Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Ready To Be A Blogger? | earn money

I'm not really a blogger - yet. I put up a blog years ago because I heard that it helps with search engine optimization of my sites (by linking to them from the blog). I never quite understood how to make money blogging until I read an ebook and some articles by Yaro Starak. I am taking another look at this now, and I found a couple of his articles to put on this website. Here is one on with some really good tips.

10 Blog Traffic Tips

In every blogger's life comes a special day - the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else's blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader - you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that's about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers.

These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called "traction", which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major "pillar" articles. A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good "how-to" lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn't news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don't have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need an easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that's the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you've done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people's blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger's article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it's sort of like your blog telling someone else's blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at http://blogcarnival.com/.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it's so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it's worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn't bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it's worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your "Resource Box". You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I've listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won't stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

This article was by Yaro Starak




Ten Creative Advertising Ideas | earn money

The creative advertising ideas that follow are specifically about finding new places and ways. It's an area that has always been full of potential for innovation. It was an article I recently read on a company calledShow Media that prompted me to write this page.

3,000 taxis in New York carry advertising placed there by Show Media. Clients (which include Levis, Nike and other big companies) are charged $200 per month for each ad, and Show Media pays $100 to the cab company per month. leaving enough room for healthy profits. Owner Laurence Hallier says that a typical campaign cost $40,000 per month for exposure on 200 taxis, and is seen by 25% of the city's residents daily.

The article got me to thinking about what other creative advertising ideas and opportunities are out there. I am coming up with the following short as I write this, and without research, some of these ideas may have already been put into practice.

Audio Advertising - An ad automatically plays as people walk by certain locations. Clients could be charged by the number of times an ad plays (they get a good deal when more than one pedestrian happens to be there to hear the ad). A company could also sell the actual machines to specific businesses to use as they wish. For example, a restaurant might have a recording that is triggered by each passer-by, saying something like, "Hi there! Come on in right now and you'll get a free drink with your lunch."

Residential Sign Advertising - Although I'm not sure about the legality of this in most places, many yards have signs supporting political candidates or announcing that some company just replaced the windows or did the siding, so why not have paid advertising too? The home owners who participate get a monthly check for each sign. Advertisers pay twice that, leaving room for a profit for the company that provides this service.

Ads On Street Signs - Many cities are looking for additional revenue, so how about placing advertising on street signs to provide that money? The city gets the monthly revenue, but in addition to that the company that arranges this might have to make new signs for the city, saving it this expense.

Car Ads - This is being done in some areas already, but what's needed is a simple system for organizing in from both ends. Ad buyers can call or visit, and a driver can pull in, have a sign attached to his or her car, and get a check for keeping it there for a month or a year.

Flying Ads - Some areas have consistent breezes, so it might be possible to have kites flying most of the day with large ads visible on each. Of course beaches are a natural location, but this may work in other places.

Murals On Buildings - This could be an opportunity for a budding artist who need to make some money. Find an ugly building and ask the owner how much he would charge to have a nice advertising mural painted on its side. Find advertisers who will pay enough to leave a decent profit and you're in business. The building owner might have to be offered final approval on the planned mural and should agree to leave it there for at least a year.

Movie Box Ads - This isn't about advertising on the box in which a DVD is sold. But many movie rental stores have their own blank boxes (usually plastic) that they send out all of their movies in. They could sell advertising on those for local products or services (a restaurant, for example), or products available nationally as well. A busy store sends out hundreds of movies a day, so this could provide a lot of exposure for the advertisers and therefore a decent source of revenue for the store.

Scent Advertising - Pump the smell of fresh cooked food onto busy sidewalks, alongside a sign or audio ad promoting a restaurant. If you think about how much more you spend grocery shopping when you are hungry, you can see the value to a restaurant of stimulating that hunger.

Plant Ads - People's bushes could be trimmed into the shape of a company logo, or a company might offer to care for a row of bushes that decorate a road in exchange for trimming them how they want. Plant and flower beds could be grown in the pattern of a logo or even to spell out slogans. Farmers fields near airports could have ads cut into them to be seen by plane passengers flying overhead ("Stay at our hotel when you land").

Advertising Games - Word-of-mouth advertising could be boosted by making it into a contest. Let the participants sign up online and get a number which they give out with their recommendation for the product or service. The one who refers the most customers in a year wins a big prize.


How To Make Money Online | earn money

Here's a look at how to make money online. We start with a list of ways, some of which you may not quite understand if you are not already doing business online. Following that you'll find some links to more detailed information on specific ways that are covered on other pages of this site as well as in our family of sites.

How To Make Money Online: The List

- Write and sell ebooks

- Build informational websites and host pay-per-click advertising.

- Sell physical products online.

- Get paid to write for webmasters.

- Create a free blog and promote affiliate products for a commission.

- Develop an email newsletter and sell your own or other's products in it.

- Sell advertising in your newsletter.

- Sell links on your websites and blogs.

- Create books and reports to sell on Amazon's Kindle.

- Create and sell an email course on your favorite subject.

- Design websites for others.

- Sell a product on Ebay.

- Buy rummage sale items to sell for three times as much on Ebay.

- Write blog posts as a freelancer, for owners who contract out their content needs.

- Get hired as a blog writer.


Learn To Budget Money - Four Steps | earn money

There are some people who don't need to learn to budget money, because they simply and naturally spend less than they make, and save the rest. Why bother to allocate "x" dollars each month for this or that category if your "outgo" is always less than your income, and you invest the rest for retirement. So if you don;t want to budget, you can try habitual frugality or an income that is constantly growing larger. But if you're not up to either of these challenges, you may need to learn basic budgeting.

Most people want to learn to budget money only once they're in financial trouble (hopefully that's not why you're reading this, but better late than never). Debts have piled up, and income doesn't quite cover the bills and habits. Stress is a common result, and learning the usual budgeting techniques is a good idea. Those are covered in four steps below. The second part of this article presents another way to approach this problem of managing your money.

How To Learn To Budget

Step One - Expenditure Tracking

Write down everything you spend for two months. Have categories that make sense (entertainment, utilities, etc), so you can see where the money is going. You'll be surprised at how much money is spent in some areas, and you might also find that as you watch the money going out on paper, you begin to change your habits. Looking at your convenience store purchases on paper motivates you to skip a soda or two, just so you don't have to write it down. This a good exercise to repeat every year or so, if only for the habit-changing effect it has.

Step Two - Reduce Expenditures

Do this before you start making the actual budget calculations. Get spending under control and then you will have a better idea of how much to allocate to each category. With a bit of thought you can cut the cost of most things and activities in your life. Turn down the hot water heater temperature, combine trips to save gas, bring a lunch to work instead of eating at a restaurant. Find the relatively painless ways first - like spending an hour to find a cheaper insurance policy for your car. If these are enough, you may not need more drastic measures.

Step Three - Make a Budget

Using your current income and your expenditure tracking notes, create a monthly budget, allocating money to each category expenses. You may need $250 per month for groceries, $300 per month for paying down credit cards, and $120 for the retirement account, for example. Be sure to include all regular expenses. The totals should add up to a bit less than your income. If not, lower those allocations and take more cost-cutting measures.

You need to account for large and unpredictable items as well. You don't know when a car repair will be necessary, for example, but you do know it is an eventuality. Try this: add up the amount you spent on your car over the last two years and divide by twenty-four to get a monthly figure for expenses.

Step Four - Set Up Systems

You'll need systems for following your budget and tracking money spent. For things that are hard to track, like convenience store purchases, you can put the allocated money in an envelope at the beginning of the month. When it is gone, you are done until the next month starts and the envelop is refilled. For large expenses, like car payments, repairs, insurance and registration, it may be best to set the money aside in a separate bank account, where it can accumulate until you need it. Medical expenses can be handled this way to, and you should have an account or envelope for the "completely unexpected."

Budgeting Based On Values

Certainly it can help to learn to budget money, but there is another approach that begins with asking why you are making money in the first place. You need it to survive of course, and the steps above will help with that, but you don't manage your money just to pay bills. After all, money is a powerful tool that can serve you in your pursuit of anything that is important and valuable to you.

A value-based approach starts with identifying what is of real importance to you, and setting reasonable goals based on that. If, for example, you value travel, you might make it a goal to take a major trip around the world every two years or so. If self-development and peace of mind is important you might plan to buy good books and courses that will help. If you truly value something, set a goal, put a price on it, and then determine how much you'll need to set aside each month to accomplish it.

Begin setting that money now - even before you do the two-month tracking exercise or make a budget. Then work the rest of the budget around these important goals. You see, if you start by figuring how much you need for the "necessities" of life, it's likely there will be no money left over for what you really value. Start with what's important.

Suppose the rest of the budget doesn't work after you set aside this "goal" money.What do you do then? Cut expenses or make more money. Consider for a moment how much less money some people live on than you do. Now, if these goals are truly important to you, live like they do. Just learn to budget money for what matters most, and if it truly is valuable, you can almost certainly find a way to make the rest of the budget work too.


What Are The Best Jobs In A Recession? | Earn money

It would be an easy answer to say that the best jobs in a recession are those that won't get cut, but that's only a partial truth. It really depends on what you employment goals are after all. If you want to make the most money you can, the best jobs are still the high-paying jobs you're probably pursuing now. If the job you have or plan to get is meant to train yourself for a future business, you wouldn't want to give that up for a more secure position in a recession that could last a long time and therefore delay your progress towards your goals for a long time

But we can start with jobs where layoffs are less likely. These will be in the industries that both maintain their sales during a recession and those that actually benefit from it as well. Retailers of cheap necessities, like WalMart don't see sales decline much in tough economic times. The same is true of any discount stores that primarily sell necessities. Utility companies fall into this category too, since we still light our houses when times are difficult. If you look for work in these industries you might still want to look for those jobs that offer opportunities for advancement as well.

Businesses that do better during a recession interestingly include movie theaters - at least during bad recessions and depressions. At the moment (2009) sales are up at most theaters around the United States, so the jobs available at them are fairly secure. They are low-paying though, so look for the companies that have advancement opportunities (most likely the larger theaters and chains). Lawyers specializing in bankruptcy law also do better during tough times, as do repossession companies. I'll tell you from experience that you better enjoy the thrill of doing auto repossessions, because the pay is not usually much better than a fast food job.


Sunday, September 6, 2009

5 Ways For Teens To Make Money Online

Teenagers are always looking for extra cash to buy clothes, gas, video games and other things that appeal to them. In order to buy these things and put money in their wallet. Teens need money. Here are 5 ways teens can make some extra cash online.

1. Blogging - Blogging can be a great way for teens to make money because teens usually have lots of hobbies. Why not blog about them. Blogging requires a lot of work at the start but eventually gets easier. People earn money with blogs mostly through ads so in order to be successful you will need to have a blog with a good amount of traffic.

2. Writing Articles – Teens can make money with article directories like Ehow and Associated Content. Whenever you write an article with these sites, you get paid based on the number of times that article is viewed.

3. Mechanical Turk – This site was created by Amazon and pays you to complete tasks that computers can’t do. These include finding information about businesses and writing short essays. Teens are usually pretty good at surfing the web for info so this is a great opportunity for them.

4. Affiliate Marketing – Teens can make money promoting other people’s products. Sites like ClickBank will pay you a commission when someone buys a product using your link. Another thing is that teens have lots of experience with social networking sites which gives them a way to promote and be successful.

5. Paid Surveys – There are sites out there that need teens opinions on products. They are willing to pay them for their opinions. Teens can make a good amount of money with survey sites. They are easy to do and most sites usually send the earnings by check which is great for teenagers under 18.

Author Bio
If you’re a teen and want to make money then I recommend CashCrate for starters. It is a paid survey site that is very easy for teens to make money with. They send money with checks which is great.


Article Marketing - The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

Article marketing is the best thing that a web owner can do to promote his website. It is a wonderful way to promote and advertise the website. The article marketing is a technique that is being most used today for promoting the web and web based business. This is especially good for the small and medium business. All you need is good research of the keywords and then well written articles using those keywords. Your articles must be genuine, fresh and informative to attract huge number of visitors to your website.

You should also keep in mind that the articles must be well targeted and according to the choice of the readers. The readers will only become visitors if they find your content interesting and compelling.
The good thing that article marketing does to your online business is that it leaves link backs on various pages of the article publishing website.

These link backs do two things for you

1. They increase your rating in the search engines and hence you get to better positions when someone makes a search relative to the keywords that you have written in. Better search engine ranking is the best thing that can happen to your website. If your website ranks higher on the search pages, you will surely attract much more number of visitors.

2. They help you to get more traffic because all those who will like your articles will click your links and will become a visitor.
The article writing also helps you to effectively advertise your website. Today, article marketing is considered as the best way to promote the small and medium business. even the larger business can be promoted effectively using article marketing, but that requires other supporting advertising methods as well.

You should know that in order to succeed and attract visitors to your website, you should choose the right niche and the articles should be of a good quality. If you make a wrong choice while selecting the niche, all your hard work and creativity can become useless. You may have to experiment a lot before succeeding. There could even be cases when you will not find the right blend even after serious hard work put in to this.

The article marketing can be really disappointing if you have not chosen the right approach. The right choice means that you should use interesting articles and there should be good information in those articles. No matter how many article you have written, you would fail if you have not followed these guidelines.

Remember that the articles can leave a bad impact on your website and your business. you should always follow the guidelines that the article publishing companies have laid down for the writers. You should also remember that excessive use of keywords can make your articles bad in the eyes of the search engines. So make sure you do every thing right otherwise you will not benefit from the article writing.