Archive for February, 2011

How to Make Money with Web Hosting

February 25th, 2011 admin

We all know that web hosting is the basis of all web sites. It helps us attract visitors, it displays what we are desperately trying to get across, and it allows us to survive in the cut throat internet world. While these are all important qualities that come with web hosting, there are many other opportunities. Dying to make extra cash? Surprisingly, web hosting can actually help with your bills. In a few simple steps, you will be on your way to a richer lifestyle.

Fortunately, there is a new trend in the web industry. Reseller Hosting, which consists of purchasing a web hosting package and reselling it for a larger price, has been making webmasters just a few cents richer. Although this sounds like a daunting task, it actually only requires a large amount of space. Once the webmaster acquires such a large server and bandwidth, he/she is able to divide it up among other people. As long as they are willing to pay a monthly fee, you will never get screwed over.

Regardless of how much money you want to make, purchasing this re-seller hosting does not cost much. For an average of $30/month, you can purchase enough space to make a profit. While all of these websites will be on a shared server, the majority of webmasters do not mind this downside. After all, not everyone can shell out thousands a month just to acquire their own dedicated server. Once you have found a few loyal customers who will not create any illegal material, you will be generating a profit every single month out of the year. Fortunately, until you stop your hosting, you will never be out of a job.

In order to sell this type of hosting, you absolutely need to network. Regrettably, there are many webmasters trying to follow the trend. For this reason alone, you should look in unpopulated areas. Try and find a website or forum that has not yet been tackled by other masses of website owners. For instance, find websites similar to your own. If you do not have one, look on webmaster-related forums such as Digital Point or Webmaster-Talk. These areas are populated with thousands of interested clients, who will be more than happy to jump on the bandwagon, if you do have a great deal.

Still desperately trying to find other ways to market? Many website owners advertise through blogs and buy text link ads. As a result, people will be more apt to find what you are offering. If this doesn’t work, you could even start marketing in a local newspaper or a newsletter that goes out to professional companies who are always looking for alternatives. Nevertheless, there are plenty of consumers out there. You just need to be creative and put in the effort, in order to get anywhere.

For years web hosting has been flooding the market. However, it has just recently become a form of revenue for webmasters who just don’t own their own web hosting company. It is a wonderful alternative to an additional part time job, especially if this is what you love to do. Networking with others, controlling a server, while working on your website certainly sounds like the perfect occupation.

Posted in Web Hosting No Comments »

SEO Musts for Local Business

February 25th, 2011 admin

The Internet might be global in nature, but if your business is local, it makes no sense to concentrate on global reach, when your customers live in your city, or even in your neighborhood. For local businesses getting a global reach is a waste of resources. Instead, you should concentrate on the local community. You might be asking how you can do it, when the Web is global and Google doesn’t classify sites according to their location. Here is how you can go local with SEO:

1 Use your location in your keywords.

The first trick is to use your location in your keywords. For example, if you are in London and you sell car insurance, your most important keyphrase should be “car insurance London” because this keyphrase contains your business and your location and will drive people who are looking for car insurance in London in particular.

2 Use your location in metatags

Metatags matter for search engines and you shouldn’t miss to include your location, together with your other keywords in the metatags of the pages of your site. Of course, you must have your location in the keywords you use in the body text because otherwise it is a bit suspicious when your body text doesn’t have your location as a keyword but your tags are stuffed with it.

3 Use your location in your body text

Keywords in the body text count a lot and you can’t afford to skip them. If your web copy is optimized for “car insurance” only, this won’t help you rank well with “car insurance London”, so make sure that your location is part of your keywords.

4 Take advantage of Google Places and Yahoo Local

Google Places and Yahoo Local are great places to submit to because they will include you in their listings for a particular location.

5 Create backlinks with your location as anchor text

It could be a bit tricky to get organic backlinks with your location as anchor text because some keywords with location don’t sound very natural – for instance, “car insurance London” isn’t grammatically correct and you will hardly get an organic inline link with it but you can use it in the Name field to comment on blogs. If the blog is dofollow, you will still get a backlink with anchor text that helps for SEO.

6 Get included in local search engine

Global search engines, such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo can bring you lots of traffic but depending on your location, local search engines might be the real golden mine. A local search engine could mean a search engine for the area (though it is not very likely to have regional search engines) or more likely for your country. For instance, Baidu is a great option, if you are selling on the Chinese market.

7 Get listed in local directories

In addition to local search engines, you need to try your luck with local directories, too. You might think that nobody reads directory listings but this isn’t exactly so. For instance, Yellow Pages are one of the first places where people look when searching for a local vendor for a particular product.

8 Run locally-targeted ad campaigns

One of the most efficient ways to drive targeted, local traffic to your site is with the help of locally-targeted ad campaigns. PPC ads and classifieds are the two options that work best – at least for most webmasters.

9 Do occasional checks of your keywords

Occasionally checking the current search volume of your keywords is a good idea because shifts in search volumes are quite typical. Needless to say, if people don’t search for “car insurance London” anymore because they have started using other search phrases and you continue to optimize for “car insurance London”, this is a waste of time and money. Also, keep an eye on the keywords your competitors use – this will give you clue which keywords work and which don’t.

10 Use social media

Social media can drive more traffic to a site than search engines and for local search this is also true. Facebook, Twitter, and the other social networking sites have a great sales potential because you can promote your business for free and reach exactly the people you need. Local groups on social sites are especially valuable because the participants there are mainly from the region you are interested in.

11 Ask for reviews and testimonials

Client reviews and testimonials are a classical business instrument and these are like letters of recommendation for your business. However, as far as SEO is concerned, they could have another role. There are review sites, where you can publish such reviews and testimonials (or ask your clients to do it) and this will drive business to you. Some of these sites are Yelp and Merchant Circle but it is quite probable that there are regional or national review sites you can also post at.

12 Create separate pages for your different locations

When you have business in several locations, this makes the task a bit more difficult because you can’t possibly optimize for all of them – you can’t have a keyphrase such as “car insurance London, Berlin, Paris, New York”. In this case the solution is to create separate pages for your different locations. If your locations span the globe, you can also create different sites on different, country-specific domains (i.e. uk.co for GB, .de for Germany, etc.) but this is only reasonable to do, if your business is truly multinational. Otherwise, just a separate page for each of your locations will do.

These simple tips how to optimize your site for local searches are a must, if you rely on the local market. Maybe you are already doing some of them and you know what works for you and what doesn’t. Anyway, if you haven’t tried them all, try them now and see if this will have a positive impact on your rankings (and your business) or not.

Posted in Money News, SEO No Comments »

What To Sell On eBay To Make Money

February 25th, 2011 admin

I spent many years as an eBay auction seller, researcher, and analyzer, yet I haven’t found anything more important that can make you succeed other than having a good product.

You can learn tactics, have thousands of positive feedbacks, but if you don’t have the actual product you can hold in your hands and ship to your customer, there is no chance you can think about eBay as a place to make money.

I remember the years I had no idea where to start.

I know what it feels like when you have no product to resell on eBay. Those days were like a horror movie.

First, I was so active and put all my efforts into getting started. For example, a friend bought something cheap from a local ad, and I had a feeling that I should go and check it out because maybe it would be profitable on eBay. After some research, I got the answer – no its not. On another day, while surfing the forums for trade opportunities, I would again check it on eBay. While shopping at the market, looking what people are selling and I began to wonder if I could get it cheaper.

All that time I got the answer NO, NO, and NO.

I felt angry and frustrated because I can’t find anything to work with. Besides that, I would check eBay to see how many people are selling phones, accessories, clothes, and computers…

Thousands of people know what I don’t, how can it be?

But there is a serious reason for that.

In order to get the answer, you have to create a question that makes sense, which will sound like this:

Is it really that hard to get something to resell on eBay?

Let’s think. You and I already know that having a good product is the key to every eBay business and it determine if you make money or not. So the answer is simple – well, yes, it has to be hard.

From my personal experience, this is the hardest part.

If it was easy, then everyone could have a business. And it will be nice and easy to live your life. You could lie down on the green grass, with the sun shining and the weather is perfect.

But no, this is so hard that it separates you from the people who actually make money on eBay.

I don’t want you to work hard.

The first step is to know where to look for a product. You need the exact place where you can find thousands of different products with low prices. Making money on eBay is all about getting products cheaper than your competition.

Let’s go deeper.

Think about this, what is the No1 place in the world that can help us with that problem?

The best solution I know – China. It is the perfect country to look at if you are looking for something to resell.

The population in China is very big, one of the biggest in the world. This makes China the cheapest workforce in the world. Because of that, products are cheap. You will find all available categories and products in the world packed into one country. And the price, as I said before, will be one of the most competitive around.

However, knowing that won’t help if you don’t know the place where the suppliers are located, just waiting potential customers like you.

One online company you should know and use is Alibaba.

You should checkout their website, because it has a lot of different products. It has so many categories and products that the question of “What to sell on eBay to make money?” will never come to your head again.

Posted in Ebay Money, Money Networks No Comments »

Affiliate Marketing Newbies Guide

February 25th, 2011 admin

Here is an affiliate marketing newbies guide, which you should go through, if you are planning to venture into this lucrative field of affiliate marketing. Yes, lucrative; and I am not exaggerating in saying that. Here’s our newbies’ guide to affiliate marketing. Read on.

Let me start with something that an affiliate marketing newbies guide shouldstart with; the affiliate marketing definition. We will then move to understanding the intricacies of affiliate marketing followed by some tips for affiliate marketing newbies. So, if you are looking forward to making a mark in the affiliate marketing industry, keep reading.

Affiliate Marketing – An Introduction

What is affiliate marketing? Well, a marketing practice wherein business revenue is shared between the business and its affiliates is known as affiliate marketing. An affiliate serves as an agent who works towards bringing opportunities of revenue generation for a business and gets paid for his efforts. Affiliate marketing is a system in which a seller or merchant, in correspondence with his affiliate, also called publisher, generates business, and rewards the affiliate for his help. An affiliate plays a major role in attracting customers towards the business, for which he receives compensation from the seller. The business merchant, the publisher (the affiliate), the customer and the affiliate network are the core players in the affiliate marketing industry.

A little bit about the affiliate network; it is an intermediary between affiliates and affiliate programs. This network serves as a platform over which websites offering affiliate marketing programs access the customer base. It also helps websites, to easily participate in affiliate programs.

Affiliate Marketing Beginner’s Guide

Affiliate marketing newbies should know that this marketing practice can be considered as a form of online marketing where the ‘affiliate logic’ is used to direct web traffic from one website to another. Affiliate marketing programs often make use of Internet marketing methods like pay-per-click, pay-per-lead, paid SEM and email marketing. There are thousands of websites that are ready to pay a commission to affiliates based on their efforts towards promoting business of the website’s products and services. With continuous growth in this field, there is an increase in people turning towards affiliate marketing. Many have begun looking at affiliate marketing as a lucrative option for making money online.

If you are one of those affiliate marketing newbies, remember, affiliate marketing is about sharing of revenue between a business and you. Isn’t that interesting? Imagine, you are actually sharing business revenue; you are earning a share of the revenue generated by a flourishing business; flourishing because of your efforts. Imagine, you are actually directing customers to a business; you are enhancing its customer base and getting paid in return.

What’s the exact role of an affiliate? That’s you, the affiliate. Simply put, if you are an affiliate, you act as a middleman (or woman) between a business and its customers. It’s usually something like, you own a website, you use it to send customers to a company and you are rewarded for it. All you do is place a link that directs users to a company product or service, from your website. Users who click on this weblink are directed to the business product or service. If they avail the company service or buy their product, you earn! And that’s because you were the one who caused the user to visit the company website, who was then attracted to buy their product or service. In short, you, as an affiliate, played that important role of bringing customers for a business and now you are eligible to earn your well-deserved share of revenue. And the good news for affiliate marketing newbies is that all you need, to be in this field is a computer with an Internet connection. And yes, you should be ready to work hard and wait to reap the fruit of your effort.

This is an affiliate marketing newbies guide and I assume you are a beginner to this form of marketing. By now, you know what affiliate marketing is and you also have an idea of affiliate marketing companies and the marketing programs they offer. Internet affiliate marketing, apart from a computer and a broadband connection, needs the marketer to have knowledge of search engine optimization and an understanding of web users. Well then. You have decided to venture into affiliate marketing and make the most of this money-making idea. You are aware of the basic SEO concepts like keywords, niches, hyperlinks, building a website and web traffic. You need to learn affiliate marketing before you actually make it a means to earn money. The following section will help you do that and also equip you with some affiliate marketing tips.

How to do Affiliate Marketing – Newbies Guide

Find a Niche: The first step is to find a profitable niche. Think of something you like; probably something related to your hobby or area of expertise. Then see if the subject you have thought of is popular among web users. Use a keyword tool to analyze the popularity and competition of the subject chosen. Find a trade off between the two and then check for the probability of the search term of fetching advertisements. An easy way to do this is to analyze the Google results for your search term by going through the right hand side section of the results page.

Build the Website: Before actually building the website, you will need to choose a suitable domain name for the same. The domain name is the website address. Select a domain name which goes with the website content, and is short and easy to remember. Even better if it contains the keyword you are targeting, as this will help boost your rankings. Register your domain name with a domain name registrar, which usually involves a fee of about $10 per year. Register with one of the website hosting services and upload your website once you have an hosting account. The process does not end here. After the website is uploaded, it should also get indexed. Once the search engines know about your website, you can work towards increasing your website traffic. One way to get your website indexed is to submit the site URL to search engines. Another commonly used way is to build backlinks to your website. You may also choose to buy an already indexed domain. Uploading your website online marks your presence on the web and getting the website indexed is like being recognized on the Internet.

Promote the Website: In promoting a website, some things have to be taken into consideration. Firstly, your website should be content rich; better if the content is updated frequently on a regular basis. The content on the website should target the right keywords. Blogging can be a good way of attracting visitors to your website. Blog about the product(s) you are advertising; again, use keywords to optimize your content. It’s good to learn SEO basics, so that you know which keywords to use and how. Once you have submitted your website to search engines and once they index it, you can employ advertising programs like pay-per-click advertising, Google Adwords and others to place advertisements on your website.

See that the advertisements are well-worded and that they attract the right audience. See what percentage of the add-clicks convert to actual sales of the product you are advertising. Place the ads in such a way that they attract maximum users. Use various website promotiontechniques to attract traffic and achieve maximum conversion of visitors to buyers. Yes, that’s your objective as an affiliate marketer. Let’s come to the last section of this affiliate marketing newbies guide; the section on tips for affiliate marketing newbies.

Affiliate Marketing Tips for Beginners

  • One of the most important affiliate marketing tips is to find the right niche. When searching for a niche, select one that you have enough knowledge about and are interested in. As you would be writing on and promoting a product related to the niche selected, it doesn’t make sense to choose something you are unfamiliar with or not interested in.
  • Whichever product you choose to advertise, see that you are convinced with what you are doing. Promote the right kind of product and in the right way. It will help you gain user trust.
  • Learn SEO. It’s important to know how to optimize your website content as well as the website design. Optimization is the key to achieve higher rankings, thus increasing the probability of attracting more users.
  • Try different affiliate marketing programs till you find the one that suits you best. Be careful while choosing them. Update your website content on a regular basis. That’s another important affiliate marketing tip for beginners. Try to give your readers something new, something useful. Users like variety.
  • Be focused, be innovative and do not be afraid of experimenting. Yes, experimenting with new products and new strategies is important.
  • Be patient; affiliate marketing cannot bring you success overnight. With persistent efforts, you will be able to make a mark in the affiliate marketing industry.

Well then, are you ready to take your first step towards becoming an affiliate marketer? I would suggest, go through this affiliate marketing newbies guide again; revise what we’ve just discussed and put your best foot forward towards making affiliate marketing a success. If you feel, you need someone to guide you in your endeavor, come back to this newbies guide to affiliate marketing. Come back, any time.

Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Marketing No Comments »

Keys to Picking the Right Affiliate Marketing Program

February 25th, 2011 admin

Affiliate marketing programs are so plentiful, that it is hard to choose which one you should promote. It is important that you choose wisely. This article will help guide your decision-making.

Here are some things to think about:

1. Market a program that you really find interesting. The first step is to try it yourself. If it is interesting to you and you think it is valuable to you, chances are that your customers will feel the same way. It is also important that you understand your product thoroughly and that your recommendations are based on experience. This is the only way your customers will trust you.

2. Market a program that is of high quality. How can you tell? Well, do the people promoting it seem to be professional? When you do diligence on the program on the Internet, does it get favorable ratings? Make sure that you want to rest your reputation on this particular program.

3. Does your affiliate program have a growing market? You want to make sure that the affiliate program has not so saturated the market that there is no room for growth. Sometimes a product is exciting and new at first, but after reaching a peak demand slackens as the market looks for the next big thing. Don’t get stuck promoting products that the market has lost all interest in.

4. Only join an affiliate program that pays you a good commission. This business is hard enough without dealing with unfair payment models. I want would look for at least a 30% commission and for electronic products (like e-books), I generally required at least a 50% commission. Also you should try to find a program that also pays you a residual income so that you will keep earning on this year’s sales year after year. You have to consider yourself and your family. There are just too many well-paying affiliate programs for you to waste your energy on the cheapskates.

5. Do not spend time with an affiliate program that does not have adequate resources to support you and help you make sales. This means they should have ample banner ads, email copy, and other promotional materials for you to use. They also need to have excellent and responsive customer service.

6. Make sure you are comfortable with your affiliate program’s record-keeping procedures. You are relying on them to accurately report your commissions. If you do not get comfortable at the outset that you understand your program’s commission tracking protocol and that it is reliable, you will always suspect them of stiffing you. That is no way to begin a business relationship.

Having the right affiliate program has everything to do with your success in affiliate marketing. Use this article to help you choose wisely.

Posted in Affiliate Programs, Make Money No Comments »

Stay at Home Jobs – Make Money From Home

February 25th, 2011 admin

Stay at home jobs is a lifeline to millions of stay at home moms, retirees and even students. Having the ability to work when you want, where you want and how much you want is an absolute revolution in the workplace and one that you need to embrace if you want that freedom that can suit your lifestyle.
If you can’t seem to concentrate at the office all because of a chatty co-worker, then you better think twice if an office setting is still the right place for you? If you always incur delays all due to constant meeting interruptions, then this might be the perfect time to consider shifting to a less distracting environ. And, if you think you aren’t prolific working at the office, stay at home jobs may help you become fruitful and make use of your time productively.
A brief history:
Stay at home jobs have also been a thing in the past. Even before the industrial upheaval, a lot of people are already working from their homes or own a small enterprise close to their abodes. So this just goes to show that even beforehand people are acquainted in working from home. At present, home based jobs have become even more popular with the advent of the internet technology, making transactions and ventures much easier and swifter by the minute.
Stay home jobs need not be linked to one specific employer. The internet has opened up a whole new world for freelance workers and regardless of your skill level you can find something suited to your needs and income goals.

Characteristics of a good home based worker:
Even if this is becoming a popular trend these days, working from home isn’t a ‘thing’ for everyone. If you think working from home is all about slacking off and working in your own pace, you may have missed an important aspect. When you work from home, you should brace yourself for a more than 5 hours of work, must comply with set deadlines, and must deliver over and beyond expectations. If you have the above mentioned qualities, then you can be part of the growing family of home workers around the globe.

In most cases your earning ability is virtually endless. Not having to get dragged down by the usual office politics and distractions that most work environments offer, you will soon fond yourself being much more focused and productive.

Posted in Home Jobs 1 Comment »

Do People Really Make Money By Blogging?

February 25th, 2011 admin

One of the most common ways to earn money online is to make money by blogging. Many people hear of the idea that one of the best ways to start earning money online is by starting a blog. So they come up with an idea of what to start their blog with, and start posting to their blog posts that are related to their topic, and they add some adsense ads and some affiliate offers all for the purpose to earn loads of cash with their blog.

The key to make money by blogging

Do people really make money by blogging or do they fail to even earn a cent?

One thing you should know is that there are plenty of people that start a blog and post daily to their blog and don’t even earn a cent from their blog. And there are people that hardly post to their blog and earn thousands of dollars each month.

So with that said, in what does it really depend that you do in order to make money? What makes a blog successful?

First of all, before you pick an idea of what to write in your blog, you have to do some research in what people are interested to read about. Let’s say if you will start a blog about watermelon pits, then you have very small chances that somebody will visit your blog, that means small chances to make some money. But if you blog about i-phones, dating, ways to earn money online or so, then you will get visitors to your blog and definitely earn some money.

But, just taking a topic that interests people isn’t enough because the competition is so big that you’ll have to work months upon months to get good rankings for your blog so you’ll get visitors. So you’ll have to break down the big topic into a smaller niche.

For example, let’s take a niche like computers, if you’ll start a blog on computers your blog will get lost between all those big companies that have millions of dollars to invest in their websites. So you could brake it apart into desktops and laptops, but that doesn’t help me too much. So, let’s take laptops you could pick different companies like Toshiba, HP, and so on. Afterward you could take a model number or screen size and write on that topic.

Get the idea? You have to take a niche that doesn’t have too of a big competition. And it should be a niche that interests people. Then you will have success and start to make money by blogging. There are people that just pick the wrong topic that doesn’t interest anybody, so they could have the best blog in the world and it won’t earn them a cent.

The key to success is to pick a good niche to write your blog about.

Shlomo Enden is an experienced blogger and a full time affiliate marketer, who helps other people in ways to earn money online. Visit my website for good ideas on ways to earn extra money.

Posted in Blogging No Comments »

Making Money With Automotive Leads After Conversion

February 25th, 2011 admin

Most dealerships spend a lot of money to acquire new automotive leads – whether it is by using traditional methods like advertising in newspapers, collecting leads through salespersons or by buying the leads from internet lead generation portals. The automotive leads bought from internet portals are seen to pay more dividends than any other form but the main problem comes when dealers don’t know what to do with the leads after the conversion have been done. Earlier, dealers used to throw away the leads like waste but there are ways in which they could make money even after they’ve been used.

After the automotive leads have been converted, these could be sold to other businesses which cater to the same consumers. For example, auto loan providers, debt consolidators, bankruptcy loan providers, auto insurance agents etc. Even if the leads turn out to be old or completely refuse to purchase any car products, buying them wouldn’t be considered as a waste. Most of the leads which do not make purchase don’t have the finances to do so. In these cases, the automotive leads become very precious for loan providers or debt consolidators. It has the added benefit that the dealer doesn’t have to go into business with a consumer who has bad credit rating. The risk would be taken by the loan provider and the dealer would get to sell the car for cash.

If the leads convert into sales, then they could be sold to auto insurance providers or car servicing agents and dealerships. These people get to benefit most from consumers who have purchased a vehicle and can offer more money for the leads.

Posted in Articles, Automotives No Comments »
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