Sunday, November 11, 2007

Huge Traffic Generation Blueprint For A Brand New Blog 2: ‘Traffic-Friendly’ Blog Set Up

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Part 2 of 5: Exact step-by-step strategies to drive traffic to a brand new blog, starting from scratch, and with little technical knowledge.

It is important for a brand new blog to start getting traffic as soon as possible. Traffic brings more traffic. So the earlier you can start driving traffic to your blog, the better it is. After defining the purpose of your blog, setting your goals for it and modelling after other successful blogs, now it is time to set up your blog so it is ‘traffic-friendly’.

There are a few ways to make your blog traffic-friendly. There are two parts to this.

Part 1: Make it easy for your target market to find out about and come to your blog.
Part 2: Make it easy for them to stay and revisit your blog.

To make it easy for your target market to find out about your new blog, it is important for you to know what your target market wants. Assuming you already know your target market and what they want, then you must set up your blog to provide them with what they want. Write articles that solve their problems, fulfil their needs and desires. The golden rule is: ‘Give them more of what they want.’

On top of writing articles that are beneficial to them, you also need to make your blog search engine friendly by doing some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies. One simple and highly effective SEO strategy is to ensure that your article postings contain the keywords that are highly searched by your target market. For example, if your target market is looking for a cure for back pain, then you need to write articles that contain the keywords ‘cure for back pain’ or ‘back pain cure’ or something along those lines. You need to include the keywords to the following elements to make your blog optimized:

- Title of the article / post
- The first paragraph of your of article / post
- The body of the article (include the keywords a few times in a natural way, but do not overdo it! About 3-6 times in a 500 – 600 words article should be good.)
- The keyword tags
- Webpage meta-data: Webpage title & description

By doing the above, you will make your articles/posts highly optimized for search engines to find them easily. This also means that your target market will find them easily and arrive at your blog.

Once they arrive at your blog, you want them to stay at your blog as long as they can, and return to your blog often. The more they return to your blog, the more loyal they become. And when they are happy with what they find on your blog, they will refer others and drive traffic to your blog. That is why it is important to model after successful blogs because you can learn where they place certain elements of their blogs to make their blogs more ‘sticky’.

Luckily there are plugins that can help you make your blog more reader-friendly and sticky. There are literally thousands of different plugins available for free. You can find most of the plugins at www.wordpress.org/extend/plugins. Here are some of the plugins that will be useful for you:

- Akismet: Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to prevent spam from getting into your comment box.
- Feedburner FeedSmith: Detects all ways to access your original WordPress RSS feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every subscriber.
- Get Recent Comments: Displays the most recent comments or trackbacks in the sidebar. This encourages interaction with your readers.
- Google XML sitemaps: It will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. This makes your blog search engine friendly.
- Headspace2: Meta-data manager, allowing complete control over meta-data such as keywords/tags, title, description, stylesheets, and other goodies. This makes your blog search engine friendly.
- Optimal title: This makes your blog page search engine friendly.
- Popularity contest: This plugin shows your readers the most popular posts on your blog. This encourages interaction with your readers.
- Related Posts: Shows a list of related posts based on active/passive keyword matches. Encourages readers to stay longer on your blog.
- Sociable: Automatically adds links on your posts to popular social bookmarking sites, also making it easy for readers to subscribe to your blog.
- Subscribe to comments: Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Encourages interaction and frequent re-visits.
- Ultimate Tag Warrior: For easy tagging and makes your blog search engine friendly.
- Wordpress.com stats: To keep track of the stats of your blog.

Once you have these plugins in place, they will help to make your blog more reader-friendly. However, ultimately, it is still the content that will bring people in and keep them coming back for more. Imagine arriving to blog that has only one article or a blog that offers nothing useful to you, would you return again? Of course not. So before you start to drive massive traffic to your blog (which I’ll discuss in the next part of this series) you need to ensure that there are some good content in your blog.

To be continued in part 3.
This article is free for republishing
Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_237636_13.html
Occupation: Profit Strategist, Entrepreneur
Sant Qiu —The Profit Strategist—is a marketing, copywriting and traffic expert who has helped many companies boost their profits by 30% and more in as little as 90 days. He delivers practical step-by-step “What to do” and “How to do” techniques to boost profits immediately. Visit his site for free powerful tips you can apply right now! http://www.santqiu.com
http://www.santqiu.com

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Friday, October 5, 2007

Blogger Templates For Free - 2, 3 and 4 Columns

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Here is a screen shot of one of the 4 column blogger templates you can found at 4 Column Templates For Blogger.

four column blogger template - Free Blogger Templates - Themed, Two, Three and Four Columns
You can find more free four column Blogger templates when you visit the blog.

Here's a link to my previous post on free three column Blogger templates.

  • Wordpress Themes Converted For The New Blogger.
  • Create Your Own Free Three or Two Column Blogspot Templates
  • Free Templates For New Blogger
  • Free Unique, Themed, Two and Three Columns Blogger Templates
  • Free Blogspot Templates Converted From Wordpress Themes
  • Free Blogskins For Blogger, Xanga, Movable Type etc.
  • Free Templates For Blogger (Classic Templates, Blogger Beta or New Blogger) - Part I
  • Free Templates For Blogger (Classic Templates, Blogger Beta or New Blogger) - Part II
  • Cost Free Three Column Templates For New Blogger

  • I hope that you'll find the links useful. The links and posts on Free Blogger templates will continue to grow over the coming days as I search for more websites or blogs that offers free Blogger templates. If you know of a website or a blog that offers free Blogger templates that hasn't been included on my list, please inform me through my email - bloggingmix[at]gmail[dot]com or you can just leave a comment on this post.

    You might also be interested in these free useful tools you can use to evaluate your blog's performance.

    Check Your Alexa Traffic Rank - View and compare Alexa Ranking graphs. Check Your Alexa Traffic Rank
    View and compare Alexa Ranking graphs.


    Check Your Website for Broken Links - Use this tool to check for broken links on a website.Check Your Website for Broken Links
    Use this tool to check for broken links on a website.


    Reciprocal Link Checker - Check your reciprocal links to see if link partners are still linking back to your site.Reciprocal Link Checker
    Check your reciprocal links to see if link partners are still linking back to your site.


    Website Speed Test - Find out how fast a specific website loads.Website Speed Test
    Find out how fast a specific website loads.


    Google Banned Checker - Discover whether a website is banned on Google.Google Banned Checker
    Discover whether a website is banned on Google.


    Index Checker - Check for the total number of pages of a specific website which are present on search engines.Index Checker
    Check for the total number of pages of a specific website which are present on search engines.


    Page Rank Checker - View Google PageRank on different Google servers.Page Rank Checker
    View Google PageRank on different Google servers.


    Source Code Viewer - View the source code of a page.Source Code Viewer
    View the source code of a page.


    Search Engine Position - Check your search engine positions on Google Search Engine.Search Engine Position
    Check your search engine positions on Google Search Engine.


    Keyword Density Checker - This tool is useful for helping webmasters achieve optimum keyword distribution.Keyword Density Checker
    This tool is useful for helping webmasters achieve optimum keyword distribution.


    Search Listings Preview - Create a preview of how your website will appear on Google, MSN and Yahoo Search.Search Listings Preview
    Create a preview of how your website will appear on Google, MSN and Yahoo Search.


    Domain Whois - Find all the information you need on any domain name. Check the DNS settings, Registrar details and much more.Domain Whois
    Find all the information you need on any domain name. Check the DNS settings, Registrar details and much more.


    Google PageRank Prediction - This predictor tool does what it says, it predicts your future Google PageRank.Google PageRank Prediction
    This predictor tool does what it says, it predicts your future Google PageRank.


    Keyword Suggestion - Find related keywords matching your search.Keyword Suggestion
    Find related keywords matching your search.


    Meta-tags Generator - Generate and configure your meta-tags.Meta-tags Generator
    Generate and configure your meta-tags.


    Link Shortener - Make a long web address short and easy to remember.Meta-tags Generator
    Make a long web address short and easy to remember.


    Link Price Calculator - Estimate how much to pay for a link.Link Price Calculator
    Estimate how much to pay for a link.


    Domain Availability Checker - Check for available domain names.Domain Availability Checker
    Check for available domain names.

    Thank you for using these free tools. I hope you found them useful.

    Sunday, September 23, 2007

    www.blogrush.com - New Flavors For Your Blog Rush Widget

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    Blog Rush will soon introduce flavors on their widget.



    MORE NEWS…

    It seems that some people are trying to call BlogRush a “pyramid scheme” or stating “there’s just no way the future impressions will ever be able to be served based on the promises of what referrals will bring. The math is impossible like other schemes of this kind.”

    Anyone that is saying this doesn’t understand how BlogRush works…

    EVERY SINGLE IMPRESSION GETS REWARDED FOR *THAT* IMPRESSION AS IT HAPPENS. There is no “promise” of future rewards based on referral activity today. Each and every impression of the widget (and impression of the 5 headlines per widget) is rewarded AS IT HAPPENS. And when all the math is said and done, it also leaves 1 out of every 10 headline spaces left-over for BlogRush to use to monetize the service. So apparently some people think it’s all based on false promises that the network will eventually “catch up” and pay rewards in the future. This just isn’t the case. Every single impression that occurs is calculated and rewarded to the generations ‘above’ — that’s how the math has to work.

    We’re working hard to move to the 100% Manual Review Process as quickly as possible, and other improvements.

    As I’ve now said many times, our SOLE FOCUS is helping our members generate quality, targeted traffic. So we’re hard at work to make that happen.


    John Reese - income.com/blog



    What's New at BlogCatalog?
    Increase Your Technorati Authority and Blog Ranking
    Blog Rush - More Exposure Equals More Traffic!
    Fechr.com - Broken Promises and Failed Expectations!
    Create Your Own Free Three or Two Column Blogger Template
    Beware of Quechup. It's One Hell of a Spammer!
    Submit Your Blog to Free Directories

    Monday, September 17, 2007

    Traffic Rush From blogrush.com - Join NOW!

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    Traffic Rush From blogrush.com - Join NOW! : Blog Rush is the newest way to increase your traffic. It’s from John Reese, a renowned and successful internet marketer. Creating a Blog Rush account is free. And installation of the Blog Rush widget is easy. It will take you less than five minutes to do all the simple and easy steps.Blog Rush is the newest way to increase your traffic. It’s from John Reese, a renowned and successful internet marketer. Creating a Blog Rush account is free. And installation of the Blog Rush widget is easy. It will take you less than five minutes to do all the simple and easy steps.

    Join Blog Rush Now and find out for your self.

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  • Sunday, September 16, 2007

    7 Top Ways To Get More Traffic Now!

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    To succeed as marketer, you must direct meaningful traffic to your website.

    No matter how well designed or interesting your site is, it is a waste of time if no one sees it.

    In the initial stages of your business, getting traffic is not easy with the steep competition of thousands of web sites all trying to get their message out there. There is hope, though, according to successful marketers. The following seven methods, applied consistently, can mean a great increase in the quality and quantity of traffic to a site:

    1.) Utilize Search Engines

    Use search engines to your advantage. You need to have your web site appear near the top of the results, ahead of other websites offering similar content to gain the maximum benefit from a search engine. How is this accomplished? See 2.

    2.) Popularity Linking

    Your site must already be attracting a considerable amount of traffic to achieve high search engine results. One method for accomplishing this is by connecting to other relevant sites via links. These "popularity links" help drive traffic, and if targeted to the correct search queries they can boost your search engine ranking.

    Link popularity always starts with finding web sites that are similar but do not compete with your own. You would contact the website owner and request a link to your site. You would, at the same time, offer a reciprocal link which would advertise their website on one of your pages.

    3.) Writing Articles

    Writing your own rich content articles on topics targeted to your audience helps promote your web site by increasing the number of popularity links coming to your site (see 2) as well as attracting interested readers. Your articles can be placed on other sites, in ezines, or even in newsletters. Always be sure to ad a source box with a link going back to your site.

    4.) Joint Venture Marketing

    Joint venture marketing, a marketing relationship in which two individuals cooperate to help promote each other, is also an effective way to promote a product or service. Joint venture agreements can also include swapping ads and exchanging links. Both parties benefit as they reach a wider customer base fairly quickly.

    5.) Joining Affiliate Programs

    By joining an affiliate program as a merchant, you can get others to market your site. You will need your own product to start your own program, but this can be accomplished through the use of private label content or product development ventures. Even a small-scale affiliate program can help direct significant traffic to your site.

    6.) Creating A List Of Subscribers

    A subscriber list is a valuable asset for any marketer. Using an autoresponder or a personalized newsletter to promote your site will help you to build a repeat visitor base, providing direct marketing opportunities for now and in the future.

    7.) Understand Your Market

    Different niches need to be promoted in different ways. Use the techniques described up until this point to reach people who will be interested. You need to figure out who your target market is and how will you treat them once they get to your site? This will affect everything on your site including your ad copy and even the colors you use.

    Use as many strategies as possible to generate targeted traffic. Relying on search engines is obviously important but there are numerous other ways to generate traffic. Combining these methods will maximize the traffic you get.


    About The Author

    Laurie Raphael operates a website geared toward boosting your marketing results using various means of advertising and marketing strategies. For her private list of recommended affiliate marketing "secret weapons," visit her site at http://theadprocess.com.

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  • Create Your Own Free Three or Two Column Blogger Template
  • Beware of Quechup. It's One Hell of a Spammer!
  • Submit Your Blog to Free Directories
  • Exchange Blog Reviews - An Open Invitation
  • How To Protect Your Blogger Blog From Hackers?
  • Viral Linking to Increase Technorati Ranking and Google Page Rank
  • Blogging Contest
  • Blogsrecord.com - Blogging Mix Review
  • Improving Comment System For Blogger Users
  • Free, Unique, Themed, 2 and 3 Column Blogger Templates
  • Blogging Mix - Performance Report 3 Months After It Was Launch
  • Optimizing Your Title Tag - For Blogger Users
  • Effective Ways to Increase Your Technorati Ranking
  • Thursday, September 13, 2007

    5 Website Navigation Tips

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    Unclear website navigation is much like trying to read a map in the dark.

    Many people who are new to web design and e-commerce have trouble creating effective website navigation. Having the expectation for your shoppers to use your website without clear and easy navigation is just like expecting them to blindly find their way to a destination with all the lights out. They will leave your site, lost and confused, without bothering to find out what you offer, and will go to find a website that is easier to understand and navigate.

    Building a quality and easy-to-use website navigation will lead to many more sales and is actually very easy to do. To help you create a more effective website, experts at Bright Builders have compiled five easy tips to help you create effective website navigation that will quickly guide your customers to the products or information they’re searching for.

    Tip One: The Navigation Bar

    The Navigation Bar or Menu is the list of links that appears on every page of your website. It is the first cue to your customers about which pages they should visit in the website. Link names should be short, clear, and accurate at describing the products, services, or information contained on the linked page. It is also a good idea to use keywords as often as possible in the links in the navigation bar.

    Navigation bars should not be too long. The customer shouldn't have to scroll down to view all of the links in your navigation bar. If your site offers a large number of products, create links to general categories instead of listing each product individually.

    Tip Two: Using a Sitemap

    A sitemap is crucial for any website. Simply put, the sitemap is an organized page of links to every page in your website. Normally organized as an outline, a sitemap includes links to each category, subcategory, and page on your site.

    Sitemaps make it easier for both search engines and customers to easily access all of the information your site has to offer. One of the main goals of any website should be to have all of its pages indexed by search engines. This is because the more pages your site can be found for and ranked for, the better your chances are that customers will be able to find you in the search engines.

    Tip Three: The Three-Click Rule

    Studies have shown, on average, if a customer cannot find a wanted item or piece of information within three clicks of entering your site, they will leave your site. This means that your competition is getting the sale that you could have had, simply because the product or information was more readily available.

    Many website owners do not understand that buyers are not the same as shoppers. Buyers know what they want and they want it now, but shoppers are simply browsing to see what is available. Make sure your customers can access all of your products and pages within three clicks from any page on your site to ensure that they buy from you.

    Tip Four: Repeat Links

    Having a Navigation Bar is very important for the ease of your website, but it is just as important to repeat those links in other areas on your site including in the body text or accompanying images.

    You should also repeat important navigation links at the bottom of each page of your site in a link tree. This gives customers the ability to look at an entire page and then continue onto other pages without having to scroll up to the top to find the Navigation Bar links.

    Tip Five: Page Titles and Subject Headers

    If a customer ever has to ask “Where am I?”, you are almost guaranteed not to get a sale. Page titles and headers are just another way to clarify to the customer what page they’re visiting.

    Found at the top of each page or dividing content by subject, headers should be bold and in a larger font than the page content. This clearly defines the purpose of the page and the content found on it, allowing the customer to easily navigate throughout the page.

    Conclusion

    Customers need to be able to navigate through a site with as little work as possible. The easier it is to navigate throughout a site, the more likely it is that your customer will stay long enough to purchase and continue to come back. By following these five simple tips, you help customers and search engines navigate through your site, thus increasing your sales potential.

    About The Author


    Shawn Hart is an internet marketer for Bright Builders. For more information about online buisness and website management visit BrightWebsite.com.

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  • Monday, September 10, 2007

    Internet Directories Page Rank Boosting

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    To reach an improved website visibility through search engines rankings has develop into a crucial requirement in today’s virtual world.

    The growing use of directories resembling to www.leadinglinksdirectory.com serves the necessity of each and every business on the way to an upsurge in its net traffic.

    This will be done by way of increasing its internet visibility on the web.

    The most favorable means to create that is probably to get listed in a link directory. The formula of this manner of a net directory saves you the time spending task of searching into every single company goal website.

    This look for might turn out to be a time taking exertion since there is an ever increasing figure of websites that make finding this information intentionally complicated as so to attempt and reject spam and also the mechanized submissions.

    Obviously the directories have to be search engine welcoming and to maintain a good page rank, and so causing the act of directory submission to become an useful and an essential instrument intended for online marketing.

    Via doing it correctly you can reach a senior mark In search engines results and have the advantage of receiving your website indexed and obviously obtain a click through internet traffic to your internet site.

    There seem to exist a rising discussion taking place on the net whether directories are worth submitting to. There are those who would sa that it’s a time waste submitting your website that also an immense amount of directories are insignificant, those persons of course put their trust at search engine rankings at the net, however a lot of the webmasters do not succeed on the way to recognize the difference between the search engines to the directories.

    This failure to tell apart the two would possibly lead the road to a fall down within the efficiency of the use of internet directories in order to increase the sites page rank and then to produce internet traffic, toward the site.

    The robotic "spiders" applied through the search engines whose lone target is to blindly save information from within the internet pages consequently as to add them on their database.That is why search engines also use human editors in order to review web pages prior to when they are added in to their directories.

    That is one of the reasons why it’s so important that you cautiously decide on the directories you want.

    We at www.leadinglinksdirectory.com believe the means of human editor will be able to form a dissimilarity and furthermore that an incorrectly designed website that is not professionally designed could be noticed through search engines as an unhelpful internet site. This is the main reason we particularly make use of chosen exclusive human edited links and furthermore preserve regular maintenance with in our internet site including its numerous categories.

    When you present your website onto a web directory if it’s a free of charge directory or a paid web directory, it is necessary to inspect it at times and so to see that errors ( if there might be any) are corrected, and then that any of the data displayed on the site is updated every time. This way you will surely recognize you chose the utterly best web site for you.

    To cut a long story short there are some people who might claim that the way of using directories are just a few websites containing categories, only a gathering collection of links collected from across the internet.

    Nonetheless they in fact are a way used for web surfers in order to effortlessly find the links they were looking for, with the help of pre defined categories, such as Alternative Medicine and also Sports and Fitness, each one of them containing exact data and info with reference to just those subjects, dropping the need to spend valuable time examining the internet for it, and naturally the use of the sub-categories makes the work of "fishing" for information and data still easier.

    Nevertheless for you it’s a very simple tool to move up your website’s popularity at the search engines rankings.

    Upon choosing the internet directory fitting you, a general one or a specific one that straightforwardly portrays your internet site, inside the web directory you can choose the appropriate category or maybe sub category as so to display your website.

    Previous to submitting your web site to an internet directory might require a small amount of work, but it will bring you the search engine rankings that your website should have!

    About The Author

    James Decet is a Co-Editor At LeadingLniksDirectory (http://www.leadinglinksdirectory.com), A Human Edited Site, With a wide range Of categories


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  • Saturday, September 8, 2007

    PS3 Game Previews and Reviews

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    The Sony PS3 will be the most powerful game console ever released. The impressive parallel processing architecture and powerful GPU allows for arguably the most ambitious releases on a console ever. Certainly, the graphics and performance the system will deliver will outstrip that of its more prudent competitors, Xbox 360, and Nintendo's Wii. It should come as no surprise then, that many of the most anticipated titles of 2007 will launch on the PS3, some on multiple platforms, others exclusively. As impressive as the hardware is, it's really not important in the scheme of things; what really matters is what games you can actually play!

    The PS3 is costly enough as it is, and as with anything else you invest in, you wouldn't want to do it before reading up on it first. What better way to do that, than to check out some PS3 game previews? Generally speaking, the best sources of PS3 previews will come from those websites and magazines that have generally covered PS2 and the original PS from the outset. General gaming sites like Gamespy/IGN, Gamespot, 1up, and GamesIndustry.biz are generally good sources of quick, easy to read news, game previews, and reviews. The quality varies, but what is common to each of these is that they will compare their subject matter to the competition. In this case, exclusive PS3 titles would be compared against games on Xbox 360 and Wii in any PS3 game review.

    If you're already a fan, and you're set on having a PS3, you might prefer PS3 reviews from sites that deal with nothing else. Dedicated community fansites tend to have active discussion forms full of analysis of every last detail. More to the point, the staff who run such sites are generally fans themselves, and are just as interested in the system and games they post about, which is usually reflected in their reporting. Sites like PSXextreme, PSrules, PS3 Power, and PS3 Land are all good sources of PS3 game previews. Naturally, there aren't any PS3 reviews out yet, but these sites are already geared up and equipped to start posting them as soon as they hit the shelves in November.

    Anticipated titles at release time will include the fourth game in the ever popular Gran Turismo series, Madden 07, Vampire's Rain, Crysis, Fatal Inertia, MotorStorm, Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty 3, NBA Live 07, Need for Speed: Carbon, Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire, Resistance: Fall of Man, and F.E.A.R. Also keep in mind that the PS3 is going to be widely backwards compatible with older PS and PS2 games, which you'll be able to buy from Son'y PNP service, if you don't already have them – one of the major selling points! For your PS3, game reviews already written will be just as useful. Finally, going back even further, Sony has announced that a wide variety of Sega Genesis (MegaDrive) games will be also be compatible with the PS3, opening up yet more games to its repertoire.

    About The Author

    Andrew Lawrence is the developer of http://www.e-bookz-online.co.uk a site that promotes mostly info products on all subjects.

    To find out more info on the PS3 you can find a full in depth report at http://www.theps3report.e-bookz-online.co.uk.

    Exchange Blog Reviews - An Open Invitation

    Thursday, September 6, 2007

    To Make Money On the Internet - One Over-riding Rule

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    There are lots of ways to make money on the internet, but let's get several things straightened out first. It is just as difficult to make money on the internet as it is to make money with a "bricks and mortar" business, but on the internet, it is possible to get started with very little money. The ways to make money on the internet are as infinite as your imagination and if you combine those two points there is one absolute. Don't part with any money until you are certain about what you are purchasing.

    I have found that the real, honest to goodness organizations that you can "joint venture" with, or work for, present their offers to you in a truly transparent manner. The best of the best, will grant you full access to their methods of conducting business online without any prerequisite for you to part with your money.

    In your search for ways to make money on the internet, very often you will be presented with offers to be a re-seller. This means you buy information to sell on to others. Frequently, this information is about how someone has made hundreds of thousands of dollars, possibly millions of dollars, by using techniques obtained through purchasing an e-book for seemingly very little money. The impression is that the "up-side" is so massive as to make the purchase price appear trivial.

    Take care. Commonly, the person selling the information has made a fortune using methods that exploit a loop-hole in a service. However, the service-provider maybe closing the loop-hole. You could be too late to gain any advantage using the tactics yourself and word may have spread, making it very difficult to sell the information onwards.

    Always ask yourself why the person is offering this information to the public at large. After all, if the biggest businesses go to incredible lengths to keep their money making methods secret, don't you think that anyone who has successfully discovered how to make money on the internet would do the same. However, there are always exceptions.

    Sometimes you can be a re-seller for a service, such as web-hosting, or an auto-responder for example. Such services are based on an ongoing subscription and may be linked to an affiliate program. In such circumstances, it is understandable to be offered the opportunity to be a re-seller. The person offering you the service will continue making money on your subscription and you will continue to make money on the internet for the lifetime of your customer's subscriptions.


    About The Author

    Gordon Milton is a successful internet marketer who uses a completely different, proven approach to building a business. To learn more, visit: http://www.gotitfigured.ws

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  • Tuesday, September 4, 2007

    Smarten Up, Marketers. It’s a Personality Contest Out There!

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    I have a friend who’s a real rascal. He wangles his way into places he doesn’t belong better than an A-list celeb thronged by his thick-muscled posse. He slips out of trouble like a greased David Blaine. This guy’s smart but he’s no Mensa grad. He’s not that good-looking, and he’s not well-connected. The tools of his trade? His genuineness and natural charm. He’s likeable. Watching him work is remarkable. It’s not so much what he says – it’s all about how he says it. And don’t think he’s some butt-smoocher. I’ve seen him tell people to take a long walk off a short pier, and they look forward to the trip!

    My friend is a poster boy for reminding us, as we craft strategies and executions for our advertising campaigns, that brand character can be even more persuasive than the actual selling message. It’s hard to be emotionally committed to an attribute. Features don’t beget followers.

    A great deal of strategic development time is focused on getting the message right: delivering the single-minded relevant point to the target. We task it with being original, unique. Ownable. I was schooled that this was by far the most critical element in strategic positioning because it was where the big idea dwelled. Well, according to Jack Trout’s latest missive in “Forbes,” there are no new ideas anymore. We are blowing time -- and our clients’ money -- with the over-reliance on the rationale. (www.forbes.com/2006/09/13/jack-trout-on-marketing-biz-cx_jt_0915minds.html)

    At my advertising agency, NYCA (http://www.nyca.com), we grow our clients’ businesses with inspired ideas. We know it’s important to concentrate on the brainy quotient, sure, but we’ve learned to heavy-up on the tone, the manner, the body. That’s where brand personality comes strolling in, dressed for success, making the everlasting first impression before he ever speaks an SAT word.

    We can learn from a master teacher: Apple. You wouldn’t know it from their raving user base but these are machines, for cripes sake. Plastic, wires, glass and tiny pieces soldered together to help create pictures and words, remember them, and connect. But I know MAC users who would rather go graphic-less in public than fraternize with a PC. They would revolt, feeling like they are betraying their friend. The machine seems to understand them, empower them – but this is lunatic devotion. A MAC has no feelings (yet!) so why does it stir them up? And, techies, please don’t blog/flog me with, “It’s the operating system.” That’s just a microportion of the emotional equation. To see it another way: I’d venture that PC people could more easily – emotionally speaking - move to Mac than the other way around. They aren’t as devoted to IBM and the like as MAC users are to Apple. IBM just doesn’t have the magnetic personality of Apple.

    The Apple personality was brilliantly reverse-designed. They may have built the machine first but they sold the personality first. So the initial contact is the embrace of the upbeat, creative, change-the-world brand character before you ever boot up. It’s in the logo. And at every touch point, the personality is true. We feel the easiness in their open, friendly, clean-lined stores, enjoy the good-natured yet competitive TV ads, groove with (not just listen to) their iPod communications, hug their black-jeaned, bespectacled wonderboy leader. Personality perfectly designed.

    Barbara Coulon, vice president of trends for market researcher Youth Intelligence, says that surveys show, "Apple has a clear brand personality. People feel like they are part of a tribe. There are a lot of people who are passionate about it. It's sort of a cult brand. Apple is a way of life." (http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/40151.html)

    So study up and invent a brand message that’s university smart. But invest some creative muscle in developing the brand’s personality so it’s genuinely persuasive.

    Great brands have defined personalities within their categories but they’re not exclusive to their sector, so you can easily borrow inspiration. Here are two examples of one personality statement: Down-to-earth, family-oriented, genuine, and sincere. Now, who would that be - Coke or Pepsi? Easy. But pour a glass of each and stand an inch from them - you couldn’t tell the difference. Brown sugar water is brown sugar water.

    Take the same words for a car: Volvo or BMW? Again, no doubt. Because their brand personalities distinguish them as much as their safety or handling claims. Better.

    A well-developed personality has the power to engage from afar, stir deep feelings, and make it all up-close and personal. And that’s the flashpoint where interest moves into buying, and buying into loyalty.

    You know, maybe my rascal friend is a genius after all.


    About The Author

    Michael Mark is Creative Director/CEO of NYCA, a full-service marketing agency that grows businesses with inspired ideas. NYCA has grown business for clients like TaylorMade Golf, San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau, Rossa Putters, Maxfli Golf, ViewSonic Corp., The San Diego Union-Tribune, http://SignOnSanDiego.com, The EastLake Company, Kyocera Wireless, DIRECTV, Penta Water, National City Mile of Cars, AutoAnything, First Dental Health, TaylorMade Performance Labs, and others. To find out how NYCA can grow your business, log on to http://www.nyca.com.

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    Sunday, September 2, 2007

    What Writers Must Know about Internet Commerce

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    Let's assume you're a writer and you want to make money by writing. In the olden days (last year, maybe) you would think up an article idea, hammer a few paragraphs out, and then check with some editors if they were interested in buying a finished product.

    If you were lucky, you sold it. If you were not exactly unlucky, the editor rejected your idea but paid you to go out and write something else. And the most common response was a great big bunch of nothing. No response. No answer. No sale.

    You have probably heard that a writer can make money on the Internet, but you're probably thinking, "How on earth is that possible?" After all, just about every job offer that comes to writers for Internet type stuff pays less than even a skinflint magazine editor would have paid ten years ago for the same material. The big difference is that the Internet publishers seeking writing support want their content virtually overnight and the old-fashioned editors did not mind giving you a few weeks.

    There are two ways to make money on the Internet and they mirror the ways people make money in the brick-and-mortar business world. First, you can sell something. Whether it's ceiling fans or candles or airline tickets, you can make money if you have a product that you can trade to people for cash.

    The other way you can make money online is by selling advertising. The best models for this include TV programs, magazines, and newspapers. Take a TV program; it's content that is offered for free to people who want to see it. A newspaper isn't exactly free, but it contains a lot of high-value content from around the world and it's offered at a very nominal fee (less than it costs to print it, I bet) to just about anyone who wants it. They'll even bring it to your house every morning! Who else will deliver for a product that does not even cost a dollar-for no extra shipping and handling fee?

    Then there are magazines. They cost more but they're still a great buy considering the content you get, the articles, the pictures, and the sheer volume of printed pages.

    So how do these enterprises make money? They do it by offering content that people want and then selling advertisement. TV shows make money because they sell some of their viewing time to advertisers who offer commercials. Newspapers and magazines do take in some subscription money, but the thing that keeps them in business is ad revenue.

    And how do advertisers manage to survive? Smart businesses know the best opportunities for their particular type of advertisements. There's a whole science to that. If a well-placed smart commercial on a certain TV show increases sales, then everybody wins. The company earns money because the ad draws customers; the TV show earns money because it sells time (and eyeballs) to the advertiser.

    You can build a website that features lots of top-quality content and then sell advertising on that site.

    Now you can't just throw up any old site (and the operative word here is "throw up") and figure that advertising will work. You need a quality product. You also have to offer something of value.

    That's where the good news comes in: you're a writer.

    You can create your own online magazine of sorts. The goal is to attract people interested in the same subject to look at your site. There's a whole science to that, too. But if you do it right, people on your site may be interested in ads on related subjects.

    The Internet is all about niches. Let's say you want to write about dogs. Bad idea. It's too broad for the Internet. With the Internet you have to think narrow. You could write about dog training. Or adopting poodles from the pound. Or photographing dogs.

    The idea is that your highly targeted information will resonate with a particular subset of readers. With billions of Internet search a year, you don't need to have broad appeal to get a big audience.

    Then you sell advertising. Now in the traditional business model, that meant pounding the pavement, talking to potential advertisers, and often working with them to get an ad finalized. Then you had to hound them for payment.

    On the Internet, you can sign up with search providers to put ads on your site. These ads (offered by the big search engines) use electronic algorithms to automatically match ads by content to your site so that your dog training site won't offer ads for gastric bypass surgery. You don't sell a single ad: you merely clear some room for Google or Yahoo to put ads on your site. They match the ads to your content.

    In the print world of our ancient ancestors, an advertiser paid if his ad ran, regardless of whether anyone responded. Internat ads work on a different model; they run for free and the advertiser pays only when somebody clicks on them. This is what is meant when they say advertisers pay for clicks.

    The good news is that you can find qualified advertisers and start generating ad revenues from a website pretty quickly without ever having direct contact with your advertisers.

    You can also get advertisers the old-fashioned way by selling space on your site to individual vendors. Those arrangements are worked out individually.

    Savvy Internet entrepreneurs can make money either selling products (including electronic products like e-books or online courses and now even online audios) or selling advertising or a bit of both. There are strategies for what to use and how, but those are the basics.

    So what exactly does this mean for us writers? Writers need to start thinking about what they write not just in terms of how to tell the story, but how to best position the content in the marketplace.

    If you can set up a wholesale arrangement with local or even international vendors, you can sell products using a "shopping cart" type website, lots of photos, and some cool product descriptions.

    If you have the expertise (or can get it) and can write about how to beat a speeding ticket, land a job working on a cruise ship, or sell your home without a real estate agent, you can write electronic content (e-book, e-course, other materials that are delivered online including audios and videos) and sell that.

    First, of course, you have to understand how these kinds of enterprises actually function. Even some off-the-wall business angles are good to study, because the same principles always apply. You target a specific niche market, develop content to attract visitors, and then sell either advertising, products, or both.

    About The Author
    Jo Ann LeQuang writes for a living. If you would like to write for a living or write for a better living, find out more of what she has to say at http://www.workingonlinewriter.com .

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    A Better Way To Profits On eBay

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    Everyone knows that eBay is ideal for buying and selling items. But, did you know that there is an even easier way to earn, big time, on eBay?

    It can be done via a drop shipping web site and order line. You buy a ready made website and either use it or sell it on again, via eBay, only for a higher price than you purchased it.

    Buy low, sell high.

    To get in on this little known act you’ll need to dig deep into www.ebay.com the American Internet version of eBay.

    On the left hand side of the home page you’ll see a heading ‘Categories’ where you’ll need to click on the ‘Business & Industrial’ link (about the sixth link down from the top).

    That will take you to a whole page of links to even more categories. You’ll then have to look in the bottom right hand corner of the page under ‘Other Industries’. You may need to scroll down a little to view this section.

    Click on ‘Websites and other businesses for sale’. This will take you to the first page of many where you can view all the websites that are available to bid on.

    At the time of writing there were over seven thousand sites for sale.

    You can pick them up for just a few pounds each, don’t go for those that are thousands of pounds each just yet … you’ll need some practice at first.

    Have a real good browse. See what’s available and visit some of the sites to see how they operate. Also read the terms and conditions of each auction you’re interested in so that you know exactly what you’re bidding on. Many sites are under a ‘Buy Now’ logo which means you don’t need to wait to see if your bid is high enough, you literally, buy NOW, usually for a very low price.

    Once you see a number of website businesses that you feel you’d like to bid on, mark them down in your ‘Favourites’ on eBay, this will keep an eye on it for you and let you know when the auction is closing. If you have any questions about any site, simply ask the seller by clicking on the appropriate link and they should reply promptly.

    Meanwhile, if you have not got a PayPal account, open one. It’s free. www.paypal.com or www.paypal.co.uk for everything UK-ised, if you’d prefer.

    PayPal will allow you to accept credit cards (sales can increase by up to 800% when you can take credit cards) and everything is converted from US dollars to pounds sterling for you, automatically, when selling or buying on eBay.

    Pretty well everyone who buys or sells on eBay has a PayPal account and you should too. It’s safe, secure and instant.

    When looking for a website to purchase, make sure it’s about a subject you’re interested in. It’s no good selling Christian books if you aren’t remotely interested in Christian books. However, if you’re just buying to immediately sell on, then that’s fine if you’re confident that people will bid for it.

    Check any sites that you purchase are working perfectly before you sell on.

    Also, watch out for sites that charge you a monthly fee to keep your service going. Rather, buy sites that are a once only payment and nothing else to pay. You may only get a commission of, say, 50% on each sale of an item but at least you don’t have to part with more cash.

    The sites that are ideal to start you off in business are dropship businesses. You are not responsible for the inventory or the delivery of goods … it’s all up to the Prime Source to do this on your behalf. Once you make a sale, simply pass the details on to them and they’ll process the order for you.

    Visit http://www.business4anyone.com. This site would be good to subscribe to if you’d like to become an affiliate in things ‘home business’. You would get a site exactly the same but you would own it. This particular one is mine and I can choose any domain name I wish to advertise it and then redirect my customers to the one above .. which I plan to do very soon. It’s brand new and I’m just starting to promote it.

    Having a site like this is the idea way to run a business if you’re not able to build your own website or print books or make software etc.. This is ALL done for you by the Prime Source. Visit the above link, take a look around and see what you think.

    You should have your own PayPal account so that any orders received will be paid straight into your PayPal account the next day. You can, literally, earn money while you sleep.

    Obviously, you won’t earn any income if nobody knows your site exists but the marketing techniques that you’ll need to drive people to your site are supplied when you buy it. There are useful articles, free software and plenty of ‘how to’ reports to help you.

    Advertising in this publication will also help, of course.

    At the time of writing it was around three hundred dollars to buy this particular site but they often have special offers so, take a look around, and see what you can find.

    Once you’ve paid this start up fee, you never have to pay anything again and you’ll earn between 50% - 75% of everything you sell.

    The above website is for you to keep and run yourself but, by looking at the auctions on eBay, you’ll be able to find similar sites where, instead of keeping it, you simply re-list it on eBay and sell it at a profit.

    Finally, you may want to purchase a site but create your own product to sell from it. This is a great way of earning 100% of everything you sell … it’s your product so you keep all the money. Allow others to affiliate to this site and give them, say, 50% of their sales. Other people will have lists of customers that you’ll never reach but, through them, you can. Think of the extra earnings by doing just this.

    Google ‘Pay Per Click’ ads and setting up auctions for your product on eBay are other ways to earn quickly and efficiently.

    There are many ‘hidden’ extra ways to earn a living via the Internet and this is another one of them…. but don’t tell anyone, it’s your secret way of getting in and making the bigger bucks. Your neighbours will wonder where you’re getting all your money from.

    About The Author

    (c) 2006 Martyn Brown: 20+ years in home business industry.

    For details of free magazine and business tools visit: http://www.workinghoursmagazine.co.uk

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    Wednesday, August 29, 2007

    Your Writers Voice is Inside You

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    You literally must pour yourself into your writing. That isn't as much a cliche as you may have thought.

    Why do you write?

    I write to change my world by revising it and giving it a happy ending. I think most write fiction to create new realities and new ways of expressing ourselves. It gives us the power to fix anything we don't like in the real world. We write to escape, and to escape we must enter the world of fiction fully.

    Who do you become when you write?

    First, you become vulnerable. You must become the characters, all of them -- even the bad guys. For the characters to be compelling I believe they must contain some real part of the writer's personality. You have all the voices inside you waiting to come out; they only need the right character. Let them each speak for themselves, individually, to bring them to life. You literally must pour yourself into your writing. That isn't as much a cliche as you may have thought.

    Have you ever found an old personal writing of yours, something you'd written a few years ago, and been surprised at the strong voice you heard? It will have a tone of realism you didn’t know you could present so well. It's your writers voice. It is probably something you wrote on the spur of the moment while in a particular emotional state and you poured yourself into it. Learn to use it by becoming each character. To become each character, you must know them well. Study them, make them individuals by basing them on someone real.

    I've heard some creative writers say they don't worry about the characters, because they think the story is more important. They admit throwing card-board characters in as they're needed to get the story to the finish line. I haven't read their work so I don't know if they can pull it off or not, but I wonder who performs the action; how is emotion brought in? I think even if it's completely narrated, the narrator still needs a strong voice to keep boredom at bay..

    I agree with the statement that the story is important, but the characters are equally important. Good ones can fool the reader into thinking even a bad story is good. Good, solid characters with consistently strong voices can sell mediocre serial books. Readers read to escape. They don't know or care that the writer was forced to draw on painful memories and cry buckets of tears to make the characters true-to-life; they just know if they can identify with them or not. They can't become that particular character or overcome the obstacle, without a strong writer's voice bringing the character to life. Bottom line - they won't like your story.

    So, to find your writers voice, dig through all the animosity, fear, anger, cruelty, joy and heartbreak of everyday living, past, present and perceived. Twist it, exaggerate it, and give it to your characters to work out. Your readers will love it.

    About The Author

    Harriet Silkwood is a reviewer of new writers and has written newsletters and articles on the subject of novice writing and reviewing with common sense and encouragement. Her portfolio may be found at http://www.Writing.Com/authors/storytime. She is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Writers.

    Sunday, August 26, 2007

    Love Links

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    Friday, August 24, 2007

    Increase your TECHNORATI ranking and GOOGLE PAGE RANK. Guaranteed!

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    If you are looking for ways to improve your GOOGLE PAGE RANKING and TECHNORATI RANKING, I recommend that you give Viral Linking or Viral Tagging a chance. All you need to do is follow these four simple instructions and you're on your way to increasing the number of links to your blog. (courtesy of Blogging Mix.)

    ==== Copy and Paste below this line ====

    Instructions

    1.) Copy and paste the entire matrix of “ViralTags” below.

    2.) Substitute the Host Tag and one of the “ViralTags” in the matrix with your anchor text of choice containing your blog’s URL. Please keep anchor text to a maximum of 4 words to keep the matrix size manageable.

    3.) When you get a ping back from someone that has your link in one of their “ViralTags”, practice good karma by copying his/her Host Tag’s anchor text (automatically the associated link will also be copied) and paste it over one of your “ViralTags” below.

    4.) Encourage and invite your readers to do the same and soon this will grow virally.


    Host Tag: Blogging Mix : Blog, Bloggers and Blogging

    | Blogging Mix | Blog About Interesting Stuff | Internet Blog Branding | Blogspot - Search Engine Optimization | Blogging Tips, SEO Guide | Blog Instructor | Blog, Blogger and Blogging | Blog About Networking | Blog Monetization - Blogspot | Blogger, Blog and Blogging | Blogging and Marketing | Blog For Bloggers | The Bloggers Haven | Business Logic | Extension - Blogging Mix | Content, Connection, Continuity | Asian Women and Culture | Viral Tag | Viral Tag | Viral Tag | Viral Tag |


    UPDATE: Please let me know through the comments when you've posted this on your blog so I can add your link. Please inform me of your preferred ANCHOR TEXT too. Thanks.

    Thursday, August 23, 2007

    What is Link Trading and How Do You Trade?

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    Link trading is the task of getting links to your site on other sites by trading.. umm.. links. This is done to get more traffic to you web site. Link trading creates more traffic in two main ways, increased search engine rankings and also from the traffic the links themselves generate from people clicking on them.

    Link Trading and Search Engines

    Trading links helps search engine rankings because the algorithms that determine rankings factor in the number of sites that link back to the site to be ranked. The logic is that sites that have many links pointing back to it must be relevant and good in some sense, and are therefore ranked higher in the engines.

    How to Trade Links

    Now that we know what link trading is, how is it done? There are many methodologies. Since link trading can involve many contacts, requests and link categorizations, it is best to use software to handle your link trading campaign.

    Link Trading Software

    The software you choose should allow you to create a link directory, ad links to that directory, send requests to have your link posted on other sites and a method for keeping track of responses.

    Link Trading Process

    The general process begins when the site owner identifies a site which he or she would like to trade links with. Generally, these sites should be relevant to the topic of your site, or at least have a section dedicated to the topic of your site. Trading links with huge numbers of unrelated sites will actually hurt your search engine rankings in most cases. Also, usually it is a good idea to look for well-ranked sites to trade links with. The importance of a well-ranked site's link to your site in search engine algorithms will be greater than those of not so well ranked sites.

    After the site to trade links with is located, a link to that site is posted on your site. Sometimes the link would be posted on a different site than the site wishing to get a link back. This produces non-reciprocal links, which weigh heavier in search engines.

    After the link is posted, a request is sent that a link back be posted, explaining that if a link back is not created, the original link to the prospects site is likely to be removed.

    If a link is returned, then the trade is marked as successful and each of the link traders has one more site linking to it. Other wise a follow up is sent. If the follow up still does not result in a link back, often the link would be removed.

    Link Trading Etiquette

    Asking to trade links without posting a link to the site you are wishing to trade with is bad form. The prospect is likely to think "If this person has not already posted a link to my site, what will motivate them to do so when I post a link to their site?" Many people will not even respond to a link request whereas the link has not yet been posted.

    This is of course only a brief introduction to link trading. In short, effective link trading requires organization, persistence and time, yet is often well worth the effort.

    About The Author

    Halstatt Pires is an Internet marketing consultant with http://www.marketingtitan.com - an Internet marketing firm in San Diego offering automated web site systems through http://www.businesscreatorpro.com.

    Attract Traffic to Your Blog: Alternative to Search Engines


    Tuesday, August 21, 2007

    Give me 1 Link, I'll Give You 5 Links in Return

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    Make Money Online Idea That Has Changed So Many Lives

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    It would be difficult to find another online make money idea that has changed more lives than this particular one you are about to discover. And what is even more fascinating about this particular make money online idea is the fact that it is based on a very recent trend that has proved to be more than a passing fad.

    We are of course talking about the phenomenal rise of blogs. Without blogs this make money online idea would not have been possible.

    For years, since the days of the rise of Amazon.com folks have been making money from affiliate programs. Still it has always been a rather difficult thing to do mainly because setting up a web site, getting it hosted and keeping it running has always been a costly and time consuming thing to do for most.

    Enter blogs, which are easy to set up and even easier to maintain and you have a make money online idea that has taken the World Wide Web by storm.

    All one needs to do is set up a free blog and simply sprinkle it with the relevant affiliate links and you could swiftly find yourself earning thousands of dollars every month.

    This is the make money online idea that is revolutionizing the web.

    Learn more about this make money strategy from a blogger who is using it to rake in thousands of dollars... and growing. Or subscribe to his email newsletter with plenty of case studies that will help you maximize on your affiliate earnings. To get it free send a blank email NOW.

    Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_Kyalo

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    Sunday, August 19, 2007

    Freelancing as A Career Option

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    Home bound workers can either consider telecommuting or freelancing. While telecommuting may keep you out of your home for some hours a week, online freelancing is a good way to make money if you are forced to stay at home. For example, homemakers, part-time students, retired folk, or others who wish to supplement their income from jobs or businesses can all consider freelancing.

    Freelance Skill Sets

    You can start earning as a freelancer as long as you have skills that someone is willing to pay for. For example, writers, web designers, photographers, and programmers can earn a substantial income by creating articles, websites, portfolios and software from home. The Internet is a hot and viable source of income for freelancers from around the world. Your target customers can be webmasters, online business owners, blog owners etc. For example, blogs and wikis are hot sources of income for freelance writers nowadays, and there's no reason why you can't tap into this market if you possess good writing skills.

    Freelance Income

    On the flip, your income may fluctuate from one month to another. As with all businesses, freelancing does not guarantee a stable paycheck at the end of the month. So keep a small kitty reserve for dry days or have another source of income for which you can work part-time. Be prepared to accept boring, low-level work initially just to keep the cash flow strong. Once you get a good reputation for providing original, high-quality work at reasonable price, then clients will flock to you.

    Freelance Advantages

    Probably the best thing about freelancing is that you get to work at your pace, in your own hours, from home, and be your own boss. That means, your shop is open 24x7. And as long as you provide good quality work and meet deadlines, your clients will remain happy with you.

    In order to be visible, you also need to be seen and heard in the right places, like forums, blogs, online groups, etc. Spend time everyday to visit such sites because they are invaluable repository of freelance gigs and email addresses of prospects. Alternatively you can sign up with freelance sites like Elance.com, GetAFreelancer.com and Scriptlance.com where you can start bidding on projects and snag a few as early as today!

    To conclude, a freelance business is one of the best ways to earn money from home and to work for your own self. If you've got a fair amount of time on your hands, maybe you too should consider freelancing as your full-time career alternative or supplementary income source.

    (Hint: While you can find plenty of lucrative freelance assignments on Elance, the other sites mentioned above generally tend to feature lesser-paid projects. However, if you're just starting out as a freelancer, the competition on Elance can prove to be really tough. So you might want to first try GAF and Scriptlance to build up your portfolio, and then go for Elance.)

    About The Author
    Lewis Low is the founding editor of OnlineBizPromo.com. For more Practical Online Business Ideas and Work-From-Home Opportunities, visit his Work-At-Home directory at http://www.OnlineBizPromo.com
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