If you are thinking about venturing into the online world and starting your own online business you are in a great position.  You have a blank slate and can literally do anything and can market yourself and your business in a way that is best for you.  Branding literally means making your business known and building up its respect in your specific industry so whilst you might want to just jump in head first, you might want to read on to make sure that you aren’t making any of the following branding mistakes.

1. Don’t Overextend Yourself

One of the main mistakes that many new online businesses make is overextending themselves.  Even Microsoft has fallen folly to this at some points in their history and if your brand isn’t well established this can end up sinking your online business.  You are better off just choosing a niche and sticking to it until you have perfected it before branching out into other areas.  Don’t promise your customers a specific product or service until you know that you can provide it, if you do you will only let them down and guess what… they won’t return.

2. Don’t Cut Costs to Compete

Many new online businesses believe that it is so hard to compete with the already established companies that the only way to get any business at all is by cutting costs.  This is a really bad idea as many of the ready established companies will cut their costs further (even if this means running at a loss for some time) until they have pushed you out of business.  If you continue on in the price-cutting war, you will only end up losing a large amount of money.  This may be something an established company can afford, but it’s unlikely that a business new to the online world will be able to.

3. Don’t Lie to Your Customers

Many new online businesses have owners that do not think of the bigger picture.  Many just think about making a quick pound online and they are not worried about the aftermath, or just don’t think towards the future.  If you want to have a successful online business you need to be honest with your customers, otherwise they are unlikely to return.  This includes special promotions that you may use to encourage people to work with you – if you say that only 20 people will receive a free gift, don’t change the offer at a later date.  Likewise if you say your prices are going to increase in two weeks, increase them; unless you want the customers who took you up on your promotion to feel conned.

4. Don’t Assume You Will Make Millions

This is the biggest mistake of all, and one that I have seen numerous times online.  Yes, it is possible to make a lot of money online but it doesn’t just happen overnight.  The internet millionaires that you have heard of have put a lot of time and effort into their brand and it has taken years for them to succeed.  There is no reason why you cannot do the same however you will need to differentiate yourself from everyone else who is trying to do the same thing.  Your business’s brand should be something completely unique and you should be willing to put the time and effort in.  Otherwise you will only become disappointed and disillusioned and end up falling at the first hurdle.

It is possible to build a very successful brand online, just make sure that you watch out for the above mistakes in the early days.

Whether you are making your own website or making one for someone else, there are a number of things that need to be kept in mind.  You may be amazed when you hear about the numerous internet entrepreneurs who make a good living working full time on the internet, and the good news is that anybody can do this if they put the time and effort in.  Below are a few things to consider if you are looking into making a profitable website.

1. Make it Visually Appealing

A visually appealing website is like eye candy.  It can encourage customers to stay on your site for longer periods of time and it can also build up a sense of trust between you and those who visit your site.  Poorly designed websites look cheap and will not encourage a potential customer to engage with you.  With numerous beautiful themes already on the web for sites like WordPress you don’t even have to design it yourself – and the best part is: most won’t cost you a penny!

2. Functionality is Key

As well as looking good, your website also needs to be functional, and easy to navigate.  To do this, you need to make sure that the navigations are easy to find and easy to use.  Failure to do this can result in your potential customers looking for sites in the same niche that are functional.  There’s no point having the most beautiful design in the world if the average internet user doesn’t know how to browse it.

3. Informative Content Updated Regularly

No matter how functional or visually appealing a website is, it’s still pretty useless unless the content on it is informative and engaging.  The target audience of the website should be able to relate to the content in a positive way and if you can do this to an extent where they share your website with others, you are on to a winner!  Regular posts or updates to your website are also recommended as they encourage your readers to check back on a regular basis.  Poorly written content or copied content will have people running for the door, so keep this in mind.

4. SEO and Keyword Selection

And again, none of the above will create a profitable website if no-one can find your site in the first place.  Keywords that are concise and specific are proven to have a higher profit rate than keywords that are general.  This is because they enable a specific customer to find your site and generally have a lower competition.  A free online keyword tool can help you to choose your keywords.

You also need to undertake a full blown SEO campaign that includes incorporating your keywords into articles, images and anchors, backlinking strategies, social media, an ideal domain name etc.  All of these can help to increase your page ranking on the search engines and, the higher you are the more people that will find your site.

There are of course, more things to do than just these mentioned above, however these are the basics when it comes to creating a profitable website.  Do you have anything to add?  Let us know.

Yes we’re still not finished!  There are so many more ways to use the internet to make money online, so here are a few extras.

eBooks

Yes, anyone can become a ‘published’ author these days. eBooks are an extremely popular way to make money online because of the simplicity involved. If you are an expert on a niche subject (or even a broad one – but be prepared to compete), why not write a few thousand words about it and create your own eBook? You can charge people for the pleasure of reading your wise words and it’s a great way to sit back and watch the money roll in without having to continue the hard work (though you will probably have to do a bit of self-promotion).

Or, if you don’t want to get into writing an eBook, why not create a series of blog posts about your speciality and see how the interest runs? If you end up with a blog boasting high numbers of traffic every month, you can make some serious money with affiliate advertising. Which brings us neatly on to…

Affiliate Marketing

An ever-popular way for companies to sell products, affiliate marketing involves driving people to a certain website by using advertising in a relevant place. For example, if you run a blog about car parts, a large parts supplier might pay you a decent amount of money to run adverts for them alongside your blog. Affiliate marketing can get quite complicated so it’s worth doing plenty of research before getting started. If you have a real knack for it, you can start making money quickly and respectably using the web.

Link-Building

In today’s SEO-hungry world, most companies are constantly striving for genuine link building across the web. You can get paid for doing a bit of crafty name dropping in forums (though be careful because most forums have rules about advertising within posts – read the Ts&Cs). It’s always best to do this with a genuine approach, actually offering help in your replies as well as a brand recommendation.

Site Flipping

Do you have an eye for design? Why not buy up an old, haggard site that needs a bit of care and attention and sell it on for a profit? There are so many websites out there suffering from neglect. Offer a small sum to take it off its owner’s hands and nurse it back to health. You’re all about giving, right? Hopefully they’ll have lots of existing traffic who will thank you for breathing new life into their favourite site.

Frankly, we could carry on listing ideas all day but what we’ve covered here should hopefully be enough to convince you that there’s always a pile of cash to be unearthed for anyone who’s willing to use the internet intelligently. If you’re willing to put in a bit of work (really, if there was a legitimate way to make thousands by doing absolutely nothing at all, we would’ve covered it by now), you too could become one of the many success stories!

Continuing our popular money-making theme, read on to find out all about the different ways you can join the hordes of people who are already making themselves a handsome living using the web.

eBay

That dusty old cupboard could hold countless treasures that other people are desperate for so eBay offers a great impetus for having a good old clear out. But why stop there? There are so many ways to make money from eBay if you have the time to dedicate to it.

Why not try to find a niche of things that are popular but few people are selling in them? If you have specialist knowledge, put it to good use and start selling related products. Before too long, you could set up your own shop on your own website and give up the day job. But beware, it does take a lot of hard work and usually some investment, so be prepared to really commit if you want a full time income.

You could also start selling other people’s junk on eBay for them. Advertise to do house clearances (though you’ll need a van for this) and you might unearth some valuable items for reselling.

Work!

Yes, it’s obvious but it deserves a mention. You can’t actually beat good, old-fashioned work for making money. The difference here is that you can use the web to find the work and do it from the comfort of your own home.

Ever heard of text question services? If you’ve ever sat in a pub debating how many times Liza Minnelli has been married or whether David Hasselhoff is actually German, these services are a life-saver. Well okay, not a life-saver but they’re pretty handy. They will answer pretty much any question you fire at them (within reason) and because of the sheer variation of questions, these services simply must be manned by real people. So have a look around to see if any of the companies are hiring. It’s a sweet way to work from home and you would rule at pub quizzes after a short while.

Are you a design whizz? Whether it’s web or graphic, there are countless companies out there willing to hire you for a couple of hours to help them out. Design competitions are popular, where designers can make bids to design a company’s logo or website. The only downside is that, because of the vast competition, most of these jobs aren’t particularly well paid. But if you can find enough of them, you can make a decent income.

Survey completion is really popular but because of this, there are a lot of bogus sites out there who purely want your details to sell on for their own gain. So be selective about who you choose. It is getting increasingly difficult to find real money spinners so it’s worth prowling around a few forums to see which companies are recommended. Many people make a decent monthly income from survey filling alone.

Want some more? We’re out of space here but we’ll be back on Friday with the final article in our series on making money online.

By popular demand, here is a beginner’s guide on to how to make money online. Since the subject is a lengthy one, this is one of a three-part series of short articles so that it can be covered in the depth it requires!

Making Money from Domains

Buying and selling domains is still a huge business, despite what you may think. Yes, the massive success stories of dot com gold rush millionaires are far in the past now but by being savvy and doing your homework, you can make a handsome living from domains. Your starting point should be (as with most things) research. If you don’t take the time to find out exactly what you’re doing, you might as well take your planned investment and stick it on black 13 on your favourite betting site (if you actually do that and win a fortune, you’re welcome).

One area of domains that’s a huge market is misspellings. Imagine how many times people type in Hotmaul or Twotter. Buying misspelt domains can provide you with a parking space for some lucrative advertising. Or there’s domain parking. This is where people buy ‘guessed’ domains and use them to funnel in marketing and advertising. For example, someone looking for an electrician may type in www.electricians.com which is a great place for targeted advertising for which you can charge a handsome rate.

Finally in this category, let’s look at drop catches. This is the situation where companies accidentally allow their domains to expire, which is when you swoop in and pick up the domain. If you can quickly fill it with interesting information, you can benefit from the previous owner’s traffic and make quite a handsome profit from doing this alone.

Fun Ways to Make Money Online

Yes, this is a legitimate subheading. There are ways to make money online by simply having a bit of fun. If you’re a keen gamer, there are sites that will pay you for participating in tournaments and endorsing certain products. Have a poke around online to find opportunities. Or how about a bit of mystery shopping? You can get paid to shop. Yes, really! It might not be the best paid industry but there are companies that are willing to pay you to go and check out the quality of customer service at certain establishments. You might even get a free meal out of it.

You could also join the community of compers! There are thousands of competitions every week to be found across the web and compers are the experts. By entering enough competitions, you can up your odds of becoming a winner. You might end up with anything from some free gardening gloves, right up to a car or even a giant wad of cash. It can be a bit time consuming so try downloading some form-filling software to speed up the process. You have to be in it to win it!

We’re just getting started here as there are hundreds of ways to make a living by using the internet so check back on Wednesday to read more…

It’s never been easier to start your own blog and most people have a niche that they can blog comfortably within.  Blogging can be lots of fun and just a casual pursuit but a lot of bloggers dedicate a lot more energy to it and actually make money out of their blogs.  It’s not easy and it takes a lot of effort.  With that in mind, here’s how you can do it too.

Choose a Niche and a Domain

Before you start blogging, you naturally have to decide what you’re going to blog about.  Not all topics are going to be profitable so if you’re keen on chatting about something, make sure it’s pretty darn interesting to others or your audience is never going to be big enough to make you some serious cash.  So you need to do your research, find a niche and then choose a keyword-rich domain name (i.e. if you’re blogging about backpacking in Australia, make sure you have the words ‘backpacking’ and yes, you’ve guessed it, ‘Australia’ in your domain).  There are plenty of hosting options out there that shouldn’t cost you an arm and a leg, but it’s definitely worth doing some research there as well.

Get Set Up

Once you’ve chosen your niche and domain, you’re armed with your own little online parking space in which you need to deposit the most stunningly attractive information in the most stunningly attractive manner.  To do this, you can theoretically use free blogging software such as WordPress.  They offer plenty of templates and little widgets that allow you to tweak your blog and make it individual.  However, others prefer to design their own blogs so that they have entire control.  Although this is obviously only possible if you have the design skills – or a designer mate who owes you a big favour.

Get Writing

Now you’ve got your blog organised, it’s time to start writing!  This is where it’s crucial to have a good understanding of keywords.  Be very aware of keyword stuffing.  Let’s say again that you’re writing about backpacking in Australia.  If every single sentence contains the structure ‘backpacking in Australia’, search engines will very quickly show you the door.  Similarly, general overuse of one keyword phrase will get you blacklisted.  You need to weave search terms through your text in a natural fashion that doesn’t detract from the readability of your text.  It’s worth spending some time researching your niche and discovering exactly what people search for.

Promotion and Money-Making

Next it’s a matter of driving some significant footfall to your blog.  You could start by using your social networking profiles to drive your friends and family there.  But further to that, you must be prepared to spend a lot of time or money on driving traffic.  Once you can boast regular and impressive statistics, you can start thinking about using Google Adsense to display adverts on your blog (you’ll get paid every time they get clicked) and using other affiliate programs to make some serious cash.

If you’ve seen the movie the Social Network, you may remember Mark Zuckerberg emphatically stating that he didn’t want to monetize Facebook with advertising to begin with.  He says that Facebook is cool, and advertising is not cool. While Zuckerberg seems a somewhat unlikely person to be telling his cohorts what is and isn’t cool, he definitely had a point.  Most people will tell you they don’t enjoy being advertised at.  This is never 100% true, because everybody has favourite adverts they enjoy, old adverts they get nostalgic over, and some degree of interest in new adverts such as at the Superbowl and at Christmas time, but it is most unlikely that any of the adverts that really touched them appeared at the side of a blog they were reading.

Facebook now is, of course, a very big advertising platform, however the amount of on screen real estate devoted to ads is really quite small, and the logic attempts to match the ads to the user’s interests.  This, when it works, benefits everybody, because the user is less likely to see too many ads for things they just don’t care about on sale in countries they don’t live in, and the advertiser can optimize their budgetary spend by targeting people geographically and demographically in line with their product.  Also, because of the way you buy advertising campaigns on Facebook, the commercials you see vary between those of major brands and those of small, local concerns – unlike mass media, just about anybody can have their ad rubbing shoulders with one for Nike or Coca-Cola.

This brings us on to AdSense.  You can join the program and agree to display targeted adverts on your own blog or website.  Some rules apply, for instance if your site contains adult content (and this doesn’t just mean pornography – comedy sites with strong language for instance, are also exempt), but for the most part anybody with a website can monetize it in this way.  The ads displayed are chosen based on the keywords in your content, so theoretically they will be in some way relevant to your audience, and you choose the sizes, styles and quantities of ads you are willing to display.

However, it is hard to make any real money off of AdSense, and in many ways it can be better to leave your blog or site ad free (and therefore “cooler”).  Other ways of making money such as affiliate marketing tend to yield far greater returns (though obviously more effort is involved), and if you are just blogging or running your site for fun rather than for profit you may take pride in giving your readers content without commercials.

If you get a lot of traffic and aren’t monetizing your site in any other way, AdSense can be a good idea – it would be foolish not to try and pick up some cash from some of those visitors you worked hard to get.  If your site is small and nichey, or you are making money elsewhere with it, consider keeping it ad free.

One of the most popular ways that people try to make money on the internet is by affiliate marketing. This is especially true of beginners for one simple reason – it’s perceived to be easy and quick. So can this really be true?

Let’s start by looking at what affiliate marketing is and how you should go about it to maximize success. Affiliate marketing is simply taking someone else’s product, selling it and then taking a cut of the selling price. This business model is surprisingly common and many large companies do it. Amazon, for example, has an affiliate scheme. You can join this scheme, free of charge, and then place products from Amazon’s huge range onto your website and sell them, taking a small commission of every sale. The advantage, of course, is that Amazon takes care of delivering the product and tracking sales. The commission rates are relatively small at between 3% and 6% but this can soon mount up on bigger ticket items.

So, let’s assume that you have decided to enter the world of affiliate marketing. The best starting point is to decide what kind of products you want to sell. The choice is normally between physical products or downloadable e-products. The main difference is that the commission on physical products is far less than that on e-products. A typical e-book, for example, would pay commission of 50% – 80%.

Start in a small niche market, one in which there is not likely to be too much competitive. This will make it easier to attract potential buyers and make sales. Once you have selected a suitable niche, the next step is to carry out some keyword research to ensure you use the right keywords that you can rank your future website for in the various search engines.

The Google keyword tool is a free resource with which to find suitable keywords. These should be low competition but have a reasonable number of searches. Obviously the more specific the niche the lower the number of searches, but the ease of getting your site ranked highly will increase.

Once you have selected your product and done your keyword research, it’s time to register your domain name and build a website. Domain names typically cost around $10 per year and hosting around $5 to $10 a month. If you lack the required skills to build a site then it’s easy to outsource the task relatively cheaply.

The next step is to build up some quality and relevant content. This should present value to visitors to your site as well as presenting your chosen affiliate product in the best possible light. The products should have your affiliate links embedded – don’t worry these are normally provided by the owner of the product or an affiliate site such as Clickbank.

Now it’s time to make some money! Build some back-links to the site, increase the traffic and get paid your commissions. Don’t forget that one of the best ways of increasing traffic is to ping your site each time you add new content. Try out our low cost automatic pinging service at Pingler.com

The advent of the credit crunch and the worldwide recession has led to more and more people seeking to make money on the internet. The reason most people do this is because they are obviously short of money, so any money making methods need to be as cheap and easy to do as possible. The idea really is “money for nothing”. So let’s look at some ways you can get started in making some money right now without it costing you the earth.

The first method is to simply build a blog. The easiest way is to go to Blogger.com. This is a site that allows you to set up a website and they take care of the hosting requirements. You can monetize this by using Google Adsense so that each time someone clicks on one of the adverts you get paid a small amount. The monies paid are not huge but if you can generate enough traffic to the site then this money will soon add up to a decent amount. Don’t forget that one of the best ways of increasing traffic is to ping your site each time you add new content. Try out our low cost automatic pinging service at Pingler.com

The second method is to use CPA – Cost per Action affiliate networking. This means that the objective is to get visitors to carry out a specific action such as filling in a short form or ordering a test product. It’s attractive because the visitor does not have to actually buy anything for you to be able to earn money.

The third method is to provide content, such as articles, for websites. There are many internet writers who earn a living by writing for websites. You can expect to earn anywhere between $0.01 and $0.05 per word for a typical article provided the standard of writing is of good quality. The number of websites increases daily and this means an increasing amount of opportunities for good writers to make a living.

The fourth method is to sell digital information online. It does not matter if the product is your own or you are an affiliate for someone else’s product, there is good money to be made.

The final method is to fill out surveys online. There are an increasing number of programs around which provide various surveys from companies looking to acquire information. You won’t make a fortune but the earnings can be surprisingly high for the amount of work involved.

Last time we talked about making money by flipping websites. This was based around the idea that buying a poorly monetized site which has decent traffic and then improving its earning potential is the quickest way to increase a sites value.
So let’s take the journey a little further. You have bought a site and have decided to create a suitable product which is targeted at the sites audience and which will be sold for $9. You don’t enjoy writing so you need to find a writer who will write the product – an e-book. There are many places to look for a writer and all are free or very low cost. Some ideas are:

http://warriorforum.com

http://www.peopleperhour.com

http://www.worldwidefreelance.com

http://www.shorttask.com/

The text of your e-book can also include a front cover and again this can be outsourced or you can do it yourself. This is easier than you may think and there are a number of online services which provide a simple step by step guide and resources which can produce your e-book cover. One example is:

http://www.myecovermaker.com/

Ok, so you have your e-book and a great looking cover. All you need to do now is add the book to your site and set up an account with a payment portal such as PayPal to collect the money. The next thing to do is to make sure that people know that new content (and the e-book) has been added to your site and the best way of doing this is to ping online directories and search engines to tell them that they should revisit your site. We have an automatic service to make this happen. Check it out at Pingler.com
You’ll remember that we set the price point to just $9. Let’s assume that you make just one sale a week over the next month. This is $36 in earnings but the site could have now increased in value by between $360 and $720. Based on just one site and one product it isn’t hard to imagine how much can be earned this way. You could even choose to accept the passive earning potential of the site and not actually sell it for a few months. Five sites like this could easily sell $5000 to $10000 in total!