START TO RiCH

SEO TIPS

2008-12-04T21:53:00.000-08:00

Here’s a quick list of tips and techniques for those who are just venturing into the SEO space or already have some knowledge. I don’t claim what I am writing below is revolutionary in any way. Its what everyone should know if they are considering optimizing their site for the Search Engines, in particular, Google.
SEO Tip #1. Get into Google’s head - think and act like Google. Understand what PageRank is and how Google rewards pages for having good PageRank and inbound links. This is the very basic that you ought to know. I wont go into details here, and if you’re a noob (newbie), just look it up.
Tip #2. Make sure the keywords you choose are not highly competitive. You want keywords which have high searches and minimum competition. When you blog or add content to your site make sure you do on-site optimization in the best possible manner. This means that you must include your keyword in the title of your post and atleast 2 to 3 times in the body. Just do it. Don’t ask why. Google likes this.
Tip #3. Focus first on good “onpage optmization” as they call it. Try and have atleast 2 to 3 variants of your primary “keyword” in your title. Example - “Download Album Name Review of Album Name Free Album Name” . Google likes titles like this. Make sure your body of the article includes one of these variants atleast 2 to 3 times. You can also write these keywords in bold for better effect. Write naturally and optimize naturally also - dont go about spamming and repeating the keywords too much. You can search for your keyword on Google and see how the resulting pages are going about their on-page optimization and try to copy them. Why? … because its working for them! Make sure you bold your keywords and italicize them too for additional benefit. Aim for around 3% to 5% keyword density. Try to include your target keywords in your domain name or permalink URL.
Make sure to include your keywords in -. your site’s title tags. your headings. at the top of the page. in the middle of the page. at the bottom of the page
Tip #4. Offpage Optmization - once your article or post is done and live, you need to go about building your links… “link building strategy” is what they call this. Basically, go to RELEVANT blogs, RELEVANT forums, RELEVANT directories, RELEVANT portals and write INTELLIGENT and thought provoking stuff - all the time linking back to your post with a varying set of 4 to 5 combination keywords. These keywords or “anchor text” as they are called - should all point back to your specific page that you are trying to optimize. They should all have a common keywords set and the rest of the anchor text link can be different. Example - Download Movie Name, Watch Movie Name, Free Torrent Movie Name. So now, if I find 20 forums in my niche, and I go into them and read the posts and find a relevant post where I can post a comment and link back to my site - then I can use my first keyword variant on it. Then I hop on to the next forum or blog or whatever RELATED CONTENT site and post my second set of keywords on it… all the time linking back to the same URL post on my site. Don’t do this too fast. Do about 15 a day. Go to related places on Social Media sites too. Also, remember that the pages must have do-follow turned on, so you get the PageRank love.
Ranking for “long tail keywords” is relatively easier to achieve than going for popular keywords. Aim to find keywords that have less than 10,000 to 20,000 competing sites… by just going to Google and searching for your keyword or keyphrase within quotes.
Tip #5. You can simply study what your competition is doing and copy them AND do more than them. That will ensure you overtake them in the rankings for those keywords. This is a very good strategy and there is a great piece of software called SEO Elite that can help you manage this whole process efficiently and perfectly. I strongly suggest you get a hold of it. Read the free copy of SEO Elite to get into SEO more deeply if you are just starting out. This is an absolute must have for anyone who wants to trounce their competition quickly. Get SEO Elite here.
Tip #6. You need to find a sweet spot between the number of searches being conducted for your keyword and the number of sites that show up. Its a bit of an art and you’ll get a grip of it with practice.
Tip #7. Make sure your URLs and page titles are “permalinks” format and spell out your title / keywords.
Tip #8. While posting on your site try linking to other articles within your site. Google likes this.
This ends the first part of basic SEO tips that I recommend everyone should know. I will cover some more in depth tricks and techniques in my next post that will be titled Advanced SEO Tips. You may want to download and read Google’s list of what NOT to do during SEO.

12 Niche Dot Com Models - To make easy cash, on a shoestring budget

2008-09-17T19:40:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows that there is a lot of potential in taking a wildly successful dot com model, and spinning off the same model for a niche audience. The “niche” audience can be across a specific Vertical (think Christian Dating and Matchmaking), or even localized to a specific country (think Digg clone for India). There IS plenty of money to be made if you move early and capture the attention of your specific targeted audience.

So, if you’re thinking of throwing up a copycat dot com model for a specific target niche - and you’re reading this article - you’re in luck. Why? Because I am going to show you how you can get your site up with as many features as there are in the professional dot com global leaders - for a few dollars of investment and in many cases zero investment in the backend software that will power your site.

Before I get on to specifics, there is one very important issue. You must be interested in your niche and making your site a success. Their is considerable effort in taking care of your “baby” once it is born - and once it enters the world - you will need to get visitors and users. You can read other articles on this blog to learn various means through which you can make this happen - but, be warned that it will take time and effort and therefore you must enjoy this if you need to make a success of it in the long run!

While trying to install these free / low cost scripts on your webiste, if you know how to configure a basic php script, you can do this yourself. Otherwise, go ahead and hire a webmaster for under $5 per hour to help you get this up in as little as 2 to 3 hours. There are plenty on the Elance type freelancer project posting websites.

The biggest and most interesting fact here is that you can start this business on a Credit Card with no upfront money. You can get a good hosting company and Virtual Private server with unlimited domains for little $17 per month. If you just need one website - there are plenty of offers for $5 per month. You can literally start a dot com business worth hundreds of thousands of dollars without spending much and just for a few dollars. The software scripts that power your website can be purchased for a few dollars and in many cases for free. These are stable - tried and tested scripts being used by many people the world over and are in NO WAY INFERIOR. On the contrary, some of them, by their very nature of being Open Source are More stable than the commercial grade software scripts out their. So, take heed - if a commercial grade software provider is trying to mislead you telling you that their solution is more stable than the free Open Source alternative. This is many a times NOT the case. Just look at Open Office as compared to Microsoft Word - as a first example.

Once your site is up - the most important part is to invest you time in Online Marketing. Either, you learn this from scratch, or expand upon what you already know - or you hire a professional agency to help you market your website. I prefer learning the tricks as its fun!

So now, here is the list of ideas that you can spin off with almost no money. I have given some suggestions of niche markets - feel free to apply thought to branch out into your own niche ideas. These are listed in no particular order of preference.

1. Dating and Matchmaking

Use script OS date. Its free. They have many “skins” or “themes” which you can purchase each for $5 only. Very stable script with a large number of modules. Highly recommended for anyone looking to start a dating / matchmaking or matrimonial portal. Spin off a niche model based on say “country” example - India, Pakistan, Australia or even Americans living in India. Another niche can be for specific religious sects that like to date and meet people within their sect. your niche can even be targeting for example “high net worth individuals” - the rich who earn over $1 million per year with over $10 million in assets. It could also be Blacks in NY, or Hispanics in USA. There are countless possibilities. Just make sure that there are not already too many players in the niche and that you will enjoy doing this in the long run.

2. YouTube Clone

There are plenty of “scripts” floating out there which you can buy for as little as $100 or even get for free. A good commercial grade script that I recommend is Clip-Share. If you are looking for a free solution - try PHPmotion , its basic and comes with all the stnadard features making it a good starting point if you are on a shoestring budget. Another slightly expensive solution is Rayzz - but it comes with complete social community features and audio, file, video sharing, blogging etc. The biggest problem with this model is finding a good hosting company that allows you to grow as the viral traffic increases. Although, the cost of bandwidth is relatively high, when compared to the money you will make via an ad running on the page or a pre-roll - this model is sustainable - even once you cross the “free” bandwidth quota provided by your hosting company. Most of the top grade hosting companies will give you about 1200 GB of data transfer per month within the cost of the hosting package. But, once your website video traffic crosses that mark you will have to cough up around $2 per GB. So, if a video on your site is of an average size of say 3MB - that will equate to around 650 videos served for $2. Now, on an average you can expect the surfer to surf around 4 pages of non-video streaming content before they finally decide to watch the next video. So thats 5 page views per video. So, 650 videos will cost you $2 and bring in a total of 5×650 = 3250 page views. But, then lets also safely suppose that 50% of the people will watch only half the video and skip. So, thats 650 bonus videos for $2 - or 1.5MB per video. OR a cost of $1 will bring in 3250 page views. Now, if you optimize your ads properly on your video website, you can very easily bring in $1.50 per 1000 page views - at the least - using on Google Adsense. I know, because i’ve done it! So, this equates to $4.50 revenues for every $1.50 spent on bandwidth in EXCESS of the 1200GB free allotment. NOte: If you pre-purchase bandwidht, you can get it for 50 cents per GB - which means your expense goes down 4 times, and you make more money!

Update: There is a great new video share setup software for $10 only… the templates are not that great and futuristic looking - but it has amazing features like youtube video embedding, permalink seo friendly urls, and a host of other features… well worth $10 ! get it here.

3. Digg Clone - Use Pligg or Drupal Digg.

They are both 100% free. My favorite is pligg, but Drupal is also pretty good and will allow you to add on more community features, should your venture take off and thus you will be able to offer more to your community making your site more sticky. I like pligg because it has an active community for support and they have some nice looking skins. The Admin interface is also very neat with a lot of modules and many plugins and configurable elements. There are countless verticals that you can setup as niche Digg clones. Again make sure you will enjoy running this niche Digg clone before you put in the time and effort to set this up (done in 1 hour max) and then customize it, launch it and market it. Some examples of successful niche market Digg clones are - Sphinn, PlugIM, DesignFloat, Dubbagol and Zligg. Visit the Pligg Forums section where people introduce their Pligg sites for more. If there is a niche that interests you, and you feel there is potential - go ahead and start this right away. Some example ideas could be – Bloggers Blogging, Book Site, News sharing for a specific country, news for a specific niche. Just make sure there is potential for fresh news and fresh posts in your chose niche. It should have a large variety of new things being reported on the blogosphere and it should potentially have a large audience.

4. Niche Social Network

There IS still a LOT of potential here - no matter what people are saying. There are as many niches as their are stars in the sky OK maybe not THAT many. But there are plenty of niches just waiting to be socially networked! There are some very good expensive and inexpensive commercial grade softwares. A very stable but expensive solution is OneSite. Then there is Ning.com - which allows you to setup a Social Network with averagely decent features at yoursitename.ning.com and even later on your own domain if things take off. I liked Boonex’s Dolphin solution - but was most impressed with PHPizabi - as it was simply fantastic and has a large number of features that are essential in a Social Network. Some Social Network niche examples - Indians living in USA, Hispanics in USA, Blacks in Australia, Mathematicians, Physicists, Professors worldwide, Skateboarders, Rock Climbers, Programmers, … you can really go on. The key here is - again that you must understand your niche and have an interest in connecting them and running the site. If this is not there - drop the idea. It wont work.

5. Ecommerce Portal

I would highly recommend OSCommerce. You can get your store up at no cost on your own server and domain in as little as day. Customizing it and adding products through the Admin interface is not complicated. There are other hosted solutions or other pay solutions too, but I like OS Commerce. Create a niche store for any category on the planet - Gadgets, Adult Toys, Shoes Store in Australia or even an custom print T-shirt shop.

6. Blogging

I dont have to say much here. Get Wordpress or Typepad - both free. I prefer Wordpress. Unless you’ve just come out of a cave on a deserted island, you’ve already read of the potential of blogging in a niche.

7. Niche Web Advertising Network

For $25 you can start your own niche ad network that looks a lot like Adsense. You can install and use the script by inClick.net guys for 15 days at no cost. If you like it pay them a one time fee of $25 and 15% of your revenues and the script and system is yours. This sounds like a great deal. The only problem here is that you will be essentially competing with Google. But then so are some of the smaller ad networks out there - and the market seems to b there - if you focus on a niche and are confident in your ability to sign up advertisers. The technology used by inClick is obviously far superior than Adsense or Adwords by Google - but if you want to target a small niche and make a little bit of money - this may be plausible. ( off-topic, but relevant - if you’re looking a for a stable Ad Management script that you can run across several sites to manage ads for several clients, get OpenAds.org - its free and fantastic! )

8. Your own Torrent Site - Try / Googling - “TS Special Edition”. I wont say more.

9. Hot or Not Clone

If you have $100 you can get K-rate by Turn-k.net – along with some themes. This is the best of the lot. If you have $45, then try PHPzen solution or even better - RateMyPhoto at built2go.com. The best free solution is at - Destiney, and it has some pretty decent features, given that its free. So, if you are just dabbling and having some fun, go for Destiney. But, if you’re serious go for Krate by Turn-k.net. Possible niche areas? A Hispanic Hot or Not, AsiaHot or Not, Websites Hot or Not, Adult Xrated Hot or Not.

10. del.icio.us clone

There is a free Open Source solution called Scuttle. Perhaps there is room to start a niche social bookmarking site for a specific mindset of people or interest - for example , all graphic designers?

11. Wikipedia clone -

Try the free solutions of - MediaWiki - and Wikiwig. You can start a Mini Wiki site for a specific niches like Web2.0 sites, Bollywood Actor Pages, Marketing Gurus Pages, etc.

12. Project Posting and Bidding Websites

like Elance, WorkExchange or Rentacoder. Try Freelancers for about $50 its an awesome solution. You can well easily start a niche site on this concept that appeals to a closed community, for example for Graphic Designers, Coders in Russia, Lawyers, Software Coders in India and Game Development Community. Basically any vertical that has potential where clients are seeking help to outsource the projects to service providers globally or in specific countries.

There are plenty more dot com models that are being replicated to target niche markets, and I could go on (file uploaders, photo sharing, real estate, classifieds etc) - but I thought these were the signinficant ones. Do let me know if I missed out some important ones and also do post any cheap scripts links that I may have missed out for the above dot com models.

Make Money with Domain Tasting

2008-02-05T20:19:00.000-08:00

Make Money with Domain Tasting

Those who do not know what Domain Tasting is… it is a 5 day “grace period” which some domain registrars allow you to hold on to a domain, within which period if you drop it - you get your money back. This has opened up a loop hole which many people are exploiting and making thousands of dollars from. This law allows you to register domains, put up ads on them, measure how much traffic is coming in (mostly from type-in traffic of misspelled words etc) - and then see if you would benefit or make a profit over the yearly cost to book the domain. People use this trick to quickly snap up domains that people forget to renew on time, and measure the traffic and revenues (by putting up adsense ads for instance).

Dynadot.com offers this 5 free day booking. Godaddy.com stopped offering it as it realized that in a period last year over 90% of domains that were booked - were dropped within this 5 day period. But still, everyone here gains… including Google, and now Dynadot - who allows you to use the money for the returned domain to purchase any other service (including another domain). Dynadot wins - because the money remains in their kitty - earning then interest. Google recently announced that they will not allow Adsense ads to run on domains that are less then 5 days old - thus shutting off the possibility to measure how much one can earn in 5 days of ads (and thus apply it to yearly earnings - in order to decide if a profit can be expected) - but Yahoo Publisher Network and MSN have made no such announcement. Also, if ad networks switch to this policy - one can still simply redirect traffic to another domain and still measure additional revenue coming in from redirected traffic. Here is a great post for those who want to learn more about this, and here is an article from Washington Post. If you are clever and move quickly, making even as little as $10 profit per domain per year, if you gradually increase your domain portfolio and holdings to say over 1000 domains - thats $10,000 for your effort. Write special software to snap up names and autoamte the process, and see this figure increase by 100 fold!

2007-12-22T20:50:00.000-08:00

How you can write more effective headlines

This is part of my blast from the past series. I have pulled this article out from down under, bringing it back into the light as it has some very valueable content.

Get a hold of today’s newspaper. Many of the headline stories will probably say Cold Blooded Murder, Sex Scandal, Corruption Charges Laid, Innocent Victims Sued …

This is because Headlines sell Newspapers to their targeted audience.

Your headline is the most important part of your message. As many as five times as many people read headlines as read the rest of the advertisement, article or letter. A change in your headline can increase your response by as much as twenty times!

The best headlines are those that tell the reader the largest BENEFIT they will get from using your product or service.

People do not want to “buy” cars. They want to “own” them. Have the thrill of driving them around. Take friends and family for drives.

Results oriented headlines work best. Whatever you want to sell, you should remember to be specific. Being specific in your headline increases your response.

Here is a list of the 10 most frequently used words used in the 100 most effective headlines.

You….31
Your…14
How….12
New….10
Who…..8
Money…6
Now…..4
People..4
Want….4
Why…..4

The most common words are You and Your. This is because headlines should be personal! The advertisement, promotion or letter should be aimed at the person reading it! You should never aim at the masses. Think that you area friend of the reader and you are sitting face to face with them and talking to them.

Six Essential Rules to keep in mind while writing headlines

1. Appeal to the self interest of the reader – and promise them a benefit.

2. Do not worry about the length of your headline

3. Put a piece of news into the headline

4. Don’t use headlines that are tricky, confusing or incomplete in their message

5. Try to use a headline that explains the articles content in advance.

6. Target your market! Your headline should appeal to a specific group of people, who will be most interested in your service or product.

Nine different types of headlines

1. The headline that offers a benefit

2. The headline that is personalized

3. The headline with a Testimonial

4. The headline with a guarantee

5. The headline with a discount sale

6. The headline with news

7. The how-to headline

8. The headline that offers a solution

9. The headline that asks a question

Some very effective words to use in your headline

Do you
Amazing
At Last
Bargains
Little-known Secrets
Facts
Discover
Inside Secrets Of
Announcing
Yes
Amazing Secrets
Which
Here
New How Much
This
Which Of
How To
You Free
Life
Breakthrough
Love
Hot
Only
The Truth About
Now
Sale
how Would
Advice To

100 of the Best Headlines ever Written

How To Raise Your Child’s IQ Before It Is Even Born.

How much are you losing to deadbeats right now?

SELL YOUR PRODUCT ON NATIONAL TELEVISION FOR A PERCENTAGE OF PROFIT

He Became Twice The Man At Half The Weight

The Secret Of Being Wealthy

PHONE WIZARD

The Child Who Won The Hearts Of All

One Place –Setting Free For Every Three You Buy!

Watch your weight and inches disappear.

They laughed when I sat down at the piano – But when I started to play!

$80,000 in prizes! Help us find the name for these new kitchens.

Vita – Mix makes juice 12 times faster than other juicers – And 400% more nutritious

Who else wants a screen star figure?

How your horoscope can bring you wealth, love, success and happiness

IMAGINE ME …. HOLDING AN AUDIENCE SPELLBOUND FOR 30 MINUTES!

Why are we giving you these $18.50 delicious macadamia nut chocolates – For FREE !

THE AMAZING SECRETS OF THE HOTTEST INVESTMENT OF THE LAST 5 YEARS!

Have a house you’ll be proud of … with color makers range of 362 tiles and new easy-to-apply house paint

The amazing money-making power of pac-man and his friends!

Important news for people who swore they would never try another reducing product

How to pay Zero Taxes!

A wonderful two years’ Trip at full pay – But only man with imagination can take it

THE $112,000 HOUSEWIFE

Your TV fixed in 4 days or It’s FREE

Confessions of a disbarred lawyer

“You kill that story – Or I’ll run you out of the state!”

Smart car owners: Save up to 87% off retail prices on your spare parts

THE SECRET OF PERFECT PUTTING

How to become debt-free and stay that way – Forever

Where you can go in a good used car

How to write a business letter

Mobile money maker

Today … Add $10,000 to your estate – for the price of a new hat

Gold coast lawyer discovers how to make money at home with the help of the Federal Government

Right and wrong farming methods – And little pointers that will increase your profits

Do you sincerely want to be rich?

Do You make these mistakes in job interviews?

HOW TO WRITE A GOOD ADVERTISEMENT

Doctors prove 2 out of 3 women can have more beautiful skin in 14 days

Life in the fast lane

THE CRIMES WE COMMIT AGAINST OUR STOMACHS

A breakthrough idea for those who want to act in the movies

Which of these 5 skin problems do you have?

Test your ability to ever grow up

Here is a way to become tight, lean, attractive and remarkably healthy in just 45 minutes three times a week.

How do you grow $1,000 worth of food in a garden this small?

Why people on the Queensland are healthier, less overweight, stay young longer, live longer, than people of any other state in Australia.

STOP DREAMING AND START MAKING MONEY.

Free giant cookie.

How to get out of the rat race and into the chips.

Wanted: your old shredder. Get a minimum $700 trade in on our new models.

Throw ‘Away your oars!

This is Marie Antoinette – riding to her death

The chinese secrets of weight control

THINK AND GROW RICH

Who else wants to make big money in electronics.

Three powerful reasons you should come to my seminar

New rubber stamp business pays beginners up to $20.70 an hour!

If your bathroom Isn’t ready in 8 days I’ll give you $100 cash for every day we go over time.

Who’s making a bundle?

YOU CAN LUNCH AT MONEY WORRIES IF YOU FOLLOW THIS SIMPLE PLAN

World poker champ sells secrets for $9.95

THOUSANDS NOW PLAY WHO NEVER THOUGHT THEY COULD

Do you do any of these ten embarrassing things?

How to get $373,500 out of a $30,000 house

At last, someone has unlocked the secret of getting people to fall in love with you!

IF YOU READ MUSIC YOU’LL LOVE OUR MAGAZINE

Brighten your dark rooms in less than 1 hour

How to form your corporation without a lawyer for under $50.00

Are you ready to use self-hypnotism to make life give you what you want?

“I had been overweight for 10 years, so … my friends could hardly believe their eyes when they saw me lose 56 ponds in only 6 weeks!”

Do you make these mistakes in English?

WHAT’S YOUR BEST CHANCE TO MAKE MONEY IN REAL ESTATE TODAY? THE ANSWER BELOW MAY SURPRISE YOU.

You don’t have to die to collect on your Insurance policy

Some straight talk about vitamins and your sex life

How you can make money with the Arabs

THE AMAZING GRAFTON “WRINKLE ERASER” DISCOVERED BY A TOP ORIENTAL CHEMIST

47 REASONS WHY IT WOULD HAVE PAID YOU TO ANSWER YOUR AD A FEW MONTHS AGO

Buy no desk … until you’ve seen this sensation of the business show new “Energy pill” tested by the R.A.A.F. with amazing results

The amazing “Face –life-in-a-jar” used by Hollywood stars who don’t want plastic surgery

HERE ARE 87 SURPRISE WAYS TO GET MONEY FROM PARLIAMENT HOUSE

Released at last – 143 perfectly legal ways to get a check out of Uncle Sam!

The machine that peels off kilograms while you sit back and enjoy it

How to wake up the financial genius inside you

How you can eat more and weight less

Remember when you could have picked up a good piece of real estate for a song- and didn’t?

Is the life of a child worth $1 to you?

Imagine being such a great lover women can see it in your eyes!

How long will you live? Ignorance about taking care of yourself can be the mistake that kills you in your 50’s or 60’s … “The Dangerous Years!”

HOW TO DISCOVER WHAT YOU ARE REALLY GOOD AT

Again she orders…” A chicken said, please”

7 ways long distance can keep your head above water

How to rob race tracks legally

How to avoid having your car stolen this summer on the Gold coast

Lawyers reveal legal loopholes that make money

Generous creative businessman wants to find a hot sexy woman with a good sense of humor

HOW TO MAKE MONEY WRITING SHORT PARAGRAPHS

Science has finally counterfeited a perfect diamond!

WOULD YOU LIKE TO TAKE IN $140 AFTER SUPPER?

“Insider Information” – On who’s really making money – Plus exactly how those business operate

The secret of teaching yourself music

HOW TO BURN OFF BODY FAT, HOUR BY HOUR!

A List of Top Advertising Networks

2007-11-20T00:40:00.000-08:00

A List of Top Advertising Networks

Here are some advertising networks that you may want to use to monetize your website traffic. These are from the more popular ones out there. I have followed the posting with a larger comprehensive list of ad networks.

Kontera ContentLink

Kontera will convert some words on your web page into click-able links. They will then pay you every time someone clicks on a link. Each link has a double underline, and every time someone hovers their mouse cursor on top of the link a small popup ad shows up showing an ad. You don’t earn anything for these mini-ad displays and you only get paid if and when the user clicks on the mini ad or the link.

Text Link Ads

This network works very well only after your site has a certain minimum amount of daily traffic. If you get around 100 to 200 page views daily, this will probably not work well for you, since they have a “featured sites” page listing that lists the top performing sites only. I’ve tried to list my site on them but haven’t had any luck so far.

Google Adsense Ads

If you don’t know what Adsense is then you need to do some serious catching up. When site owners get accepted by Google Adsense, they place ads in their pages that can be of several different sizes - as text only ads, graphic ads and rich multimedia or a combination of them. The Google system studies the content of your web page and accordingly displays matching “contextual ads” on your pages. This is the best way for content developers with any amount of traffic to get started.

Bidvertiser

Bidvertiser is a Google Adsense type contextual advertising network. The only difference is that their payout ceiling is as low as $10, so you don’t need to reach the $100 mark until your payment is sent to you - as with Google Adsense. This works very well for the really small content creators specially in third world countries.

Azoogle Ads

Azoogle is one of the largest and best performing affiliate advertising networks globally. They pay you on a CPA (Cost-Per-Action) basis - where the action can be anything from filling up a web form, purchasing something, participating in a survey etc. Merchants who want to build a large network of affiliate websites, sign up with them and specify their action required and offering, which is listed in their directory. Then content publishers browse Azoogle directory and choose the merchants ads that they wish to display. The payout per action can be anywhere between $1 to $100. Recently Google has entered the Affiliate Network space with their Adsense Referral scheme, which looks pretty good.

Auction Ads

This is basically a middle man that pays you for Ebay referral traffic - just the same way as Ebay would pay you if you signed up directly with them. The advantage is that because they are so huge, they can offer you a larger commission. Currently they pay you 100% of the referral earnings. I also like their customizable ad boxes. The only problem here is that your site needs to have a lot of traffic to generate any money at all.

ReviewMe

This one is for bloggers. If you blog and have about 100+ regular readers then you should list yourself in the ReviewMe directory. This is basically a system that facilitates paid reviews on blogs… so you can get paid for writing a review for a website! The amount you get paid depends on traffic and topic. Usually ReviewMe analyzes your site and sets the price, but you can change that if you like. ReviewMe takes a cut of the money you earn, and the only requirement is that the review be at least 200 words.

FeedBurner Network

If you have feeds going out to a large number of feed readers then you may want to try signing up with the Feedburner Network. They pay on a CPM basis with CPM rates going up as high as $10. They also allow regular web page CPM advertising other than in-feed ads.

Adbrite Ads

Adbrite is another contextual ad network, that pays on a CPM or CPC basis.

Three clever Blog Promotion Tricks

2007-11-20T00:27:00.000-08:00

Three clever Blog Promotion Tricks

Here’s three sneaky ways to drive traffic to your blog for almost no money. Some violate the terms of service of the service provider, so be careful and use at your own risk!

Trick #1 - You Review Me, I Review You

For those of you who dont know what ReviewMe is - it is a directory of bloggers who take money to write a post on their blog - usually a review of a product, service or website. This way any sponsor can get a write up in exchange for some money. Some people regard this as unethical means… but I think as long as the review is honest and not misleading AND the blogger clearly indicates that he is writing this review for money - its ok.

Now here’s the trick…

Lets assume a review on your blog costs sponsors $100. Now, sometimes ReviewMe offers a 50% discount coupon to sponsors. Quickly grab one. Then approach another blog listed on ReviewMe and agree to review them for $100 (with 50% discount) if they review you for $100 (with the 50% discount). This way - you will pay each other $50 which will cancel out and you get a review for free! Better still, if you sign up as the advertiser through an Affilaite Link that is on your own site, you get a bonus $25 commission too!

Trick #2 - Text-Link-Ads Starter Trick

Text-Link-Ads offers all new advertisers a $100 coupon if they sign up via the Link Buying Starter Kit. This is great. Simply sign up and purchase $125 worth of ad links - which will only cost you $25 ($100 coupon). Further, you can get another $25 affilaite commission if you are a publisher and sign up through your own link.

Trick #3 - The Free Pay-Per-Click Coupons

Occasionally, Google Adwords, Microsoft AdCenter and Yahoo Publisher Netowrk will issue $100 or more free advertising coupons. These get taken away very quickly. All you need is a credit card to sign up - and whats superb is that you can use the same Credit Card to sign up 5 different accounts… thats $1000 worth of free ads!! So, if you see these coupons, grab them as quickly as you can before they get over. They are generally in short supply and only last for a short period of time. If you have two or more Credit Cards… you can really take advantage of this system!

The Magic Number of Viral Marketing

2007-11-20T00:22:00.000-08:00

The Magic Number of Viral Marketing

First, what is Viral Marketing?

Viral marketing takes place when many of your customers are responsible in some way or another to create awareness of your product. The customer may or may not be rewarded in some way to spread the word. The product could be anything - from a new hot car just introduced in the market, or a free email service like Hotmail. In the offline case of a new car, the owner drives the car around and is automatically creating awareness of the car in this manner. In the case of Hotmail, the service inserts a line “Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com” - at the end of every email message sent out by users who use the free webmail service. A typical viral marketing effort grows exponentially. If we assume that each person is responsible for getting two customers, then the growth would look like this -

1
1 1
1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

As you can see this growth is very powerful and grows exponentially… 2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024…

Services such as MySpace, Youtube, Flickr, Hotmail, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Bluemountain arts and PayPal have all shown viral growth patterns until they reach a very high critical level such as 20 million or 30 million, after which they exhibit steady growth, because they have reached a certain market saturation point - beyond which they cannot grow at the same exponential rate.

The great thing about Viral marketing is that your advertising budget is almost zero in most cases - as members of your website spread the word about your great unique service. Because they do the talking and tell their friends, their friends are more receptive to listen to them and very likely click to check out the service (at a rate that is un-comparable to an online advertisement). Friends have a large factor of trust - that brings in this large click-through-rate that results in exponential viral growth.

The one important fact about Viral Marketing is that the first mover in the product or service has a very big advantage over the others who launch similar product or service afterwards. Unless you are a Microsoft or Yahoo!, you just cannot get significant market share for your product if there already exists a couple of first movers who have grabbed majority of the share - unless your similar service has something unique and of value that is lacking in the first-mover’s model. By this, I don’t mean its not possible to achieve the same customer base, its just more difficult, because people are already exposed to the concept and have already signed up for the first mover’s service.

In some cases, people do not mind having accounts setup and being part of separate communities providing similar services. For example - a large number of people are members of and regularly visit multiple friendship network type sites like - Facebook, Myspace, Orkut, Friendster, LinkedIn (Business Networking). This is because each of them has a twist and a different image - serious, party, business - and appeals to these unique traits in individuals.

If your product had significant advantages over the dominant players, you could get a break and make loyal consumers of the other product or service switch over to you. This is exactly what Yahoo! Messenger Service, and MSN did to grab market share from AOL (which had bought out ICQ, who had a user base of 40 million!).

A viral concept spreads mostly by Email, Instant Messaging or in some cases in chat rooms. The flow of information is very fast and costs almost nothing. The fact that email is free allows the Viral concept to spread fast in a frictionless media.

Seth Godin’s Equation, and the Magic Number

Seth Godin is known mainly for his concept and book called “Permission Marketing”. Before he started writing books he sold of a company for $30 million to Yahoo!. He’s been a consultant for major companies like Microsoft, Yahoo and IBM.

If you think you have a product or service that can spread in a Viral manner, you should test it out with Seth Godin’s basic principal - which will give you your answer.

Seth Godin, in his book Unleashing the Idea Virus, says that to grow exponentially by some form of viral marketing, the “Magic Number” described below must be met.

How do we calculate the Magic Number?

Let us suppose for this example, that we are running an e-greeting cards site. Lets assume that each visitor to our site sends cards to 5 people. Lets also suppose that these recipients of cards have a 50% chance to go to the site and are interested enough
with the concept to send cards to 5 of their friends. Now, if we start with 10 people the generations look like this:

10 people send 50cards

which means that 25 people (50% of 50 cards) come to your site and get the “virus”and send (25 x 5) = 125 cards

which again means that 63 people (50% of 125 cards) get the “virus”
and send 315 cards

which again means that 162 people (50% of 315 cards) get the virus
and send 810 cards

which means that 405 people (50% of 810 cards) get the virus
and send 2025 cards…

This might seem like a slow growth. But, if you assume each “generation” takes 3 days to occur, then we’d have 58million users in 54 days!!!

Of course, this doesn’t really happen - because it is quite unlikely that you will get the 50% conversion rate. If you take the above example and use a 30% conversion rate - then
the number of users drops from 58 million to less than 10,000. Which is why “conversion” is critical.

So, what is value of the magic number?

You can compute the magic number by multiplying the number of cards the average user sends (in the example above it is 5) by the percentage of people who convert (50%). therefore, in this case the magic number is 2.5 = (5 new invitations x .5 conversion rate - that is, 50%) . This figure of 2.5 is “how much bigger” each generation will be than the one before.

Until the magic number exceeds 1.2 or 1.3, its’ very hard for a product to get viral fast enough to beat the competition.

What motivates people to participate in Viral Marketing?

The best forms of viral growth happen when there is absolutely no motive for the consumer to spread the message. 99% of people are totally unaware of the fact that they are spreading a viral message.

By sharing jokes, you could be spreading the word about a joke site where you got the joke from, because the joke site has a link in the email (joke) that is being circulated. Many people forward the joke they get from you to their list of friends. The email joke that is being circulated may have a link to a website in it. Some people may want to read a few more jokes and they may click on this link, which takes them to the joke site. On visiting the website they may read some more jokes which they would like to share with their friends - and thus fuel the Viral growth further.

Sometimes Viral growth takes place when people like to share interesting information they read somewhere or get from someone, with their friends. Again, as above, friends send emails to friends.

People may also spread the word about a website to their friends in exchange for a reward or an entry into a sweepstakes and a chance to win a prize. They maybe motivated by the idea of earning or winning money, as in the case of AllAdvantage and ValuePay lotto systems - where for every friend you invite to play lotto you automatically are rewarded with one free ticket for a cash prize draw.

The “invite your friend” or “recommend this site” feature

This is a must for every site. Simply put a “recommend this site” link on the homepage and subpages, by which your site visitors can invite their friends and relatives, or people they think might find your site interesting. By clicking on this link a small window pops open, which has text boxes in which they can enter the names of their friends and their email addresses. They could invite up to say 10 friends in one go. By clicking on the submit button at the bottom, an automated email is sent to each of the persons they invited, saying “Hi *John*, your friend Jack has invited you to see this site” or “Jack would like your to check out this site, etc etc”.

You could visit the various script resources, that I mentioned earlier (cgi-resources.com and hotscripts.com), to download and install this script on your site. Or, if you don’t have any knowledge about installing scripts, you can visit recomemnd-it.com. They will then give you a simple HTML text which you need to plug into your site, and you will automatically get all the features required for this invitation system to happen - no programming experience reqired. A good twist that recommend-it has added to this system - is that, the person who is inviting his friends will automatically get entered to win a prize. This slightly increases the chance that someone will invite friends to see your website. I liked the recommend-it.com system and strongly recommend it!

A viral twist to the recommend-it system

For this you will have to write your own “invite your friend” or “recommend-it” program.

This is how it works…

Offer visitors to your site one entry into a prize draw for every friend they invite to see your site. Let them invite as many friends as they want (your invite-friends form could have as many as 20 blank text-entry boxes - to invite up to 20 friends at one go!). For each friend they invite, they get a ticket for your prize draw of say $100. Pretty straightforward so far. Nothing new. But here’s the twist…

Along with every invitation email that is sent to their friends, you insert 20 empty text-entry boxes so that they - the friend who receives the email - can also invite their friends, and get an entry into the $100 prize draw for each friend that they invite.

Again, when these invited friends invite more friends, you send 20 more empty text-entry boxes - so they can invite their friends and so on.
How can you use Viral Marketing to grow your business?

A classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com - a first-mover in giving a free web based email address. The Hotmail strategy is simple:

1. First giveaway free a email address and service.

2. At the bottom of every free email message sent out from hotmail user, include the message -
“Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com”

3. Then stand back and watch while people email to their own network of friends, who see the message, then sign up for their own free web email service, and then further propel the message still wider to their own circle of friends.

Like tiny ripples spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped in a pond, a carefully designed Viral Marketing Strategy ripples outward, extremely rapidly.

Lets now look at the seven basic elements which are required for a viral marketing campaign to be successful…

1. Give away a free product or service

2. The message must spread in a almost zero frictionless manner.

3. Ability to grow from small to large, without growth hindering further growth..

4. Take advantage of common motivations such as prizes, free money.

5. Must work within the communication media network.

6. Ability to take advantage of other’s resources.

7. Growth rate of each generation must be greater than the “Magic Number” mentioned earlier.

Brightspot.TV - now Get Paid to Watch Video Ads

2007-11-15T02:41:00.000-08:00

Brightspot.TV - now Get Paid to Watch Video Ads

The GP2 model now comes to streaming online videos with Brightspot.TV. The model requires users to view video advertising, often with the occasional question thrown in to make sure that the user is actually watching the ad, and then compensates the user by funding things like a one month subscription to Napster or discounts off subscriptions to XM Canada, MLB TV and Gamefly. The model credibility comes from the fact that it is funded by sports moguls Jerry Colangelo (Phoenix Suns, Arizona Diamondbacks and Team USA Basketball) and Jerry Reinsdorf (CEO of Chicago Bulls and Chicago White Sox). Other advisors include Paul Schrage (Original CMO of McDonald’s) and Eric Heneghan (Founder of Giant Step and current CEO of Elevation Inc).

The amount of funding is anywhere from $2.5 million to $10 million - which will allow the people behind the model to pull this off successfully. Targeted at teens with limited incomes who want access to paid services, this model has a good chance to succeed. The company will be leveraging its partnerships with Napster, the NBL and others to promote the service. The video below is a brief ad on the model.

AFFILIATE MARKETING

2007-11-13T01:12:00.000-08:00

AFFILIATE MARKETING INTRODUCTION

Affiliate marketing is a “no-risk” partnership that allows you to promote another company’s product or service on your website to earn a percentage or amount on the sales made through your site. Sometimes the merchant may pay you even if someone from your website visits their site, and/or simply registers or fills up an online form.

You might post a banner on your website that links to the Merchant or Affiliate Program’s site, or you might publish an article about the company and their products in your newsletter.

Generally there is no fees for you to join, and you can leave the program whenever you choose. Affiliate Marketing is also know as Associate Programs.

Win-Win for both

This system is a win-win situation for both the Merchant and the Affiliate

1. The Affiliate Program and Merchant gets a “no-risk” advertising (they don’t pay you unless you send someone who pays them - in most cases)

2. Being the Affiliate, you get the opportunity to earn easy additional income without any hassles of production, packaging, shipping, or customer service.

The Amazon.com Affiliate Program -

Amazon.com is the pioneer of affiliate programs. They were the first to start this form of marketing on the Internet. In fact, this system was not the brain-child of someone working in Amazon. Amazon had put up a “Suggestions?” link on their site, and an old lady had the original idea of Affiliate Marketing! She submitted this suggestion to Amazon - and within a few months Amazon sales were soaring and a high percentage of their sales were derived from their Affiliates. Amazon now has hundreds of thousands of affiliates all over the world.

The reason for the Amazon affiliate system being such a big success is basically because “content and commerce” get tied together. Amazon has books for sale in every conceivable topic. And at the other end people have website that talk about every conceivable topic.

So what happens? Well, lets suppose you have a homepage on say geocities and you love marine life. You continually post information on marine life, latest happenings and findings etc. People who are interested in fish will visit your site, because you have some interesting content that they may want to read, or maybe they want to communicate with you. So once you have a site with a lot of useful marine life content - you can simply become an Amazon Affiliate (for free) and start promoting marine life books found on Amazon - that are interesting and a must have for all marine life lovers. Now, since your visitors are all marine life lovers, they will see your recommended books, and if they like it they will purchase it. Amazon will track the purchase and send you your commission, which ranges from 5% to 15%. This is a perfect example of content and commerce working together to bring you money.

Your own Affiliate Army

Amazon has programmed its own Affiliate System software. If you are a merchant you could develop your own software too, or you could buy some of the basic ones that are available for free and for a fee. You can easily get hold of a developer who knows how to configure scripts, and ask him to install an Affiliate Program on your website. Having your own Affiliate Program has its advantages, but the pitfall is how do you get webmasters to signup for your Affiliate Program? IF you have a member community, then you could simply email them and let them know about it. If you get a steady flow of traffic to your site, you may simply put up a “Earn Cash _ Join our Affiliate Program” link or banner on your homepage. Alternatively, you could approach another site that has a large membership base and ask them to promote your affiliate program for a fee. If you don’t want to shell out money, an alternative would be to setup a 2-tier Affiliate Program.

A 2-tier affiliate program is just like those MLM systems. Basically, lets assume you know a webmaster who has a large list of emails of his members, and you would like to get the word of your Affiliate Program out to his list, without shelling out a dime. In this case you would setup a 2-tier Affiliate Program and you may then approach the webmaster with the following proposal -

1. You sign up for my Affiliate Program for free and become my Affiliate

2. For every sale I make from visitors you send me, I will give you 10%

3. If you happen to send me a visitor who signs up as an Affiliate, then I will give you 5% of every sale his visitor traffic makes with my Affiliate Program!

Bingo! This webmaster, will be very eager to now promote your 2-tier Affiliate Program to his full list of members, because if they become Affiliates he can earn a lot of income!

Using Free 3rd Party Affiliate Programs

There are Affiliate Network websites like commissionjunction.com and clickbank.com that basically act as the link between Merchants and Site operators - promoting the merchants products.

They have their own Affiliate Tracking System, that works with both Affiliates and Merchants. As a merchant you would sign up with them, and they will give you a piece of code that you need to give your potential Affiliates. Your Affiliates will then put that code into their webpages. When a visitor to their pages clicks and comes to your site to make the purchase, the intermediary site like Commission Junction would track the sale made and commission earned.

Going to intermediary sites like these, has its own advantage and disadvantages…

Advantages:

1. Most sites have a ready large base of Affiliates to whom they will promote your website when you sign up. This means instant Affiliates for you.

2. Since they are recognized intermediaries, Affiliates who sign up are sure that the system is fair and that you are not ripping them off, by not giving the correct commission.

3. Its free!

Disadvantages:

1. Some Affiliate Network sites (like commission junction) may charge you a hefty upfront fee to join as a Merchant and get started. Although, there are many other’s that are free (example: ClickBank)

2. They may take a % commission / cut on the sale made, as a facilitators fee.

I would suggest you start out with signing up for a thrid party Affilaite Program like ClickBank.

Alternatively, if you want total control and are confident that you can tap a large Affilaite Army base, you can install (or get a webmaster to install) your own Affiliate Program script on your website. Visit Hotscripts, and search or go to the Affiliate Programs category, to find which Affiliate Script works best for you and your budget.

Once you have your Affiliate Program in place and all setup, you can go to refer-it.com to list your Affiliate Program and describe benefits / commissions. Refer-it.com is basically a web directory of Affiliate Programs found on the Internet. It is visited a lot by webmasters and people seeking to monetize their website traffic by signing up for appropriate Affiliate Programs. By listing your website and affilaite offer on refer-it.com , you’re in the right place! … and you will be reaching out to your target audience.

One issue that these webmasters will ask you before they insert your Affilaite Tracking Code on their site, is that – “what if I send you a visitor today, who sees your site but does not make an immediate purchase, but comes back after, say a week, and buys something? Do you have the ability to track that and give me the sales commission? Reasoninig - because I was the one who sent him to your site in the first place? Also, what if a customer I send you, buys again and again from you? Do I get a commissions on repeat sales?”

The answer you can give them will depend on how good your Affiliate Program software is. So while selecting your Affiliate Program software make sure it covers all these points and rewards repeat purchases. The software would typically use something known as “cookies” to track this.

How much Commission should one pay per referral sale?

This is really an answer that will defer from merchant to merchant. It depends on factors such as, the cost of the product for the merchant, and what the competition is giving, how much can a typical visitor afford? etc. Stuff like ebooks, have a zero cost to merchant associated with them, and things like subscription to a website service (such as dating) have almost zero cost. You can pay your affiliates a % commission or a flat $ amount. If you are selling an downloadable electronic product like an ebook or software – I would strongly recommend you to pay out as much as 75% of the sales to your affiliates. This will get them all excited and they will put in a much larger effort to market your product for you – over their other third party products.

Some Terminology

Affiliate Programs often talk about something called a CPA or CPS.

CPA is Cost Per Action. This is the amount a merchant would pay their affiliate, if their affiliate sends them a visitor who comes to their site and performs an “Action“. This action could be something like - fill up a form to register for services, or say, play a game. CPR is Cost Per Registration (and could be classified as a subset of CPA, since it is an Action).

CPS is Cost Per Sale. This is the amount a merchant would pay their affiliate per sale made, to a visitor that the Affiliate sent the merchant. This could be a percentage or fixed $ fee.

All these values are displayed in the 3rd Party Affiliate Program Software statistics or Web Interface, which Merchants and the Affiliates have access to. These statistics will directly decide the actual commissions earned.

GET PAID TO (GP2)

2007-11-09T22:34:00.000-08:00

GET PAID TO

The GP2 (Get Paid To) market is a very crowded space with many sites and various offerings to members. By signing up with them you can make money without a website - and by simply surfing websites, reading mail or doing some task that the site you sign up with requires you to do on a daily basis. They generally have a daily list of tasks or site visits you have to make - and in return you get paid.

The original business model of these sites is highly questionable because they used what is called as “Ponzi Schemes” - which is illegal in most countires including USA. A Ponzi Scheme is basically a business scheme that asks member to invest $x in their company, and in return promises members a multiplication of their investment at y% - if they recruit other members. There is no real product or service offering. The company basically does nothing but recruit people through people promising retruns on invested money. Eventually, as the market saturates and no more members can be recruited - the business model topples over and fails - as there is no more influx of money coming in from newly recruited members. This causes the investment of many people - specially those who keep putting their interest earned back into the system to get more interest money - to become unavailable as the business shuts down due to lack of funds. Usually the owners of the business at this point have already withdrawn a % of money that gets invested (mostly claiming that these are operational costs to run the business).

A famous company that made over $30 million revenues within hardly 12 months is 12dailypro - which is now under litigation and lawsuit by members and the FBI. The model these sites adopt are called “autosurf” models. USers sign up, put money in, and need to then login daily into their website account and the control panel shows them a series of automated and rotates them through 12 sites (or how many ever pitched) for about a minute each on a daily basis.

Cleaver entrepreneurs have found a loop hole in the law that can save them from litigation of being a Ponzi Scheme - which is illegal. One such example is that they ask members to invest the money for advertising units on their network. So effectively, they are selling a service or product. In return they tell members they can earn commissions on this investment by inviting others. This way they have found a loop around the purely Ponzi Scheme model.

The barrier to entry for setting up such a service is very low - and anyone with $50 to $100 can setup this business with available scripts online. On the other hand those who do not wish to setup their own business or company or website can still participate in the GP2 websites that are still operational. Typically GP2 sites reward members for -

Visiting a website to complete a survey
Reading Email advertisements
Referring a friend to purchase a product
Opening up a free user account on the website
Purchasing a refundable trial product or subscription
Giving an email address for a newsletter

Some of the early pioneers in the get paid to industry like Cashcrate and CashonTap are still around and their member base has grown considerably, but many have shut down. The key to making money with these offerings is to invest in a large variety of sites - and not to just put all your eggs in one basket. That way, if any one packs up - you still keep going. The income you can generate from these get-paid-to websites can be substantial. According to some forum threads posted by members, you can make a minimum of $100 to $2,000+ a month. This amount of monthly income is possible and can be achieved with effort.

Tips -

Dont use your regular email address while signing up. Get a throw away address from Gmail or hotmail etc.
Read sites and blogs that reveiw GP2 sites to make sure you dont sign up and invest in a scam.
Get a free private phone number to avoid excessive telemarketing.
Stick with sites that have a good response time for your questions and are friendly, but still be wary and watchful
Start with about 5 different websites and get a taste of how this works first, before you go with more websites. Feel the pulse and ride the wave!
Open an excel sheet and track your earnings and tasks on a daily basis on a one page glance basis… otherwise it can get very confusing.
If you can recruit other members (referrals) you may not even need to log in daily to some of these websites to make your money grow.

Below are some GP2 sites that you may want to visit. This is not a personal recommendation, but is just a resource list for you to start doing some initial research. Please make sure you read the Terms and Conditions of each site and clearly understand their offerings before you put your money in and sign up with any of them.

The Get Paid To - Resource List

Make money with VIDEO

2007-11-09T21:49:00.000-08:00

There are a few good video clip sites that will pay you for your videos. One such website is Metacafe.com – where you can sign up for their “Producer Rewards” program and upload your videos. When your video crosses the 20,000 views mark, you get $100 and $5 per 1000 views from there-onwards. This is provided your video rating by viewers is more than 3.0 out of a total of 5.0

If you are creative and own a camcorder (if you don’t you should buy one today) - this could potentially be very lucrative. The payout rates as above are very good. There are many people here earning a good side income with their creativity. The trick is to go to Metacafe.com and see what kind of videos are earning money. Categorize them and see if you can offer a similar video or a twist on something there – but its best to be unique. People want to be entertained… so show them something unique and amazing or weird. Shock people! Make them laugh! Make them gasp in awe! Make them say – wow!

Here are some of the categories and type of videos that are earning good money, and some ideas for you to make money by making videos -

Magic Tricks (show it – but if its really good, don’t sshow them how to do it , or the magician community will ban you)

Eater Eggs – Easter Eggs are strange things software developers put into software they create that can be seen by executing certain sequence of actions. Google “windows XP easter eggs” and find some examples. They are fun and whacky and people love to find these hidden gems and fun things inside Word, Excel, Photoshop, Grand Theft Auto or virtually any popular software or game.

Puzzles or Challenges – these can be as simple as matchstick or card puzzles that you demonstrate and ask the viewers to solve. Repeat your question a couple of times and ask them to solve it. Then after a moment – give them the solution.

PC Tricks – You may use a screen capture software like Camtasia to record your desktop screen. Then you can show viewers some fun stuff – be it handy shortcuts to do, some PC tricks, or amazing things online … for example a Google search for the word “failure”, shows a funny result (you need to go do this!).

Amazing Experiments – could be simple fork and knife balancing acts, carbonated fizz drink acts, safe firecracker stuff, or anything that’s not dangerous but entertains.

Tutorials – These could be general tutorials (on how t odo a Yoga pose) or even PC software tutorials – eg. How to do a create fancy headline text in photoshop or something cool in 3D Max or Google’s 3D software – Sketchup or any other popular software being used by hobbyists. They love this stuff!

Hacking – some basic “ethical” hacking videos, showing the common and uneducated person some simple and amazing (non-harmful) hacking tricks – be it Search Engine hacks, or software hacks. Don’t encourage any fraudulent and illegal activity as you will be booted out of Metacafe and also get into trouble.

Travel Videos – If you travel overseas, record videos of fun moments and amazing things you see and people you meet.

Cooking – Show the world how to make the best blueberry cheesecake pie! ..or anything that’s simple to make and unique – and what the masses would love to learn to quickly impress their friends, family and spouse!

Science Experiments – If you’re the geek type, show them some cool scientific experiments.

Origami – make a the next cool paper flapping bird and show them how its done.

Alert 1: Do not perform any dangerous stunts that could cost you an arm or a leg. Its not worth the money and the risk. Be careful. And if you must – make sure you have a supervisor or friend who can help you if anything goes wrong.

Alert 2: Do not under any circumstance rip of and copy someone’s video and upload it – as this could get you in some serious legal problems.

Alert 3: Do not use any soundtrack or clips or logos of copyrighted material. You may earn a bit –but then Metacafe can block you out quickly and not pay you for violating their terms.

Alert 4: Head over to a Do-It-Yourself site (DIY) or a site like expert village - see what videos are popular and make similar ones for the audience at Metacafe! It could’nt get simpler! I just saw a video on this guy showing how to remove scratches from a CD so skipping can be eradicated… this video has made $400 plus in a very short period of time.

If you have a blog you could increase your traffic / views of your video submitted by cutting and pasting the embedded code of your video(s) from Metacafe.com into your blog. These “off-site” views will also make the counter tick. You could also paste and embed your video(s) into your myspace.com page for your friends to see and pass around. All this will increase your views and get you closer to the 20,000 mark, after which you can start earning money!

Another good site that also pays you for your videos is Revver.com

The magic Formula 2 make $$DollaR$$ online

2007-11-09T21:34:00.000-08:00

Magic Formula = Affiliate Systems + Google Adwords + Website = $$$ !

Is this a magic formula? The Holy Grail of all Internet Moguls?

There is a lot of talk going on in the online industry of how people are making thousands of dollars by adopting a ingenious combination of Affiliate System providers, Google Adwords, and a website. You don’t need to even have a product of your own!

These ebooks claim to have stumbled upon a interesting money making system that anyone with a little bit of effort and time can create and then set on auto-pilot and watch the cash flow in through monthly checks.

Here is a brief on how this is claimed to work –

1. Sign up as a website owner on an Affiliate System like ClickBank.com

2. Select fast moving and popular products that third party merchants have put up on Clickbank for affiliates like you to choose from and sell and earn commissions of. Here are a few hot selling online products. – list products here small list (For a larger list, refer to the end of this document).

3. Display these products on different pages within your website by using the tracking code provided for each product by ClickBank. The key is to identify 1 to 3 products and focus on them. Don’t go overboard and start selling 20 different products. Focus!

4. Goto Google Adwords System and sign up with a minimum $25 account. Look for low CPC per-click keywords (or non-competitve keywords) that match and target each of the products you have put up on your website, and create an ad to be shown in the search results or on relevant targeted websites.

Note: Your ad on the Google Adwords Network is basically advertising a third party product or service - that you have selected from Affiliate System provider Clickbanks 11,000+ database of products made available by other third party Merchants.

5. Play around with this system a lot – until the amount you spend for traffic coming to your website from your ads on Google Adwords, is lower than the commissions you earn when this traffic eventually makes a purchase on the ClickBank redirected Merchant websites.

Here is an example:

Lets say you pay $0.25 per click on your ad (showcasing a third party merchants product) on Google Adwords.

Now, lets say - out of every click on this ad, eventually only 1 out of 100 people end up eventually clicking onto the merchants website and purchasing this product – that is valued at $100.

Now, for this product Clickbank gives you 50% revenue share. That means you make $50 per sale.

Since, you have spent $0.25 x 100 visitors = $25 on Google Adwords to draw in this traffic, and you have earned $50 commission … this means you have made $25 profit!! Which is not bad for not having manufactured anything at all!

The trick here is, identifying products that have –

a high conversion rate (sale per visit) on the affiliate network (eg. Clickbank)
a good/high commission paid to you by the merchant (through ClickBank)
a low competing cost-per-click on Google Adwords OR an efficient enough CPC rate that eventually results in a positive profit flow.

A few books that are written about this system (and how to optimize Adsense and Adwords) of generating auto-pilot income are -

Adsense Secrets - What Google Never Told You About Making Money With Adsense - By Joel Comm

Google Advertising Tools Cashing in with AdSense AdWords and the Google APIs - By OReilly

Google Cash - Chris Carpenter

The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords - Perry Marshall

Marketing - Adsense - Marlon Sanders

Unprotected - Google Adsense Secrets - Joel Comm

Now, here’s the good news.

I’ve spent a lot of money and effort to buy and read these books. In the next few months I will essentially summarize the jist of what all these ebooks are saying and post them on this website. There is some truth in these systems and one could possibly use them, if they stumble upon a subject and keywords that produce just the right balance of excess revenues generated to money spent on traffic.

Keep your eyes open on the blog topics for more. Better still, subscribe to the Blog RSS Feed (the RSS link on top).

Domain name

2007-11-05T00:47:00.000-08:00

A Few Tips while Choosing Your Domain Name

1. Your domain name should be easy to spell and remember

2. Try to have the .com extension as a priority, although this is now fast changing and not a requirement anymore - as people are getting familiar with the alternate domain extensions. (TLDs)

3. You should plan to have words that spell or identify your business type. This will help in directory ranking, and in rare cases Search Engine Optimization, and direct “type-in” traffic.

4. Even if you already have a domain name that spells out your company name, and does not describe what your business is as an English word(s) – you should go ahead and book a new domain name that uses a combination of English words (or your language words) as a part of the name. Try and snap up a few combinations and once the domain is booked, simply point traffic coming in to your main company website. These extra domains will help you rank higher up in Search Engines and pull in additional traffic.

5. Most single dictionary words are taken, try and combine 2 or 3 short words to make up your name.

6. If you are selling only in a particular geographical area – try and get that countries extension.

7. Feel free to use other country extensions if you get a catchy and easy to remember word. Eg. Try and snap up yourname.in , yourname.ws , yourname.tk etc.

8. Visit domain brokerage sites like www.buydomains.com and see if you can find any interesting domains, that fit your product or service, being resold (at higher prices generally) from the current owner. Sometimes, you can get a rare deal – that will help your business in many way – including the fact that this new domain may already have certain amount of residual traffic coming in on a daily basis. Email the owner(s) and ask them as many questions as you feel – before you snap up the domain – specially if it is costing you a bomb. Buydomain acts as the middleman and Escrow services are provided – so the transaction is clean, and there is no need to worry about anyone cheating you by not transferring the domain name to you even though you sent the money. Escrow services hold on to your money until they get a green signal from you that the domain name transfer has indeed been done. Only then do they release the payment to the domain seller.

17 year old makes $70,000 per month giving away free stuff

2007-11-03T18:48:00.000-07:00

More Girl Power ! How this 17 year old makes $70,000 per month giving away free stuff

Ashley Qualls is 17 years of age and runs a site called Whateverlife.com that gives away free chic looking themes for Myspace pages. Whats brilliant is that she makes an average of

$70,000 every month doing this. She quickly fires up Photoshop and churns out a couple of new themes daily, hardly spending an hour or so doing this. Thats it. Its almost on autopilot requiring minimal work and its not complicated and doesn’t need more than one person to do.

Like most ideas - if you’re in early and take advantage and move fast - you can dominate and benefit from the “winner takes all” phenomena… as virally spreading news of your product stirs up even more viral growth. If you have an idea that gives something of good perceived value away for free - and people love it and spread it by using it, then you can benefit from steroidal virally growing spikes of traffic. This is something we initially saw with hotmail - with their simple tag line at the end of each mail message ….”Get Your Free and Fast Email at Hotmail.com” Other examples are egreeting card sites like “BlueMontain Arts” and now Ashley has done it with her website that gives away chic layouts and skins for free to people using Myspace.com that allows them to dress up their personal pages for friends and visitors to see. Somewhere in each free skin - is a simple tag line that informs visitors where they can get similar skins and layouts for free. This, like Hotmail, is highly viral. She makes money by displaying ads on her website to a highly sought after age group. Infact she has turned down several offers of a buy out inssting she can do better than what was offered.

Ashley took advantage of this “new area” and moved in quickly, spreading the awareness of her cool site with the free templates VERY EARLY in the piece.

This is important… she saw the gap and opportunity early on and moved in quickly and initially. Were you to try and replicate what she is doing now - it will NOT work. Why? Because she and a few others have already spread their offerings all over and captured 99% of the market.

Unless, you have some radically-mind-boggling-unique-never-seen-before skins and themes don’t bother wasting your time trying to replicate her smple strategy and expect to make the kind of revenues she is making from targeted ads on her site.

For those of you who would like to read more and in detail on Ashley’s journey and how she made it to where she is, FastCompany as written a brilliant article about her that you may find very entertaining.

Seven Habits of Successfull Bloggers

2007-11-01T17:56:00.000-07:00

Seven Habits of Successfull Bloggers

1. They Blog with consistent frequency.

Make up your mind first on how often you will make posts on your blog. If you want to do it twice a day, or once a day, or once every 2 days or just once a week - decide this and then stick to it. Dont post everyday for a few days and then do nothing at all for a week. You will lose whatever repeat “sticky” traffic you could get.

2. Be passionate about your topic

This is a given. You have to be passionate about what you blog. This is the only motivator for you along with the money you could make. The passion will drive you through the dry revenue periods initially. You must read about your niche blogging topic, and keep updated. If you are not passionate about your blog, you will probably not excite your readers.

3. Interact with readers

Allow your readers to post questions directly to you and reach you if needed. Dont alienate youself from them. Many readers may want to get in touch with you and ask you questions. Listen to them, and help them out! Blogging is a two way street. Involve your readers and they will be loyal to you. Build two way relationships!

4. Dont be afraid to link out

If you see and read a good posting or article someplace else, link to it! This may seem contrary to opopular belief and at first it looks like you are channeling traffic away from your site at the risk of getting your readers hooked elsewhere - it actually may work in many cases. By providing valuable links to other stories - you are gianing authority and credibility by showing that you know what is happening around you. Readers will love you for referring them to other stories - and will come back for more stuff if you send them to quality articles in the sea of poor content.

5. Build Your Blog Brand

Whatever you choose to call your blog - make sure you have your own domain name and not a subdomain on say for example yourname.blogspot.com . That just doesnt work in the long run forserious bloggers. Take control of all you can do with free blog softwares like Wordpress and install them on your domain - it takes less than an hour and you can easily contract out someone for as little as $50 to install it. Having your own domain name gives you your unique brand, and allow you to stand out from the crowd.

6. Be a good writer

Communicate your thoughts and ideas in well structured English. Some people take longer than others to express their thoughts. Its ok to have a few typos as its acceptable by blog readers. But dont have too many typos. People are interested in the content. Be clear and to the point - and dont ramble on and on repetitively.

7. Read other blogs in your industry

See what other competing blogs are writing. Read a LOT. Reading is something you must do. Visit websites that are related to your blog topics and get ideas from them - but never copy them word for word. Its ok to summarize another bloggers post in your own words, and saying the same thing in your way.

2007-10-31T01:34:00.000-07:00

What are people searching for online?

Why is this important? You need to know this information because it can help you in marketing or come up with a money making idea. These are excellent resources to know exactly what people are looking for online at any particular time. They will also help you identify niche products and niche trends. Before I get on to the power lessons, these are some tools you need to be aware of.

On visiting these links, you will see that people search for different things on a daily basis - many of which depend on the media and news. But, there are a certain set of keywords that remain popular month-to-month. If you are clever and quick enough you can get traffic to your website for keyowrds that popup once in a while and become popular for a week or a couple of months.

You can simply blog about the subject matter or setup a mini-site to sell a third party (someone else’s) product targetted to the specific audiences. Then, once you have the hundreds or thousands of people visiting, you can upsell them niche products that they would be interested in, or even another related product… or simply setup a money generating Adsense ads!

The information on these sites can help you identify popular products and markets. They are market trends and popularity data from which you can derive ideas…

1. Overture Search Inventory

If you want to see hopw popular a particular keyword was in the past month, this is a great resource. Simply, enter a particular keyword and check its popularity in the last month. You can also get related keyword search popularity. Note that this is only for Overture Network of sites which includes total stats from Yahoo, MSN, AOL and a few others. If you want an estiamte of how many people would do the same search on Google - a safe formula would be to multiply these figures by about 4 or 5. This tool can even suggest other keywords to you - which you could use for Search Engine Optimization for your website. [ Overture ]

2. Word Tracker

Various Keyword packages and information. Subscribe to get their free monthly report - or take a look at some of their paid reports. They say “Keyword Reports offer the latest Top 20,000 to the Top 20 million search terms”. [ Word Tracker ]

3. Zeitgeist
Live updated feed of popular keyowrds being search on Google. Make sure you check our WORLDWIDE and USA ONLY trends. [ Zeitgeist ]

4. The Buzz @ Yahoo!

Whats the buzz on Yahoo! A good way to catch upcoming trends [ Yahoo! Buzz ]

5. Lycos Movers and Shakers

List of movers and shakers on lycos engine and media. [ Lycos 50 ]

6. Ebay Pulse

Great place to look for sub-niches. Select the category from previous above popular niches and then look for profitable sub-niches via sub-cateogries. [ Ebay Pulse ]

7. Google Trends

This is a newcomer. There is a lot of useful information here. The news volume is synchronized with the search volume, and you will see that several notable news articles are displayed, alongwith where they occurred on a timeline. [ Google Trends ]

2007-10-31T01:14:00.000-07:00

FIRST LESSON

This lesson is targeted to those who do not have their own product or website and would like to make a little bit of quick money. This is a very basic lesson and some of these methods are common. They are a good way to start getting small amounts of cash flowing in - and these methods are in NO way power methods. Here is a list of business opportunities with legitimate companies that:

Pay you real cash, and not just points towards rewards or a chance to win money

Do not require you to have your own Web site or domain name, or your own products!

Do not require you to do any hard-selling

Are not just promoting more and more online marketing

Give you a very good return on the time you spend and investment with them

None of the links below are affiliate links. They are also not sponsored and neither have they paid for their presence on this page. These links are 100% legitimate companies with REAL business models that will allow you to get paid for a wide range of activities.

[1] You can Help friends find better jobs

Websites like karmaONE, JobThread and H3.com will connect employers with their prospective employees. Once can get rewards for referring a candidate who gets hired. The amounts range from a few hundred dollars to as much as $5,000! This is a great way to break into the recruiting business with zero overheads!

[2] Try and Connect “Suppliers with Buyers”

InnerSell provides an effective way to track Referral fees in online networking sites. Vendors can set the referral fees they are willing to pay. If and when the deal happens, you get as much as 70% of the referral fee. Not bad.

[3] Share and Provide business contacts

Today, the most difficult task for marketers is to get accurate and valid information on prospective customers and clients. Jigsaw pays members to submit contact information of people they know. Members simply help keep information up-to-date on the people they know, and Jigsaw then pays you $1 for each unique new contact you put into the system! Jigsaw says that in their first payout, the top ten point-earns each received more than $750

[4] Become a reporter (part time, and semi-pro)

Creative Reporter is a new program from Creative Weblogging which allows anyone to become a paid reporter and blogger. They are seeking people to create original, but non-exclusive, blogs, posts of articles with 250 to 500 words on various topics including parenting, travel, mobile technology, and many other topics. The Pay is a premium $10 per 1000 page views (CPM) on your content / posts - which is very good!