Work-at-Home - West at Home

Who are they? What do they do?

West at Home is a company that provides call center services by utilizing home based agents. Their high quality customer relations services have earned them an award in 2008 for the Contact Center Company of the Year.

They have 20 plus years of providing customer service under their belt and they continue to meet the demands of their contractors with the best support agents possible. They use cutting edge technology and they use the best training materials, so their contractors are never left unsatisfied with the performances of their agents.

What type of work would I be doing?

If you're hired for them, you would be providing customer relation services. Some of the tasks that could be involved with a position with them include:

• Obtaining and verifying customer information
• Resolving issues
• Explaining sales features
• Offering new products or services

Your job duties will depend on the position you're hired for and those duties will be given in more detail at that time.

How much can I earn? How would I be paid?

Each project is different. Some will be hourly, some per minute and some per call rates. West at Home, however, will determine if the total amount that you would be paid is greater or less than your state's minimum wage. You would be paid the higher rate at all times.

You would receive your pay via direct deposit or, if you prefer, a pay card option. Pay will be on a biweekly basis.

Along with your pay, West at Home offers their agents flexibility of scheduling, opportunity to work from their own home office and some medical and dental benefits from an outside provider should you qualify. West at Home doesn't offer vacation pay or insurance benefits though.

Do they offer training?

Yes, West at Home will have training for their new home based agents. You will also be paid for your training. You will receive training specific to the company you would be working for, so you won't be left high and dry and not knowing what you're supposed to do.

Their training sessions are completed online, so you would be able to attend them from your own home office.

Are there any requirements to apply for them?

Besides job commitment and professional work performance, West at Home does have some other requirements. They are listed on their FAQ page. They are looking for specific PC requirements from their home based agents.

How do I apply for them?

Their website contains their online application that you can easily fill out. They have a section on their website where you can check on the status of your application; otherwise they will contact you when they're ready.

If you have what they're looking for, you will be contacted for an interview with the company. If you pass the interview stage, you will then be notified of a position within their company.

If you accept a position with them, you will then be given all the necessary information you will need for your new position.

Export all your Google Docs Files with One Click

See how easy it is to export all your Google Docs files as a zip file in a single click using the Google Takeout service.

Do you want to put all your Google Docs files on a USB drive before you take that road trip? The Google Docs website does offer an easy option to help you download all your documents in one zip file but there’s another simpler alterative that you may want to give a try– it’s called Google Takeout.

Once you have logged in to Google Takeout with your Google Account, select the Google Docs service and hit the “Create Archive” button. It will create a zip file with all your Google Docs files and you can either keep the browser window open while the archive is being readied or download that file later from the Google Takeout website.

Google Takeout will export your Google Documents in standard Office file formats by default – Excel for spreadsheets or PowerPoint for Presentations – but you also have an option to export files in either PDF or OpenOffice formats.

Google Takeout is part of dataliberation.org, a Google project that wants to make it easy for you to import and export data out of various Google products. The same tool may also be used to export your Picasa photos and Contacts data out of Google Servers though, surprisingly, it doesn’t offer Gmail export yet.

Coming back to Google Docs, here’s a quick video that shows how easy it is to export your Google Docs files using Google Takeout.

Upload Office Files to Google Docs From The Right Click MenuUse Google Docs To Compare Two Text Files OnlineConvert Web Files to PDF with Google Docs ViewerZoho Will Help Backup All Your Google Docs Documents LocallyHow Guest Can Upload Files to Your Google DocsAmit Agarwal is a personal technology columnist at WSJ India, author and founder of Digital Inspiration, a widely-read tech and how-to blog. Send him an email at amit@labnol.org.

View the original article here

How To Think Positively- 7 Tips For Success

As children we were all naturally positive thinkers, believing that anything was possible and we could achieve everything we wanted in life.

The stresses and strains of adult life tend to cloud our minds and many people get stuck into a rut of negativity.

We believe we don’t have the ability to do anything worthwhile; we live for the weekends and holidays, and spend our days in the office just passing time.

Regaining a positive attitude can change all that.  By learning to think positively, all your dreams and goals will suddenly seem attainable once more.

Making a success of your own business is much easier if you are able to get rid of your negativity and think positively.

How to think positively – 7 tips for success.

Thinking positively is not a temporary way to make a specific achievement; it is a total change in the way you think and act. Here are a few practical ways to introduce positive thinking into your every day life and business.

1. Develop a positive attitude

If you expect success you have a good chance of achieving it.  You should never be blind to the things that could go wrong, but finding a positive way to manage your risks will help you to believe that your project is going to do well.

2. Think and talk in positive terms

The language you use will have an enormous impact on your own subconscious as well as the people around you.  Use positive terms to gain confidence and convince yourself and other people that you will achieve your goals.

Negative and uncertain terms to avoid 

3. Surround yourself with positive people

Positive thoughts and expressions can be as contagious as negativity, although we are not usually so aware of it.  If other people around you are expecting success and happiness then this will improve your general outlook as well.

4. Substitute negative thoughts for positive ones.

When something has not gone as planned don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on it and worrying about it.  Do focus on the lessons you have learned and visualize how well it will go next time, using the experience you have gained.

As Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, once said;

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty”

5. Balance negative images with positive ones

We are bombarded with negative images all day without being aware of it.

Reading the paper, or watching the news will inevitable bring the world’s problems to your attention, and watching sad or violent films can fill our minds with negative thoughts.

Balance this onslaught of negativity by listening to music that makes you happy, watching inspirational films or reading a positive book that you really enjoy.

Balancing the negative images in your mind with positive ones will improve your overall outlook dramatically.

6. Be physically positive

Your posture can contribute greatly to your disposition. Walking tall and taking long strides, keeping your head up and making eye contact can all dispel those negative thoughts.

Some people find it helps to sing an upbeat song in their head as they are going about every day tasks.  This is a great way to put a swing in your step and a smile on your face.

You can go as far as imagining yourself in a positive situation.  I once had to approach a group of managers sitting around a table in an open plan office.  I was the new office junior and scared stiff.

Instead of shuffling up to them with my eyes down, I though to myself “You might be my superiors now but I will be your boss one day.”

This gave me the confidence to approach the group positively with a knowing smile on my face, and get exactly what I wanted.

Physical exercise can be another great way to increase your positive mental state.  Regularly walking, swimming, cycling or playing sport can help to lift negative thoughts and worries by increasing endorphins that promote happiness and wellbeing.

7. Find your happy trigger.

What makes you happy no matter what?  Maybe it is a song, a joke, a pet, or even simply being outside in the sunshine.  When the going gets tough, and it will, have a trigger to keep you thinking positively.

How To Use Google Analytics Goals And Funnels

How to Use Google Analytics Goals & Funnels

Every website has a main objective. To obtain the objective you set goals.

Those goals are broken into steps that have to be taken in order to reach the goal which gets you one step closer to fulfilling your objective.The process of going through each step is your funnel.

Goals allow you to see the conversion rate and monetary value of your traffic.

Funnels allow you to monitor how frequently your site visitors start the conversion process, complete it, abandon it and at what point they abandon so you can work on ways to improve your return on investment (ROI).

Some examples of goals might be tracking how many people completed your sales process and reached the thank you/download page.

It might be monitoring what percentage buyers take you up on your upsell offer and where in the process the rest abandon the offer.

For this demonstration, we will be using Google Analytics goals to measure how well our about page works at sending visitors to our services page.

You will need:

1. To have your goals (up to 20) and funnel figured
2. To know the URLs for each page in your funnel (up to 10)
3. To know the value of your goal (optional) – you’ll find an explanation further down.
4. An existing Google Analytics account with the tracking code installed on your website.

Step 1: Choose Your Profile & Navigate to Goals Setup Area

Log into your account and from the View Reports dropdown, select the site in which you want to set up your goals.

Select Goals from the left sidebar.

In the Goals Overview section, click the Set up Goals & Funnels link at the bottom.

Step 2: Set Up Goal(s)

In the goals section, you have the option to add up to four sets of conversion goals. You can then add up to 5 goals per “set”. Click Add Goal next to Goals (set 1) to get started.

You’ll have several places to fill in to get your goal set up. Let’s quickly go through each item…

Goal Name: Name your goal something you’ll quickly recognize

Active Goal: Make sure your goal is turned “On” so it will track. Turning it “Off” will stop the tracking but not delete the goal.

Goal Position: This allows you to control the order in which a goal appears in your report. It also lets you move a goal from one set to another without having to set up a completely new goal.

If this is the first goal you’re setting up, from the drop-down menu, select “Set 1, Goal 1”.

Goal Type: There are three types of goals; URL Destination, Time on Site and Pages/Views.

Once you select the goal type you want to set up, a “goals details” box will open, allowing you to enter more details about your goal.

Match Type: You have three options for how you want to match your goal…

• Exact Match – An exact match of every character in your URL – without exception According to Google, you’d use this when your URLs are easy to read and do not vary.

• Head Match - This matches the identical part of the URL string you specify. So you can specify only part of the URL and it will only match that part.

Google suggests you use this option if your website has dynamically generated content, use the Head Match filter and leave out the unique values.

• Regular Expression Match – With this option you can create wildcard matching. This could be useful when you’re tracking multiple items from within a folder such as download links.

For example, if you had multiple downloadable products in a folder called “downloads” that was housed in a folder called “members” you would enter /members/downloads/ in the regular expression field and it would track ALL of the files within that folder.

Case Sensitive: Are the URLs you entered above case sensitive? If so check this.

Goal Value: If your goal completion has a dollar value, enter it here.

Example: If your product sells for $100 and you know that 20% of the people who visit the page will buy, you could assign a $20 value to your goal.

If you’re going to add a Goal Funnel, click the plus sign. If you’re not, click Save Goal.

Step 3: Set up Funnel

We chose to do a URL Destination goal so here we will enter the URL to the first page of our conversion funnel.

This page should be a common page that all users working their way through your goal will land on – typically not your product page

Name the step so you can easily recognize it in the reports.

If this step is required to complete the conversion process, check the box.

Important! If you select this, any users reaching your goal page without going through this page will not be counted as conversions.

Repeat the process to set up the remaining steps in your funnel & click save when finished.

We only have one page for our funnel and one goal so we’re finished.

Once your finished setting up your goals and funnels, it’s time to wait. How long you wait depends on how busy your site is and how long you want to track everything.

Step 4: Checking Stats

When you’re ready to check your stats, log into your account, select the appropriate profile and then click Goals as you did in Step 1.

The first page you see will be your Goals Overview page. We set our goal & funnel up on March 28th so as you can see, there are no stats prior to that time.

From the above page, you can get many views of your stats.

Dates: In the upper right corner you’ll see the date span. You can select the drop-down arrow to change your date range. We changed ours to March 27th so we had a better view of just the dates being tracked.

You can also check stats by hours, days, weeks and months by clicking the icons directly below the date as shown below in the green box.

Goal Conversion Rate: Clicking the Goal Conversion Rate tab will allow you to change the view of your graph. You can view one at a time, compare two or compare one site to another (providing you have more than one site set up).

Advanced Segments: Clicking the “All Visits” above the date will allow you to choose what segments you want to view. You can also create new segments customized specifically for you.

Goal Verification: Clicking Goal Verification in the sidebar will bring up your main stats and show you the page URLs being tracked along with their individual stats.

Reverse Goals Path: Clicking Reverse Goals Path in the sidebar you’ll be able to see where your traffic came from and where they went to, to arrive at that destination.

Goal Funnel Visualization: Clicking Funnel Visualization in the sidebar will give you a visual look at your pages. Ours is not reading correctly because we only have on page in our funnel. You must have more than one in order for it to show correctly.

 

Earning Money Online With No Investment - Is It Really Possible?

There are many legitimate ways of making money online. But there are also scams.

Some legitimate means of earning an online income include:

• Surveys & focus groups: there are multiple sites you can sign up with to fill out surveys or participate in focus groups for money. This is not going to earn you a living, but it can certainly make you some quick pocket money.
• Writing for shared revenue sites, to get residual income. This is a much slower way to earn money as there is no upfront payment. Also you need to do quite a bit of work to ensure your articles make it into search engines, and you will really need to learn about this before you start writing, as what and how you write will determine (in part) how your article ranks and whether it is discoverable by search engines like Google and Yahoo. However, in the long term this can be very profitable.
• Writing content for upfront pay sites. There are many sites that will pay a set rate for your work, which can be a better option if you need to earn money immediately. However, the rates of pay vary enormously, as does the speed with which you will get paid, so do your research. Rates can be anything from a dollar or two per article to tens or even hundreds of dollars, though as you'd expect, the better paying markets are both harder to crack and take more work to succeed in.
• Sell products through eBay. This can be anything from your old furniture or your kids' outgrown clothes, to items you've made or purchased cheaply at trash and treasure markets and garage sales.
• If you have an existing blog or website, you may be able to make money through monetizing it with AdSense or other advertising, particularly if you already have a large readership. However, making money this way is much like making money through residual income on shared revenue sites, and you will likely make far more if you do your homework first.

How do you avoid scams?

Use your common sense. If a site is promising you will get rich without a lot of hard work, it is probably a scam. If a site is asking you to pay them money to learn the secrets of their program, it is probably a scam. If in doubt, look around, put the site or program name into a search engine with the word 'scam' and see what comes up. In conclusion, yes, there are legitimate ways to earn money online, and while none of them will make you rich without the usual amount of hard work, they can allow you to make a living working from home.

How To Make Extra Money Sitting At Home

The need to find ways and means as to how to make extra money can be best understood by those who are leading a middle-income life. Those who are in this segment are the ones who literally have to struggle day in and day out to ensure mere running of the family. Quite often these groups of people often fall behind as far as their pending bill payments are concerned. It is therefore quite common for such people to find out ways and means to augment and supplement their income and hence they are always finding out ways to make some extra money which can make their lives a bit more comfortable.

Today the internet has indeed provided ways and means by which struggling middle class people can find out honest and ethical means of making extra income sitting in the comfort of their homes. However identifying the right option and the right opportunity could be indeed a tough task given the fact that there are thousands of such websites. There are a number of websites that are basically fly by night operations about which the customers should be aware and be wary of. There are many people who could have tried various such options ranging from reading emails, trying their hand at freelance writing, working as virtual assistants and so on. While some may have seen success in these options, there could be others who could have ended up losing money and time. Hence, the right answer to the question how to make extra money would need careful examination. Let us over the next few lines try to find out ways and means as to how to make genuine money at home using the power and reach of the internet.

Affiliate marketing is indeed a great option of making extra money sitting in the comfort of your home. Not many people believe it but the fact of the matter is that there is a lot of money to be made through this method, provided it is learnt properly and correctly. The best way to learn more affiliate marketing is to get started in the act. Once you are into it, you can start learning more about it. Gathering knowledge is extremely important and it takes time and cannot be done overnight. Many people think that to make money in affiliate marketing one has to be a wizard or someone with extra brains. This is not the fact and in fact only when you get into the act can you realize that there is real money to be made. All that you need is to have a bit of ingenuity and should be willing to take the rough with the smooth. Once you master these basic traits your answer to the question how to make extra money online would have been answered.

Google is the best place to get started as far as your learning experience in affiliate marketing is concerned. Affiliate marketing is all about choosing a niche product or service and marketing and promoting the same using your website. With each and every successful visit to such niche marketing websites or sales, you could make money. However, you should also be able to learn the basics of internet marketing, SEO concepts and other things. Hence, there is no denying the fact that the answer to the question how to make extra money could be just a mouse click away.

How To Set Up Chitika Ads In Your Website

Chitika

Chitika is a contextual advertising network. It allows publishers to place ad units on their websites, where both image and text ads will be shown, sometimes at the same time.

Because Chitika often uses images next to text ads on the same page, click through rates and therefore earnings can sometimes be even higher than Google AdSense earnings.

Here’s how to sign up for and use a Chitika account.

Step 1: Click Publisher, Apply Now

Click on Publisher along the top. A drop down menu will appear. Click on “Apply now” to begin the application process.

 Step 2: Complete the Application

Complete the application, which is really just a simple log in form with your email address.

Once you’ve completed your application, you’ll need to confirm your email. Shortly thereafter you’ll receive an email telling you that your account has been approved.

Log in to your Chitika account with your new account to proceed.

Step 3: Click Ad Setup

Click ad setup to create your first ad.

Step 4: Click Get Code

A preview of what a display unit looks like will appear. Click on Get Code to continue.

Step 5: Customize Your Ad Options

A number of options will appear on the left hand side of your screen, along with a preview on the right hand side of your screen.

Your channel is an important setting to pay attention to. It’s basically a description.

You can sort your channels later by channels, which will allow you to get more advanced reporting from the Chitika system.

Basically, the channel should be a factor you’re trying to test out. For example, “Left Sidebar” channel might be applied to all the ads you put in the left sidebar.

Later, you can sort by the “Left Sidebar” channel to see how all the left sidebar ads did as a group.

The format determines the size and display method of the ad. Type rotates between the different types of ads, including mobile ads.

Fallback options are basically what the ad will do in the event that there is no advertiser for the traffic you’re getting.

For example, if you’re getting traffic from Zimbabwe and nobody’s bidding on traffic from Zimbabwe, Fallback options will tell the system what to do.

The colors set the color scheme.

Step 6: Copy Code and Upload

The code will update in real time as you make changes to the options box. Copy and paste the code into your HTML editor and upload it to have the ad go live.

Your first ad is up and running! If you want to put more ads up, just repeat this simple process.

Step 7: Basic Reporting

Basic reporting is shown in the dashboard of the Reports tab.

You’ll see your earnings and traffic stats all in one glance.

Step 8: Advanced Reporting

Click on Advanced Reports to access the advanced reporting options.

In this screen, you’ll be able to sort your ads according to the channels that you assigned to them when you setup your ads.

You can also sort by date range and choose to view ads from specific days or time ranges, or even data all the way from the beginning of your account.

Once you’ve selected all your options, hit submit to view your custom report.

There you have it! That’s how to sign up for a Chitika account, setup a Chitika ad, view your statistics in a glance and get more advanced stats.

List Of Affiliate Softwares And Networks

Popular Server-Based Software Programs

The following is software that is installed on your server that you are responsible for operating and maintaining. Usually there is a one-time fee only.

1. Affiliate Ally Pro (http://novasignal.com): A low-cost software option with basic features. License is $69.95.

2. Affiliate Wiz (http://affiliatewiz.com): Affiliate software designed for Windows servers with a wide variety of features. Licenses start at $199 and go up to $1049.

3. All Affiliate Pro (http://allaffiliatepro.com): Provides a wide variety of advanced features and there is a web hosted option available. License costs start at $449.

4. Amember (http://amember.com): Designers as a membership site script, this system can also handle one-time product sales and has a built-in affiliate program. License is currently $179.95.

5. Euraffiliates (http://euraffiliates.com): Affiliate software with decent features. Licenses start at $99 and go up to $399.

6. iDevAffiliate (http://idevdirect.com): Feature-rich, plugs into a number of ecommerce systems. Pricing starts at $99. Monthly web-based option also available.

7. Jrox Jam (http://jam.jrox.com): Wide variety of features and integrations available. License is $250, but there is a free option for up to 50 affiliates.

8. Post Affiliate Pro (http://www.qualityunit.com/postaffiliatepro): Wide variety of features that increase, depending on the option you choose. Starts at $99 and goes to $999.

Popular Web-Based Service Options

Web-based services offer you hosted options for your affiliate program and usually carry a monthly fee.

1. 1ShoppingCart (http://1shoppingcart.com): Comprehensive ecommerce program that includes shopping cart, autoresponders and affiliate program. Monthly fee starts at $99 per month.

2. Affiliate Shop (http://affiliateshop.com): Web-based service with a variety of affiliate features and integration options. $25 set up fee and from $45 – $120 per month.

3. ClickInc (http://clickinc.com): Web-based service whose pricing is based on clicks generated by affiliates. Pricing starts at $25 per month for 50,000 clicks and up to $149 for unlimited clicks.

4. InfusionSoft (http://infusionsoft.com): Comprehensive ecommerce program that includes shopping cart, autoresonders, affiliate program and other advanced features. From $299-$999 per month.

5. My Referer (http://myreferer.com): A variety of features, but they are very limited on the $79.95 per month plan. More features are offered with the $99.95 per month plan.

6. Omnistar (http://omnitstaretools.com/osiaffiliate): A variety of features including autoresponders. From $27 – $47 per month, depending on the number of affiliates you have. 

7. QuickPayPro (http://quickpaypro.com): Comprehensive ecommerce system with shopping cart, autoresponders and affiliate program. $99 per month.

Hybrid Networks

These sites operate much like networks, but you are responsible for paying commissions to your affiliates.

1. E-Junkie (http://e-junkie.com):  Provides the ability to set up digital download products and set up affiliate tracking links.

Affiliates have to sign up to the E-Junkie network to promote your products, but you manage all the payments. Monthly transaction fee based on number of products. Starts at $5 for 10 products.

2. PayDotCom (http://paydotcom.com): Similar to E-Junkie, PayDotCom provides the ability to set up digital download products and set up affiliate tracking links.

Affiliates have to sign up for PayDotCom to promote your products. $1-3 transaction fee per sale, split between vendor and affiliate. No set up fee.

3. PayLoadz (http://payloadz.com): A low cost way to sell digital goods using PayPal or Google Checkout. Pricing is free to $14.95 per month. If you use the paid version, there are also transaction fees. No set up fee.

Popular Affiliate Networks

Affiliate networks are usually the most expensive, but offer the benefit of exposure to affiliates.

In addition, payments are handled by the affiliate network as well. Most also require a deposit on acceptance to their program.

1. ClickBank (http://clickbank.com): Large affiliate network of digital products including information products, software and memberships. $49.95 sign up fee plus per transaction costs.

2. Commission Junction (http://cj.com): One of the largest affiliate networks and exposure is likely the biggest benefit of signing up with them.

Set up fees are a few thousand dollars and there is a monthly minimum and a per transaction fee (reported at 30% of the commission payout).

3. Google Affiliate Network (http://google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork): Large network with a $1000 sign up fee, 25% of commission per transaction fee and a $500 monthly fee minimum.

4. Share a Sale (http://shareasale.com): Another large affiliate network that provides exposure to its members and is a viable option for smaller volume sellers as the minimums are much lower than other large networks. Sign up fee is $550.

Transaction fees are 20% of the commission and there is a monthly minimum of $25 in fees to be paid to Share a Sale.

5. LinkShare (http://linkshare.com): A large network with a $1000 sign up fee with transactions ranging from 2-3% per sale. There is also a $500 minimum monthly to be paid in fees to LinkShare.

6. Link  Connector (http://linkconnector.com): A large network that provides options depending on your budget and your sales volume.

Choose from self-managed to save money or choose premium where just about everything is taken care of for you.

Set up fee and transaction fees vary and minimum fees are between $100 and $2000 per month.

How To Use FeedJournal To Share Your RSS Feeds

FeedJournal

FeedJournal is a unique online service that allows you to turn one or more RSS feeds into a downloadable newspaper format PDF.

In other words, it can turn any blog or combination of blogs into a newspaper. It’s fast, easy to use and completely free as long as you’re using just one feed. Combining multiple RSS feeds costs $59 a month.

Here’s how to turn your feed into a downloadable newspaper.

Step 1: Enter Your Email & RSS Feed

Go to http://www.feedjournal.com/ and scroll down. Under the heading “Generate your own free issue now!” enter your email address and RSS feed.

Assuming FeedJournal is able to pull your RSS feed successfully, you’ll see this message after a few seconds:

Step 2: Open PDF in Email

Go to your email and find the message from FeedJournal. Click the link to open the PDF.

Step 3: View Online Newspaper

The PDF version of your RSS feed will open up. Here’s a sample of what this looks like:

Step 4: Multiple RSS Feed (Optional)

In order to aggregate multiple RSS feeds into one newspaper, you need to get the gold membership. Scroll down to the bottom to contact FeedJournal and sign up.

It’s that easy! Turning your RSS feed into an online newspaper can take as little as 5 minutes with the help of FeedJournal.

How To Set Up Your Google+ Account

Once you’re signed up on Google+, how do you actually setup your account?

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to add information to your profile, how to choose who can see what, how to set your notification preferences and how to link up other social networks to your Google+ account.

Step 1: Accessing Your Settings

To get to your settings page, click on the “Settings” dropdown button in the top right.

Click on “Google+ Settings.”

Step 2: Add a Phone Number

Adding a phone number allows Google to send you a text whenever you get a notification. To add a phone number, type in your mobile number, then click “Send Verification Code.”

You’ll need to get the code from your phone and enter it into Google+ before you can receive notifications.

Step 3: Choosing Your Notifications

When do you want to receive an email or text from Google+? Use the checkboxes to select when you do and don’t want to get notifications.

Step 4: Set Your Image Preferences

There are two main settings you can set with images.

The first is whether or not you want geographical location information to be tagged onto your photos.

Most modern cameras, including the iPhone and Android cameras now tag geographical information onto photos.

If you check the “Show photo geo location information” box, Google+ will automatically add the geo location tag to your photos.

Your other choice is who gets to automatically have their photos approved. Approved photos show up on your profile.

Use the blue drop-down box and the “Add more people” button to choose who can post photos of you and have them approved automatically.

Step 5: Access the Profile Edit Page

To edit your profile, click on “Profile and privacy.”

Then click on your profile.

Click on “Edit Profile.”

Step 6: Editing Your Personal Information

Fill out your introduction, things you’re proud of, occupation, employment, education and places lived information.

Then fill out your contact information, relationship status, gender and alternate names.

Step 7: Safeguarding Your Personal Information

Google+ makes it very easy to choose who can see what personal information. When you click on a field to enter your information, below it is a privacy setting button.

Just click on the button to choose exactly who can see the information you type in.

Step 8: Connect Other Social Networks

If you want to link other social networks to your Google+ profile, start by going back to the settings page and clicking “Connected accounts.”

You’ll immediately see a list of accounts that Google+ thinks belongs to you, based on Google+ searching the various social networks.

If you see any accounts that do indeed belong to you, just click the “Yes this is my” button to link the account.

If you need to add the account manually, just click “Connect an account” then select the specific type of account you want to add.

Then enter your username on that site or a direct link to your profile on that site.

Click “Add” and the account will be linked to Google+.

Congratulations! You’ve just setup your Google+ account. You’ve learned how to add a phone number, how to set notifications, how to setup your profile, how to adjust your privacy settings and how to link other social networks.

How To Set Up Google Adsense In Your Website

Google AdSense

By becoming a publisher on Google AdSense, you make your website available to the largest pool of advertisers on the planet.

Google will gather data on your website and contextually display advertisements from a pool of thousands of possible advertisers.

To sign up for Google AdSense, follow these steps.

Step 1: Preparing to Register

In order to sign up for Google AdSense, you first need to have a website. The website should be well designed and have plenty of original content.

You only need to sign up once for AdSense. Once you have an AdSense account, you can use it for any and all websites you own.

However, in order to actually get an AdSense account, you need to have one website for Google to look at and approve.

Use your best website for the signup process. In a way, this is like putting your best foot forward.

Show Google that your websites are of high quality and that their publisher network will be better off with your website there.

You should also read over all the AdSense policies and terms.

Webmasters who unwittingly violate the terms risk getting their accounts suspended.

It only takes about 20 minutes to read over all the rules; well worth the time investment to reduce the risk of accidental suspension.

Start the application process at:

https://www.google.com/adsense/

Step 2: Specify Website URL

Specify the website that you want Google to review. Specify also the primary language of the website. Check the two boxes that say you won’t incentivize clicks and won’t place ads on pornographic websites.

Step 3: Add Contact Information

Add your contact information. Make sure your name and billing address are 100% correct, as that’s the name and address the checks will be written to.

The account type will tell Google whether to write the checks out to a company name or to a personal name.

Step 4: Agree to Terms and Submit

Agree to the terms and conditions and click submit to submit your site to Google for review.

Then you wait. If Google decides that your website is of sufficient quality to be on their network, you’ll soon have a working AdSense account. If not, you’ll receive notice that your site was denied.

Note that even when you do get your AdSense account, you won’t be paid out until you reach your first $100.

When you reach your first $100, that’s when the “real” approval process happens. Every site that reaches the $100 mark is again reviewed by a real human.

If Google doesn’t find your traffic acceptable at the $100 mark, your account will be disabled and the $100 won’t be paid out.

On the other hand, if you get paid your first $100, that means you’ve passed all of Google’s hurdles and now have a fully fledged AdSense account.

That said, once you have your initial AdSense account, how do you actually use it? Here’s how.

Setting Up Ads in Google AdSense

Step 1 – Click My Ads, New Ad Unit

To start the ad creation process, go to the “My ads” tab and click “New ad unit.”

 A drop down box for creating your new ad will appear.

Step 2 – Name, Size and Ad Type

Name your ad. Select its size and choose whether you want text only or images and rich media as well.

Step 3 – Stylize Your Ad

Choose the display options for your ad. This includes the color, background, border and the fonts.

In general, the more you can make your AdSense ad unit look like your page, the higher your click through rates and the higher your earnings.

Step 4 – Channels and Tracking

Choose the channels you want to associate with this ad. Channels are properties that you can “tag” on to ad units. Later on, you can search by channels and see how each channel and groups of channels performed.

For example, if you tagged all your red ads with the channel “Red”, you could later sort for all the red channels and see how they all performed individually and as a group.

Select the channels you want to tag your ads with here. If you haven’t created any channels, just click “Create new custom channel” to create a channel on the spot.

Step 5 – Submit and Get Code

Click submit and get code to save all your changes and generate the HTML code to place the ad unit on your site.

Copy and paste this code to your site. Give it 10-20 minutes before expecting the ad to appear.

That’s all there is to it! You’ve now registered for AdSense and created your first AdSense ad.

Place up to 3 ad units on any given page to receive the maximum return per visitor.

5 Chrome Extensions That Are Going To Make Your (Browsing) Life Easier

Some people say our lives are getting harder the more technology we have. While I’m not here to argue that point, I am sure of one thing – some things only get easier. An example for one of these things is browsing 15 years ago, I was battling my way with Netscape 1.0, which pretty much included back and forward buttons and a stop button which never really worked.
Today, we have excellent browsers to choose from, and even more extensions and add-ons which hold the sole purpose of making our lives easier. It’s only a matter of finding the right ones. In this post, I will share with you a list of truly awesome Chrome extensions which can truly make your life easier. At least those aspects which have to do with browsing the web.
YouTube keeps changing. Sometimes we like the changes, sometimes we don’t, but most of all, we sometimes wish we could have more control over what YouTube looks like when we’re watching videos. YouTube Options for Google Chrome is a simple extension which lets you do just that.

The extension comes with an extensive list of options for changing YouTube’s default layout, as well as various playback, size and quality options. For example, you can set a certain size and quality for your videos, and have them automatically display that way every time. You can also disable auto-play, which is a very useful option if you’re regularly opening multiple YouTube windows.
On the layout side, you can choose to hide almost every aspect on the page, and also change the background to enhance your watching experience. The extension can also work with other video websites such as Vimeo, Metacafe, Dailymotion and more.
Ages ago, I heard about a service called BridgeURL. This handy web app lets you easily share multiple URLs in the form of a neat slideshow. How happy I was to find that BridgeURL’s technology also exists in a Chrome extension, which goes by the name of Tabulate.

If you’ve ever had the urge to share all your open tabs with a friend, Tabulate! lets you do this easily. Simply click on the Tabulate button and get a URL for all your tabs. You can then share this URL with friends. When they click on it, they will get a list of links which they can open separately, or choose to open all the links at once.

The most fun option, though, is viewing the links as a slideshow, which lets you browse through all the links one by one in the same window. I only wish there was a way to choose which tabs I want to share, instead of automatically sharing all of them.
There are numerous ways to tackle the “too many tabs” problem, but despite that, I still find myself with a chock full of open tabs so as to not forget to look at them “later”. If you have the same problem, Page Snooze is going to come in mighty handy.
With Page Snooze, you can snooze any open tab for a certain amount of time. When that time is up, the tab will automatically open again. This means you no longer have to keep a tab open for a week just so you can look at it on Sunday.

Clicking the extension icon will snooze a page for one week. If you want to choose a different time window, right-click on the page itself and choose your preferred window from the context menu. In the extension’s options, you’ll find a list of all your snoozed pages and the date and time of their expected return into your browser.
Hopefully, this extension will get more options in the future, such as setting specific snooze times or at least something shorter than 1 day. As it is, it’s still really useful.
The web is a cluttered place. Usually, this is not a problem, but when all you really want to do is read something, things can get quite distracting. Readability Redux is an awesome extension that lets you quickly unclutter any webpage, so you can comfortably concentrate on what’s important – the text.

There are five different styles to choose from, and you can also choose your font and margin sizes. You can set your own hotkey to activate the extension, and easily get a readable version with a quick press of a button. You can even apply Readability only to a selected fragment, and while this feature is still experimental, it worked very well for me.

Aside from comfortable reading, you can also use Readability Redux to create printer friendly versions of any webpage, and e-mail pages or fragments to friends.
Are you tired of having to click every single picture you want to view? With Hover Zoom, all you have to do is hover. Hover your mouse cursor over any image, and you will immediately get to view this image in full size. No clicking, no opening new pages. Clean and simple.

The extension works on almost every website; if a website supports it, the Hover Zoom icon will appear in the address bar. In the options, you can control delay times and other aspects of the display, disable Hover Zoom for specific sites, and create action keys to disable or enable Hover Zoom. This one is a true keeper.
Browsing should be fun, not tedious. There are some true life-savers out there. If you haven’t found the right one here, be sure to check out our Best of Chrome extensions page.
Are there any Chrome extensions that make your life easier? Tell us all about them in the comments.
Tagged: browsing tools • chrome extensions • Google Chrome

How To Organize Your Computer

Look at the desktop on many computers and you’ll see a screen covered with files and documents.It not only looks overwhelming and cluttered, it makes it difficult to find anything.

That wastes your valuable time!

Create an organization system on your computer that is consistent, logical and easy to use. Consider embracing the three tiered system on your computer too.

For example, files and software you use on a daily basis can be on your desktop. Files and software you use weekly or monthly can be saved in your “My Documents” folder.

Each folder will be labeled by what is in it and then each file or sub folder will be labeled and perhaps dated. Then, any items you only use on a yearly basis or less can be stored on an external hard drive.

This forces a quick mention about backups.

Please, please, please create a system for yourself where you back up your information, software and websites/blogs on a very regular basis. Daily is great.

Weekly is strongly recommended.

Monthly and you’re at risk for losing valuable information. Anything less than monthly will likely result in regret. Investigate online backup services and/or an external hard drive.

Action Step!

How organized is your home office?

Do you have a stack of papers that you haven’t looked at in more than a month? If so, it’s probably time to clean the clutter and create a more organized office space.

Consider using the three tiered system.

Outline what you use daily, weekly/monthly and annually.

Then create organization systems to support it.

Don’t forget your computer too! Give yourself a full weekend to do this.

It’s strongly recommended that you create your plan on paper first and then go buy the products to support your plan.

Don’t buy products and then try to create a system around them. Your money is as valuable as your time.

Your second action step is to research the software/tools to make the first system on your list a reality.

For example, if the first system you’re focusing on is an opt-in/email marketing system then research autoresponders to support your system and your needs.

Okay, so by this point you have planned your systems.

You may have purchased or created some tools to help you automate the process and you have hopefully begun to assess and organize your home office.

You basically have all the information you need to create time management systems you need to run your best business – and live your best life.

How To Earn Money Through Fiverr.com

How to Earn Money through Fiverr.com

Fiverr.com is the latest and most widely searched freelancing website these days. Its popularity lies in the fact that almost any one of us can start earning money through Fiverr.com by sharing anything.

It is not a regular freelancing website offering freelancing jobs and opportunities since no special qualifications or experience is required.

You just have to become a member in order to start availing its facilities.

The Website

The distinguishing factor that separates it from a typical freelancing website is the ideology behind Fiverr.com.

Through this website, you can sell almost anything that you think is worth sharing the customers for $5.

Making money through this site is much easier and affordable by everyone and you do not have to be well qualified in order to make money.

No need to be a website designer or ghost writer that is promoted and encouraged by other freelancing websites.

Make It Big With $5

You must be wondering how it is possible to make money when the price is as low as $5 and that is the whole point.

Keeping it low will get you more buyers and if you share different things every time, you can easily make $5 again and again which can sum up the large amount depending upon how many ideas and things you have to share on Fiverr.com.

This website is more like a service provider than freelancing website, since you can share and provide customers with your product and they can buy it from you for $5.

Those sharing things on this website will have to pay $1 as fee on every $5 sale.

Buyers on the other hand can avail the facility free, and just have to pay the price.

Now you must be asking yourself that there is nothing for free in this website since you will be spending some time in coming up with or creating an idea of the service that you would be providing to the customers.

You should have realized by now that nothing comes for free in this world, but at least this website does not require you to be a specialist or go through complicated stages and phases of designing and researching like other freelancing websites that require you to invest your time, energy and skill.

Earn Money for Almost Every Task

Anything over here means anything that you are able to do. It can be your hobby, expertise or any other interest that you have information about and think it is worth sharing with others.

You can make a cartoon, take pictures and edit them, sing or write songs and poems.

There is no limit to the number of things and simply no restrictions of specialization in any field or subject.

If something comes naturally to you even that can become your means for earning money through Fiverr.com.

It is definitely the most used website since it presents you with the latest and easiest option to start earning money.

All the advertisements by service providers are similar so that there is no difference in the quality; it is just the service provider and services that will make it different from other advertisements.

For instance, the line goes something like “I will _service_ for $5?.

The blank will contain the service that you are planning to offer to the customers.

Following are some important lines that many services providers are using in order to promote themselves.

• I will tell you the ways to earn quick money online for $5.
• I will tell you how to stop smoking in one week for $5.
• I will design a tattoo for you for $5.
• I will create and mail greeting cards for you for $5.
• I will provide you with free advice on traveling related to World Cup for $5.
• I will remind you about birthdays for $5.
• I will write lyrics for your song for $5.
• I will do the submission to different article directories and magazines for $5.

Once customers receive their required service or product that you create for them, they can leave their comments and feedback about your service.

Their comments automatically become part of your profile on Fiverr.com which are visible to all the visitors while they choose and select among service providers.

Therefore, make sure that you give your best and provide them with quality work the very first time.

It is in your hands to make it or break it through this website which is easy and simple to use and does not need any pre requisites from you for becoming a part of it.

Like many other members of Fiverr.com, you can also take advantage and make money in matter of few hours and little hard work.

You do not need to put in extra effort or take out special time for these little tasks.

They can be easily done in your spare time or on weekends whenever you are free.

Earning few extra bucks on the side and making most out of your spare time is not a bad idea as a beginner.

In a few hours, you can make $5 repetitively and earn a reasonable amount of money.

In case you are still searching for ways to earn money without paying anything or investing anything in terms of finances, Fiverr.com is definitely the website you are looking for.

It is easy, simple and absolutely free to join. You can become a part of their service provider team by deciding what you want to do for others.

Moreover, you will see your advertisement or service line up and running on the website in a matter of minutes.

Besides being easy, it is quick and real. It is not a scam that claims to make you rich in no time at all.

Fiverr.com is truly a site that pays off for your services if you do it consistently with quality.

There is nothing false or fake about their statements and claims when they say free, it really is for free. It is pretty transparent and easy to understand for anyone.

What Are the Other Options?

In case you are still confused about opting for Fiverr.com as your platform for earning money online due to low service charges and not sure whether $5 is worth it then there are other alternative websites as well.

These websites work on more or less the same ideology of Fiverr.com, but their service fee ranges from $4 to $50 depending upon the worth of your service.

Following are some of these websites that will pay you according to the value of your service.

a. GigBucks.com pays you in the range of $5 to $100 through PayPal. There is no minimum limit on withdrawing the amount.

b. TaskArmy.com pays amounts like $19, $49 and $99 for the job and is owned by some French businessmen with good reputation among other small task websites.

c. FittyTown.com pays you $50 for any type or kind of task through PayPal.

d. Twentyville.com pays you $20 for every type of work through PayPal.

e. GigsWood.com pays you amounts like $4, $9 and $19 for different types of work through PayPal.

An attractive and enticing thing about this website is that you get the payment in your PayPal account as soon as a customer accepts your offer even before your submit your work to him.

f. MagicGig.com pays you $10 for your services.

g. UpHype.com pays you the amount of $8, $16 and $24 for the work and service lines are known as hype in their website.

h. TenBux.com pays $5 and $10 for the task.

i. GigHour.com pays you in the range of $3 to $10 through PayPal.

j. GigMe5.com pays you $5 through PayPal just like Fiverr.com.

k. JustaFive.com pays you in amounts like $5, $10 and $20. Another difference between this website and Fiverr.com is that as you show quality in your work and get good feedback score, your advertisement or service line gets better.

For instance for beginners it is similar to that of Fiverr.com and later on with your reputation it improves as well and your service gig comes under the heading of “the job of the week”.

l. Dealerr.com pays in another currency than dollar which is Euro and their range is 5Euros-100Euros.

You can add to our data and information by letting us know of any other site that qualifies to be in the above-mentioned list.

Google Finally Allows Teens (13+) Into Google+ [News]

Approximately 6 months ago, Google+ splashed into our lives with a much-publicized launch. Everyone wanted an invite, and as the days went by, most everybody got one. But there was one thing that marred this launch for a large group of people: Google+’s age restriction.
When Google+ first launched, no one under 18 was allowed in. As if it were some adult-only secret society, Google decided to forego this huge chunk of Google+ users, which left them no choice but to remain on Facebook and other competitors, unable to even check Google+ out (unless they wanted to enough).
Well, good news. Google has decided to change its age policy, and will now allow anyone over 13 to join Google+. This age restriction is the same as Facebook’s, and will allow many teens who currently use Facebook, to move over to the Google side and give Google+ a try. According to Google’s Bradley Horowitz, not only will teens be allowed on Google+, they will now be able to enjoy a sharing experience they currently don’t get from competitors.

While in real life, teens share information with relevant friends only, on Facebook and such there is sometimes the problem of “over-sharing” because there is no good way to share only with specific friends. With Google+, they will be able to share information only with classmates, friends, parents, teachers, etc., via circles.
Time will tell if all those 13-and-up users will herd over to Google+, or if these 6 months were enough to cool them off and dampen their curiosity about Google+. What would you do?
Source: +Bradley Horowitz
Tagged: Google • google plus

How To Use Feedburner To Share Your RSS Feeds

 Feedburner Publicize Tools

Feedburner has a ton of built-in tools designed to help blog owners share their feed better. Whether you want to ping other services when you post or allow other blog owners to share your feed, Feedburner makes it easy.

In this guide, we’ll walk through all of FeedBurner’s tools that allow you to publicize and share your feed more effectively. To start, you’ll need to already have created a feed in Feedburner.

Accessing the Publicize Tools

To access the publicize tools, just click “Publicize” along the top navigation.

 To navigate to the specific tool you want to use, just click one of the services under the Services navigation bar on the right.

The Headline Animator

The headline animator will create an RSS feed box that’ll automatically put the newest headlines in. You can place this box on a website for example and every time someone visits, they’ll see the headline of your newest post.

Just set your options for how you want the box to look. A preview of how your box will look will appear towards the bottom. Click Activate to generate the code for the headline box.

BuzzBoost

Want to share more than just the headline of your post? BuzzBoost makes it easy. Just fill out your options, then click Activate. The JavaScript code can then be pasted onto any website to create a RSS feed box with anywhere between 1 to 15 posts.

Email Subscriptions

A lot of people would rather get their blog posts in their inbox, rather than having to visit your blog all the time or learn to use an RSS reader.

That’s easy, with email subscriptions. Just activate it, then once people are signed up they’ll automatically get your blog posts by email.

Ping Shot

Instead of having other services refresh your feed, constantly taking up your bandwidth, you can just tell Feedburner to send those services a “ping” of data whenever you update your blog.

All you need to do is click Activate.

Feed Count

If you want to show off how many subscribers you have on your RSS feed, all you need to do is publish your Feed Count.

Select your button and text color and select whether you want a static or animated button. Then click Activate to generate the code.

Socialize

Want to automatically post to your Facebook, Twitter or other social media accounts? Feedburner allows you to easily link other accounts to your feed.

Anytime you post on your blog, the post will also automatically be posted to the account(s) you specify.

To add more accounts to post to, just click “Manage Connections.” Under formatting options, select how you want your posts to look, then click Activate to link the accounts.

Additional Tools

The tools we’ve just covered are the most important tools for publicizing your feed. In addition, there are also a few more tools and options you can change in the publicize options.

Here’s what each of these does:

Chicklet Chooser: Select a slightly different button to take people to your RSS feed.

Awareness API: Allow other developers to read your feed with software. This is useful if you want outside software to sort and use data from your blog.

Creative Commons: Choose the type of copyright your feed is protected under.

Password Protector: Require a password for people to read your feed. Note that this will deactivate the email subscription option.

NoIndex: Deny search engines access from your feed.

These are all the tools available to you in FeedBurner’s publicize tools. As you can tell, it’s easy to publish and use your RSS feed in many different ways, whether it’s on your website, your Facebook page or even a friend’s software.

How To Use Bit.ly To Track Links And Clicks

Bit.ly is a great little free tool that allows you to shorten long URLs such as affiliate links so you can more easily insert them into emails, tweets and such. Bit.ly Pro (also free) allows you to track your clicks as well.

Today we’ll be going through using Bit.ly Pro to shorten links and also where to view stats for those links & clicks.

Step 1: Shorten Links

When you log into your account, you’ll see a box as shown below where you enter the long URL that you’d like to shorten. Simply enter the long link and click the “Shorten” button.

Below the box you’ll now see a shortened link as shown below.

Copy & paste this short link on your website, social networking sites, email or any place you want to share it.

Step 2: Custom Link

If you don’t like the look of the shortened link, you can create a custom link. To do this, click “Customize” next to the bit.ly generated short link.

Enter the letters/word you’d like to use for the link & click the “Customize” button as illustrated on the page below.

If the link is available, it will be updated. If someone else has already used that customized set of letters or words, then you’ll have to choose a different word/letter combo.

Once you have a unique letter/word combo, your new link will generate.

Copy & paste this short link on your website, social networking sites, email or any place you want to share it.

Repeat for each link you want to shorten.

Step 3: Short Domain & Tracking Domain (optional steps)

With the Pro version of Bit.ly, you can enter a short domain and a tracking domain. To do this, in the upper right corner, next to your username, click the down arrow and select “Settings”.

Custom Short Domain

A custom short domain is used in place of the bit.ly.com domain when creating short links.

For instance, if you owned the domains all-baseball-card-deals.com and abcd.com you could enter http://aplc.com here and your shortened bit.ly links would look like abcd.com/aQ7tz rather than bit.ly/aQ7tz

Just enter the short domain into the box and click the “Add Short Domain” button.

Note: Adding a custom short domain requires you to edit your DNS settings before it will work.

Tracking Domain

This will allow you to gather data on how your domain is being circulated across the web.

If you own the domain all-baseball-card-deals.com and set it as your dashboard tracking domain, all of the bit.ly redirected traffic to all-baseball-card-deals.com would show up in your stats.

You simply need to enter your root domain and click the “Add Tracking Domain” button.

You’ll then be asked to verify your domain one of three ways…

Once you verify, you’ll see a new message in your dashboard…

Step 4: Sidebar Bookmarklet

Bit.ly has a sidebar bookmarklet that allows you to tweet, watch your stats and see who is talking about the linked page on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and blog comments right from your browser’s sidebar.

To set this up, navigate to the upper right corner next to your username & click the down arrow and select “Shorten Everywhere”.

The page will show you an outline of how the bookmarklet will look. At the bottom of the page, there’s a yellow box that tells you to drag the link to your browser toolbar to get started.

If you already have links set up in your dashboard, once the bookmarklet refreshes, you’ll start to see your stats.

You can add your Twitter and Facebook account details so you can quickly post directly from this bookmarklet.

You can find similar tools that work pretty much the same on this page:

http://bit.ly/pages/tools

Step 5: Reading Stats

Once you’ve had your links published to the web for a while, you’ll be able to view your stats. To do this, log into your account and click “Analyze”.

The Metrics Summary will give you a breakdown of your stats in graph form for the past 30 days, as shown below.

The Dashboard Summary will give you a different view of your stats for the past 24 hours, as shown below.

That’s it! You can now easily use short links and track the stats for each one.

How To Start A Blog For Profit

An online presence is important these days for whatever enterprise you engage in. to connect with a wide variety of people there is no bigger forum than the Internet.
If you are looking for a way to show off your expertise and also make a little money while doing it, consider starting a blog.
What is a Blog?
A blog is actually an online journal of sorts. With a blog you can upload daily posts about anything that you want.
Some people create personal blogs as a way to keep in touch with family members.
Pictures, videos and other information are uploaded so your loved ones are current with what is going on with you.
Here we are going to talk about business blogs.
This is a blog that you begin to attract traffic in order to sell products or services.
To be interesting to others, your blog will need to:
1. Have updated content for visitors
2. Be marketed to draw traffic
3. Register with search engines so it can be found in the rankings
How to Start
If you are new to blogging, use a free blogging platform to get your feet wet. Sites like Blogger.com, WordPress.org, Blogspot.com and others offer free blogs to users.
Depending on the site you choose, the themes and plug-ins (added features) will vary.
Most will walk you through the process step by step so that you can be up and running in no time.
Before you start posting, decide what will be the theme, or niche of your blog.
A jack-of-all-trades type of blog doesn’t do as well as one that is geared towards a certain niche. If you like crafts, that can be your niche.
Create posts that talk about how to craft, what to craft, how to make crafting profitable and so on.
Once you have decided on a path, it is time to create that great content.
How to Make Money
In order to make money with your blog, you need to have people visiting it. That is where marketing comes in. to draw traffic you have to get the word out about your blog.
Tell all of your friends and family members that you are online with your blog for a start.
Any money-making venture will take place once you have built your readership with interesting posts.
Then you can put into play a number of profitable additions:
1. Google AdSense
2. Selling Advertising
3. Affiliate Marketing
4. eBook Marketing
The simplest one to pursue is Google AdSense. You are using targeted advertisements to create revenue for your blog. You are paid per clicks on the ads.
There are other options where you can get paid when someone makes a sale on that website.
That is more likely to happen when you join an affiliate program. Join affiliate program that work well with your website niche.
eBooks are short downloadable electronic books that you can create yourself and sell on your website.
They can be on a variety of subjects but in order for them to sell, you must be able to offer new information to your customers.
Blogs can be used to build revenue.
Start with your chosen niche and market your blog to find the traffic you need. Then, utilize these ideas to turn a profit.

How To Use Google Sparks

Sparks is like a personal newspaper that goes out to find just the news stories and websites that most interest you and bring it back to you.
You can also think of it as RSS feeds, just much simpler.
Here’s how it works: You tell Google what you’re interested in.
Google will regularly go out on the internet and find articles, websites, news stories and blog posts related to what you’re interested in.
Anytime you want to check in on your sparks, Google will show you a list of the most recent topics they’ve found. It makes it very easy to stay on top of various topics.
Here’s how to use Google Sparks.
Step 1: Click Sparks
Click “Sparks” on the left sidebar to access the Sparks page.

Step 2: Featured Sparks
By default Google’s selected a few sparks to feature. Click on one of these if you’re interested. If not, skip to Step 3.

Step 3: Search for Sparks
Enter a keyword, phrase or description of what you’re interested in.

Step 4: Browse Listings and Add Interests
Take a look at some of the articles that pop up when you do a search. If you like what you see and would like to continue to get updates on that topic, then click “Add interest.”

Rinse and repeat this process until you have a handful of sparks that you’re interested in following.
Step 5: Accessing Your Sparks Feed
Click on a specific spark in your left sidebar to see what’s new in that spark.

The spark’s news feed will then be displayed.

Step 6: Giving Plus Ones
If you like a specific article, click the “+1” button in the lower left. This will be displayed on your profile, so your friends know what you liked.
It’ll also help the content that you liked get ranked higher, as content with more +1’s will generally get ranked higher.

After clicking +1, you’ll see this:

Step 7: Sharing Content from a Spark
If you find something in a spark that you liked, why not share it with your friends? Start by clicking “Share.”

Enter a post or comment along with the share.

Click “Add circles or people to share with…”

Then choose which circle(s) you want to share the post with.

That’s how to use sparks! We’ve covered how to access sparks, how to find sparks, how to add sparks, how to view the spark’s feeds, how to give +1’s and how to share content from a spark.

How To Use Google Circles

Circles is one of the things that really sets Google+ apart from other social networks.

In Facebook for example, your friends are your friends – It doesn’t matter if that person’s the janitor you sometimes talk to or your best friend from childhood.

In Google+, you can create circles and put different people in different circles. You can then choose to share things only to certain people and not to others.

For example, you might share only professional updates with your work contacts, while sharing photos of a night out with your friend circle.

The people in your circles won’t know what circles you put them in. It gives you a whole lot of control over your data, without any potentially embarrassing situations.

Here’s how to use Google+’s circles feature.

Step 1: Click Circles

To access your circles settings, click on “Circles” in the top navigation boxes.

You’ll see a screen of the people who are already in your circles.

Step 2: See Potential Friends

Click on “People who’ve added you” to see who added you to their circles. You can think of these are your “friend request

Step 3: Drag and Drop Into Circles

To add someone to a circle, just drag and drop them into the circles along the bottom.

Step 4: Create a New Circle

To create a new circle, click or drag and drop into the “new circle” circle.

The create circle box will pop up. Choose a name for your new circle, then either add people to the circle or create an empty circle.

Step 5: Adding by Search

If you want to add someone who hasn’t already added you, do a search for them along the top bar.

Click on the name to go to their profile page. Then click “Add to circles” to add them to a circle.

Step 6: Circle Specific Stream

Want to only see photos and updates from your friends? Or want to see what your family is up to?

Google+ makes it easy to see only updates from the people you want to see updates from.

On the left hand side of your home screen, just click one of the circles whose streams you want to see. Google+ will update and only display updates from people in those circles.

Step 7: Circle-Specific Posts

To post an update to only certain circles, click on the status update bar and start writing a post. A box with who can view your post will pop up along the bottom.

To remove a circle, click the small “x” in the top right corner. To add a circle that can see your post, click “Add more people.”

You now learned how to see who’s in your circle, who’s added you to their circles, how to add people to your own circles, how to create a new circle, how to add people who didn’t add you to a circle using search, how to sort your stream by circles and how to post to only specific circles.

Google+’s circles features really makes it easy to use social networking without “leaking” updates you don’t leaked to the wrong people.

It allows you to connect with the different people in your life in different ways.

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12 Questions To Ask Before You Start A Business

Getting Started

Do you have business challenges? Are you trying to grow your business or want to be your own boss, but haven’t yet found practical information?

It is my goal through this article to help you to overcome your obstacles and reach your dreams.

One of the first things you need to remember before we get started is that there is no magic pill out there for you to swallow and become an instant millionaire.

No matter what you do in life or what methods you choose in accomplishing your goals and visions it is going to take some serious work on your part.

It is going to require you to take action!

Let’s Begin to Make Things Clear

There is No Magic Pill!

Questions to Ask Yourself Before Starting Your Internet Business

1. Why do I want my own Internet Marketing Business?

Before deciding to start a business, think about the qualities you possess, what makes you tick, and how that might help you be a more successful business owner.

2. What interests, talents, skills and strengths do I have that will assist me in running my new business?

Inventory the abilities you already possess.

Then think about all the ways you can use them to grow your business and help others grow their business, and also working with partners that lack your abilities.

3. What are my strengths and weaknesses?

The ability to recognize your own strengths and weaknesses is invaluable for the business owner.

Recognizing what you’re good at and what you’re not will help you decide how to use your time and when to outsource to the experts or outside professionals for help.

4. What skills do I need to learn or brush up on to run my business effectively?

Recognize which skills you need to develop in order to run your business most effectively.

Identify the ones that are worth investing time into learning, and which ones you might be better off finding outside sources to perform.

5. Do I enjoy challenges?

Businesses provide constant challenges. If you enjoy a good challenge, it will energize you.

If you don’t, you may end up feeling as though you’re engaged in a constant uphill battle.

6. Will I be doing work that is meaningful and really interests and excites me?

When you’re engaged in doing something rewarding it helps to motivate you to keep going even when things get tough.

Start by getting back in touch with your values and see if there is a synergy between them and the things you will be doing in your business. If not, see how you can spin things so that there is.

7. Do I really have a money-making idea?

Not all great ideas make money. A good business idea addresses a problem, need or pain that a particular group of people or companies face.

The problem must be significant enough to warrant spending money to solve or alleviate.

Before bringing a new product or service to market, test your ideas and make sure they’re profitable.

8. Who are my ideal target customers?

Every business needs customers. Successful businesses know exactly how to describe who their best customers are, what “pain” they’re feeling and what they need, want, desire and are willing to pay for.

9. Who is my competition?

Learn everything you can about the others in your field who provide similar products or services to the same ideal customer – direct and indirect competition.

10. What do I offer that the competition doesn’t?

What makes my services or product unique above my competitors?

This is your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) – what you’ll use to make to your prospective customers buy your product or service instead of buying from your competition.

Why should your customer make you their Marketer of Choice?

11. Have I established business goals?

Setting goals is an important part of any business plan. But setting a goal is only part of the picture. Achieving goals is even more important.

Learn how to identify which goals are important enough to commit to, and systematically work towards them by breaking them down into steps, establishing timelines, identifying resources needed, and benchmarks for success.

12. Am I a self-starter?

When you have your own business, there’s no boss or manager to tell you what to do and when to do it. To get your business off and running you’ll have to motivate yourself to get things started

21 Reasons For Publishing A Press Release And How To Position Your Story

If you’ve ever thought that you don’t have anything newsworthy to share about your business, this handy reference guide will provide you with plenty of ideas.
Every company has newsworthy information to share and it’s just a matter of positioning that information so it’s of interest to the media.
1. The opening of your business. Local media is particularly interested in new businesses, especially when they offer a helpful product or service for the community.
Write your press release showing the benefits to your community and target market. You can even include a special offer or free gift to encourage people to visit your business.
2. The launch of your website. The launch of a helpful website is newsworthy, just like the launch of a business. Make sure your release includes the useful features of your website.
Invite readers to visit your website for a free gift. It could be a white paper, report, coupon, software, tool, etc.
3. Change in product offering. If you’re launching a new product that will help or if you’re lowering your prices, this might just be very newsworthy.
Just keep in mind how your target market benefits and make that the focus of your release.
4. Joint ventures. If you’re combining forces with another company or individual and it benefits your target market, share that information in a press release.
5. Association membership. Join your local Chamber of Commerce or another business association.
Include information on how your contributing to the group. Don’t know what association to join? Create your own.
6. A business move. If you’re moving to a new location that offers benefit to your customers, write a release.
For example, if you’re getting a larger location for more inventory, moving to a location with improved technology, etc.
7. Share your expertise. A release that provides consumer tips, time-saving tips, money-saving tips, etc. that are relevant to your own business and show your expertise.
8. Make a prediction. Make a prediction that relates to your niche. Include supporting evidence, facts and statistics for credibility.
9. Solve a problem. If your target customers have a typical problem, create a release that includes solution.
For example, if you provide skin treatments that help with dry winter skin, you can explain how the treatment works and provides release from pain and itch.
10. “Celebrities” that use your product. If a respected individual in your community or niche uses your product, share that news – with their permission, of course.
Include quotes from the “celebrity” that share why they came to you and the results they’ve received.
11. Capitalize on current events. A popular news story is the perfect tie into your release. If you can relate the story to your business, it is quite likely the media will be interested.
For example, if there is an increase in home break-ins in the area and you sell home security systems, you can write a release that includes tips for securing a home that refers to your products.
12. Capitalize on pop culture. Popular TV shows, movies and music are great fodder for a press release. For example, if you teach music lessons a tie-in to the popular TV show Glee might be an interesting angle.
13. Share your awards and accomplishments. If you’ve won an award or received some other type of recognition, this is perfect press release fodder. Show how this accomplishment serves your community/ target market.
14. Give awards. Not only can you share information about awards you receive, you can give out meaningful awards to your community as well.
15. Fundraisers. Spread awareness for your cause and your business, by making a donation or holding a fundraiser.
Be sure to follow-up the announcement of your upcoming fundraiser with the end results you achieved.
16. Be a sponsor. Sponsor a local team or organization and write a press release about it. It shows you contribution and support of the local community.
17. Have a contest. Whether it’s a sweepstakes, an essay or video contest, it’s fun and interesting. Make sure to send a follow-up when the winners are announced.
18. Host a special event. Put together an open house or customer appreciation day.
Offer refreshments, helpful information, etc. to attendees. Let the media know about the event with a press release.
19. Host a virtual event. Organize a teleseminar or webinar that provides valuable information to your target customer and announce this free event through your press release.
20. Create a useful publication. Are you putting together a helpful newsletter, white paper or report? Share it in a press release.
21. Create an internship or work experience program. If you’re going to hire some students for the summer, share the news.
Follow up with stories on the success of the program with some of your star participants.
As you can see, there’s always something to share in a press release and if you don’t currently have a newsworthy event, you can create one.
Keep this list handy to help establish your business in your community and to develop a relationship with the media.
Below is a Press Release template.
Feel free to use it as you see fit.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact Person’s Full Name
Company Name
Mailing Address
Phone Number
Email Address
Precise Website Address / URL for More Information
Attention Getting Headline Here – Include a Benefit for the Reader
City, Town, Date – Summary that draws the reader in to learn more. Make sure you address who, what, where, when, why and when. Be succinct, but include enough information.
Provide some relevant background information about your product/event/announcement. Make sure you include information on why this is important to the target audience. Be factual and succinct.
Add a quotation from a customer or somebody who reinforces your expertise or the importance of your announcement. Include that person’s full name and if relevant, include their credentials.
Include a quotation from yourself that says why you created the products/put together the event, etc. Having a quotation from yourself makes it easier for you to assert an opinion, while still remaining newsworthy. Make sure to include your full name and position in the company.
Finish your press release with a company summary and what you do. Include a statement that says, “For more information, please contact…” and include a phone number and email. Also include the URL of where to get more information on the website.

10 Methods To Generate An Online Income Via Blogging

Introduction:

Once you’ve got your blog in place and have added plenty of good-quality, search-engine optimized content, you may be wondering when the money will start rolling in.

If only it were that easy!

The thing about making money on your blog is that blogging is the vehicle for your actual business, not the business itself.

Let’s say you own a flower shop.

You have the physical location, you decorate it all cute, you install a cash register and take out ads in the local paper.

You even stand outside the door, handing out tiny blossoms and business cards to people who walk by.

That’s all well and good, but until you start actually providing value to your market, you’re not really in business.

The same is true for your blog.

Until you actually provide a product or service that people can pay money for, you’re not in business.

This article will give a brief overview of the top ten ways you can make money from your blog. Not every method may be right for you, right now – and that’s okay.

Read through all ten, make notes, and pick one or two to start with.

Then you can add on additional methods until you’re well on your way to making money from your very own online business – your blog.

Method #1: Sell Your Own Physical Products

Possibly the oldest business model of all-time is also the most familiar: Selling your own physical products.

It’s a concept we’re all familiar with, and we see it play out from the corner lemonade stand to Mrs. Fields Cookies.

I have something you want, so I sell it to you. Simple and straightforward.

When selling online, however, there are a few questions to answer:

1. What am I going to sell?
2. How am I going to accept payment?
3. How will I let people know about my products?
4. How will I handle fulfillment and customer service?

Let’s look at each of those questions in turn.

1. What am I going to sell?

Choose a product that is of interest to the majority of your readers. For instance, if you have a Hawaiian vacation blog, your readers won’t necessarily come to you for the brand-new flea collar you invented.

A few might be interested, but keeping synergy between your blog theme and your product is essential.

Any disconnect will lead to confusion on the part of your blog readers, and confusion leads to distrust.

Sell those Hawaiian vacation dreamers your own ukelele music CD, or your audio guide to the Big Island, or posters you’ve made from photographs you took on your last excursion to Maui.

2. How am I going to accept payment?

Ten years ago, would-be online entrepreneurs would have had to dream up some complicated work-around for customers to get them cash.

Now, we’ve got a number of options. The easiest is PayPal, which will allow your customers to pay using their credit card, debit card, or PayPal balance.

Go to www.paypal.com and click on “Business” for more information. PayPal can help you create “buy now” buttons for your site, issue invoices, and more, and it is easily integrated into your blog.

If you outgrow PayPal, there are a number of shopping cart services you can check out, including 1shoppingcart.com, Americart.com, vshoppingcart.com, and many more.

These services are more expensive than PayPal, but will add functionality you may eventually desire, such as affiliate management.

3. How will I let people know about my products?

Marketing your wares is an essential part of your business plan. No matter how good your mousetrap, ukelele CD, or homemade cookies are, if no one knows about them, no one can buy them.

You can spread the word through forums, search engine optimization (SEO), Google AdWords, Facebook advertisements, and a number of other methods. The key is to know beforehand how you’re going to tell people about your products.

4. How will I handle fulfillment and customer service?

Unless you enjoy making numerous trips to the post office and answering calls 24/7, as you grow you will need to have a scaleable plan for shipping out orders and handling customer questions and complaints.

You can outsource fulfillment to a local business or individual (try Craigslist.com), or through a service like Amazon’s amazonservices.com.

Likewise, you can outsource customer service to a virtual assistant, or to a company that specializes in customer service.

Selling your own goods online can be a profitable and satisfying way to make your mark on the online world – and to make money! Many businesses of all sizes incorporate a physical sales component to their offerings.

Method #2: Become an Affiliate

Affiliate marketing is a great complement to any other business model. Basically, you recommend products and services to your readers, and every time one of them makes a purchase through your referral link (a piece of code inserted in your blog), you receive a commission.

Commissions can range from a few percent of the purchase price, to upwards of 50%. Physical products usually have a lower commission rate, while digital downloads have higher commissions.

The upside of affiliate marketing is that it’s simple. If you’re established as an expert in your industry, you likely already tell people what products and services you use in the course of your business.

You’ll continue to do the same… only now you’ll get paid for it!

There are a number of widely-known programs online to find products and services to promote.

Some of the most popular are:

• Amazon
• Shareasale.com
• Clickbank.com
• CommissionJunction.com

You can also google the industry you’re in, along with “affiliate programs,” such as “scrapbooking affiliate programs” to see what other retailers and programs are available for you.

When promoting products through affiliate programs, there are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Only promote products you believe in.

If you start promoting any product under the sun, whether or not you’ve tried it yourself, you’re going to lose credibility and trust with your audience.

You want them to believe that you have their best interests in mind – and that means only recommending products you know and trust.

2. Give value.

To have a viable business, you must offer value.

How can you make it easier on your readers to buy the products they want and need?

Can you give more details so they can make informed buying decisions?

Can you offer coupons or tell them where to get the best deals?

Or maybe you can perform a full review so they can evaluate products before they buy. Figure out a way so you’re adding value to the purchasing process.

3. Promote the products.

You can’t just throw up a bunch of links or even review posts and expect to see massive traffic and sales. Instead, actively promote your affiliate links through social media, article marketing, and more.

For instance, if you write a blog post comparing two popular vacuum cleaners, link back to the post from other blog entries and promote it on Facebook, Twitter, and even YouTube.

Because of its versatility, affiliate marketing is the perfect addition to any blogger’s repertoire of money-making methods. You can spend as much time or as little as you like, but it’s a method worth considering.

Method #3: Promote Online Auctions

One of the very first ways for “ordinary” people to make money online was through eBay. Whether you were selling used maternity clothes, car parts, or collectibles, eBay promised millions of eyeballs, brought directly to your goods, allowing you to sell virtually anything with a minimum of hassle.

Adding auctions to your blog is a great way to make some extra cash, and eBay makes it easy with a plethora of simple tools.

The best part: You don’t even have to create your own auctions! You can pull in auctions for items related to your topic or subject matter with RSS feeds, product feeds, or directly from auction listings.

The first thing you have to do is to join the eBay affiliate program (go to www.ebaypartnernetwork.com for more info). Then you can use eBay’s tools to pull specific feeds into your blog.

You can include live eBay listing information, direct links to auctions that might be of interest to your market, and a host of other options.

Of course, if you have your own products to sell, all the better!

Sign up with eBay, and then you can list your products and show the auctions in real time on your site, letting your readers know that your wares are going, going… sold to the highest bidder!

When promoting auctions as an affiliate, the advice to know your products, provide value, and promote your affiliate links holds true.

And if you’re listing your own products and showing your auctions via your blog, it’s even more important to spread the word and drive traffic to your website and auction.

More traffic will result in more action on your auctions, which in turn leads to higher selling prices.

Method #4: Sell Information Products

Information products are digital, audio and video based products, typically delivered electronically via download.

Tens of thousands of people make their living online selling “virtual” products in industries as diverse as eldercare, test preparation, scrapbooking, and pet care.

If there’s a group of avid people online and you can identify their needs, you can create a product to meet those needs.

Selling information products is a natural extension of blogging. You’re already building your audience and creating information for them, so sometimes creating a product is just a matter of pulling together information you’ve already written or recorded and repackaging it.

Here are some of the most common information products:

a. Consolidate blog posts on a certain topic into an eBook.

For instance, Darren Rowse’s 31 Days to Building a Better Blog.

This information was originally shared as a series of blog posts, and Darren repackaged them as a for-sale product.

b. Record a webinar or teleclass.

Hold a free call on your topic of choice, record the event, and then sell it as a digital download with a call guide or FAQ sheet.

c. Record an interview with an expert.

Take advantage of someone else’s expertise by interviewing them, recording the conversation, and then marketing the resulting audio to your readers.

Bonus: If your interviewee has a rabid fan base of their own, you may be able to capture some of their market’s ears – and wallets!

d. Record screencasts.

Are you a Photoshop whiz or video editing expert? Record yourself showing your stuff with Camtasia or Jing and sell the tutorials in a batch or individually. How-to sells!

When selling your information products online, you have a variety of delivery options, including:

a. Clickbank.com
b. E-Junkie.com
c. Directly through Paypal or another payment processor

Each of these has their advantages and drawbacks, so you may have to do a little bit of research to figure out which is best for you.

If you’re new to information marketing, start small – don’t feel like you have to offer all the bells and whistles before you’re making the money to back it up!

Method #5: Join an Advertising Network

Back in “the day,” you couldn’t visit a website without being accosted with a number of blinkie, flashing, marching-across-the-screen pop-up ads.

Yuck! Thankfully, advertising has changed significantly since then. Now, the majority of online ads are text-based or include photos rather than home-drawn neon images.

By joining an advertising network, you can reserve space on your website and allow the networks you join to serve ads directly to your site.

Ad networks will then pay you per impression (how many people view your ad) or per click (how many people actually see and click on the ad).

Depending on the network, you can specify the size, shape, and types of ads you deliver. Some of the most common ad networks include:

-Google Adsense: Probably the most well-known and versatile network.

-Kontera: An in-text ad network that provides links directly in the text of your already-created content.

-Text Link Ads: Another in-text ad network.

The advantages of advertising networks:

• They’re easy to incorporate into your existing structure
• Advertisers are brought to you; you don’t have to find them on your own
• You are paid regularly for work you’ve already created, making it a passive income stream

The disadvantages:

• Pay can be extremely modest unless you have high volumes of targeted traffic (it’s not uncommon to make $.10 – or less! – per day).
• A chunk of the revenue is taken as a fee-for-service.
• You don’t have full control over what sites are advertised.
• You’re encouraging people to click away from your site.

Many people find ad networks an easy way to start including advertising on their blogs. As you grow your reader base and traffic, you may want to investigate approaching advertisers directly.

But in the meantime, picking up some spare change for doing nothing more than adding a little code to your site might be attractive.

Method #6: Accept Paid Advertising

While placing Adsense ads on your blog can bring you a few dollars, or even a few hundred dollars, a month, many people prefer to sell their blog real estate directly to advertisers.

By cutting out the middleman, you can keep more of the profits yourself and keep control over the types of products and services you advertise on your site

When considering opening space for advertising, here are some things to think about:

a. How much will you charge?

A good rule of thumb is to see what other blogs in your industry are asking, and price your spots accordingly. Keep in mind that in general, the more traffic (page views and unique visitors) you have, the more your ad space is worth.

b. What kinds of ads will you accept?

Will you take any ads, or do you want them to be directly related to your market?

If you offer reviews on your site, do you want to refuse to accept ads from sellers of products you might review?

What about adult sites or online gaming?

What about competitors?

Know beforehand what you will accept and what you won’t.

c. Will you create the graphics?

If you have to create graphics, then it’s going to take more of your time and energy. But if you don’t, you could end up with – to put it bluntly – lame graphics.

d. How will you charge and accept payment?

Paypal is usually sufficient. You can even create recurring payments if someone books for more than one time period at once.

e. Where will you place ads, and what size will they be?

Sidebar and leaderboard ads are common. You can google “blog ad sizes” to see what standard sizes you might offer.

Once you’ve made these decisions, create a section on your blog where potential advertisers can click and easily see your rates and requirements, and the next steps for advertising.

If the advertisers don’t come, you can approach them directly with your offer of advertising space.

Method #7: Provide Paid Sponsorships

Many bloggers offer product and service reviews as part of their regular content. As companies want to leverage the power of bloggers, there are more and more opportunities to receive cash or products in exchange for blog mentions or reviews.

Basically, you get paid to include a review or other information about the sponsoring company.

Sounds good, eh? Well, there are some guidelines to follow:

1. Disclose everything.

If you’ve been paid to review a product, mention a site, or otherwise plug or promote a company, tell your readers! The trust you create with them is hard to replace and easy to damage.

Many bloggers place disclosures in each sponsored post; others create a site-wide disclaimer. In either case, be transparent. (For more information on disclosure statements, go to http://disclosurepolicy.org/)

2. Have standards.

Bloggers of integrity will not promote or give a good review to sub-standard products. If you cannot be honest in your assessment or review, it is not worth the money.

Many sponsors will have guidelines regarding how you must talk about their product, site, or service. Pick sponsors who are a good match with your standards.

3. Don’t overdo it.

If every post you put up is a paid sponsorship, your readers may be wondering, “Where’s the beef?” Balance paid content with unpaid content. Also, make sure the sponsorship opportunities you accept are in line with your market.

You might get approached by a dating site or – the latest for me – an anti-meat movie. The money may be good, but will your audience resonate with the message?

4. Be of service.

Even in a paid post, you can provide value to your readers. Honest reviews, additional information, hints and tips, and case studies are all great ways to put your own spin and unique value on paid posts.

Treat paid opportunities as you would your unpaid content. Make sure it’s valuable to your audience and adds something to their experience. Then you’ll be creating great content AND getting paid for it.

Method #8: Offer Coaching

As a blogger, you are a position of authority. People come to your site to read about what you have to offer – whether it’s fly fishing, vegan cooking, making money online, or paper crafting.

A natural next step for making money is to offer your expertise in a “live” coaching format. Here are some questions you might have about coaching:

Do I have to have any specific certification or education? If you’re an accountant, lawyer, doctor, or even personal trainer, you need to be certified in your particular field. But to hang out your shingle as a coach, no certification is necessary.

Who would come to me? If people are reading your blog, people would pay you to coach them. Not every blog reader will become a coaching client, of course, but a percentage will.

That’s why it’s important to build up your readership before you launch your coaching program; the larger your list, the larger your potential coaching client base.

How much should I charge? It really depends on your field, what your competitors are charging, and the format of your coaching program.

Typically, the more value you bring to a client and the more pressing their pain points, the higher rates you can charge.

If you can help someone lose 20 lbs. in 30 days or make $5000 in a week, you’re going to be able to command more than you could for helping someone plan a beautiful garden.

What format should I use? Coaches have been early adopters of online technologies such as webcasting, teleseminars, and more.

With services like UStream, Freeconferencecall.com, and Skype, you can transport yourself virtually to anywhere in the world. Some coaches work strictly via email; it’s going to depend on your market.

For beginner coaches, one of the most effective first steps is to offer a low-price, fixed-term (4-6 week), group coaching environment for 6-10 people.

You could offer one structured call followed by a Q&A session each week, covering a certain segment of your topic, such as, “Planning your organic garden,” or “Financial planning for retirement.” Use the experience to test your materials and gauge interest and response.

At the end of the time period, evaluate your process and either change things up or offer the same coaching program again.

Over time, you’ll be able to better target your offerings and raise your rates as you know – and deliver – exactly what your audience wants.

Method #9: Restrict Access to Premium Content

We’ve gotten used to thinking that everything online is free. But businesses are learning that while “free” is a great way to drive traffic, it’s not so good for making money.

And consumers are learning that while “free” is great for the pocketbook, it’s not always so great in terms of quality. More and more online, people are being asked to pay for “the good stuff,” and you can do the same on your blog.

What can you ask people to pay for?

• Videos
• Deeper, more sophisticated content
• Replays of interviews or Q&A calls
• Step-by-step tutorials
• Access to training materials such as worksheets, planning guides, spreadsheets, etc.
• Audios

Here are some hints for offering premium content on your blog:

a. Give a taste.

If you’re offering recipes, show an image of the completed dish to encourage people to pay to access the full recipe.

If you are selling audios, list a few bullet pointed “takeaways,” or provide a sample of the audio, like iTunes does. Give people an idea of what to expect and they’ll be more likely to want to “pay to play.”

b. Keep it simple.

Too many options confuses people, and a confused mind does nothing. Don’t offer too many bells and whistles or packages; just keep it basic, especially at first.

c. Educate people.

Particularly if you are in a non-technical field, people may be hesitant to purchase something they think they can get for free.

Emphasize the benefits of your material – convenience, quality, exclusivity, etc. Point out how your product is superior to others, or how it will save them time or money.

d. Include testimonials.

Give people a reason to trust you, and to say “Yes.” By including testimonials of satisfied customers on your blog, you can help potential purchasers over the hurdle of making the decision to purchase. Video testimonials are especially effective.

There are a number of WordPress plug-ins to allow you to restrict access to certain areas of your WordPress blog – or you can keep things very simple and just password-protect specific posts or areas.

In any case, just as a velvet rope at the entrance to the hottest nightclub in town indicates that something good is going on inside, barring entrance to certain areas of your blog will make visitors very curious – maybe curious enough to pay!

Method #10: Sell Technology

Many of the technological advances in the blogging world have come about as a result of a blogger needing a way to do something more quickly, more easily, or more completely on their blog.

WordPress plug-ins, blog themes, graphics, apps, and the like are all examples of ways inventive bloggers have turned their need into a profitable revenue stream.

You may think that there’s no way you could sell technology because you’re not technologically minded yourself.

Not true! Not even Bill Gates does his own coding. Here’s how to identify and create technology tools your market will flip for:

a. Make a list of problems you have.

When his wife Jess needed a better way to keep track of her knitting patterns and yarn stash, Casey Forbes started what would soon become a knitting world phenomenon, Ravelry.com.

They didn’t intend to create a social site for over a million users; it happened as a byproduct of a problem. You can do the same thing in your own market. What tools do people need to help them accomplish their goals more easily?

Write them down.

b. Seek out competition.

A little competition is good – it lets you know that there is indeed a market need.

c. Improve on what is.

If there’s already a WordPress plug-in for pulling Flickr images into your blog, but it’s not working well for you, figure out what you’d do to make it better.

d. Find a tech hack.

Sites like Odesk.com, rentacoder.com, and even Craigslist are great places to find people with the skills you need to make your dream a reality. Read the requirements carefully, and get several bids – and several recommendations!

e. Test, test, test.

After you’ve got a solution, try it out on your own site, and ask anyone you can to test it for you as well. Maybe that new plug-in works great on IE but makes Firefox crash; you won’t know unless you test!

Once you have a workable “widget” in-hand, take it to the masses. Go to forums, write about it on your own blog, and strut your stuff.

The best advertisement is your own blog! You might also give away a copy of your app or plug-in to some other bloggers, asking them to provide you with a testimonial or review on their site.

You don’t have to be a tech whiz to sell your own great device. Instead, you can be the brains behind the operation and pay someone else to do the pixel-pushing and byte-budging.

Conclusion

The number of ways to make money through your blog is limited only by your imagination. This short list is just the tip of the iceberg.

I hope by reading through these descriptions, the floodgates have been opened and you have a better idea of how you can begin to monetize your own blog.

If you’ve got an idea that isn’t listed here, all the better! The online world is changing and morphing all the time. Put yourself at the front of the next wave, and you can reap the monetary benefits!