• Mar 11

    Every internet marketing guru knows how to use SEO to make money. In fact, SEO is their life blood in spite of what they will tell you in their newsletters.

    Have you ever tried to check out one of their websites? How many are not on the first page for at least one of their keywords? I can answer that question none that I know of! These guys know how to do it, and they started off by themselves. OK, perhaps now they can afford to pay others to do it, but you can be pretty sure that you wont get the service that they get!

    If you were paying for a service, would you like the guy you were paying to get you on the first page to offer the same service to your competition? Of course you wouldnt. SO what chance do you think you have of employing a SEO consultant and getting a top 10 position? I can answer that on no fingers!

    Come on! Are you rally so nave as to believe all these claims to get you in the top 10, let alone Number 1 as some claim? OK, Number 1 for the keyword whajotys: anybody can do that (I shut my eyes and typed there). What you want is a Number 1 position for a good keyword in your niche, and nobody except Google can guarantee you that. The same applies with a top 10 position.

    The only person capable of earning you a top 10 position for any page in your website is you. You have to optimize your page to make it appear attractive to the search engines. Attractive means that your web page (Google lists pages, not sites) best meets the needs of a Google search for the information that your web page provides according to the calculations of the statistical mathematical analytical system that is loosely termed the Google algorithm, applied by so-called spiders that analyze the content of each of your web pages.

    If you want to use SEO to make money, you should learn how it works. Learn how to make your website attractive to the Google algorithm. Learn what semantics are and how to use them to fool the spiders. How to maximise the power of the links between the various pages in your website. How to maximise the complete latent power that is charged in each of your web pages, and how to use the content on these pages to drive an unlimited amount of traffic to your site.

    That information is available to anybody who wants to seek it online, if they know what they are looking for or where to look for it. That information is available, and it can make a massive difference to your online success. Anybody with any form of online business needs to know this information and it is available for you free of charge online if your know what to look for.

    The problem with many, however, is that they dont know what to look for or where to get it. They take the advice they find, only to discover too late that what they have learned is wrong. Stop being obdurate (look it up) and get it right for a change. That can make all the difference between failure and success.

    Learn how to use SEO to make money and you will never look back.

  • Mar 10

    How To Take One Small Step Onto A New Revolution And Turn Your Website Into A Money Maker!

    For a while now, maybe youve been watching the digital revolution pass you by. You hear stories about regular people stumbling upon some idea, putting up a website, and making a mint. Then maybe you think, I wish that was me! Or maybe you already have a great website, but it doesnt have an angle into making real money.

    THE PINNACLE OF AN ON-GOING DIGITAL REVOLUTION!

    Heres a little story. Three guys put together a small web site in early 2005 to upload, share, and stream all kinds of video. It caught on like wildfire. Less than two years later, it had become one of the Webs #1 sites. In late 2006, Google bought it for $1.65 billion! Yes, thats with a capital B. Perhaps youve heard of YouTube?

    Were not saying your website will the be next YouTube, but we are saying that planet Earth is in the midst of a digital revolution, a revolution that will alter the course of human history as completely as the Industrial Age, Gutenbergs printing press, and the Renaissance, all rolled into one.

    ITS ALREADY HAPPENING!

    MP3 players, Blackberry, Bluetooth, mobile phones, iPods, iTunes, digital music, digital everything, digital everywhere. Everything is becoming downloadable. Media companies across the globe are struggling to keep pace with a lightning-fast changes taking place in all of our media. Those who find their niche, take that opportunity and seize it first they make the money, because theyre the pioneers. Everyone after them is doomed to being an also-ran, struggling to catch up, and never quite making it. Which would you rather be?

    What would you give to be a pioneer in a brand new niche? What if you could be among the first to launch a new trend in Internet marketing? What if your website could be a part of this revolution, and earn real money?

    What would you say if we told you that you could do this at NO COST TO YOU?

    DONT WAIT ANY LONGER!

    Were a society thats always waiting for something. Waiting for the train, waiting in traffic, waiting in line. As much as one-third of every persons life is spent waiting. People dont want to think about how, when they reach retirement age, they might have spent 20-25 years of their lives just waiting. And people, on some level, realize this, and wish it was different.

    How many books could you have read in 25 years? Classics of literature that you always wanted to read but never found the time, the latest in current affairs or business strategies, or popular novels to enjoy in your leisure time.

    What if you could download any book you wanted, any time, load it into your iPod or other MP3 player, or just play it on your computer at home? Listen in the car, on the bus, in the coffee shop. Digital music is revolutionizing the music industry.

    And DIGITAL AUDIO BOOKS stand ready to revolutionize the audio book industry as well.

    All the hottest titles, fiction and non-fiction, all the classics, all the finest authors can be at your fingertips, with one easy download that you can carry anywhere!

    Sound good? We think so. And, with the internet finding its way into the most remote corners of the world, so do billions of potential listeners, across the globe. Thats with a b.

    Heres a future scenario.

    A small but significant percentage of those billions of internet consumers, with a b, browse your website, enjoy your content, then notice that you have AUDIO BOOKS for sale in EASILY DOWNLOADABLE form. Then they might, Wow, Ive been wanting to read that one, but I just havent had time. They click, they download, and YOU get a commission!

    DIGITAL AUDIO BOOKS, THE LAST UNTAPPED INTERNET MEDIA MARKETPLACE!

    You can be a part of the DIGITAL AUDIO BOOK revolution, and it wont cost you a dime. All you have to do is join our Affiliate Marketing Program!

    How does this help you?

    Its a guaranteed way to make your website earn you money!

    Products that are 100% relevant to your customers.

    Simon & Shuster, BBC, Time-Warner, Harper-Collins. World-class names, high-quality brands that will lend their prestige to YOUR website!

    A 10% commission on every single sale!

    Higher volumes of relevant, quality traffic going to and from your web site. Search engines love this!

    Sound good so far? We think so. But we can offer an even sweeter deal!

    Heres how:

    Groundbreaking, leading edge service available to quality website owners like you.

    Hassle-free setup and maintenance. You dont need to be a web programmer or HTML guru to set this up. We do that for you!

    All payment processing is handled at download time. You dont need to set anything up; just take home the cash!

    Truly hands-free operation. You dont have to worry about handling any Technical Support for your audio book buyers. We take of that for you!

    A Self-Service Affiliate Administration Page, where you can access links and sales reports, any time you want!

    10% COMMISSIONS ON ALL SALES! BETTER THAN AMAZON!

    This is so good, well say it again. For every audio book that is sold through your website, you will earn a 10% commission! This beats Amazon affiliate program and most other niche marketers by 5%. How many audio books do you have to sell to get a spectacular return on your investment? Just ONE! Because joining our program costs you nothing!

    So there you have it. The days of your web site earning money for you, with no extra cost or effort from you, are just a mouse-click away.

    All you have to do to sign up is click the link and follow the instructions. What do you have to lose? Except a perfect opportunity.

  • Mar 5

    How To Make Your Computer Print Money In 6 Easy Steps

    I bet that got your attention, didn’t it? I’ve been working on my headlines. Sorry to disappoint you but this article isn’t about counterfeiting or how to get rich quick. It’s about how to create a successful website which will draw lots of traffic and make you lots of money.

    This is an enormous subject and you could write a book on each different step. I’m just going to provide a general outline here of the 6 crucial steps to creating a website that’s successful over the long term.

    1 Pick Your Niche

    Choose something you enjoy researching and writing about because you’re going to spend a lot of time doing both. It shouldn’t have a lot of competition. For example, don’t choose “electronics.” I guarantee you’ll never get a better ranking in the search engines than Sony or Amazon.com. Narrow it down to something like “high end audiophile speakers”.

    Do some research. Check out how much your keywords are going to cost for advertising. If they’re really expensive you might want to choose another niche. Check out some sites with similar subject matter so you can see who you’re going to be competing with for rankings in the search engines.

    2 Choose Your Service Providers And Register Your Domain

    Your service providers must be reliable. If your internet connection is always going down or your server is constantly crashing it’s going to be difficult to maintain a successful business. Don’t skimp on quality just to save a few pennies here.

    Your domain name should contain your most important keyword that you’re hoping to rank well for in the search engines. It should be something unique that’s related to your niche and easily brandable. By brandable I mean easy for people to remember and associate with your site. Some call it “mindshare”.

    3 Create Your Content

    Your content must be unique. If you’re content is plagiarized, Google will tend to ignore you. They now recognize duplicate content and refuse to list it. They want to provide their users with useful results. People have been slapping together crappy “made for adsense” websites by just copying and pasting content and Google’s decided to put an end to it.

    My advice is not to mess with Google. They’re the 900 lb gorilla of the internet that you really don’t want to piss off. If you can’t get listed in the search engines, you’re pretty much doomed from the start. So give them what they want. You’ll need 30-100 pages of good content before you even put up a website. You could just start with a few pages and add a page day like you would with a blog but it will take you longer to get indexed. Are you noticing a theme about the search engines here?

    4 – Create Your Website

    You’re either going to have to use a program like Dreamweaver or a Content Management System. I’d suggest considering a CMS. You’ll need to update your website frequently, and even for experienced web designers this can be difficult. A CMS removes all the hassles of publishing new content daily. However, you have to make sure your CMS is search engine friendly. Probably the easiest thing to do for a beginner is use a blogging program like Wordpress. Search engines LOVE blogs, they’re very easy to update, and best of all Wordpress is FREE.

    You should create the website with search engine optimization in mind right from the start. SEO is a very in-depth subject that I can’t get into here. Basically, you’ll want to make sure your website can be easily crawled by the search engine robots or “spiders”. This requires all kinds of things like proper meta-tags and making sure you have good keyword density on your pages.

    Also, you MUST make sure all your pages load quickly. Much of the world still doesn’t have broadband. The average surfer will only wait about 4 seconds before they click off elsewhere. If your pages load too slowly you will be losing massive amounts of traffic. Navigation is very important as well. If people have a hard time finding their way around they’ll quickly get frustrated and leave.

    5 – Drive Traffic To Your Website

    Setting up a business on the net is different than at a physical location. In the “real” world it’s all about location, location, location. If your store’s in a high traffic area it’s easy to get customers. But on the net no one just passes by, they SEARCH for specific things. Until your site is listed in the search engines there’s no way for anyone to find it – It’s up to you to drive traffic to it.

    There a several ways to do this:

    You can buy it by creating ads and then bidding on certain keywords so the ads will show up whenever anyone searches for them.

    You can get it for free by:

    - Writing articles on your niche topic with a link to your site in the author’s resource box, and submitting them to article directories so publishers can use them and distribute them to thousands of readers.

    - Submitting your site to free SEO friendly web directories.

    - Social bookmarking some of the more interesting pages on your site at places like del.icio.us and Blink.

    - Submitting some of your articles to sites like Digg or Reddit, where people vote on whether they should be displayed on the front page. If you’re item is popular and gets displayed on the front page of Digg, the amount of traffic you get could crash your server. I’m not kidding, I’ve seen it happen.

    - Participate in forums and provide a link to your site in you signature. Don’t spam or you’ll get banned make intelligent comments.

    - Comment in blogs with a link in your sig. Again don’t spam. And make sure the blog isn’t using no-follow or you’ll be wasting your time.

    - Post free classified ads. These provide a high value link back from a popular site, plus you get free targeted traffic to your website from the ads.

    - There’s many ways to get free traffic just be creative but don’t be too creative. There’s a lot of illegal ways to get free traffic as well but they’ll backfire on you in the long run.

    6 – Monetize Your Website

    This is the fun part. Now that you’ve got all this traffic how do you make money?

    - You can sell advertising – probably the easiest way is with Google Adsense. You can also sell banner space, text links, almost anything really.

    - You can sell merchandise – I’d suggest drop-shipping. Why do all that packing and shipping if you don’t have to? That’s too much like work.

    - You can do affiliate marketing – one of the easiest ways to do this is to feature recommended products that link through to your affiliate’s site for purchase. Just make sure you choose quality products to be affiliated with.

    - The sky’s the limit when it comes to monetizing your website. Be creative here too but again, not too creative. You don’t want to do anything stupid and get banned from Adsense or your best affiliate program.

    And there you have it. How to make your computer print money in six not so easy steps. Now get going and have some fun!

  • Title:

    Filed under Make Money
    Feb 15

    Title:
    How to Make Money Using Nothing But Your List

    Word Count:
    757

    Summary:
    An opt-in list allows for a company to market their products and site via an e-mail. With an opt-in list, a site and a subscriber consent to sending and receiving a newsletter from your company. Through this, you can keep your subscribers abreast of what is currently available in your site as well as whatever you have to offer. It would be good to first build a successful list with a huge number of subscribers. The more subscribers you have, the more money you can get. Here are seven ways to make money using nothing more than your list.

    Keywords:
    Free website traffic methods, effendy lie, opt in list, make money, internet marketing, email marketing, newsletter, sell ebooks, affiliate links, create network

    Article Body:
    An opt-in list is crucial to any site or internet based business. Even for a small venture such as a niche profit site an opt-in list can make a world of difference and also add some extra income for your pocket. Rarely would you see an e-commerce site, big or small, that is without an opt-in list.

    An opt-in list allows for a company to market their products and site via an e-mail. With an opt-in list, a site and a subscriber consent to sending and receiving a newsletter from your company. Through this, you can keep your subscribers abreast of what is currently available in your site as well as whatever is coming out.

    And because there is mutual consent between the two parties, any mail sent to the list is not considered as spam mail. There is a great number of successfully read promotional materials such as catalogs, newsletters and such that are sent because the subscribers themselves have signed up for them, meaning, they do want to be sent those items.

    Building a list is crucial, only a small percentage actually subscribes for an opt-in list. Many people find promotional mails annoying but of you provide a good newsletter or promotional material, you will see your list build up and grow. You can also achieve this by having good content on your site. If people like what they see and read on your site, then they surely would want more. Newsletters would be a way to attract them back to your site. A little teaser or appetizer could shoot your profit through the roof.

    But other than marketing your wares and your services, an opt-in list can also be used to earn extra profit. Not all lists can be used though. It would be good to first build a successful list with a huge number of subscribers. The more subscribers you have, the more money you can get. Here are seven ways to make money using nothing more than your list.

    1) Place advertisements. There are many corporations who will be willing to pay to put their banners and ads on a list with many subscribers. Selling or renting out lists is not a good idea so rather than doing that, many companies would just rather place ads with lists that have a huge subscriber base. Your newsletter could be placed with many ads and each one spells money.

    2) Have affiliations with other companies that have at least a semblance or relation to what your site is about. Here, other companies will provide links and brief descriptions of what their products and services. With every click made on the link that directs or leads a subscriber from your list to their site, the company will pay you. This P4P or pay for performance.

    3) Make deals with other companies by asking for a small percentage of sales done through your list. With every sale done by customers that have come from your list and have gone there because of your newsletter, the other company will pay you a small percentage of your sales. The more people who buys from them, the more earnings you get.

    4) You may also get products from other sites on a consignment basis and sell them to your list via your newsletter. Place descriptions, articles and photos of the product in your newsletter. There will be those who will buy from you and when that happens, you can order the product from the other site and sell it to your buyer.

    5) Sell e-books or a compilation of your articles on your list. Manuals and how-to articles are in great demand. Many people will be willing to shell out money to gain knowledge about a certain topic and subject. With your existing list trusting your expertise in that area, an e-book could be offered and sold or used as an incentive.

    6) Create a network out of your list. Get people to invite more people to view your site and subscribe to your list. The larger your list is, the more people will be able to click on your links and affiliate links as well as make your advertisement rates higher.

    7) Subscribers are willing to pay for information if they know that it can be trusted and relied upon. Use your list to get more and more people to subscribe to you as well as browse your site. Lastly, you can use your list to earn money by making them your partners. Your list will be the bloodline of your growth and increase.

  • Title:

    Filed under Make Money
    Feb 11

    Title:
    How To Make Money Online With The Ebay Affiliate Program

    Word Count:
    411

    Summary:
    You center most it every the time. Someone you undergo knows someone who is making a experience over the internet. You center most grouping making whatever player outlay money. You also center most grouping making thousands of dollars a month. How do they do it?

    Keywords:
    ebay, whatever, phpbay, using, phpbay pro, crapper, wordpress, pro, attain, money, undergo, place, making, grouping, products, bans, ebay place, cente

    Article Body:
    You center most it every the time. Someone you undergo knows someone who is making a experience over the internet. You center most grouping making whatever player outlay money. You also center most grouping making thousands of dollars a month.

    How do they do it?

    Well, there are lots of structure to attain money online. And they dont refer spamming or whatever shadowy techniques.

    One artefact is to attain period promoting another peoples products or services for a authorisation or fee. This is titled affiliate marketing.

    One of the large affiliate marketing programs online is separate by eBay. eBay pays grouping a proportionality of their earnings for every traveller you beam to eBay who buys something. They also clear discover at small $25 for every newborn individual you intend to tie eBay.

    Many grouping attain beatific money environment up websites that exist every of eBay products. When a traveller clicks a creation on the site, they are directed to eBay. If they acquire something, the someone of the place gets a commission.

    There are whatever structure to ordered up an eBay place flooded of whatever products you poverty to sell. If you undergo how to program, you crapper ingest eBays API or RSS take to exhibit products on your site. But I favour using and out-of-the-box code same phpBay Pro (which allows you to easily attain an eBay place using wordpress blogging software), or BANS (stands for Build A Niche Store). Both are relatively affordable and such easier to ingest than the eBay API. I favour phpBay Pro because it crapper easily combine with wordpress to enthusiastic enthusiastic sites.

    If you are old with wordpress, you should be healthy to intend your prototypal eBay place up in a hebdomad using phpBay Pro. If you dont undergo wordpress and do not poverty to wager it, you crapper essay BANS, but ready in nous you requirement to undergo whatever base HTML using BANS.

    How such does it outlay to intend started? The eBay API is free. phpBay Pro for wordpress costs most $49. BANS costs most $97.

    How such crapper you make? I currently hit threesome sites prefabricated with phpBay Pro and I attain most $500-$600 a period amount from every of them. And every period they acquire a lowercase taste more.

    Now that you hit the aggregation on how to move making whatever money online using eBay, provide it a effort and wager if you crapper move earning whatever player cash!

  • Feb 2

    Many people are now trying to involve themselves in an online business. There are a variety of online business opportunities, you go from providing a service or a product. And one of the more popular ways of making money in the internet today is through an online magazine.

    Although an online magazine does not need any lay outing unlike a print magazine, there are still many who consider it as a difficult business to handle. Therefore, when only starting in this business, it is best to keep your purposes reserved.

    Consider the following steps to make money in an online magazine a success.

    1.Identify your topic. This will make sure that your online magazine will be consistent with its niche, allowing to provide great quality and regularity.

    2.Think of your capital. You will need money to spend for your articles, server space, maintenance, and your site design and programming. You should have a proper marketing strategy on how you can handle all the expenses needed for this business and how to advertise your online magazine.

    3.You will have to work with other individuals. An online magazine will surely be a hit if you also get ideas from others who can contribute ideas and share some knowledge to your online magazine.

    4.Think on how you can earn from this business. Your chance on earning a big amount depends on how your advertising goes. Be sure to attract a market to read your magazine.

    5.Consult your lawyer and other experts. Ask for advices regarding your business.

    6.Decide on your modes of publishing. Do you want it to be on a day-to-day basis, once or twice a week? Remember a regular schedule will keep your readers coming back to your site. This means regular earnings will also come your way.

    7.Learn how to keep your site to appear more pleasing to your readers and keep them interested.

    If you want to profit big from an online magazine, be sure to think of the above steps. A systematic steps and proper planning in this business will assure you of a great success in the future.

  • Jan 29

    There’s a common misconception that people who search for free stuff online are not good prospects as customers. While that may be true in many cases, that doesn’t mean they can’t help you make money.

    We’re going to discuss how you can make money from these freebie seekers by not selling them any products.

    You’re going to send these people to companies which will pay you for each lead you send them.

    These pay per lead companies will pay you each time you send them a visitor who does one of a few things:

    1.) Fills out a form to request a free sample
    2.) Downloads a free software program
    3.) Signs up for a newsletter

    What’s important to know is that these people will not be handing over any money to the company. Yet, you can still generate an income by sending visitors to these companies.

    That’s because these companies know that they will make back the money they invest in paying for the leads.

    Here is a reputable company which will bring you quality pay per lead offers: http://www.azoogleads.com

    There are many others in various niches. You can find them through Google.

    You’ve found the lead companies. Now you need to find the freebie seekers and do some match making. Have a look at any of the various keyword research tools on the market. You’ll find tons of people searching free stuff.

    These freebie seekers don’t stop at just one freebie. When they’re on a roll, they’ll practically run over anybody that gets in their way to find more free offers.

    There’s another similar market that you could even tackle. That’s the coupon market. People who are searching for all sorts of coupons and rebates for products online.

    There are enough companies using Adwords to advertise their sites that you could set up a content site and make money by placing Adsense ads on your sites.

    I used to wonder how these sites were making money when their focus was on free stuff. Now using pay per lead programs and Adsense, I can see how much money there is flowing in this niche.

  • Jan 11

    If youre like me and have been scouring the internet for a sure fire way of making some extra income from your content rich website then you have no doubt come across and have probably joined the Google Adsense program and placed Google ads on your website, and have also had the frustration of not getting enough visitors to your site and again have been scouring the internet for information on combining Google Adsense and Google Adwords to get targeted visitors to your site.

    You no doubt like me have come across the so called Get Rich Quick With Google Adsense e-books, which offer a sure fire system to use the Google Adwords feature to unlock those Google Adsense riches on your website and have probably handed over the $30 to $60 to find out the secret system. Well this article has been written to expose the myths behind these so called systems and to warn people that the results will be very disappointing.

    Google Adsense Fact

    The major problem with these systems is they try to blind you with a massive list of high paying keywords which Google Adword bidders supposedly pay for certain keywords and your focus is to try and concentrate your efforts on including these keywords on your website page, so the Google Adsense can put these high paying Google ads on your site, therefore increase your click through payments.

    Fact is Google ads rarely payout over $2 per click for Google Adsense, I have run sites myself with the supposed top keyword “yahoo domains and the most I earned was about 50 cents per click which seems to be the Google Adsense average.

    All this high paying keyword information is not going to make the so called $50 per click that some of these e-books claim, the best paying keyword out there at the moment is to do with asbestos cancer and this will only give you between $3 and $5 per click and is such a niche keyword, that not everyone is interested in reading about the subject or going to click on the Google ads on your website.

    Google Adwords Fact

    The Google Adwords part of the systems require you to find a high paying niche keyword, get over 200 related keywords list, create a one page website with a single article leeched from one of the free article sites surrounded by three Google ad blocks, then effectively write a Google ad with the chosen keywords as the title (via a special Google tag) and set a campaign budget of $10 a day with a maximum of 7 cents per click bid.

    Fact is setting a bid of 7 cents per click will place your ad that low on the search engine that you will only get a small amount of page impressions therefore decreasing the chance of anyone clicking on your Google ad and registering a possible visitor, plus most keywords will not successfully activate Google Ads at such a low bid price.

    Conclusion

    Though these e-books seem to offer a system, I would have to say it is not an air-tight sure fire way of making a decent income from Google Adsense, there are just too many flaws which cannot be explained away.

    My advice would be to stick to building your webpage content daily with no more than two or three Google Ads on each page, in 12 months all the search engines will have no doubt crawled and indexed your web pages hopefully bringing in a steady stream of targeted visitors who will hopefully click your Google Ads and make you a small fortune. GOOD LUCK!!

    Simon Ecclestone

  • Jan 10

    Here are a few tips on how _not_ to make money, and underneath each one, the smart thing to do instead.

    1. Follow The Herd.

    By the time you hear about it, it’ll probably have peaked. The time to grab a niche is looking around you, seeing what people are looking for, and giving it to them, fast. Not recommended: Multi-Level Marketing (MLM), Internet Marketing, eBooks, Paid-To-Surf and High Yield Investment Programs (HYIP). These will all make money for the guys running the show, not you.

    Do your own research. Internet forums are full of the past, not the future. You can learn your trade, but not the latest wheeze. You think if someone’s got a really sweet idea they’ll blab it in a forum? Only if they’re vain or stupid. Or they’ve already made their bit, the idea is washed out, so they make one last profit by getting the newbies excited about it.

    By the time you hear about it the herd will have spammed the hell out of it.

    2. Not Following The Herd.

    Sometimes the herd is heading over a cliff. Sometimes it’s heading to green pastures. You can’t start a revolution on your own; it’s too much hard work. So find something there’s already a demand for, and set up a stall offering it cheaper, faster or better. Or all three!

    Tip: Exhaust internet research before starting your new career. It’s likely someone has already done what you’re thinking of, at least in part. Maybe you can walk the trail they blazed, rather than hacking your own?

    3. Do Something You Dislike.

    You can’t put your heart in a job you dislike. You’ll find you can’t summon the energy. The ol’ inspiration doesn’t flow. Why? McJobs turn your brain to hamburger. Your subconscious (your heart) will not supply the energy to do something it’s against, even if the head says ‘go!’.

    Solution: Take the time to find something you truly enjoy: your vocation.

    4. Do Something Which Doesn’t Pay Well.

    Just getting by means you’ll go broke someday: one bit of bad luck, then bam!

    Plenty of jobs out there which pay _just_ enough to survive on. That’s how capitalists get rich; _they_ make the profits, _you_ do the legwork. And that’s as it should be. You want the big bucks? Be a super salesman, or an entrepreneur; they take all the risks, so it’s only right they get the gravy.

    Like all employees I disliked and feared my boss; he had real power over me. Then when I became my own boss, I understood him perfectly. He didn’t care about my little problems. He didn’t owe me anything beyond my wages and a civil word. He was largely oblivious to my mutinous grumbling. All he wanted was for me to come in on time, do the work, and clear off at the end of the day. He set the business up, so he deserved the lion’s share. He had to worry about keeping the whole place going.

    If you were a boss, and it was your money, just how generous would you be to your employees? Oh yeah, suuuure! And I bet you’re a big tipper too!

    Solution: If you want to work for someone else, and be happy, find a job that pays well. Easy!

    5. Do Something You’re Not Good At.

    It’s easy to be mediocre at a wide range of jobs. To be a master takes years, sometimes a lifetime.

    Solution: You _know_ you’ve got a knack for _something_. If it’s something you like, which can pay well, _and which you’re good at_, consider doing _it_ rather than fuming in your cubicle. At the very least you’ll enjoy the ride!

    If you’re not sure, find a fat list of job titles somewhere and skim through it: who knew that jobs like chicken-sexer or house-sitter existed?

  • Dec 17

    Membership web sites are great ways to make residual income. Selling information via password protected web sites is a big business, and it has a low barrier to entry, and minimal operating costs. Unfortunately, you aren’t the first, or even the thousandth person to realize this. What do you do?

    While it’s a hot business model, not every membership site will pull people in, and even the ones that do, some don’t make a lot of money. There have been far more failures than success stories with membership sites, though part of that is simply keeping track of expectations. The single most common site crippling and business killing factor though, will surprise you. It’s something so elementary that you’ll smack your forehead and wonder why people make this mistake, repeatedly.

    It’s failing to do the market research to ensure profitability.

    It’s not rocket science. You need to sell what people are already inclined to buy. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Don’t do this for art’s sake it’s commerce.

    Identify your target market. Sell them what they’re already buying (and thus, already want). Listen to what else they want and expend your range of products and services to meet their demand.

    Admittedly, this was an amazing sea change in product launches back in the 1970s, but it’s going on 40 years since the concept of market research to tune a product launch hit big business and trickled down to ubiquity. And yet, time and time again, internet squeeze sites keep selling what the owner thinks will sell, not what the market has told him will sell.

    The usual excuse is “Well, what am I offering that they can’t get elsewhere, buying those products individually?”

    Knowing what people are already buying, you have the MUCH easier task of packaging those information products and bundling them together into one location; your time spent packaging and sorting is worth their money. Your willingness to be “eyes ahead” to look for new products in that niche is time they don’t have to spend, and in this day and age, time is more precious than money. This applies if you’re selling informational goods, physical goods, subscriptions to newsletters, or services. You have to package what people want so they’ll buy them from you, not your competitors, and all you have to do is convince them that you add enough value by saving their time to be worth your monthly membership fee.

    Now, differentiation from the competition does take work; look into alternate formats like audio, video and ebooks. Give your consumers choices about how they get their information and how they use it. Offering audio and video formats pays for itself rapidly in increased memberships.

    Next, keep it fresh. Always be on the lookout for something new, something fresh. Focus on giving new, enticing offers to keep those membership fees coming in. And don’t get complacent. We’ve seen well done membership sites; ones with good site design, great keyword placements, loaded with products people wanted to buy, easy to use, and customers signing up in drovesand all worthless three months later, because the site owner didn’t capitalize on the momentum, and run to keep ahead of his customers.

    Your typical customer will buy things every four to six weeks; make sure you have something new for them to buy every two weeks or so. Basic rule of shopkeeping; always turn the products on the shelves, or in your case, the product on the web site.

    Lastly, solicit feedback from your customers. Work with them. Listen to what they have to say, and adjust course based on it. It’s their money, they’re just telling you why they want to give it to you. Do this every week or every month, and your paychecks will grow nicely.