Making Money Online From Blogging

There's an exciting array of opportunities opening up for bloggers for earning an income from or through their blogging. Bloggers looking to earn an income from blogging should spread their interests across multiple revenue streams. This is becoming increasingly much easier to do and the past year has witnessed many options opening up.

A Few Examples Of Income Generators for Bloggers:

Advertising Programs - such as Google's Adsense, and many more.

Sponsorship - Some businesses are realizing the advantage of advertising directly on blogs. Some companies also pay bloggers to write on certain topics on a post-by-post basis.

Affiliate Programs - such as Amazon, Commission Junction etc. There are also hundred of others from the large to the very small.

Business Blog Writing - Many competitive businesses today have started blogs. Some have internal staff take on blogging duties, but many hire bloggers to run their blogs.

Non Blogging Writing Avenues - Bloggers are even being approached for writing in newspapers, magazines, books, and other non-blog websites.

Merchandising - an increasing number of bloggers are making a bit extra by selling branded products through programs like Cafepress, etc. Read more...

Dressing for success is important

If you’re a professional in today’s world (yes, that includes bloggers!), when you go out or meet others, you’ve got to look the part too. That is, dress for success. As for myself, I like dressing smart but casually, and one item that’s a must for the wardrobe (can either make or break your attire) is a good pair of shoes. This is why Del Toro Shoes are a must-have. These beauties are hand crafted in Alicante, Spain using only the finest velvet and leather. What they’ve essentially done is taken the traditional Prince Albert house slipper and modernized it (it’s basically a velvet loafer). So, these are great when you want to look casual but smart – and jeans are a perfect accompaniment to the Del Toro "Classic". An every day shoe, you can wear it to work and scuff up. No need to worry about roughing them up -- they only look better with age. The guys who made these have been pouring their hearts in to these shoes for three years, so slip your feet into them and try for yourself. You’ll find them online at their website www.DelToroShoes.com Read more...

How to add a contact form to your website/blog

A common question people ask is how to put a contact form on one's blog/website.

There are several good options out there. One is Wufoo.com , in which you can create different kinds of online forms like mailing lists and subscriptions, job applications, etc. The disadvantage with Wufoo, however, is that you have to login to your admin dashboard to read the messages coming from your contact form. So, what if you forget to check your dashboard, right?

Another alternative is MyContactForm.com . A good point about it is that you can send the e-mail directly to a predefined address. However, they put a limit on submissions to 20 per month. So if you tend to get more feedbacks than this number, this is obviously not a good choice, unless of course you pay for a premium upgrade to get more features.

Response-o-matic.com is also good although, in the free version, you are permitted to create only one form. It has spam protection (with CAPTCHA enabled), plus you can specify the way it will treat the e-mail sent. Another plus point is that it allows you to receive a copy of the message directly to your e-mail.

One of my favorites is EmailMeForm.com. This one lets you receive the e-mail directly to the predefined e-mail address also. Moreover, it has CAPTCHA anti-spam protection, and no limit on the number of submissions per month.

You can find other great web/html forms with great features if you do a search. Do also let me know about any good ones you come across. Read more...

Be smart - get your own domain

If you're REALLY serious about making money online by blogging, then take some precious advice from me and get yourself your OWN domain (for example, a .com, .net, etc. and not a free-hosted one) from the get-go.

I'm planning to switch this particular blog over to a .com sometime soon also, and am checking out some options. Will of course let you guys know when I do. Till then, keep coming back here for more free advice! Read more...

Save holiday shopping money by using a Black Friday site

If you're like me, then while shopping, you hate standing in long lines just to get a chance to grab the discounts. But, during times like Christmas, there's no doubt that you could really use those discounts.

Well, this last Christmas I got smart and decided to save my hard-earned money when shopping for Christmas, by buying items during Black Friday, which is the day after Thanksgiving.

But, you will think, I probably had to stand in long lines to grab the discounts, right? NOPE! I actually did it all online, without even leaving my house, with the help of Black Friday Ads.

This site let people purchase Black Friday items online without the hassle of having to stand in line at the store at 5am. It also offers email alerts that let you know when new black friday ads have been posted.

There are deals galore in stores like Toys ‘R’ Us, Radio Shack, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Macy’s, Sears, Circuit City, Office Depot, etc. etc. Just look around for your favourite merchant and you’ll probably find it. If not, you’ll surely find some other store that's relevant to your shopping needs.

This is definitely a consumer friendly site that was useful for me for planning my holiday shopping last year. And, no doubt, I’ll be using it again this year for Black Friday as well! Read more...

PayPerPost - a great income opportunity!

Payperpost is an incredible new self-service marketplace that pays you to blog about different websites, products, and services.

How does it work? Well, all you need is your own blog (either on a free or paid domain site). Then sign up at Pay Per Post. The old rule was that your blog had to be online for a minimum of 90 days and have at least 20 posts, but they have just recently changed their terms and NOW your blog only has to be a minimum of 30 days old and contain only 10 posts.

Once your blog is approved (mine took only a couple of days!), you search through the list of Opportunities available to you. An opportunity is a summary of the advertiser’s requirements for your review - it includes the word count, links required, information about the company and/or product, and the payment amount for the approved blog entry. Then you make a blog posting according to advertiser's requirements, get your content approved, and get paid. It's that simple!

What I love best about PayPerPost is the fact that you can earn money online, at your own pace, and that too from the comfort of your own home. So it's another way to work from home that's also fun. And that's exactly why I signed up when I read about Payperpost online.

Read more...

Earning through Clickbank

Earning money online does not necessarily require any initial investment. In fact, it's possible for people of all levels to earn income online almost immediately and at NO COST (apart from investing their time, of course). Here's one such path you can take:

• Sign up for free at clickbank. From there, you can start promoting products fast. Choose a product that you would like to promote that pays well.
• Get a domain name (web site) related to this product. Once you get your domain name and a host, you have to redirect it to the product that you are promoting with clickbank.
• Now, you need to get people to visit your domain and buy the product from you so that you can earn a commission. The best technique to accomplish this is to begin an adword campaign with Google and SUBMIT ARTICLES. That is, write articles related to the product you are promoting, and submit as many as you can all across the internet on various sites. This will generate lots of traffic for you.
• Also, register with forums to chat with like-minded people, and leave your web site URL in your signature.

Then, watch the money roll in from clickbank. Read more...

More advertising programs

In my last post, I talked about BidVertiser being an alternative to Google's Adsense. But in addition to BidVertiser, a whole host of other options exist for those bloggers wishing to monetize their blogs. Here's a list of options that many people are using successfully:

Chitika’s eMiniMalls
WidgetBucks
Text Link Ads
Azoogle Ads
Intelli Txt
DoubleClick
Tribal Fusion
Adbrite
Clicksor
AdHearUs
Kanoodle
Pheedo
TextAds
Fastclick
Value Click
MSN Adcenter
YPN
BlogAds

...to name a few. Read more...

BidVertiser: an alternative way to monetize your website

You are most probably already aware of Google's Adsense program to monetize and earn money from your website or blog. However, there are alternative programs you can use, one of them being BidVertiser.

The BidVertiser Publishers Program is an alternate way for you as a publisher to display unobtrusive text ads on your website and make money from your website or blog. The program is free and BidVertiser pays you for valid clicks on the ads on your site. You simply paste an HTML code into your web pages and ads will instantly start appearing. Advertisers will bid against each other for your ad space.

BidVertiser will always display the highest bidders on your site, assuring the maximum revenue possible at any given time. You will see a constant improvement in your bidding over time, as both your visitors and their advertisers will be exposed to the opportunity of bidding against each other on your ad space.

You get paid for every visitor that clicks on an ad. Thus, you get to make as much as possible from your advertising space, by letting advertisers bid on your ad space. BidVertiser pays monthly, either by check, or instantly through PayPal with a minimum of $10.

To get started, all you have to do is to complete and submit the Publishers Program sign-up form. Read more...

Earning through advertisements

Whenever you come online, you must be seeing advertisements plastered all over the Web. Both big and small companies pay for ads and sponsored links to their websites from search engines and other websites. Ads vary a lot, depending on the website and its target audience. What is the factor that determines which sites attract advertisers? Sites whose target audience matches that of the advertiser's customer base. For example, if your company sells software solutions to businesses, you want executives who make purchasing decisions in that area to view your ad/message. So, if your site can influence the advertiser's customers, you become a prime candidate for selling "eyeballs" to an advertiser. And, the more targeted your audience is, the higher rate you can command. In case you don't have such a target audience yet and/or are just starting out, an easy way for you to make money from advertisements on your site is through Google's Adsense program. By placing Google ads on your site, you can earn revenue each time a visitor clicks on an ad. Although the amount per click is small, all those clicks add up quickly. Read more...

Become a virtual assistant

Most small businesses and freelancers require help in running their businesses. However, they would not be inclined to hire a secretary to come sit in the family room and answer phone calls. This is where a virtual assistant comes into the picture. Virtual assistants can do anything from making hotel reservations to paying bills to handling expense reimbursements to arranging for a baby sitter. As a virtual assistant, you can do it all from your own home office, interacting with your clients online and by phone. Payments range from around $20 and up an hour, depending upon your expertise and experience. Read more...

Metacafe: a way to make money online

Meta Cafe is a good site that permits you to share videos and also pays you for it. The payment structure is $5 per every 1000 views your video gets. If you are already a visitor of You Tube or any other video sharing sites, you would be aware that 1000 views is easily obtainable. So receiving good payments from Meta cafe is not out of your reach.

A plus point about Meta Cafe is that they pay you for the "non-exclusive" rights to your videos, which means that, apart from publishing the video on their site, you can publish that same video on Associated Content, Spymac, You Tube, My Space, or anywhere else you wish to. You just need to follow their basic rules, in terms of your video being your own original work, it not being pornographic or containing other adult material (e.g., excessive profanity, violence, etc.). Also, it must maintain a rating of 3.0 from the community.

The minimum payout level is $100 (which translates into 20,000 views). However, the rating system which Metacafe uses plays a big part in how many views your video receives. For example, 4 and 5 point ratings can quickly move your video to the homepage of the website, and then you can watch the money role in. Meta Cafe gets 100,000 unique hits per day, so it's easy to imagine how many times your video will be viewed after one day on the homepage. Even if your video doesn't make it to the homepage, using the embedded code you get to post that video on your My Space page, in bulletins and comments, or in emails will get you a lot of views fast, especially if you have a big network of online friends. Read more...