The 10-Step-Plan: How to Make Money Online

The Internet is filled with thousands of blogs that teach tips for making money online — unfortunately, very few give you a detailed tutorial for how to build your own website that will contually earn an income indefinately. That’s what this page is for.

This is the exact plan I use when making a website.

This is literally what I have in a word document on my desktop to remind me to keep to the plan. It’s extremely systematic, and it works. I’ve used it to dominate topics like “financial planning”, “financial advice” and “savings accounts”. I can personally vouch for this plan because, well, it’s my plan that I use.

Several readers told me they’ve made this article their home-page until they get the first 6 steps accomplished. This continually reminds them to make sure they actually build their website — rather than wish they had 12 months from now. If you think this tactic would encourage you as well, feel free to do so!

Steps 1-6: Getting Started

The first six steps only need to be done once. This means after you get the first six steps finished, you can simply work on the website whenever you feel like it, and you’ll be making money online.

1. Get a Domain and Host. You can get both for less than $5 per month. Remember, you’re starting a complete business for that money. Treat it as a business, and you’ll suddenly see why I constantly urge friends and family to build a website.

2. Get a usable website design. You can install Wordpress with one click if you get your hosting through Blue Host or Just Host. It’s a free program that lets you manage everything on your website, including free web designs. You can even use this website’s design for free.

3. Plan out 50 articles. Whatever topic you choose your website to be about, plan out the 50 pages of your website. Go get a pen and notebook if it helps you. Just plan out the 50 articles. You won’t need more than 50. Please make sure to read this article — it’s one of the pillars of the 10-step plan.

4. Write the articles or outsource. Write the articles yourself or outsource the writing to a freelancer or a firm. I do a mixture of both. I write about what I find interesting, and have someone else write what I find to be boring. Regardless of your budget, you can find someone to write your content over at Text Brokers.

5. Place ads and affiliate programs. Don’t do this until you have all 50 articles written and placed on your website — it can be distracting if your content isn’t finished. Check out programs like Adsense, Commission Junction, Click Bank, and others. Mix and match until your website looks professional with both advertisements and relevant affiliate programs.

6. Set up a newsletter. A newsletter is a cool way of having a method for contacting people who have been to your website and trust you. You can use GetResponse — one of the most famous services. This insures that you’ll always have thousands of people on-hand if you want to sell products or remind them of your website.

Steps 6-10: Marketing and Earning

The first six steps are about getting set up. Unfortunately, very few people actually get past the first six steps. It’s extremely easy to get distracted with adding advertisements and reading about cool tools that will “make money” for you on “autopilot”.

Do yourself a favor: ignore everything except accomplishing the first six steps until you get them done. Don’t go out of order. Just concentrate and accomplish your goals. Trust me, you’ll save months — if not years.

Once you get the first six steps accomplished (and not before), start with the rest. The next four are about increasing traffic through your website.

7. Write articles for article directories. Article directories are a fantastic, cheap and easy way to build links and awareness. Websites like Buzzle.com and EzineArticles.com let you publish an article with a link back to your website. Just talk about your niche and tell people that there’s more where the article came from — you’ll build traffic.

8. Trade links with other webmasters. This works best if you have other websites to bargain with (for example, I’ll link to your site from my B site if you’ll link to my A site). This let’s you build relevant one-way links to your website, which are important to most search engines. A few months of this and you’ll get significant search-engine traffic.

9. Submit articles to blog carnivals. One of the coolest and most important websites for a webmaster is BlogCarnival.com. It lets you add your best articles to a “carnival”. A carnival is basically where some webmaster volunteers to link to all the articles that were submitted about a specific topic, like financial planning, knitting or NASCAR. You get free links, and curious people will click on your articles to read. Double win.

10. Write guest posts. This is one of the most important strategies for building traffic. Go to the most popular websites/blogs in your niche and offer to write for them. They’ll give you the credit, which can give you relevant links and hundreds (if not thousands) of visitors. This is the most important method I’ve used to generate traffic.

A Quick Warning

When it comes to building an online business, thousands of “internet marketers” want to sell you tutorials, ebooks, courses and other stuff that you just don’t need. Most “make money online” and “make money blogging” blogs are complete wastes of time. The constant barrage of “tips” are rarely worth the time to read every day.

Success, as we discussed in the 80-20 article, is almost always about the basics. Use the principles in this post one right after another, and you’ll have a full-time income.

Update: Several people have asked how long this process takes. The answer is: it depends on how much time you’re willing to spend.

I don’t work more than 1-2 actual hours per day, and haven’t needed to yet. I made it to the first page of Google for “financial planning” on the week of my website’s 6-month anniversary

It’s best if you don’t think about time, and instead think about the steps. Start with step one, actually get a domain and host, and then work on the next five. Stick to the system and the income will follow.

learnfinancialplanning.com

5 Ways To Improve Your Search Engine Optimization At Minimal Cost

Search engine optimization (SEO) does not need to cost you anything. If you have time and patience, you can optimize your web site for search engines at minimal cost. This article outlines some of the key SEO ways you can use that do not cost you anything.

1. Write and submit a lot of articles. Articles are very powerful in building links to your website. All the articles you write are saved and archived in article directories, creating many links to your website. The more articles you write the better because as your articles are published by other websites, your website URL in the author’s box will be on many websites. Writing articles need not cost you anything since you can write your own articles and then submit them to many article directories.

2. Create a web page on your website where you post your own articles. If you add new content on your website regularly, search engines will index your website, and your website ranking on these search engines will also increase. Make sure that you use your keywords and phrases in your web content as well as your articles.

3. Have your own blog and blog regularly using your keywords and phrases. You can simply sign up for own blog and start to blog right way. Have a link to your website on your blog. Blogging and adding fresh content will make search engines crawl your blog. This process does not cost you anything. All you need is time to blog.

4. Have a link building strategy that will help you build many links to other related websites. This does not cost you anything. All you need to do is to contact webmasters you want to exchange links with. You can create one way links by articles submissions and forum participation among others.

5. Be patient and follow these SEO steps consistently. Your website will not rank high on search engines overnight. You will need to consistently work hard at writing articles, blogging and exchanging links so that you can see an increase in your website popularity rank. Patience is the most important trait you will need if you want to succeed in SEO for your website.

Follow these tips and increase your website popularity and rank on search engines. The easier your website is to find on search engines, the more traffic you get.

internet-marketing-canada.com

7 Good Twitter Monetization Strategies (and 7 That Suck)

I've been getting into Twitter (under my usual moniker - randfish) more and more over time (despite only following a few friends and family), and lately, its been weighing on me that the service, despite its brilliance, rapid adoption and passionate fanbase, isn't yet pursuing revenue. That's OK - I think they probably have lots of very smart, talented, experience people thinking about the problem and taking action to prepare for it. However, I thought it might be fun to brainstorm some concepts publicly and recruit the smart SEO crowd to pitch in.

First off, here are the ideas I'd toss - I don't think they make good sense. Thumbs down to:

1. Third-Party Contextual Advertising - Google AdSense or YPN just don't excite me, and I think they'd undermonetize and be limited to only those folks who use Twitter on the web (and not through third party apps or mobile).


2. Broadcast Tweet Ads - Sending users a random ad tweet every 5, 10 or even 50 tweets isn't exciting and it's not targeted the way Twitter should be. Twitter knows something about everyone; leverage that if you're going to message your users.


3. Display Ads - For the same reasons as contextual advertising


4. Third Party Aps & APIs - I love that it's free now, and I think Twitter will be far more valuable by remaining completely free to users and open to developers.


5. Pay for Corporate Accounts - Can't prove you're a real person? Twitter charges for your corporate/brand account. It's an easy one (even if people set up lots of sock puppets to get around it, Twitter's sales/spam team can go find the valuable accounts), but it doesn't have the targeting value or the potential that some of the others do.


6. Pay for Followers - Twitter fans are going to get angry quickly if you auto-sign them up to follow a brand or person they don't know. I'd stay far away from this one.


7. Pay for Followed Links - Something tells me Google would be pretty quick to penalize Twitter and they probably don't want to make enemies with the search giant just yet. :-)

And here's some ideas I really like:

1. Keyword Purchases - Every time someone Tweets the word "SEOmoz," I, as an advertiser, want two things. First, I want those users recorded so I can message to them in the future and second, I want the word to automatically become a link pointing to the page of my choosing (probably a Twitter-specific landing page for PRO in our case).











2. Search Ads on Twitter Search - As Twitter search becomes more popular (and it will, not just for obsessed Twitterers, brand managers and reputation analysts, but for regular users and marketers and researchers, too), placing relevant ads in those searches becomes valuable. Better yet, you can combine Twitter searches with tweet history, so I could, for example, only show my ad to Twitter users who search for "SEO" and have previously twittered (or received twitters from those they follow) with my brand name.


3. Charging for Power Accounts - Your first 1,000 followers are free. After that, no one can follow you until you pay $50 a year (or some nominal, but affordable number). When you get to 5,000 or 10,000, the price goes up.


4. Subscribe Invitations from Advertisers - When I log into Twitter or reach my account page on the site, an overlay could indicate that some users have invited me to follow them. Those "invitations" could have 140 characters to say something clever and enticing enough to attract me and Twitter could target them based on my followers, followees and tweet history. There's a lot of targeting options for a brand manager seeking new followers.


5. Targeted Tweet Ads Based on Tweet History - Unlike the broadcast ad concept I didn't like above, these would rely on user history and profile to make them effective. If I've tweeted a combination of words a number of times or follow people who have, I'm an ideal candidate to receive a sponsored tweet every 20 or 50.


6. Opt-In Geo-Tweet Ads - You Tweet a location and advertisers can Tweet back (and appear in your mobile updates) with messaging. It's a pretty solid concept, although I worry that opt-in adoption rates would be low unless the advertiser quality controls were extremely high.


7. Pay to Opt Out of Ads - Don't want to receive Tweet ads or sponsored tweets (and maybe get some extra member features like a more robust timeline and maybe greater visibility or listing in some sort of Twitter user directory)? Pay $3 or $6 or $9 a month. It's a great extra revenue stream for those who'd (inevitably) complain about the ads.

Your turn - any good ideas for how Twitter should monetize? Any guesses as to which they'll adopt and when?

p.s. I recognize that many folks around the web have probably already voiced these ideas, and I've glanced at a few headlines on the topic, but thought I'd come at it independently without reading anything else first. If this were my job, I'd approach it much more systematically.

www.seomoz.org

5 Ways To Improve Your Search Engine Optimization At Minimal Cost

Search engine optimization (SEO) does not need to cost you anything. If you have time and patience, you can optimize your web site for search engines at minimal cost. This article outlines some of the key SEO ways you can use that do not cost you anything.
1. Write and submit a lot of articles. Articles are very powerful in building links to your website. All the articles you write are saved and archived in article directories, creating many links to your website. The more articles you write the better because as your articles are published by other websites, your website URL in the author’s box will be on many websites. Writing articles need not cost you anything since you can write your own articles and then submit them to many article directories.






2. Create a web page on your website where you post your own articles. If you add new content on your website regularly, search engines will index your website, and your website ranking on these search engines will also increase. Make sure that you use your keywords and phrases in your web content as well as your articles.
3. Have your own blog and blog regularly using your keywords and phrases. You can simply sign up for own blog and start to blog right way. Have a link to your website on your blog. Blogging and adding fresh content will make search engines crawl your blog. This process does not cost you anything. All you need is time to blog.
4. Have a link building strategy that will help you build many links to other related websites. This does not cost you anything. All you need to do is to contact webmasters you want to exchange links with. You can create one way links by articles submissions and forum participation among others.
5. Be patient and follow these SEO steps consistently. Your website will not rank high on search engines overnight. You will need to consistently work hard at writing articles, blogging and exchanging links so that you can see an increase in your website popularity rank. Patience is the most important trait you will need if you want to succeed in SEO for your website.
Follow these tips and increase your website popularity and rank on search engines. The easier your website is to find on search engines, the more traffic you get.

internet-marketing-canada.com

5 Ways To Improve Your Adsense Earnings

If webmasters want to monetize their websites, the great way to do it is through Adsense. There are lots of webmasters struggling hard to earn some good money a day through their sites. But then some of the “geniuses” of them are enjoying hundreds of dollars a day from Adsense ads on their websites. What makes these webmasters different from the other kind is that they are different and they think out of the box.

The ones who have been there and done it have quite some useful tips to help those who would want to venture into this field. Some of these tips have boosted quite a lot of earnings in the past and is continuously doing so.

Here are some 5 proven ways on how best to improve your Adsense earnings.

1. Concentrating on one format of Adsense ad. The one format that worked well for the majority is the Large Rectangle (336X280). This same format have the tendency to result in higher CTR, or the click-through rates. Why choose this format out of the many you can use? Basically because the ads will look like normal web links, and people, being used to clicking on them, click these types of links. They may or may not know they are clicking on your Adsense but as long as there are clicks, then it will all be for your advantage.

2. Create a custom palette for your ads. Choose a color that will go well with the background of your site. If your site has a white background, try to use white as the color of your ad border and background. The idea to patterning the colors is to make the Adsense look like it is part of the web pages. Again, This will result to more clicks from people visiting your site.

3. Remove the Adsense from the bottom pages of your site and put them at the top. Do not try to hide your Adsense. Put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between Adsense locations can make when you see your earnings.

4. Maintain links to relevant websites. If you think some sites are better off than the others, put your ads there and try to maintaining and managing them. If there is already lots of Adsense put into that certain site, put yours on top of all of them. That way visitor will see your ads first upon browsing into that site.

5. Try to automate the insertion of your Adsense code into the webpages using SSI (or server side included). Ask your web administrator if your server supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just save your Adsense code in a text file, save it as “adsense text”, and upload it to the root directory of the web server. Then using SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a time saver especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages on their website.

These are some of the tips that have worked well for some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites. It is important to know though that ads are displayed because it fits the interest of the people viewing them. So focusing on a specific topic should be your primary purpose because the displays will be especially targeted on a topic that persons will be viewing already.

Note also that there are many other Adsense sharing the same topic as you. It is best to think of making a good ad that will be somewhat different and unique than the ones already done. Every clickthrough that visitors make is a point for you so make every click count by making your Adsense something that people will definitely click on.

Tips given by those who have boosted their earnings are just guidelines they want to share with others. If they have somehow worked wonders to some, maybe it can work wonders for you too. Try them out into your ads and see the result it will bring.

If others have done it, there is nothing wrong trying it out for yourself.

internet-marketing-canada.com

Using Other Peoples Info To Increase Your Adsense Cash

Adsense is really making a huge impact on the affiliate marketing industry nowadays. Because of this, weak affiliate merchants have the tendency to die faster than ever and ad networks will be going to lose their customers quickly. If you are in a losing rather than winning in the affiliate program you are currently into, maybe it is about time to consider going into the Adsense marketing and start earning some real cash.

Google is readily providing well written and highly relevant ads that are closely chosen to match the content on your pages. You do not have to look for them yourselves as the search engine will be the doing the searching for you from other people’s source.

You do not have to spend time in choosing different kind of ads for different pages. And no codes to mess around for different affiliate programs.

You will be able to concentrate on providing good and quality content, as the search engines will be the ones finding the best ads in which to put your pages on.

You are still allowed to add Adsense ads even if you already have affiliate links on your site. It is prohibited, however, to imitate the look and feel of the Google ads for your affiliate links.

You can filter up to 200 URLs. That gives you a chance to block ads for the sites that do not meet your guidelines. You can also block competitors. Though it is unavoidable that Adsense may be competing for some space on web sites that all other revenues are sharing.

Owners of small sites are allowed to plug a bit of a code into their sites and instantly have relevant text ads that appeal to your visitors appear instantly into your pages. If you own many sites, you only need to apply once. It makes up for having to apply to many affiliate programs.

The only way to know how much you are already earning is to try and see. If you want out, all you have to do is remove the code from your site.

The payment rates can vary extremely. The payment you will be receiving per click depends on how much advertisers are paying per click to advertise with the use of the AdWords. Advertisers can pay as little as 5 cents and as high as $10-12, sometimes even more than that too. You are earning a share of that money generated.

If your results remain stagnant, it can help if you try and build simple and uncluttered pages so that the ads can catch the visitor’s eyes more. It sometimes pay to differ from the usual things that people are doing already. It is also a refreshing sight for your visitor once they see something different for a change.

Publishers also have the option of choosing to have their ads displayed only on a certain site or sites. It is also allowed to have them displayed on a large network of sites. The choice would be depending on what you think will work best for your advantage.

To get an idea if some Adsense ads you see on the search engines has your pages, try to find web pages that have similar material to the content you are planning to create and look up their Adsense ads.

It is important to note that you cannot choose certain topics only. If you do this, search engines will not place Adsense ads on your site and you will be missing out a great opportunity in making hundreds and even thousands of dollars cash.

It is still wise to look at other people’s information and format your Adsense there. Just think about it as doing yourself a favor by not having to work too hard to know what content to have.

Topic to be avoided includes gambling, firearms, ammunition, tobacco or drugs. If you are being offered more cash in exchange of doing Adsense with these kinds, it is just like signing your own termination paper.

With all the information that people need in your hands already, all you have to do is turn them as your profits. It all boils down to a gain and gain situation both for the content site owners and the webmasters or publishers.

Make other people’s matter your own and starting earning some extra cash.

internet-marketing-canada.com

10 Easy tips to make money off your website

This article is intended to teach you step by step how to get started and more importantly, make money from your website. We will teach you how to start a home based website business. Please leave us comments, questions, or success stories so that we can improve this guide. This guide is part of our make money online article series. More related articles can be found at the lower part of this page.

Hundreds of thousands of webmasters across the world make money with their websites. Why not you? Here are 10 easy tips that you can use on your website to make it profitable.

· Google AdSense - Make money selling advertising space. While banner ads are not worth your time for the most part, Google AdSense is. Many web site owners make a comfortable living off of AdSense profit alone.

· Affiliate Marketing - Make money referring your website traffic to other web sites. Don’t have a product? That is 100% O. K. Just add someone else product to your site by joining an affiliate program and forget about it. If you have related content (free information) you will see a slow trickle of income from your affiliate links.

· Write an eBook - Sell your own idea or product. I know it sounds like a day dream, but people do this all the time. In fact, it is the most common method that people use to make money. Write an eBook, offer consultations, or make something people will use. In this category, you are only limited by your imagination.

· Create an online directory - Sell text links. Add a directory area to your site and offer to place links to other web sites for a small fee.

· Become a Paid Blogger. Offer to blog for companies. Blogging is fast becoming an important link building strategy for online companies. There are hundreds of small businesses that could benefit from a professional blog but, do not have the resources to hire a full time employee. You have a website, put it to use!

· Open your own eBay store. Buy low, sell high. There is no easier place to sell than online with your own eBay store. You can concentrate on a particular type of product like coins and antiques or you can sell a wide variety.

· Host an online competition. Offer prizes for the first, second and third place winners. Your competition can be on almost anything. Think of a way to offer a competition, create a small entry fee and you are set!

· Create a members only area. You can create a members only site about anything from Fan Clubs, Online Newsletters, Courses and Training, Stock Trading Tips, Dating Sites, Personal Advice, Horoscopes, Family Trees, and so on. Again, your only limitation is your imagination. If you have a site already up and running, offer something in your paid member’s area that they cannot easily get for free.

· Begin a paid advice service. Free information is great and will draw readers to your site. Once there, help the reader out with some basic information. Save the real “meat” for those that are willing to pay a small fee.

· Sell your site. Why drag on a project for years when you can get in, get out and turn a quick (albeit smaller) profit? Create your site, get it listed in the search engines, make sure you get a few dollars a week in online advertising and sell your site for a few thousand dollars.

Again, these are just a few of the ways you can make money from your website. For more information about making money at home click here.

successwithauctions.com