The Best Way to Make Money Online

The Blogger Lounge asks a great question: Blogs vs. Websites, What’s the Best Option to Make Money? Well, in my opinion, it all depends on what type of business you have. I have both blogs and static websites and make money both ways. If you are selling products, you may want to sell via a static website versus a blog. Blogs are still fairly new to the ecommerce world and there are still people who don’t know how to navigate a blog. You may lose customers because they have a hard time finding an item on your site. However, it does take time to build a website, so it may be awhile before you actually start making money. On the other hand, a blog is fairly easy to set up and most likely you will adding content every day which keeps it fresh. What I’ve learned from my own experience as a blogger is that Google ranks a website higher because of its “freshness”. This could lead to more traffic and more money. Blogs are good if you’re in the business of providing information to people. I believe the best way to make money online is to have both a blog and a regular website for your business. You’ll have the best of both worlds and create multiple streams of internet income. That’s what we want, right?

3 Ways to Stay Motivated With Your Online Business

Once in awhile we get stuck in a rut when it comes to managing our online business. We do the same thing every day (roll out of bed and hop on the computer) and our contact with humans is minimal at best. We visit the same forums, read the same blogs, and still do the same types of marketing. Not that these are bad things, it’s just that there comes a time when you feel unmotivated and need a fresh new perspective on work and life. So, how does an online business owner stay motivated? Here are a few things I like to do... 1. Get out of the house and enjoy life! Remember when you said you wanted to have an online business to have more freedom and spend more time with family? Well, why aren’t you doing it? 2. Read a very inspiring book. Roam through the business section of the bookstore and discover a book that calls out your name. Stories about people who went from “nothing” to something are always great. 3. Find other online business owners in your area and start a networking group. Or you could simply get together for coffee and bounce ideas off one another. Sometimes it’s nice to connect with people offline instead of emailing each other back and forth! What do you do to stay motivated?

Tips On Getting More Website Traffic

If there’s one thing that every website owner or blogger needs, it’s traffic. The more the better, right? Website traffic is the blood life of any online business and Maximizing Revenue Tips has a post titled 10 Ways to Get Your Site Packed With Visitors! One thing I’m working on is participating in blog carnivals and adding social bookmarking buttons in my sidebar. As for my static websites, I haven’t been doing much and I realize that I should be updating them with new content at least twice a week. That’s not a hard and fast rule, but from my experience I’ve found that when I update a static website, I tend to get more traffic the next day. What are you doing today to get more traffic to your blog or website? Have any tips to share? Related Post: Website Traffic For Free Revisited

John Chow, AGLOCO, and Some Link Love

If you’ve been playing the online marketing game for quite some time, I’m sure you’ve come across John Chow’s name quite a few times. If you really want to make money online, then he’s one of the guys to learn from. I’ve been reading his blog on and off for the past few months and I feel inspired and motivated after reading his blog. Heck, if he can make thousands of dollars a month online, why can’t I? If he can get 7,000 AGLOCO sign-ups - I can too! By the way, I finally joined AGLOCO tonight. I mean, it’s a no-brainer for me. If I can make $5-$15 a month just for surfing the net, why not? And that’s just if I sign up and have no referrals. Now, imagine if I referred ten people and they referred ten people, etc. etc. Sign up for AGLOCO now and get in with a company that has visions of being as big YouTube! The best part about it is that it’s free to sign up and you make money. Nothing to lose and possibly thousands to gain...Yup, a no brainer. Anyhow, so back to John Chow and the link love I was talking about in the title of this post. Well, if you review John Chow's blog, he will link to your blog using any anchor text you want. If you’re a beginner and want to know what the big deal is with regards to links, check out John’s article, How Much Is A Link Worth?

Free Tools For Your Online Business

My boyfriend looked at my desktop the other day and noted how many icons I have. Yeah, I have quite alot on my computer, but I spend so much time on it and do so many things - I need them! If you’re an online business owner like me, you come across all these tools to make “work” much easier. (I don’t like to call it work because I love what I do!) I came across this website that has all this free software that you can use including Google Picasa for photo editing, Adobe Reader, Skype (which I use and highly recommend to make long distance calls), free Norton Antivirus, and much more. Practically everything an online business owner needs is here - well, except a virtual assistant ;) **Sponsored Post

How To Manage Your Blogging Business

Blogging has become a viable source of income for many people around the world. But like any online business, it takes work - sometimes alot of work. I didn’t even realize how many blogs I had until a friend pointed it out to me, but I’ve been so busy reading and writing that I really haven’t even stopped to look at the bigger picture and simply enjoy the moment. I’m finally here! Finally doing something that I love, helping people, and making money in the process. So, how do I do it? How do I manage all these blogs and still stay sane? Easton Ellsworth wants to know my secrets and now I’m here to share. They’re really not “secrets“, per se. Here are my tips.... Treat blogging as a business What I mean by this is that I have a blogging schedule that I adhere to. Every day before I start typing away, I sit down and make out my “To Do” list for the day - like any manager or business owner would do. I make every effort to stay focused on my “To Do” list. Don’t read email before noon I believe there’s a book out there with this same title, but I can’t seem to find it on Amazon. When you read email first thing in the morning, you tend to get distracted by things that are not a priority - although you may think it’s a priority. The first thing I do is start blogging away while my mind is fresh and uncluttered. I don’t know about you, but I feel overwhelmed when I see 100+ emails vying for my attention first thing in the morning! Christine Kane has a great article which offers her reasons why you shouldn't check email before noon. Get Help I write practically all of my own content on my blogs because I like to stay connected to my readers, however, I have two blogs that have another contributor. Once in a blue moon I’ll find an article over at EzineArticles.com that I find very interesting and I’ll republish it on my blog - but again, it’s very rare that I do that. Take Breaks You may think that this is a weird “tip”, but when you sit in front of a computer all day every day, it can sometimes take a toll on your body - mainly your eyes, back and wrists - and can actually be counterproductive. I take lots of breaks during the day and usually come back to the computer filled with energy and refreshed with new ideas to write about. I actually get more work done when I take more breaks! Well, these tips aren’t actually “ground breaking”, but hopefully you’ll find something here that will help you with your blogging business. If you have a tip to share, please leave a comment! Also, I should note that I don’t have any kids, so I have plenty of time to blog!!

How To Make Money From Blogging Part 5: Pay Per Post

Well, we’ve reached the last installment of the How To Make Money From Blogging series here at Online Business Resources. First I’d like to apologize for not posting yesterday. Somehow I got caught up making jewelry - besides I was feeling a little blogger burnout. It happens sometimes! So far I’ve covered all the ways I’ve made money with my blogs. I’m sure there are many other ways to make money with a blog and do feel free to leave a comment to share your experiences and tips! Today I will talk about a fairly new way to make money - at least it’s pretty new to me. Well, companies are now starting to notice the benefits of blog marketing and bloggers are really starting to cash in on this new medium of advertising. PayPerPost seized the opportunity and what PayPerPost does is bring advertisers and bloggers together. Advertisers are paying bloggers to post reviews about their respective companies. All you have to do is sign up as a blogger and review the list of advertisers under their open opportunities. The opportunities that are available to you will depend on the theme and ranking of your blog. PPP looks at several different things to determine if your blog(s) are qualified for the opportunity. New advertisers are constantly added, so you should check their website everyday. I joined PayPerPost back in October and so far I’ve made $189.51 with about $22.00 pending. It’s not very much, but then I’m highly selective about the companies that I write about and link to. I only blog about a company that is related to my blog topic and feel that it will be of value to my readers. The money I’ve made so far with PPP was used to pay for the hosting on a couple of my websites. There are some very high paying opportunities - like $1,000 and $500 - but unfortunately my blogs don’t have a high enough Google ranking. If you are a PPP “Postie”, I’d love to hear your experiences. If you would like to sign up, click here... By the way, you can also make money by referring people to PPP! Well, that about wraps up this series on how to make money from blogging. If you have any questions or need any help at all, simply leave a comment below or you can contact me via email at maria [at] salondemaria [dot] info

How To Make Money From Blogging Part 4: Sell Ad Space

This is part 4 in my “How To Make Money From Blogging” series. If you missed the previous posts, what I’ve taught so far is that you can make money by: 1) Joining a blog network 2) Adding Google Adsense to your blog & 3) Adding affiliate links Today I will talk about selling ad space on your blogs.... If your blog starts to get a substantial amount of traffic, selling ad space is something you may want to consider doing. Many people are against ads on blogs, but let’s face it, blogs are becoming a viable medium for information and it’s inevitable that business would take notice. If you have many blogs like I do, you may outsource the management of all your ad links to a third-party company. One company I use is LinkWorth.com. You could probably handle all the advertisers yourself if you’re just starting out. I just like that LinkWorth will help me find advertisers - but of course, I have to pay them a commission. Text Link Ads is another company you can use to handle your text link advertising. They’re probably the most popular company to use. If you know of a company you’d like to recommend, let me know! Stay tuned tomorrow for another way to make money from blogging! Random trivia: Did you know that Boing Boing made an estimated $1M in advertising revenue this year?

How To Make Money From Blogging Part 3: Join Affiliate Programs

Back in the days when I first started doing research on making money through the internet, I found out about affiliate programs. I thought it was great to be able to make commissions from referring people to companies simply by adding a link on your website. So, how do these affiliate programs work? Let’s say you just read this book that you absolutely love. Well, most likely this book is available at Amazon.com. Did you know that Amazon has an affiliate program? All you have to do is sign up to become an affiliate and create a link to the book from your blog. When someone clicks on the link and purchases that book or anything else from Amazon, then you make a commission from that sale! Amazon has thousands of products that you can link to, so if you don’t read books I’m sure you can find something else to recommend to your blog readers that fits in with the theme of your blog. There are literally thousands upon thousands of companies out there that offer an affiliate program. Four directories that I use to find companies to affiliate with are: Commission Junction Linkshare Clickbank and ShareASale There are also companies that aren’t listed with these directories, so the next time you’re visiting a website that you like, make sure to see if they offer an affiliate program so you can make money by simply recommending their products! If you want a good example of a blog that is very successful at recommending products and making money with affiliate programs, check out the SheFinds Blog. I personally have made a substantial amount of money recommending products from Amazon.com. I’m an avid reader and do many book reviews on my blogs. One helpful tip when you sign up with an affiliate program: Make sure the company is legit and offers good customer service. Really think about the products or companies you are recommending. Are these companies or products going to bring value to your blog readers?

How To Make Money From Blogging Part 2: Google Adsense

Today I will discuss another method by which you can make money from blogging. Yesterday's tip was about joining a blog network and today I will talk about Google Adsense. Ok, I’m sure many of you are aware of this method if you’ve been around the internet for quite some time, but for you newbies this is virtually an effortless way to make a little cash from your blog. Oh, I’m sure you’ve all seen those Google ads all over the place. They’re a set of ads that Google hosts and as a blog owner, you can incorporate these ads into your blog template. If someone clicks on one of those ads you make money. How much you make per click depends on how much advertisers are willing to pay. (If you’re reading this post on the day I publish this, you’ll see the Google ads to the left here. You’ll also see a line of Google ads above the banner at the top of this blog) For those of you who are not familiar with HTML or feel a little uncomfortable dealing with all the code, I would recommend doing a Google search on how you can embed the HTML code for the Google ads. Use the phrase: “How to add Adsense to [enter your blogging platform here]“ Of course, it will be different for every blogging platform. If you know someone who is tech savvy and can add the Google Adsense code for you, more power to you ;) The amount of money you make through Google Adsense will depend on the topic of your blog and how much traffic you get to your blog. I know people who have hundreds of websites and make a great deal of money through Adsense and I know people who have just one blog and also make a boat load of money. In my opinion, the key to making money with Adsense is to play around with ad placement to maximize click-throughs. For a great article full of tips on how to maximize your Adsense income read this article: Placement Strategies That Will Maximize Your AdSense Income. Here are a couple of helpful resources on Google Adsense for further reading Google Adsense Optimization Secrets Top Beginner Adsense Tips If you have any tips to share, leave a comment below!

How To Make Money From Blogging: Join a Blog Network

This week I will be sharing some of the ways I have made money with blogging. First, I would like to welcome those of you who have come here from my other blog, The Good Life. Like I said there, people have been asking me how I came to be a problogger, so I want to share some of the things I do to bring in my income. This is the first in a series of posts that I will do this week where I will give you tips and tricks to creating enough money so that you, too, can become a problogger or freelance writer! So, stick around this week and don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed or simply enter your email in the box in the sidebar to the right so you can receive updates! When it comes to blogging, I believe that one of the ways you can be really good and become successful at it is to blog about what you love. That is my advice to those of you who are just starting out. When you write about what you love, it will be easy to come up with content for your blog. I started out blogging as a hobby. I just wanted to share some of my thoughts and experiences and really had no intention of making any money at it. Then when I discovered Darren Rowse’s website and realized that I could actually make money doing it, well, by golly I was going to do that too! I love to write, so why not make money doing what I love? One day as I was browsing the web, I came across the Marketing Blurb website which is part of the Know More Media network of blogs. I noticed that they were looking for writers, so I browsed the topics that they had available and “customer service” was one subject that needed a writer. Well, with over thirteen years of working in customer service related positions, I figured I was the perfect writer for this blog. I applied to be a blogger and voila! I got my first writing gig! By the way, Know More Media is still looking for bloggers. I have been blogging for them for over a year now and I love the company. From what I’ve been reading around the blogosphere, Know More Media pays better than many of the blogging networks out there. Besides, the guys that run it are phenomenal and I just like support they offer. Let me know if you’re interested in writing for them and I’ll put you in touch with the right person ;) Blog networks aren’t for everybody, but if you’re just starting out, I would recommend joining one. You have the support of a community of blogs who link to you and you can make money because most of the networks do pay you per post, give you a percentage of the advertising revenue, or both! You can also find freelance blogging gigs over at Problogger.net Well, that’s it for today! Stay tuned tomorrow and I will share more ways to make money with blogging. Check out one of my previous posts on blogging that has a list of great resources...