Once you’ve decided to start your own online business (pretty much whatever it is, from a blog to an ecommerce site), you’ll first want to get a firm grasp on how your visitors/potential customers use the Internet. In particular, you’ll need to learn what exactly they use the Internet for.

It would certainly be great for your site if every person who logged on was doing so because they had their credit cards in hand, and were looking to buy precisely the kinds of products and services you offer.  But, of course, we live in the real world. Rather, most people use the Internet to get information. That search for information often takes the form of trying to answer questions that these individuals have been unable to find answers for elsewhere. That quest may or may not lead them to your product or service. So how do people tend to go about finding answers to their questions?  As you might guess, these days most Internet users tend to rely upon search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Whilst very few users won’t have used at least one of these three search engines, there are also hundreds of other search engines available. However, those other search engines generate far less traffic than the big three (Google alone garners well over 60% of the Internet search traffic), so we’ll focus our attention on the big ones. As you probably know, a person uses a search engine like Google by typing a word or phrase into the search box.

This specific word or phrase is the key to your  success, because the word or phrase indicates exactly what that person is looking for. Let’s say, for example, that the individual is interested in losing weight. If they type the phrase ‘weight loss’ into Google, the search results page will provide two things, “paid” and “organic” search results.  Go ahead and Google ‘weight loss.’

Notice the yellow box at the top of the page, and the narrow column that runs down the right side of the page. These are paid search results which companies have paid Google to have their text (and links to their company websites) displayed whenever someone searches on the term ‘weight loss’.  Not surprisingly, you can see that these companies appear to be selling weight loss and diet products and services.

The majority of the page displays the so-called “organic” search results. This means that the Google search engine determined these web pages to be most naturally (or “organically’”) related to the phrase ‘weight loss’. The phrase ‘weight loss’ is what we refer to as a “keyword term”.

You can see the importance of the keyword term by the fact that the phrase ‘weight loss’ is highlighted throughout both the organic search results and the paid search results. In order to maximize your business opportunities, you’ll need to research and identify the terms and phrases that potential customers will use when they look for the kinds of products and services you’re selling.

After identifying those keywords, you could certainly launch a paid advertising campaign, with Google AdWords or one of the other paid ad services. This would be an easy way of driving lots of relevant traffic to your website, right?  Unfortunately, because of the level of competition for the attention of prospective customers, it’s very easy for beginner advertisers (and even some advertisers with more experience) to end up spending a lot of money but have very little to show for it.

New websites may well choose to do paid advertising until they are more firmly established, and instead focus on getting the best organic search results placement for their website.  This can take longer but it’s safer to start with and, ultimately, organic search gives you the bedrock to build upon – most people who really understand the Internet will tell you that building solid, quality content over time is the way to the top of the search engine rankings. You can do this by using keyword research skills and optimizing your website accordingly.

To do this, you really need to “get” the search engines. Remember, we’re talking business, here: you don’t need to be a rocket scientist (mostly), but you do need to understand it and get it right.  Don’t go in blind. In our opinion, the ‘king’ of keyword tools is here.  They have a wide range of tools and a high proportion of professionals in the business of keywords rely on this tool every day.

What’s a targeted visitor?

You begin an online business in order to make money, right?  Well, some reading this may be more interested in a hobby, or another purpose blogging, perhaps.  But if it’s business you’re interested in, it’s probably apparent you’ll have a greater chance of making more money from individuals who are interested in the kinds of products and services you sell. Let’s use the example that you run a website that promotes a product which helps people lose weight.

So, the types of people you want to find and visit your website are those who are interested in becoming thinner.  Conversely, if a visitor to your website isn’t particularly interested in losing weight (but is instead searching the Internet because they’re interested in video games or gardening), then it is unlikely that they’re going to convert into a paying customer.  Or, perhaps, they’re looking for reasons why people lose weight (e.g., illness, etc).

Subtle differences make a big difference. This is the concept of a “targeted visitor”: a person who is already “in” your website’s topic before they find your website and see the products and services you offer. It’s not hard to see why the most successful web business are those who get traffic comprised of individuals who are already interested in the products or services offered by that business.

It’s essential to your success that you build you individual website pages to contain and focus on the individual keywords that relate to your products and services. In addition, it’s likely that your appearances on a given search results page won’t be limited just to pages on your own website.  The search engine is likely to find and list many external resources, too.  These will include marketing-type materials that you may publish through other websites. Go ahead and type a generic search term or phrase into your favorite search engine.  Chances are that near the top of the natural search results there will be links to external aggregations sites like YouTube and EzineArticles.  This is something that you want to emulate as well.

So, in order to make sure you’re driving the greatest number of targeted visitors to your website as possible, you first need to create a site in which each web page is focused on the particular keyword terms and phrases that you’ll identify.  Second, you’ll support this by creating promotional materials (again, using the relevant keyword terms and phrases), and making sure these are properly distributed on the Internet. Finally, once your website is live, make sure to submit your web address directly to the major search engines.  Each search engine has a page that permits you to do this:

• Google’s is here.
• Yahoo’s is here.
• Microsoft’s is here.

The search engines would eventually find your pages, of course, but using these quick submission forms helps the process move forward more quickly.  Next time we’ll be digging into the detail of Keyword Reasearch.

I have a personal blog which is just my own private little place to go online and jot down my thoughts, but I also have my business blogs.

Back In the Beginning

To be honest with you in the beginning of my blogging experience I really wasn’t sure what I should do with my blog. I knew I wanted to make money with it, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what I could do to not only be a value to others so they would come back to my blog, but that I would still enjoy writing it.

So it was really important to me that I find a topic in which I would be excited about, and have enough to offer so that I could blog every week or so. After starting a blog that was meant to just be an add-on to my business at MommysPlace.net and struggling with the direction of that blog, I came across one of Alice Seba’s blogs, which she used to write about her experience through a traffic product.

So every couple of weeks she would update her progress through this course. She would tell us all about her successes with this product and how great it was for her business. And it made me think of how I could do something similar.

Product/Service Focused Blog

And this is when the light bulb moment went off in my head. This is when I realized what I should have been doing all along. I have been a member of an exclusive coaching program for mothers in business.

Since joining this program my business has seen great success. My income has increased more then 10 times what it was before I joined, and my traffic has increased even more then that.

I enjoy and believe in this coaching program and it happens to have an affiliate program. I often got emails from other work at home mothers who wanted to know my thoughts on this program.

Taking a cue from Alice’s blog I decided to start my own such blog. And named it Mom Masterminds Grad and it can be found at [http://www.mmgrad.com]

I use this blog for the purpose of documenting my successes with my business. My projects, new content added to my website, keyword phrases I was ranking for…etc. Basically anything that has to do with my business that was directly or indirectly because of my joining Mom Masterminds, I jot down.

Not only was this the best move I could have made for my promoting this affiliate link it also served as a great way to really see for myself the successes my business was achieving and also to keep me on track.

This is one way you could make money with a blog. There are other ways you could make money with a blog if you don’t want to devote a blog to one service or product you’re promoting.

Side Kick Blog

For instance, my blog at http://www.telecommutingmoms.com is a side kick to TelecommutingMoms.com and my forums. This is a blog in which I update my members on additions to the website, newsletter and forums. And also use it as a vehicle for updating members on any important telecommuting news and promoting affiliate programs.

So this blog serves more then one purpose. My main goal with this blog is to get traffic to certain sections of my website. I have a large website and it’s not always easy for people to find my information. This is a great way for me to keep certain new pages or sections of my website in the public eye and get traffic to those pages. It also serves as a way to make money with affiliate programs. And lastly it gives exposure to my forum and my newsletter.

There can be many ways and, many topics in which you can make money and gain exposure to other businesses you may have, or can help in creating you as an expert in a certain field.

Just take the time to really think about what you could be writing about and then how you can make money with that as well. You can take a look at others blogs to get an idea and see what other people are looking for.

Making Money With Your Blog – Resources:

Blogs to Riches- is an e-book that details ways you can make your blog profitable. And the really cool thing with this is if you list the publisher’s link on your blog for 45 days he will give you this e-book for free! If you don’t want to wait that long you can also purchase it for a low price. Read more about Blogs to Riches – http://www.blogstoriches.com

Increasing Adsense – is an e-book about how to increase your adsense revenue. This e-book isn’t specifically geared towards blogs, but the information you will learn you can use with your blogs. (As well as websites and forums…anywhere you have adsense.) http://www.adsense-secrets.com

* Don’t know what adsense is? Go to http://www.google.com/adsense to learn more.

Ready To Blog?

Are you ready to take the leap into a blog? If so, it’s really very easy to set up a blog. The one resource I have used for my old blog is blogger.com and what I use for my current blogs is WordPress. Blogger is a great option for the newbie and you can host it with them. WordPress is a bit more complicated and must be hosted on your own domain, but it’s by far my most favorite option for blogs.

Submit Your Blog

After you create your blog you will want to submit it to blog directories to help get your blog out in front of the public. Some of the directories you can try are:

BlogWise – http://www.blogwise.com

Blog Search Engine – http://www.blogsearchengine.com

Blog Hub – http://www.bloghub.com

Blog Daisy – http://www.blogdaisey.com

Get Blogs – http://www.getblogs.com

Is Blogs – http://www.lsblogs.com

Feeds

Next, you need to add feeds to your blog. For adding a feed you add a little graphic to your blog. It can be a “my yahoo” feed, msn feed, or many other options.

When they click on that they can add your blog to their personal feed page. Then every time you add a new post they are alerted on their yahoo page that you have posted AND it even shows the topic of the post and how long ago it was posted.

This is one of the best resources I’ve found in keeping people coming back to your blog. They can subscribe to it so easily and they will be automatically updated whenever you have posted. It’s pretty easy to add an RSS feed to your blog. The resource I personally use is at http://www.feedburner.com

Watch Out Blogging World – Here I Come!

Now, see how simple this really can be? You can make money with a blog, gain exposure for another business or websites, can build yourself as an expert on a certain topic, can create a blog for free, get it listed for free and start an RSS feed for free! Now get out there and start blogging.

Want to learn more about Nell Taliercio, the author of this article? She is sharing the secrets that grew her business by 10fold in only one year! Go to http://www.mmgrad.com to learn more!

Author: Nell Taliercio
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Anti-angiogenic Food

You don’t want to ‘scatter gun’ any list; certainly not one you haven’t built and generated in a targeted, controlled way.

Yes, you can ‘rent’ or ‘buy’ a list.  But it’s a one-hit wonder.  And actually probably a one-hit failure.

But if you develop and nurture your own, valuable list you benefit from generating a customer relationship; a reader relationship; real engagement with those who buy your produce, use your service, read your blog

The 10 key areas:

• Who’s your audience and why should they listen to you?
• When you email them, what, exactly, are you trying to achieve?
• What will your mailings look like – would you read them? Would they make you take action?
• Will you – actually, SHOULD you – do the writing and construct the mailings? Are you really up for it?
• How regularly will you mail and how long will your mailings be?
• Those email addresses won’t just magically appear – how will you collect them?  Always do it ethically, whether via web form or other opt-in method – do it right, do it well, do it consistently.
• The last point bears repetition: ALL recipients must have in advance expressly asked you to mail them.  And if they don’t want to hear your drivel anymore, make it easy for them to switch you off!
• Is your technology scalable to grow your list?  Will the length of the list actually become a problem? How will you store/host your list – internally or will you outsource.
• Whatever you do, you MUST create and maintain TRUST.
• You must add value.

Be honest. Be genuine. Be successful.

CB

This post ‘does exactly what it says on the tin’.  It touches on the relatively low returns from AdSense and, importantly for many of you, provides insights into the world of an entrepreneur who is looking to decapitate AdSense!! In particular the last bit sounds UNBELIEVABLE … read on, though, and you’ll get to the details of Widget Ad Generator.

As an AdSense advertiser (we are, and know that many of you are), you receive a percentage of the amount paid by advertisers for each click on an ad. Unlike other networks, Google doesn’t state what that percentage is. It varies and, in all honesty, it generally isn’t a bad share.

Revenue generation is dependent on various things:

• Page views/day
• Price paid by the advertiser (the AdWords advertiser) for each click
• The nature/type of the site’s content
• Of course, the number of people who click!

If you only generate a few hundred page views a day, you won’t necessarily receive a tiny amount. Actually, light traffic sites can and does generate big revenue if the topic which they cover on the site is niche, resulting in dedicated viewers and high click-through of ads. However, the issue is that, despite this, you’re not going to give up the day job on the revenues you make unless your traffic is decent and you’re very well positioned in the market… Not that we’re giving away our revenue

Using AdSense, therefore, for most people “How much will I make” is a “how long’s a piece of string?” type question. There are no limits. People have and do generate very large monthly income by using AdSense. But most don’t. The vast majority don’t.

We use AdSense, as I say.  However, we’re seriously considering other options, having looked at the new strategy created by Todd Thompson, the CEO of a company in Colorado. Todd has created a tool called the “Widget Ad Generator”, a great piece of innovation in the world of the internet.

The principle behind Todd’s product, which has been endorsed by the heads of various ‘net companies, is that “you just don’t need to rely on AdSense”. Simple, eh? Er, we weren’t convinced…

But it’s a good idea. And it’s based on the bedrock of affiliate marketing (we all know where the web would be without it!).

Widget Ad Generator is an easy-to-use tool which we (and probably you) won’t want to do without. Whilst there may be other ways of getting from A to B on this particular journey, the widget makes it seamless. And simple. And fast.

If you go here you can see for yourself.  Be warned – it’s a bit “salesy” (!) but when you get through it, you’ll realize the principles and the essence of this product are sound – it works. Google, look out!

As always, bye for now.

To make this work well for all parties involved, it’s important that the individual who works from home gets organized. They need to have all of the supplies that they need in one place where it can be easily found. This will help save time.

Creating a schedule is also vitally important. You need to create a schedule of your upcoming jobs or tasks. Make sure that you schedule in time for family and friends and household chores. If you do not, these parts of your life will get out of control. There may also be some hurt feelings and strained relationships. This may require you to get up early to do some work or stay up late even after everyone else has gone to bed. This may put a little bit more stress on you physically However, this might be a sacrifice that you need to make to be sure that everyone is happy and tended to.

When you are busy and have to get work done, make sure that you come up with activities for your kids to do. Create a schedule for them as a well so they don’t feel like they’re being ignored not being paid attention to. If you have young kids, you may want to purchase coloring books, or come up with fun activities that you can do with them. Once a week, take a field trip. If you have older kids, find something that is age appropriate for them.

Striking a balance between working at home and spending time with your family, especially if you have young kids at-home, can be very difficult. However, it can be done. It will require some really tight scheduling from you and great organizational skills. You many need to get up a couple hours earlier in the mornings or stay up a little bit later at night after everyone else has gone to bed so that you can finish your work. It is fine to do work during the day while your kids or at home, just make sure that you take breaks to spend time with them.

One way to monetize their blog is to use pay-per-click advertising. Companies like Google Adsense and Chitika will pay you, the blog owner, every time someone clicks on one of their sponsored ads placed on your blog. This is a really popular way to monetize your blog or web site, because you’re not selling anything. People are more apt to press on a link that they believe will give them more information about a topic that they are already interested in. You are essentially acting as a resource guide.

Affiliate programs are also another great way to monetize your blog. Many product owners will have banners available and you will simply need to place them on your web site. You may also use text links to advertise your affiliate products or business services. It goes without saying that whatever you are advertising needs to be related to your blog topic or it needs to be at least complementary.

Pay-per-download (or install) is another option. This generally works by giving away a free piece of software. Every piece of software that gets downloaded from your site makes you money.

Pay-per-impression is another great method to monetize your blog. You get paid every time someone comes to your blog. Generally you don’t get paid much. However, if you can draw a lot of traffic to your blog, you can make some pretty decent profits.

Seriously consider advertising your own product. If you have an e-book that you have written, have rights to or a physical product that is related to your blog, make sure that advertise it.

CPA or cost per action programs are another option. These are essentially lead generation programs. These tend to be very popular in the insurance and mortgage industry. You simply get your visitor to provide their contact information and then you get paid per lead. These actually pay pretty good and the money can add up really fast if you can get targeted traffic.

Selling blog reviews can also be lucrative. You can either write the review yourself for someone else’s product or web site or you can have them right it themselves. You will place the review on your blog for a fee. The amount of money they you will be able to charge, will be will dependent on how many visitors you average. The more visitors that average, the more money you can charge.

However, there are problems with PLR products. Other people, perhaps hundreds of them, are selling the exact same product that you are. In order to make yours standout, you need to rewrite the sales letter and pay for new graphics to be made. You may also need to find bonuses that you can add to the e-book so that your product stands out or perhaps rewrite it altogether. Now, doing all of these things can take a lot of time and will likely cost you money. If you can not create a web site, write a sales letter and develop graphics yourself, you will have to outsource these tasks. Therefore, it will take about the same amount of money and time to create your own unique product.

Creating your own unique product has a lot of advantages as well. You can create a great sales letter and develop a kick butt product that is perfectly tailored for your audience. You also can harness the power of affiliates. They will spend their own money and their own time to promote your product, and they will share the profits with you.

Many people shy away from creating their own product or e-book because either they don’t like writing, or they feel like the process will be too overwhelming. This isn’t necessarily true. A good e-book can be anywhere between 25 and 40 pages. This includes text, screen shots and graphics. An average page is between 500-700 hundred words. Therefore, if you can write 30-40 articles, you can write an e-book. In this article, will take a look at the process and hopefully you will see that there really is no need to feel overwhelmed. You just need to break down the e-book down into smaller sections.

To begin, you will need to find a great topic. Determine what people are looking for? Will they be willing to pay for information for the topic that you are considering? Is information on the topic readily and freely available? How can you make the topic unique or add to it?

Next, determine how long you want to make your e-book to be. Choose sub-topics and divide your main topic into manageable sections. Once you have come up with your sections or chapters, it is time to start writing articles for each of these individual sections. Create an outline and then fill in that outline with your copy.

After you have finished your e-book, go over it and make sure that it flows smoothly from one topic to the next. Use Adobe or free online software to create a PDF. You might need to contact someone about creating graphics and perhaps even writing your sales page if you are not able to do this on your own. There are templates for sales pages that you can find for free on the Internet. Also, research how to write an effective converting sales page. Once you have gone through the process, it will get much easier the next time.

For those who are new to this, or those who are established but need serious, effective structure to their business, SiteSell is one of the very best.  Highly recommended.

Pay-per-impression is a very easy way to make extra cash because the only thing they you need to do is drive traffic to your website. You don’t have to convince anyone to make purchase and they don’t have to click on any links. They simply have to visit your web page. As a result, the quality of traffic that you receive doesn’t even necessarily have to be good. You just need to be able to attract people who are interested in viewing your web site. If you have a large, informational site, you can increase your significantly improve your earnings. There are different pay-per-impression programs. If you type in “pay-per-impression affiliate programs” in a search engine, such as Google, Yahoo or MSN, you should be able to find a few good companies.

Pay per install is another program that allows marketers to make money without actually selling a product. It involves getting people to download a piece of software. This may include things such as screensavers. In exchange for you getting people to do this, you get paid per installation. Zangocash.com is an eample. These types of programs generally pay pretty good and can make you money really fast.

Trial Pay. This is a company that allows individuals to give away their own product for free. If the consumer agrees to sign up for an available offer, they get the product free and you get paid from Trial Pay. Consumers get to choose the offer that they are interested in. Offers range from signing up for Blockbuster movies to  signing up to get care insurance quotes. Trial Pay combines CPA and giveaway offers. You are essentially getting paid from Trial Pay to give away your product. You are getting paid by the company to get people to try their trial offers. This is basically incentivized CPA.

These are three great ways to make money without actually selling anything. In many cases, you are giving away something free, as is the case with pay-per-install and trial pay. Pay-per- impression pays you every time someone visits your web site. All of these are simple programs to implement and are free to join.

These tips are smart and easy to understand and can be used effectively. As you may be knowing by now affiliate marketing essentially involves promoting other websites (and their products) by putting up links in your website and encouraging the readers/users of your website to visit those. With every such visit to an affiliate website and/or resulting sell of a product generates revenue for you. So how to make this apparently simple concept work for you?

Tip 1: Find the right affiliate program. There are many frauds out there – pick and choose the right programs to promote. Look for programs that give you high returns and good commissions and secured way of paying you. Also looking for shocking, interesting products that may have immediate demand and create an interest among the prospective buyers is a good way to go.

Tip 2: Promotion of anything, at the very onset, puts off people. People see ‘Sponsored link’ and they shirk off from that. Also the cyber space is a faceless world and you cannot trust anybody. There are people who may steal your affiliate ID and use the sponsored links for their benefit. So the very first step towards effective affiliate marketing is to hide the affiliate links in your website – avoid having them ‘on-your-face’; be subtle in putting those forward…the technical term for this is ‘cloaking’ the links. There are many websites and software tools that can assist you in cloaking the affiliate links.

Tip 3: Do not promote anything and everything. You have a steady traffic to your website or blog, you’ve created a brand name for yourself. Do not spoil it by promoting bad products. Your readers and users trust you and selling or promoting a bad product will be detrimental in long run. You may get instant profit but to stay in the business you need to live up to your name.

Tip 4: Use forums to promote your affiliated products. These forums have specific queries and discussions and are generally niche forums. So you will get your target audience in abundance and you can target your marketing effectively. However again remember to be subtle with your message. Use your expertise to guide people and give them a solution to their problem and then slip in the link to the affiliate site cleverly.

Tip 5: Build up a strong mailing list. Identify the prospective buyers, forums and generate their interest through regular updates and mails. However don’t stick to one format of marketing to promote the affiliate products. Use a mix of different formats, emails, forum messages, blogs, postings, through features why even a signature under your name may also generate interest.

There is a lot of money to be made in the Going green trend and there is a lot to write about so you do not have to worry about running out of things to say. This topic can be monetized by :

Selling Advertisement Space: If you can get a lot of traffic to your blog, then you can sell advertising space to other marketers. Depending on your traffic, you may be able to charge top dollar.

Adsense: Adsense ads can be placed on your blog easily and quickly. You make money when someone clicks on an ad.

Selling Books on How to Convert One’s Engine: If you look through the Clickbank marketplace, you will find plenty of books on how to convert a person’s engine to run on water. Place a few links, write some reviews or post some banners on your blog to make some affiliate cash. You can also sell books on the topic from Ebay or Amazon.

Selling Biodiesel Kits From Ebay: Biodiesel kits are selling for hundreds and thousands of dollars. You can make a percentage of the asking price by simply signing up as an Ebay affiliate.

“Going Green” and ways to decrease fuel costs are hot topics right now. For bloggers, this is a great opportunity to cash in and provide individuals with information on how to help preserve the environment. Remember, to ensure that you are always relevant and that you will not have to create a site about every new trend, envelop what is hot into a broader topic. For example, you can blog about “going green” and water fuel cells on your environmental blog. This way you can simply maintain this blog forever. You won’t be starting new blogs every few months. You can invest in the design of one blog and then use it to discuss relevant topics.