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.

Keep Track of Your Earnings

The first thing you need to do in order to prep for tax time is to keep accurate track of your earnings. If you have affiliate links on your blog that are earning you some cash, for example, you need to keep track of the money you earn each month from these links. If you are selling a product such as an ebook, you need to keep track of these sales as well.

Fortunately, many affiliate programs will provide you with monthly statements and annual statements that summarize your earnings. In addition, if your customers use a company such as Paypal to purchase products from your site, you can make it easier to keep track of your sales by setting up separate Paypal accounts for each product or blog you own. Not only will this help you keep better track of your income, it will also make it easier for you to monitor the success of a particular product or blog.

Taking Advantage of Deductibles

As a business owner, there are also many deductibles that you may be able to take advantage of. Be certain to keep track of all of your business expenses in order to keep your overall tax burden down. You may be surprised by all of the items you may be able to deduct from your taxes. Some possible deductions include:

• Business expenses for the use of your home if you do your work from home

• A portion of your utilities if you do your work from home

• Expenses related to travel associated with your blogging business (i.e. for attending conventions)

• The cost of purchasing equipment associated with your blog, such as your computer, your printer and printer paper

Of course, it is best to consult with an accountant in order to be clear on what can and cannot be deducted from your business expenses. This way, you can be certain you are filing an accurate return that you can stand behind if you happen to be audited. And, remember, if you are filing your taxes as a sole proprietor, you and your business are not considered to be separate entities. Therefore, your business tax burden is your personal tax burden as well. In addition, your income will be taxed as a small business as well as part of your personal income, so you want to take advantage of every deduction possible!

Benefit #1: Performing Market Research

Simply put, surveys and polls help you get to know your audience better. Although you should have already conducted some market research in order to get to know your target audience better, surveys and polls will help you get to know the people who are actually reading your blog. Armed with this information, you can create posts that are more to their liking and you can add features to your blog that will help you keep your audience happy. If you are trying to make money with affiliate products, polls can also help you when it comes to selecting the products you will try to sell on your blog.

Benefit #2: Starting a Conversation

Polls and surveys are often great fodder for getting conversations going. One on hand, you can ask a question with your poll and then ask your community members to explain why they provided that answer. On the other hand, the results of the poll or survey can often stir up additional conversations – particularly if the topic is one that is controversial. In fact, using a poll or a survey is a good way to introduce a controversial subject for your readers to debate without you having to take a strong stance on either side.

Keep in mind that you will have the option to allow your readers to view the results or to keep the results closed as the survey is taking place. If you don’t want the responses to be skewed, you might want to keep this feature closed until after you have conducted the poll.

Benefit #3: Keeping it Simple

Polls and surveys are also beneficial to the blogger because they are pretty easy to set up. So, if you have a day when you really can’t think of anything to write about or you simply don’t have time for a post, putting up a survey or poll will still interest your readers without taking so much time to create.

Although polls and surveys are relatively easy to create, this is not to say you shouldn’t put any thought into the one that you create. Rather, make certain you ask a question that involves a topic that is meaningful to your readers. Also, make certain your answer choices are clear and well-defined. That way, you will get an accurate response to your poll or survey and you may actually be able to use the information to further improve the content of your site.

Word of Mouth: The internet’s impact on ‘word of mouth’ advertising has been huge. The invention of social networks and media sharing facilities has put thousands of likeminded people in touch with each other in ways that were impossible before the web. If you have a great product that a particular group of people will really like, you can be sure that it’ll be talked about on the web.

PPC/PPI Advertising: Pay per Click advertising and Pay Per Impression advertising will both cost you a little bit of cash, but you can build a campaign relatively cheaply and reach many thousands of people for extremely low cost. PPI is best for generating brand recognition on the whole, while PPC is ideal for deployment to key demographics who might want to read more about your product or service.

Affiliate Systems: Affiliate systems are a great way to sell medium to high cost services. Using an affiliate system allows you to put your affiliates in charge of your advertising. They are rewarded only for sales converted from their links, and so the burden of advertising, and the large rewards, rest firmly upon your selected affiliates. Be prepared to give away a significant percentage of your profits though, as good affiliates work hard to promote your product and expect payment in kind.

Mail / Software use: Last but certainly not least is the use of bulk e-mailing and software advertising. These are generally considered to be distasteful and annoying advertising methods but are certainly effective. Consider your business relationship with its customers very carefully before you undertake such a project. While these are ideal for one shot small purchases, they can alienate more picky customers.

Get Your Feet Wet

Before you turn in your resignation and hit the web, it is a good idea to get your feet wet in the world of blogging. Spend some time reading some blogs and interacting with blogging communities so you can get a better idea of how blogs work and how the communities are built. You might also want to guest blog for some of the more popular blogs or even write blog paid blog posts for someone else so you can better determine whether or not writing blogs is something you enjoy. Of course, you can certainly set up a free blog with a site such as blogger and you can get started with your own blog. If you notice that your blog is generating some interest, you may very well have found a way to leave the rat race and start a successful home based career.

Monetizing Your Blog

After you have successfully built up a community with one blog, you might want to start dabbling in different ways to monetize your blog. Allowing pay-per-click advertisements to be placed on your blog is one way to monetize your site. You might also want to get involved with affiliate products and look into selling them through your website. Another option is to sell advertisement space on your blog. In fact, if your blog becomes popular enough, you will find people coming to you and asking to place their ads on your blog.

Spreading Your Wings

If you find that you were able to make one blog a success, you might want to start looking into creating additional blogs. The key is to make certain you don’t overburden yourself by creating more blogs than you can keep up with while still holding down your job. After all, building a successful blog takes time and maintaining a successful blog requires making a commitment to add new blog content on a regular basis. Therefore, you don’t want to have so many blogs going that you cannot keep up with them.

Until you start earning enough income from your blogs, you may have to juggle both your regular 9 to 5 job as well as your blogging business. But, once your blogs take off and you start earning a decent amount of cash from them, it just may be time to spread your wings and jump into blogging full time!

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.

Be helpful: You want to be seen as a valuable resource in a forum and not as someone that is looking to make money. So if you come across a post where an individual is struggling with something that you are familiar with, offer to help them. Give them advice, point them to good resources. They will be very thankful and the other readers of the post will notice that you are knowledgeable on the subject and you almost instantly, become a mini expert.

Have something to say: Don’t only give two word posts like “thank you,” “me too” or are “too bad.” If you ever try to sell a product, you better believe that some people will go back and look at your posts and see what type of things you have contributed to the forum. If all of your posts consisted of two word answers, this will discredit you.

Be honest.: If someone asks you to give a review of a product or service, be tactful but be honest. If you are not honest and give a glowing review for a bad product, you will damage your reputation. If someone goes ahead and buys the product or service and it sucks, you will look bad.

Forge partnerships: Develop relationships with other people on the forum. This will help when you are a looking to launch a product of your own. You will have people that can vouch for your integrity, your skills and your work ethic.

Be consistent: Don’t post one-time, and then don’t come back for three months. If you can’t get on the forum everyday, get on there at least once or twice a week.

Give away something free: if you find a really good resource or if you have a product that you have written or that you have free rights to, if you think it will benefit people on a specific forum, give it away. This will endear them to you and will make them much more willing to spend money on a product or service that you advertise down the line.

Create a signature link: This is a simple link that advertises some type of a product or service that you are selling. It will show up every time you make a post.

Advertise: In forums, there is generally a place where you can advertise. Make sure to advertise in it. If you have followed the above guidelines and have contributed to the forum you should have no problem. If you are new to a forum, consider giving the forum members a big price break on your product or service. Maybe even give a few products away for free, so that you can get some feedback and testimonials.

These are all ways to build your reputation at forums. If followed, they will help you sell more products and make more money.

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.