The community loves free.  People love free, at one of their most base levels.  You give a lot away, you sell at the “top slice”.  It’s another example of the “freemium” model working.

Take a look around you as you browse the web.  As you walk down the street.  As you watch TV.  As you read a magazine.  Are you “drawn” by free?  Have you ended up somewhere you might otherwise not have been, surfing down the web “rabbit warren”, because of “free”?  Or walked into that random store because of free? Of course you have.

We’re going to do some pieces on the power of free.  Because it is powerful.  And it’s win-win-win.

Taking Ownership of Your Business

One of the reasons many bloggers and writers have difficulty taking ownership of their business is because it is something they do on a part-time basis or as a “side job.” Therefore, they don’t look at themselves as being professionals or as true business owners. Unfortunately, when you look at your business as just a part-time gig or as something you do as a hobby or in your free time, you likely will not put forth the effort necessary to make it a success. Even worse, those around you will fail to take you seriously.

So, how can you take ownership of your blogging business and help make it more successful? First, you need to identify yourself as a blogger. Sure, you may also be the manager of a restaurant or a retail salesperson, but you are also a writer. Therefore, the next time someone asks you what you do for a living, be certain to identify yourself as a writer as well as by the title of whatever other occupation you may hold.

When you start to identify yourself to others as a writer, you will find that something amazing happens. First, many people will ask you to elaborate on what you write about. Obviously, this gives you an excellent opportunity to spread the word about your blog and to potentially draw in new readers. Second, you start to feel more confident in your business, your writing abilities and your knowledge regarding your blog topic. Your readers will pick up on this confidence, which will help your community grow.

Using Your New Found Confidence

A lack of confidence in your knowledge and abilities is a big turn off with blog readers. Your readers aren’t looking for someone who appears to be wishy-washy or who seems to be trying to fake his way through his posts. If you aren’t knowledgeable about something that has to do with your blog, take the time to research it or to admit it to your readers rather than writing a blog that is nothing but fluff. If you do know what you are talking about or if you have a strong opinion about a certain topic, express your opinion to your readers. Not only will this help to shape your voice and personality, it will also give your readers something to debate – which is sure to draw even more traffic to your blog!

Of course, if you want to use a contest to help increase the amount of communication taking place on your website, you have to put some careful thought into your contest and how you will implement it.

The first step in hosting a successful contest is to come up with a prize or prizes that would be attractive to your target audience. If your blog is experiencing some success already, you may be able to talk a company into providing you with the prizes for free. If not, it is a worthwhile investment for you to purchase an item that would excite your target audience and make your audience members want to participate in the contest.

Once you have determined the prize, you need to find a creative way for your readers to win the prize. Some ideas include:

• Giving the prize to the person who makes the most relevant comments over a certain number of days

• Giving the prize to the person who posts the most recipes, tips, photos, etc over a certain period of time

• Giving the prize to the person whose recipe, tip, photo, etc is voted number one by your community

When determining how the contest will be won, be certain to keep the content of your blog in mind. If your blog is about being a homeowner, for example, you might ask your readers to post cleaning tips, home improvement tips or even money-saving tips. If your blog is about baking, you might ask readers to post their favorite cake recipes.

By having your community members vote on their favorite entry, you can further get your readers involve in the process. Just keep in mind, however, that voting on things such as which recipe is the best can be difficult because you may get dozens of entrants and your community members won’t have time to try them all before the contest ends.

Hosting a contest on your site is not only a good way to get lurkers to start leaving comments, it is also a great way to boost site traffic. After all, as word spreads about the great contest you are having, more people will decide to visit. If you do a good job of posting interesting and relevant content throughout while the contest is in effect, you just may be able to hook your new visitors into coming back even after the contest is over.

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.

Perks of Having a Business Credit Card

Many people are frightened by the thought of getting a business credit card. After all, credit cards have earned a bad name because many people have managed to dig themselves into a significant amount of debt with their credit cards. If used responsibly, however, a business credit card can provide you with all of the following perks:

• Make you appear more professional to your clients because having a credit card makes you look like an established business

• Provide you with a free form of advertisement since you can put your company name and logo on a business credit card

• Help you keep your business expenses separate from your personal expenses, which is particularly helpful at tax time

• Allow you to give cards to your employees or business partners while still being able to monitor their spending and placing separate credit limits on different cards

• Make it possible for you to get a quick business loan if needed to help take your business to the next level

While using a business credit card irresponsibly can certainly lead to an overwhelming amount of debt, using it wisely can help you take your business to the next level.

Picking the Perfect Business Credit Card

There are many factors you should consider when selecting a business credit card. One of the most important factors you should consider is the interest rate on the credit card. This is particularly important if you plan to use the card to help you get your business going rather than obtaining a traditional business loan from a bank. In this case, you want to find the card that will offer you the lowest interest rate possible. In fact, if you are applying for a new card, you should also look into the various introductory rates offered by business credit cards. You may be able to find one that will offer a 0% APR or a very low interest rate for the first several months.

If you don’t plan on borrowing against the credit card and carrying a balance from one billing cycle to the next, the interest rate may not be your biggest concern. In this case, you should look for a card that offers attractive benefits to its cardholders, such as discounts at certain stores or insurance coverage. You might also want to consider obtaining a business credit card with a rewards program, which can actually help you make money from the credit card if you pay it off at the end of each billing cycle in order to avoid paying finance charges.

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!

The owner of the product has to do that. You will however, have money deducted from your affiliate checks if people ask for refund. But you will not have to actually worry about getting them their money back or dealing with their complaints. This may not always be the case. People may complain to you if they didn’t like a product that you endorsed. Simply refer them to the product owner.

There is a down side to affiliate marketing. The major disadvantages are that there is a real possibility that you can be ripped off. You can spend a lot of money advertising a product, only to never receive an affiliate check. You are forced to share the profits that you generate with the product owner. You also can not make changes to the sales page in order to increase conversions. You might find a product on a hot topic, but the sales page sucks which cuts into your conversions. There is really nothing that you can do about it short of contacting the owner and offering to help them with their sales page.

The advantages of owning your own product are that the money that you earn is all yours. You don’t have to share it with anyone else. You can also recruit affiliates to sell your product for you. This allows you to make money without doing any work if you have recruited a sufficient amount of affiliates.

Some of the disadvantages of owning your own product are that you do have to pay for product development. You will have to write, create or outsource the writing of the e-book and the sales page. You also have to deal with refund requests, and complaints.

There are benefits to both being an affiliate marketer, and selling your own product. When deciding which is right for you, consider the money and time that you have available to create your own product if you’re thinking about going that route. For Internet marketing newbies, it is generally best to start with affiliate marketing and to only work with top affiliate companies such as Clickbank, Linkshare and Commission Junction. These affiliate portals have a great reputation for sending out timely payments.

Understand though at times I have paid for things because the freebies was not up to the quality I needed.

But “Free” is always good!

1. Cubestat.com

Cubestat is a free and perfect tool for website value calculation, estimations and information.

How does it work? you simply enter the domain url above, our unique algorithm will calculate and estimate the website worth, daily pageviews and daily ads revenue of the present domain.

It gives you a price on what your domain might be worth, whether it is accurate or not is up to debate.

But still it is a great tool because it does give you all your backlinks,indexed pages and more.

2. Free adsense Keyword tool

With the ability to search a growing database of tens of thousands of high-dollar Adsense keywords, Iotaweb allows publishers to find the keywords and key phrases that will allow them to focus their content to monetize their site most effectively.

3. Free FTP

FreeFTP is a Windows FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client which allows you to transfer files between your local computer and a server on the Internet. With its many basic and advanced features.

4. Download.com

This could be the one stop for all the free stuff you might have been looking for.

5. Free Download Center

Great download site for free software and games, They also give away free licensed software once a day that you otherwise have to pay for.

If you have free stuff you want mentioned drop me a email and I will try and get them in future posts.