Three Great Ways You Can Make Money at Home in Your Pajamas
Many people dream of becoming their own boss and working their own hours. While one choice is to start a traditional business, most ordinary folks lack both the know-how and the initial capital required to start a business, so even if they have a great idea then their idea will not see fruition. However, the advent of the internet has resulted in many ways for people to make money online without ever having a boss. I have been in online marketing for years so I will share a few ways with you:
Infolinks: Make a blog and use ads
Millions of people have blogs but they do not know how to make money off of them. Perhaps not many people read them or perhaps they blog not for money but because they are passionate about their topic. I have blogged for years and have become a blog monetization expert in the process, so I will share three great ways that you can make money by blogging. Companies like Infolinks, Kontera, and INTENTclick are great choices to make money off of text-rich blogs. They do not work as well with video blogs but you can still put their ads in the description. Also, INTENTclick and Kontera do not mess up your Adsense ads so they are a great choice for generating additional revenue.
Write a mobile app
Android devices and iPhones are becoming increasingly popular, and the ease of writing and selling an app has brought a resurgence of small-time software developers. Many of these developers have great apps but they do not know how to monetize mobile apps, which is marketing parlance for saying that they don’t know how to make money off of their creations. This is common among mobile app developers in part because it’s so easy to bring an app to the market to sell it since all the big operating systems have mobile app stores.
Write 25 guest blog posts per day
Many companies will pay people to write blog posts for them. They do this because the backlinks in those posts will help them show up higher on search engines. A lot of companies rely on outsourced work, usually in India or Latin America, to do their blogging for them, but these bloggers usually do not have the writing skills to be published on good websites. As a result, they’ll pay a premium to American and other anglophone bloggers to get posts for them.
This is a guest post by Murray Newlands. Murray and his company – Influence People – do blogger outreach for a variety of clients from a small office in sunny San Francisco!
The Art of Building Amazon Sites Post Panda
Thousands of people supplement their monthly incomes through the use of Amazon affiliate sites – or at least they used to. Recently, Google introduced a major overhaul to their search algorithms known as Panda, and a lot of Amazon affiliate sites that could be politely referred to as “thin,” “spammy,” or “junky” quickly saw their search rankings plummet down to the depths where no practical Google user would ever find them.
For the uninitiated, an Amazon affiliate site is a website or blog that directly or indirectly promotes products sold on Amazon.com, the ubiquitous online retailer. Clicking certain links at these sites redirects you to a product page at Amazon, and when you make a purchase, Amazon pays the affiliate site owner a portion of the proceeds in exchange for the redirect. With commission rates as high as 15% and the ability to promote whatever products you’d like, including the very expensive ones, it’s easy to see how a well-implemented Amazon affiliate site could turn a tidy profit.
The trick, of course, is to build an Amazon affiliate site that passes muster in the eyes of Google Panda, and achieves the search engine results ranking it deserves.
Build Your Site Around the Niche, Not the Products
Google Panda is all about attempting to ensure that the pages ranked most highly for a given search keyword are relevant and provide the best user experience possible. As such, most of the sites that experienced severe downranking at the hands of Panda were ones that offered a list of promoted products, along with maybe a brief description of each, some keyword-rich promotional text (“This is such a wonderful product!” without any details) and maybe a few pictures. In other words, the exact same content you could find by visiting Amazon directly and simply visiting the product page. Credit to Google for sending these two-bit sites where they belong: out of the public eye.
Your job is to make your site stand out. You can accomplish this by building a site based around a niche, or a specific product category, instead of just the products themselves.
Let’s say you want to promote wireless internet security cameras. Instead of making a thin site like the one described above that simply lists and promotes the cameras, build your site around the niche of home security, and particularly the ways that technology can be used to improve it. This is something that will provide actual value to your traffic. A few examples of content ideas that could be applied to other niches as well:
- Stories of break-ins and robberies that could have been prevented with a wireless security camera.
- Comparisons of the top-rated security cameras.
- Software programs that integrate well with security equipment.
- How to set up home security equipment.
- Common misconceptions held by those purchasing home security cameras for the first time.
Once your readers see how valuable home security cameras are, they’ll be far more likely to click your affiliate links and actually make a purchase.
Know the Products You’re Promoting
Although you may be tempted to select products to promote simply based on their value or apparent immediate popularity, the post-Panda online environment dictates that it’s better to promote products that you’re actually comfortable discussing through knowledge and experience. Your readers will be able to tell whether you’re an expert regarding the products you’re discussing, and they’ll be more likely to stick around at your site if you are.
If you really want to promote a certain niche that you may not be totally familiar with, there are some good ways of conducting research:
- Visit forums devoted to discussing the products and learn from experts who use them every day.
- Watch Youtube video reviews of the products to see how they work in action.
- Download the manuals for the products to get additional details that might not be included in their general online product descriptions.
- Take advantage of return policies and trial periods. You may be able to try the products in your own home and return them for a full refund, so long as you don’t damage them. Any fees you incur in the form of return shipping will be worth the content you’re able to generate by actually using the products.
Allow for Interactive Discussion
Speaking of forums, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t set one up on your own Amazon affiliate site. Google Panda loves the idea of increased website functionality and interactivity, making a forum for your users an excellent Panda-baiting feature.
It’s important that forums are moderated and kept on topic, so don’t expect to simply create the forum, let it run itself and return to your normal daily operations. Jump in frequently to participate in discussions and answer your visitors’ questions.
Post Video Reviews of Products
Placing some multimedia content on your Amazon affiliate site can truly make it stand apart from the competition. If you have access to the products you’re promoting, record a video of yourself using them while you discuss what you like about it, how you like to use the product, your favorite features, etc. Doing so paints you as an expert with hands-on experience, and builds a higher level of trust between you and your reader.
It’s also possible to review the promoted products using video even if you don’t actually own them. Although “talking head” videos are maligned by some, the fact is that they prove that you’re a real person and not some faceless marketer hiding behind a potentially dubious site.
Think from the Consumer’s Perspective
When creating your Amazon affiliate site, it’s important to occasionally stop and think: If I were a customer researching these products, would this site provide me real, valuable assistance? If the answer is “not really, but I think I have good advertising strategies,” then your site will need a lot more work before it’ll pass the Panda test. Think about the things that you want to see when you’re researching a potential purchase for yourself, and implement them into your Amazon affiliate site.
Guest post written by: Mitch O’Conner, an online marketer and writer. When he’s not busy testing sites, generating traffic or writing content, he enjoys spending time with his wife and kids, watching TV, playing games or going camping.
Branding is Very Important for Online Marketing
Far too often the individuals that get into internet marketing think about nothing but themselves. They have nothing on their minds except how much money they can make or how successful they can be. These thoughts aren’t necessarily wrong (there is a lot of power in the law of manifestation) but they certainly should not be the only thing inside your head as an internet marketer!
To be a successful internet marketer you have to be aware of how others think and know how others see your business and the products/services being promoted. What that basically means is that branding is very important to the success of your online business. You need to be sure to never forget about your personal and business brands.
Now, you might be wondering what exactly a brand is? The vast majority of people assume it’s the advertising slogan or the logo of a particular business. Or that it’s a company’s colors on their ads or other things that stick out to people. But while these things do make up part any company’s brand, they certainly are not everything that it entails. Actually, there is a lot more to it.
The simplest way to put it is that your brand is everything you do online for yourself or your business. Make sure you always remember that when you are doing anything on the internet. It is the way you handle your customers, every blog post you make, every forum discussion you participate in, every social media account you post on, every picture that gets posted, every email you send, and so on. It’s also every product or service you sell or promote.
Your branding is done through everything you do so you need to always remember that whatever you are doing is potentially affecting your brand, either positively or negatively. Think about that the next time you are about to publicly rant on a forum about a refund request. Remember that the next time you are about to send a nasty email or write a blog post trashing a fellow internet marketer. Just don’t ever forget about your business brand.
Branding is very important for any internet marketer or other business owner. You are your brand and everything about your business is your brand. So you need be sure you that everything you do represents your brand in the best possible way.
For proper branding you must first decide what exactly you want your business to be portrayed as and then make sure you are doing things that are in line with that decision. It doesn’t have to be all perfect and nice. There are plenty of people and businesses who brand themselves as a “jerk” or something else like that. You can become very successful by doing things differently than everyone else. Just make sure you create a brand that you can stick with and keep up the persona in order to build it successfully.
Really what I am trying to say here in not so many words is that branding is very important for your online business and marketing, and you should never forget about your brand in your daily life. This will certainly help make your internet marketing business more sustainable and increase your income.
Three Important Factors for Successful Content Writing
If you have a blog or any other type of website for your online business then you need to know how to write great content. At the very minimum you are going to be writing for your own blogs/sites. In addition to that, you will probably be writing for at least one of the following reasons, if not all of them; articles for promotion, press releases, guest posts for other blogs, information products, sales copy, and more.
Whatever the reason may be, it is vitally important to be able to write well if you plan to build a successful internet business of any kind. Here are 3 important factors for successful content writing on the web:
1) Write Frequently
If you want to become a sports superstar or a famous musician, or become successful at anything else, you have to practice. The same rule applies for writing high quality content. You need to hone your writing skills and keep them sharp. In order to do that you should write a bare minimum of 500 words every day. That might sound like a lot but it’s really not very much at all. The post you are reading right now is around that length. Really most days you should write up to five times that amount, or more.
Another thing you want to do that goes along with writing a lot is read a lot. Find blogs, articles, forums, books, and other things in your niche to read on a regular basis. Believe it or not but reading will help you with writing. And they don’t all have to be in your niche, you should read other stuff too. Any time you read good writing it will help you become a better writer.
2) Develop a Unique Writing Style
As you continue to write and read, you should be able to develop a writing style that is unique to you and doesn’t sound like everyone else out there. Be different and embrace the fact that you have your own unique style of writing. Stick with it and people will take notice. You can build up a very loyal following if you write in a way that people truly enjoy.
3) Be Valuable
A very important factor for successfully writing online is to be very valuable to your readers. How you provide value will depend on your niche and what you are trying to accomplish with your website. In general, this will usually mean that you either entertain or educate your readers with your writing. It’s even better if you can do both at the same time but you definitely need to at least do one or the other.
If you are just stringing words together for the sake of writing then you will never build up a readership. People either want to learn or be entertained, or both at once. If you can do that with your writing then you will do great.
So, three of the most important factors for successful content writing online are to write (and read) frequently, develop a unique writing style, and be valuable to your readers. If you keep those three factors in mind when writing then you should be able to create great content for your online business.
