Six Ways To Earn Money Online

The Internet is a treasure trove of income opportunities. Though people might encounter scams from time to time, there are still plenty of legitimate ways to earn decent money on the Web. Here are six of the most common online money-making methods:

1. Get paid to do mundane tasks in your spare time.

Amazon MTurk is a crowdsourcing website where contractors hire online workers to do simple and minute tasks. Though most of these tasks are simple enough to do without much thinking, like classifying images into categories, spotting grammatical errors or collecting website links, slightly more complex tasks such as transcribing audio files and writing short articles can also be accessed after earning the required qualifications. Other websites that are similar to MTurk include cloudcrowd.com (a Facebook account is needed for sign-up), microtask.com and minuteworkers.com

2. Sell old and used stuff on eBay.

Ebay is a great online marketplace to sell things. It’s amazing how much people are willing to pay for used stuff, so if you have old items that you don’t use, and are of excellent quality, go ahead and put them up for sale. Old books, branded clothes, consumer electronics, toys and other collectibles often sell the best.

3. Sell other people’s products through affiliate marketing.

People earn money through affiliate marketing by promoting a particular merchant’s products or services through advertisements, blog posts, reviews and other media. Sales revenue is then shared between the parties involved. For website owners with a steady stream of web traffic, affiliate marketing is a great way to earn a passive income.

4. Start a blog.

It might take some time to create a high-quality and well-visited blog, but once it reaches a competitive place in search engine rankings, the effort will surely pay off. Companies will be paying to place ads on your blog or have you write a post about them. The best thing about blogs is that it’s easy to create one, and a lot of blogging platforms, like Blogger and WordPress, offer blog hosting and templates for free.

5. Become a freelancer.

Being a freelancer is no easy task. Work is usually project-based (which means that you have to scrounge around and bid for your next assignment) and you have to personally handle all your taxes. But still, more and more people are ditching the stiff corporate world by going freelance. Two great websites that provide job listings for freelancers are oDesk and Elance. These two websites are online job marketplaces where people can post their portfolios and bid on jobs that interest them.

6. Market your knowledge.

Got any interesting ideas about freelancing, social media, internet marketing, or any of the millions of niche topics out there? Then write an e-book about the subject which you can sell on your blog. Or you can be an online consultant for whatever it is that you specialize in. The important thing is to identify any marketable skill or knowledge that you have and make the best use of it by sharing it with other people who might need your insights.

Is it Actually Possible to Make Money with Twitter?

It’s no secret that people love to jump on the latest trends and fads. And right now social media sites are the cool thing to be on, with Twitter being among the most popular of them all. So naturally, there are thousands of people asking the same question every day…”Is it truly possible to make money with twitter?” The answer to that question is, YES!

However, with that being said, if you are going to be successful using Twitter to earn money online, you need to be absolutely sure you are not one of the many wannabe internet marketers out there doing it all wrong without a clue. This post will help you to avoid the dark side of tweeting for cash.

The first thing you need to know is that if you are going to sign up for Twitter with the intentions of spamming like crazy, you might as well forget about it. You will get reported and your account will be deleted before you have a chance to get anywhere with it. And even if you do happen to slide under the radar without getting deleted, you still won’t make any money because nobody will read your spam posts.

The best strategy for becoming successful at Twitter is by actually building up a following and legitimately participating in the community. It is a social networking type of site so you need to be social. You should talk about yourself and what you are doing with your life and business, give useful tips, be creative, helpful, and entertaining. Share information about your niche that your followers actually want to read.

If you have your own blog then one great way to semi-automate your participation is to integrate your blogging efforts with your social media efforts. Make it so every time you post it gets tweeted on your profile. Or maybe you have written a free report covering something about your niche that you are an expert on? Why not give it away for free to your Twitter followers? When you share useful information you will find that your followers will grow just by word of mouth sharing of your tips.

Obviously a great way to help all of this along is to publish the link to your Twitter profile anywhere it is allowed. This would be in your blogs sidebar, the signature file of forums you participate in, other social media site profiles, and so on. And if you submit articles to directories, they often have an option where each time you get an article published it will be tweeted out to all of your followers.

In the end, what you want all of this to do is build up a strong reputation for yourself. Once that has happened, you will find that the trust and following you have gotten will turn into a lot of sales if you roll out your marketing promotions strategically. Always contribute much more than you pitch sales. That is vital!

If used correctly there’s little doubt that Twitter can be quite profitable. It can certainly be used as one tactic for earning money online.

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, desire, and the initial capital required to start a business, so even if they have a great idea then their idea will not come to 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.

Create 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 5 guest blog posts per day

Many companies will pay people quite well to write blog posts for them. They do this because the backlinks in those posts will bring them in targeted traffic and help them show up higher on search engines. A lot of companies rely on outsourced work, usually in India or the Philippines, 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 writers to write posts for them. Just 5 posts per day could bring you well over $3,000 per month – depending on your skill set.

Making Money With Wizzley

So we know the universal truth about making money online is you need high quality content and links to rank in the search engines. There are a million debates about how to build links, if you should even build links, or if you should just try to be social.

Anyway I’m not going to get into that because it’s a never ending fight. What I will tell you is I use web 2.0 sites to get links to my content. I write good articles on my web 2.0s, and try to provide relevant information that people will find useful, just like I do with anything I write. The sites I really LOVE to write on though are the sites that share revenue with the people who write content for them. Everyone knows about the big two, being HubPages and Squidoo. They are great sites and are easy to use for backlinks and to make money.

Introducing Wizzley

Anyway the real purpose of this post is to let people know about a new site that I’ve been using to build links called wizzley. This could be considered a wizzley review. It’s another revenue share site, where you get anywhere between 50-60% of the adsense and amazon impressions for the site. It’s a pretty easy to use interface as well. When I first started building on the site I was really just looking for a link (you need 5 articles for you links to become do-follow), but I was pretty surprised at how fast the articles took off and started getting some traffic. I kept throwing up articles and they kept ranking well.

The nice thing about a newer site like this is that it’s not saturated with articles. When you write on hubpages you compete not only against millions of other sites on the internet, but also with tens or hundreds of other articles on the same site. There are also just about any URL you want on the site. Using a new site like this a great benefit for sure.

Now don’t think you can go and toss a bunch of garbage up on the site and get away with it. New sites always get looked after pretty well, and so publish good content or you always risk getting banned. The only thing I’ve really seen them be tough on is adding affiliate links of your own outside of what they allow. They do provide a good service so use the adsense, and if you want an affiliate then use their amazon setup. They give a great service and you get the benefit of using a great site.

Anyway check out the Wizzley site here and get back to us with any tips or ticks you might find on the site. I’m going to keep adding to this post as I learn more and more about the service and some some tips of my own to share, so check back in regularly.

TIPS

Send in a good tip to help with our review of Wizzley and I’ll post it here and give you credit and a link to your blog or Wizzley account if you like!

When you start your page you have the option of setting your URL and title separately. In this day and age I would suggest you: a) set your title as something keyword related, but interesting for someone searching for information on the topic (think like you’re answering a question your searcher is asking) and; b) set your URL to your exact keyword.
Use keyword cousins and longtail keywords in your module titles.
Add an image or two, and always be sure to give them a related keyword for your image title. This is also a great place to add a link to one of your sites if you give one of your URLs credit for the image as the source URL, using your keyword as the “Name of Source”.

Wizzley can be great for making money online directly and for building links to your other sites to help you increase their rankings and earn money from them.

Chronic Commissions Review

As I am writing this post a product called “Chronic Commissions” is the #1 most popular product in the e-business & e-marketing (online business and internet marketing) section of Clickbank, which also happens to be one of the most popular affiliate marketplaces on the internet, if you didn’t already know that. I noticed it the other day when I was checking my CB sales stats but I didn’t really look into it until I saw a post on the most popular internet marketing forum in the world. I recognized one of the people posting positive reviews in the thread as a very well-known and respected IM expert. Obviously they are doing something right so I decided it was probably time for me to check out Chronic Commissions for myself.

After going through it I decided to write a review for my blog readers (such as you) to read. So here is my review of Chronic Commissions…

To start I must say the sales letter is full of hype. It’s seriously overboard in that category. I’m not a fan of hypey products in general so that definitely gives this a negative point in my book, even though it is expected on most internet marketing products. However, on the other hand, their video is actually quite entertaining. It kept my attention well enough to watch the whole thing and that is very rare for me. So I will give them a small bonus on that aspect of the sales letter.

Now. let’s get a little more into what the Chronic Commissions product really consists of…

Basically it’s a very cool web based software that automatically builds your email list for you and promotes various products to your list so you can make money from them. I’m sure you’ve heard the popular saying, “the money is in the list” and it’s very true. Chronic Commissions can help with that.

Pretty much all you have to do is to put in your autoresponder and clickbank account information. Then, a few more quick things and you’re done. The system also has pre-loaded email swipes that can be used to send to your subscribers to make it even more effortless for you.

The setup is quite user friendly even for a complete beginner. And there’s a video for each section that is very easy to understand.

It really doesn’t even require you to have your own domain or hosting because the software is web based. All you do is enter in a few pieces of information:

* Clickbank ID – For your affiliate links
* Paypal ID (optional) – In case you want to get paid per lead
* Autoresponder Code – To build your list

After you finish that simple step, you’re ready to set up your campaigns. That part is also pretty self explanatory.

They have several high converting offers displayed for you. All you have to do is simply type in your tracking ID and decide if you want it go to the squeeze page or salesletter. Once you do that it takes you through a few more easy steps of picking and choosing what you want, and showing you what it will look like.

They also give you a great list of solo ads providers. Each of them shows you their testing results, the list size, costs per click, and so on. These people and companies will send emails to their lists for you at a great price. I loved this part because it is information that can be used for my internet marketing in many ways.

Once your list starts building, Chronic Commissions will send out emails to your subscribers about the various products in a way that is proven to generate sales.

That’s pretty much it. There’s a little more to it here and there, but that’s the main part of it and really all you need to know.

Also, there are some really great bonuses, but I won’t get into those since they aren’t the main part of what you are actually paying for.

So, the big question is…

Does the product deliver as promised or is it just one big pile of crap?

Well, the answer is actually somewhere in between if you ask me. It’s not quite as easy as they try to make it out to be and I highly doubt you are ever going to earn the kind of money they are claiming from it. But, it’s not worthless either. You really can make money using the system and it’s not overly difficult by any means. In my opinion, it’s definitely worth giving it a shot.

So, do I recommend Chronic Commissions? Overall the answer is yes, I do. Just don’t expect to get rich in the next month with a few clicks of your mouse as the sales copy would have you believe. But it does have great potential for building a great list and making money, so it’s certainly worth the cost.

That’s all I really have to say about it. So, I guess that concludes my chronic commissions review.

Top 7 Tips for Flipping Websites & Blogs

When you are looking to make extra money online, flipping websites (or blog flipping) can be a good idea. Site flipping can even be turned into a highly profitable full-time home business. Similar to flipping houses, the goal is to buy websites that are currently not doing very well, but have a lot of potential. You then improve them to make the sites more valuable and sell them for a profit. However, as simple as it sounds there are a few things that you need to be aware of when buying and selling websites for profit.

Here you will find the top 7 tips for website flipping (and a LOT more)…

Tip Number One – Buy from Well-Known Sources

When you are looking for websites to buy it is always a good idea to stick to well known marketplaces. Flippa.com is one of the most popular and reliable sites that you should try. As well as showcasing websites, it also offers you plenty of tips and information to get you started. Flippa is easily the most well known site flipping marketplace right now.

Tip Number Two – Beware of Sites that Seem Too Good to be True

It can be really easy to get carried away when you are looking for potential sites. Some may seem too good to be true. If you find websites for sale that promise the earth then you should be very cautious of them. Never invest in anything that sounds too good to be true (e.g. “$14,000 in just 10 days!” OR “Automatic business! 0 hours a month!”). It would be worth checking Google to see whether the sites have been blacklisted on any list on the web. If they have then you would find it very difficult to make them work for you. Also check the sellers and the website background on twitter search and blogs search to see what people have been saying about them. You should look at everything you can find to make sure it is legit. It’s much better to be overly cautious than it is to get screwed over.

Tip Number Three – Ensure that you stick to a Budget

You should always stick to a budget that you can comfortably afford. Set aside a set amount that you can spend on flipping blogs or any types of websites and do not go over it. This will help you to stay focused on what you are spending. Sometimes you can get carried away by a site that looks so promising, but going over your budget might not be the best thing to do when you’re just starting out.

Tip Number Four – Evaluate the Websites

Once you have found a website that you would like to invest in, you should first evaluate it deeply before making any offer. Look at how it would need to be improved, are there any usability issues, what new features would you need to add to the site, who are the suppliers if it’s ecommerce, what’s the margins, what kind of help you need to run the website and also think of everything that would need to be done to double the value of the website before you work out whether it would be worthwhile.

Tip Number Five – Understand the Work and Costs Involved

Another thing that you have to consider with website flipping is how much time it will take you to improve the site. What costs will be involved? When you need to add features to a website it can be costly. If the website would need a complete redesign then it could be worth just building your own site from scratch. The investment in the website is not just the purchase price but also the post-purchase investment in the improvements you’ll be doing. So take this in consideration.

Tip Number Six – Be Enthusiastic

If you want to make the most money flipping blogs then you will need to be enthusiastic about the website that you are buying/selling. You will need to want it to do well. Ideally you should choose a website that relates to something that you know about. That way you will be more interested in making it work. If you aren’t interested in the site then you might not give it your best. That’s simply how it works. So when deciding on which site to buy you should only buy those that you feel enthusiastic about and that will probably insure a nice profit for you.

Tip Number Seven – Know When to Sell

The keys to selling a website is giving it a better design, building its traffic up, increasing earnings, and making the operation easy to manage. When you succeed you need to choose whether to keep the site or sell it and make a profit. If you wait too long then you run the risk of a downturn further along the line. If the website suddenly starts to lose traffic then its profit margins will also deteriorate again. So in most cases it’s smart to sell the site when you feel it has hit its full potential. This way you can take the money from the sale and buy a larger website.

These basics should get you up and running as you enter the exciting world of site flipping!

However, if you don’t feel ready to dive in head first just yet, here’s a LOT more information to help train you for the site/blog flipping business olympics…

Blog Flip vs Site Flip

People often ask, what is the difference between “blog flipping” and “site flipping” or if they are the same thing?

Technically speaking, a blog is a website; therefore, site flipping and blog flipping are really the same thing just said in different ways because they are different kinds of websites. You can flip blogs, static websites, directories, product sites, ecommerce sites, and you can flip any other type of online website. They are all types of websites and you can make money flipping any of them.

It really doesn’t matter what type of site you flip, it is still essentially “website flipping” and they all are done with basically the same or similar process. The reason you tend to see more people flipping blogs for profit is because they are easy to build and are high in demand (more info on that below).

If you come across a “blog flip” information product or website or if you come across a “site flip” information product or website, they are really the same thing just being presented in a slightly different way.

So, when it comes to blog flipping versus site flipping the choice is yours. The process is the same or very similar so why not do a little of both? Blogs do tend to sell easier and for more money, with all other things being equal, but there is still a good market for all kinds of websites.

Why Flip Blogs?

Even after reading the above, I still get asked quite frequently why I recommend flipping blogs instead of flipping websites of other types such as static sites, ecommerce sites, single page sales letter sites, niche mini-sites, or any other types of websites that aren’t blogs.

There’s actually no easy answer to that question, but I will try to explain my reasoning a little bit here if you’ll bear with me. I’ve flipped many types of web sites. One of my favorite site flipping business models is to write an information product, create a sales letter, establish a couple months of good sales, then flip it for large profit. That’s a great way to make a lot of money flipping websites, so why don’t I recommend you start here?

Well, the reason is because this more elaborate site flipping business model I just described works well for me because I happen to have several key skills that are necessary to do this sort of thing. I have a lot of internet marketing and other online business experience. I can write compelling sales copy, I understand how to create a good information product, and I can get some sales coming in fairly easily. I’m not bragging, I am just pointing out that there’s quite a lot of experience that make this model viable for me. If you have it then, by all means, go for it! But most of the readers of this blog do not have that same level of internet marketing experience.

However, the typical person who reads this blog does have enough knowledge and experience to build a blog in a hot niche and flip it for profit. And besides the fact that I know you have the skills necessary to build and sell start-up blogs, another great reason for you to do this is the fact that the market for blogs is huge!

Blogs are HOT sellers! And rightfully so, because by their very nature, blogs can easily do what most other, more static websites can’t. For instance, they are easy to build, easy to update, easy to manage, and relatively easy to transfer to a new owner. Plus, they are usually very search engine friendly, and tend to rank well. That’s not necessarily the case with a static site. Blogs are also more natural for other people to link to, share on social media, comment on, etc… which makes them traffic magnets compared to many other types of website.

Another great reason to flip blogs instead of other types of web sites is simply because people love blogs. People associate blogs with quality information that is updated frequently and there’s more interaction on them. Blogs are open and other people can comment on them or even submit guest posts as most owners allow. That fact alone gives your visitors a sense of ownership of your information. Generally speaking they are much more likely to trust information on blogs more than information that comes from static sites.

In addition to all of this, blogs are relatively easy to design and make them look cool. There are a ton of free themes and plug-ins out there that you can use on your blog, which will make your site very functional and give it a very professional, polished look. This helps a lot when you go to flip it because website buyers respond to the visual aspects of sites. A cool looking blog will often sell for more money than a static site with the same information, traffic, and earnings.

So, why flip blogs rather than other website types?

I think I have answered that question well enough above. If you are just getting started then I recommend using blog flipping as your main site flipping business model. But I am not saying you should only flip blogs. Expand your horizons and see what works best for you, especially after you gain some experience!

The Best Domain Extension to Use for Site Flips

There are a LOT of extensions, also called top-level domains (TLD), that you can register when registering (or buying) a domain name for a new site. However, most of them are not good at all for website flipping and could end up losing you money on your sale in the end.

This is not an absolute rule these days since more and more TLDs are becoming acceptable, but you will still be doing yourself a favor by sticking to my advice on this part of things.

I’m sure you know that extensions such as .info are cheap, and there are a ton of other cool sounding, fun, new, and fancy domain extensions out on the internet to choose from. Since you are just going to sell the site anyway it can be very tempting to get one of them, but they are not your best options when it comes to the site flipping business. Getting a .info domain or another cheap/crazy alternative can often times lower the perceived value of your site, so you won’t get as much money from the flip.

The .com domain extension is the most widely used in the world and definitely the best to use for flipping purposes if possible. Almost all regular internet users know the .com domain extension and most businesses prefer a .com domain name because it is very recognizable for an online business presence. The .org and .net TLDs are quite well known as well and accepted by the vast majority of the population, so they are perfectly fine too.

One of the things that I try very hard to get across to my blog flipping students is to never use domain names like .info or .mobi or any other unusual extension. You should always go for the “big three” (com, org, net) whenever possible.

Like I said above, this isn’t a rule that will absolutely make or break your efforts, but it certainly can’t hurt to stick with the major extensions. You definitely can sell a site with any TLD, but you are in this to make money, and you will get a bigger profit most of the time from a site with a “normal” extension – with all other things being equal.

How Much Is My Web Site Worth?

When you are looking to flip a blog or sell a website, you always want to have a general idea of what it’s worth before you put it up for sale. How to determine how much your site is worth really depends on who you talk to. There are several schools of thought on deciding the value of a website.

There’s a saying that you may have seen before and it goes something like this, “Your site is worth as much as someone is willing to give you for it” – but that doesn’t help you much in determining what to start your price at when buying and selling websites.

So, how much is a site worth?

When figuring out the value of a website, there are a few different formulas you can choose from:

1) For a newer site that doesn’t have a long history of earnings but does make some money each month, you will usually take 10 times the monthly income it brings in. So, if your blog made you $100 consistently for the past few months, but it’s less than a year old, you can probably get about $1000 out of it, or maybe a little more.

2) If you have a premium site that has been well-established online for a long time (multiple years), gets a lot of traffic, and consistently makes a lot of money every month, you can usually get anywhere from 3-5 times the yearly income that it brings in. So, if your site earns $50,000 per year, you could get up to $250,000 for it.

3) Brand new sites with little to no traffic or earnings will not usually sell for very much and it is very hard to determine their value. In this case you will usually be looking at the “potential” the site has, the design, how much original content is already published on the blog, and other things that have some inherent value. You can expect to make maybe $100 to $500 from the sale of a site like this, depending on a number of factors.

Remember that these are just ball park figures. In some cases you might get a lot more or a lot less for a site that fits in one of these categories.

That’s the basics of establishing the value of your site. There’s no set rule for how much websites are worth and sales values can largely be determined by the market. However, you can use the above information as a general guideline for the next time you are flipping a blog so you don’t set your price too high or low, or buy something that is overpriced.

I Made $48,000 In Two Days Flipping a Website!

I’ve got a true story to tell about site flipping that should get you very motivated about this business idea…

I once sold a website for $48,000 and the listing was only up for 2 days before I got the “Buy It Now” bid to end the auction and solidify the sale!

In addition to that I received a private bid of $60,000 for the same site a couple days later from a very well-known and respected internet marketing guru. However, I had already started the transaction with the original buyer and I am not someone who backs out on a deal just because I can get more money from someone else, so I denied his offer and lost out on another $12,000 from the site sale.

Okay, so I admit the headline of this section is a bit misleading because it took me a lot longer than two days to build up that site to the point of being worth that much money. However, it still shows that you can make a lot of money selling websites.

Take the time and put in the effort to build a website or blog up to the point where it is getting good traffic on autopilot and consistently bringing in a solid monthly income. If you are willing to do that, you can sell it for THOUSANDS of dollars.

Most people say they would never sell a site that they had built up to the point of getting great traffic and consistently high earnings. I used to say the same thing. However, that nice lump sum of money is great for funding new projects, buying more sites, paying off debts, taking vacations, or whatever else you want to do with it.

There’s no doubt that you can make money flipping blogs & websites so if you are looking for an extra income stream, this is a great way to do it. What could you do with an extra $48,000 or more right now? Think about it!

The Escrow Process for Site Flips

If you are going to make money buying and selling websites, you need to be familiar with the Escrow process. this is very important because Escrow helps protect both the buyer and the seller from being scammed during a site flip. I would never be comfortable selling a site for a lot of money without the services of Escrow.com to ease my mind.

It’s too easy to get away with fraudulent transactions during the sale of website if you don’t have a 3rd party such as Escrow to help protect both sides. Nothing can guarantee you won’t get scammed out of your money or site (not even Escrow) but it does greatly reduce the risk. It’s probably not worth using for a small site flipping transaction due to the fees, extra effort, and time – but when you start getting into thousands of dollars per sale it is more than worth it.

A lot of site flippers don’t use them because they don’t know how it all works. I know I was nervous the first time I used them but honestly it’s not difficult at all.

Here is the (very easy) Escrow process so you know what it is ahead of time and you can put your fears to rest…

1) Seller or Buyer initiates the transaction

This basically just gets the ball rolling. You set the terms of the sale and other information about it. Either party can initiate it but as the seller I always like to do it. That way it’s just one more thing I am in control of to help prevent a fraudulent buyer from getting away with anything. I don’t really think it matters either way, but it does make me feel better if I am the one initiating the transaction. If you are flipping websites the choice is yours but I recommend being the one to initiate the Escrow process just in case.

2) Buyer and Seller Agree to Terms

Both parties agree to terms of the transaction set in step one above. This includes a description of the merchandise, sale price, number of days for the Buyers inspection, any shipping information, and so on.

3) Buyer Sends Payment to Escrow.com

The Buyer submits the payment by check, money order, wire transfer, credit card or Paypal. Escrow verifies the payment to ensure its validity and either approves or denies it. If they approve it then you move on to the next step.

4) Seller Transfers Domain and Site to Buyer

Upon payment verification, the seller transfers the domain name to the buyer. Escrow verifies that the domain name is transferred to the buyer then notifies both parties of the next step.

5) Buyer Receives Domain and Site

The buyer has a set number of days for inspecting the website and is given the option to accept it or reject it if they find the seller misleading them or whatever. The number of days for inspection is set in the terms of the transaction when it is initiated. Usually it’s set at around 3-5 days. If the buyer accepts it then you are pretty much done.

6) Escrow Pays Seller

Escrow.com pays the Seller by check, ACH or wire transfer and the transaction is complete.

As you can see the whole process is fairly simple and straightforward.

Also, I have copied/pasted the exact Escrow history of the $48k site sale I discussed above, so you can see exactly how it went and how long it took. Here you go:

* Apr 30 – 7:40PM PDT
Seller initiates the transaction

* Apr 30 – 7:46PM PDT
Both parties have accepted the offer, awaiting buyer payment.

* May 1 – 5:29AM PDT
Buyer selected option to pay by wire transfer, Escrow.com waiting for payment to arrive.

* May 1 – 9:44AM PDT
Escrow.com approves payment.

* May 1 – 2:13PM PDT
Seller submitted transfer for domain.

* May 2 – 5:12AM PDT
Buyer received merchandise. Inspection period starts.

* May 2 – 5:12AM PDT
Buyer accepts merchandise, transaction complete.

* May 4 – 8:33AM PDT
Funds disbursed. Final closing statements sent to both parties.

That’s it. The process took five days from start to finish and there were no problems. This was for a very well-established and highly profitable website so using this service definitely helped me sleep at night, even though I was still nervous until the money was safely in my bank account.

Using the Escrow service isn’t free because they do take a percentage of the sale but it can be more than worth it to save you from losing a lot more money, or a site you worked very hard on, to a scam artist. As I said above, if you’re only dealing with a fairly small site flipping transaction that you wouldn’t necessarily be crushed over if you got scammed then it might not be worth the time or the fee of using Escrow. But when you start getting into the thousands of dollars range, you really should use them!

WebSite / Blog Flipping FAQ (Remember they are the same thing)

Here are some frequently asked questions about buying & selling websites and the answers to them. Most of this has already been answered above but I thought you might like it summed up once again…

What is site flipping?

Basically it is just the act of buying (or building) a website and selling it for profit. Site flipping (or blog flipping) is one of the hottest online business models right now. Flipping blogs is somewhat similar to flipping real-estate in the offline world, but instead you are flipping virtual real-estate.

Why would I want to flip blogs?

Well, the best reason for blog flipping is simply to make money. You can make some quick and easy cash doing a site flip.

It’s also a great way to make money from a website that isn’t earning the income you expected for the amount of work you put in. You can also do it as a way to get rid of sites you don’t have time for anymore. There are a lot of reasons for flipping blogs but it mainly comes down to making money.

The great thing about flipping sites for money is that you don’t need to spend all your time learning all the internet marketing techniques most people use to make money online and there are very little technical skills or special knowledge required.

How much money can I make flipping blogs?

The sky is the limit really. Many people are making thousands of dollars on every flip. Some are earning over $500,000 per year flipping blogs. Most likely you will earn anywhere from $100 to $2,500 per flip depending on a number of factors including; domain, age of site, current earnings, search engine rankings, niche, how much content it has, readers, followers, social accounts, traffic, etc…

How do I get started in site flipping?

You already have a great start by reading this post. Then it’s basically just a matter of buying a website (or building one) and putting it up for sale at Flippa or Empire Flippers, or another similar marketplace where you can buy and sell websites. You can also just flip blogs and sites you already own if you are willing to part with them.

How do I know how much my site is worth or how to valuate a website I am looking to buy?

Okay, now you know how to buy a website and flip it for profit. So get out there and start making money flipping websites. You got this!

Starting a Link Building Campaign

One of the biggest mistakes people make when they start a site is pounding it with links. These days that can get you in hot water with google because if your site gets too big too fast (ie. too many links) and you climb the SERPs like a rocket they figure something must be up.

For those people who believe in natural link building (ie. suckers) it’s not an issue generally. For people who post all over the web from hubpages, to squidoo, to infobarrel, to facebook, etc. it’s not a huge issue either because you simply can’t pound out 100 of those a day (or a week for that matter).

No it’s the people who pay for things like the Keyword Academy’s PostRunner system, or BuildMyRank that end up getting tossed in google’s sandbox. Sure the sandbox is only temporary, but when you are working on a site and seeing consistent growth in the SERPs it really is a kick in the nuts to see its traffic fall to near nothing in a matter of hours.

Ok so what can you do?

1 – Start out slowly: Two or three links a day for a few months. This slow rate of link building also means that you should be investing some serious time in getting the links. Look for relevant sites to write high quality guest posts on. Build some pages on web 2.0 sites like hubpages, squidoo, infobarrel, and whatever else you can find. The nice things about building on sites like these is then if you get to a point where you have too much content and don’t want to link it all to your site (or if you have 2 links to send from 1 article like in postrunner) these are great places to link to your links.

2 – Ramp up slowly: Increase the number of links you send your site per day slow and steady. Stick with two or three for like two months, and then maybe ramp it up by one additional link every couple of weeks. Slow and steady wins the race.

3 – Hold off on the blogrolls: I wouldn’t suggest sending your site blogrolls for at least six months. Despite the fact that all the links are coming from one site, it is still a buttload of links to point at a site early on. You used to be able to get away with hammering a site with blogroll links, but I do not believe this is the case. Even when you do get to the six month mark I would suggest just doing one blogroll trade a month.

4 – Build for a wide range of keywords: Don’t just hit your site for your site for its main keyword but work on a range of related keywords as well. Use the odd “click here” or your site name, or even your sites URL. I also like to build links for some really short keywords that just relate generally to the category your site is about.

Anyway if you keep those four things in mind you should be able to keep your site out of hot water. If your site gets sandboxed anyway don’t feel bad, stop building links, or give up on making money online altogether (although I do love buying sandboxed sites off newbies for a fraction of their value). Just keep working until it comes out.

Best of luck!

Review of Niche Reaper

Updated in 2019 for the newest 3.0 version of Niche Reaper, this post was first written as a review of the original niche reaper software (everything you see under the divider line and image was the original post).

There have been more versions released over the years so the product has changed/updated since my original review. Recently, Niche Reaper 3.0 was released, which is why I have added this short update to the post.

To be honest, my Niche Reaper 3 review isn’t much different than my first review of the original version — other than the obvious fact that it is new and improved.

It’s still an excellent tool for internet marketers, affiliate niche site builders, SEO specialists, or anyone else into making money online. In fact, it is much better now, and it was great then. So I definitely recommend it!

Niche Reaper

This is an honest Niche Reaper review without all the hype, lies and other crap. You can take it or leave it. There are no bonuses or a bunch of other marketing strategies to try and convince you to purchase it through my affiliate link. Yes, there are affiliate links on this page, so if you buy it I will make money, but I’m not going to sugar coat it just to earn a few extra bucks. Fair enough? I think so!

There’s no doubt that you will be hearing a LOT about niche reaper in the next few days and coming weeks. I’m sure you have probably already been bombarded with emails, blog posts, forum threads, social media updates, and everything else possible about Niche Reaper. If you haven’t yet then you will soon. Trust me. This is a huge internet marketing launch so it’s going to be impossible to avoid it. I know for a fact that a bunch of the biggest internet marketing gurus are already on board. Everyone and their dog will be promoting this. You just gotta deal with it for a while whether you purchase it or not.

Anyway, let’s start by going straight to the million dollar question…

Is niche reaper a scam or ripoff, or is it legit? Of course you want to know the answer to that question. So, here it is…

It truly is 100% legit and could really be very useful for most internet marketers or anyone else trying to make money online. Yes, I know, that doesn’t really tell you much other than what I think about it. So I suppose I will go a little more in-depth for you with my review of niche reaper…

What is it?

In a nutshell it is a keyword research software program built for finding money making niches, and was created by Matt Garrett and Gary Prendergast. It will save you hours upon hours of time when researching profitable niches along with helping you to earn a lot more money from them.

You still have to put in work! Using the Niche Reaper software doesn’t mean money is going to come flying out of your computer screen at you. Too many lazy ass people think that’s how internet marketing works, but if it were that easy everyone would be doing it. This is just a tool to help you make money online, it won’t magically make you rich. Much like a hammer is a tool that will help you build a house, but it doesn’t build it for you.

A quick overview of what it does is give you the following information on niches you can use for online money making:

* Best keywords to target
* How much competition there is
* Average authority of the top competing sites
* Keywords related to the topic
* What people are searching all the time
* How competitive the niche really is
* What related domains are available
* If the Facebook fan page is available

…And soooooo much more!

So far it’s looking very powerful and highly recommended. If you are on the fence about getting it then I think it’s safe to say you can go for it. But this unbiased review will be completely finished after I have a chance to fully dig in and get a grasp on the niche reaper keyword research tool — so stand by.

Update: Alright, my final thoughts on niche reaper are that it rocks! Don’t fear the reaper… Get it, learn it, use it, love it! Most importantly, Stack the cash! That’s all I have to say about that.

Exploring the Various Ways of Online Money Making

With the widespread usage of the internet all over the world, it is a universally acknowledged fact that a lot of money can be made online. However, there are many ways for earning a living online and possibly even becoming rich, so how do you choose? It basically just depends on your own preferences and skills.

While some believe that it is best to make money with affiliate marketing, others believe that flipping websites or domains is their way to make money online, others believe in doing it with Adsense or by creating their own information products to sell, and the list goes on and on. The fact is that there is loads of money that can be earned online through many different methods but you have to choose the best ways that fit your needs.

Here are just some of the ways that people may use to make money online…

* Making money on eBay: If you’re looking forward to exploring the avenues of online money making, you can try being a seller on eBay. Thousands of sales are being made every day on eBay and this results in a lot of income for the sellers. You might be wondering where you would start or where you would you get the items to sell? Once you have signed up with your free account, the best way to get started and build some experience as a seller is by auctioning off some of your personal items that you do not use anymore. While doing that, you can decide what kind of business you want to set up and figure out where to get inventory to sell, or find a reliable drop shipper.

* Making money through affiliate marketing: This is also an effective and highly popular way to make money online. It is basically just the act of referring people to different products and services according to their needs, and getting a particular percentage of the sale in return for it. As an affiliate marketer, you are given your own links to a product/service so the seller will know when a customer buys that product from your referral.

* Make money blogging: An increasingly large number of people are starting to figure out that blogging can be one of the best ways to make money online. With very minimal start up costs (or even free), you can easily build a blog and get started on blogging. Your goal is then to gain a loyal readership over time as well as high search engine rankings. This will be done by regularly posting very high quality content along with getting backlinks and utilizing social networking sites. Once you do that you can start bringing in a decent income that will continue to grow as the popularity of your blog grows.

* Make money with Facebook: If you’ve always wanted to earn an online income, why not jump into the most popular social networking site in the world? Go after a popular niche and build up your list of friends and fans by engaging with them and giving them lots of great reasons to like you and share you with their friends. You can start making money by using the various monetization systems to your advantage as more people come to know about you.

The above list is by no means comprehensive but it does highlight some of the most interesting and effective ways of making money on the internet. You can try out one of them or combine a few of them into your own money making system. Whatever fits with your interests and works best for you.

What Is Bring The Fresh?

As an aspiring internet marketing business owner, SEO specialist, affiliate marketer, or someone just looking for ways to make money online, I am sure you have heard of “Bring the Fresh” and you might be wondering what it is? In a nutshell bring the fresh (BTF) is a membership site that is fully loaded with useful information and resources that actually teach you how to make money online.

They teach an incredible system for building profitable websites, getting them ranked highly in Google and other search engines with SEO, and having them generate free passive income for you. Basically it’s a step-by-step blueprint for building a successful online business without needing a lot of money to do so.

UPDATE: Bring The Fresh is SOLD OUT for the time being and has therefore been taken off the market.

I’ve written my full Bring the Fresh Review below. So, if you want, you can skip all this intro stuff and scroll down to read my review of bring the fresh. If you want to know some of thoughts about it beforehand, I will give you a little more detail about what the BTF membership actually includes and teaches.

There’s no doubt that Bring the Fresh has caused a lot of buzz in the internet marketing world and has been recommended and promoted by many of the top marketers in this industry. The owner (Kelly Felix) has created an awesome series of videos that teach market research, product creation, copywriting, SEO, affiliate marketing, PPC, video marketing, and TONS more. He really thought of everything and included it all.

Here’s a quick rundown of just some of the stuff you will find inside BTF…

* You are shown exactly how to quickly create a website in a competitive market that the search engines will love. Yes, it is simple, and it really does work, even if you have no idea how to build a website.

* How to get numerous high authority websites to link to you. No spam or crappy links. We are talking about real authority links in a natural way.

* How to find profitable keywords fast. You will learn exactly how to go after “buying” keywords where the people searching will be ready to spend money now.

* A behind the scenes look at incredibly successful websites and online businesses. You get to watch as they are created from start to finish, and how they are made profitable, time and time again. There is nothing left out, including a sneak peek inside campaigns that brought in millions of dollars in profits. Also, an up close look at some of the biggest product launches in the history of internet marketing!

* Access to a private members only forum. They even personally answer questions there all the time, as do numerous successful members. The information in the forum alone is more than worth the cost of bringthefresh.

* Excellent support. You will never have any trouble getting a hold of them.

* …And MUCH more!

Here are the things that are NOT inside BTF…

* A useless get rich quick scheme. While it is true that some of their members have earned small fortunes in a short amount of time, and many earn hundreds of dollars per day from the information taught in BTF, most people are happy with an extra $100 a day or so; on autopilot. That’s a much more realistic goal and something that can easily be done by virtually anyone from the teachings in Bring the Fresh. Although you can make a LOT more. They don’t give you false hyped up promises of becoming a millionaire overnight.

* How to build fake blogs or other crap like that. You’ve seen the blogs that look like online newspapers or news websites. You know the ones that sell worthless products and continue to bill the customer over and over without their consent. They don’t recommend misleading people and they don’t do it themselves.

* How to trick search engines into liking your site or giving you undeserved high rankings. Tricks and schemes might work for a little while but they don’t last. If you are trying to make a quick buck through spamming or other black hat stuff, this is not the product for you.

* A customer service team located in a third world country that doesn’t even understand your questions or problems. They have excellent customer service that goes above and beyond.

* Tons of upsells. They don’t make you buy a bunch of expensive stuff in order to make their system work.

* …Or any other crap you might be expecting from an internet marketing product. This is the real deal. Honest, straightforward, and realistic.

Everyone from newbie’s to full out gurus can benefit from the information and resources that Bring the Fresh has to offer!

Obviously this isn’t some miracle product that will have you making money overnight without doing any work. There’s NO such thing! However, if you are willing to follow their advice and put in the necessary work to build a real online business, then “Bring the Fresh” truly is the system you have always dreamed of finding.

Again, I encourage you to continue reading below to find my full and very real review of bring the fresh. It will help give you some more information about what I actually found inside.

Okay let’s get to the real meat of my review…

If you regularly read this blog or any of my others, or subscribe to my newsletters, then you will know that I don’t do a lot of reviews. Yes, I’ve obviously done a few here and there, but they are certainly not a big part of my blogging efforts. Out of hundreds upon hundreds of posts across multiple sites – only a very small percentage of them are reviews. However, something called “Bring the Fresh” was recently recommended to me by a close friend of mine who also happens to be a high level internet marketer. He’s one of the few people I truly trust online and when he speaks, I listen.

Plus, I recognized the name of the owner, Kelly Felix (of “The Rich Jerk” fame) who is very well known in the internet marketing world and puts out excellent information. I’ve been following him for a long time and have a lot of respect for him. I’ve also purchased some of his other products and they have always been top-notch! So I decided I should probably at least give BringTheFresh a look and see what it’s all about.

I told Kelly Felix that I would write a review of bring the fresh if he wanted to set me up with an account. I made it very clear to him that I would give my honest opinion of it and tell the truth about what I thought – even if I thought it sucked! I do not write positive reviews just because I was given a free copy of something or because the owner is a well known internet marketer, or someone I know, or for any other reason – unless they truly deserve it. If it’s bad then I am going to call it out. Plain and simple. He still set me up with a full membership after hearing that so he must have been confident in his work. I’ll give him a plus for that right away.

Of course, I still didn’t have high expectations being the skeptic that I am. And having been an internet marketer for many years seeing all the new crap coming out all the time has made me even more cautious and pessimistic. But I tried to go in with as much of an open mind as I could.

The first thing I noticed is that their sales page isn’t full of hype and outrageous promises like you see far too often on most of the “how to make money online” types of products. It basically just gives you a rundown of who they are and what they do, an overview of what is inside and what’s not inside along with some videos, testimonials, and a bit of other information. They get another plus right off the bat for that.

But the sales page isn’t really what matters; it’s just a small part of the equation. It’s what’s inside that you pay for and ultimately the only thing that counts. So I dug in expecting to get through it all in an hour or two and be done. Ha! The joke was on me. This thing is loaded.

BTF isn’t some short ebook or report like you see so often with products in the make money online niche. Instead, this is a full blown membership site complete with videos, guides, interviews, recommended products, forums, bonuses, and so much more. I didn’t count up every minute but my rough estimate is that there has to be somewhere around 40 hours of video plus a ton of other stuff.

What is Bring the Fresh?

Some of the lessons taught and resources include; market selection, product creation, website success, link building and SEO for high rankings, marketing, conversions, templates, etc… It is absolutely packed with information! And it’s not just a bunch of fluff and filler content either. No, this is real advice that you can actually use to make money, a lot of it!

I’ve been an internet marketing business owner making a great living from my online business since 2003, so I have a ton of experience. Even still BTF taught me several things I didn’t know, gave me a few more twists on some things I did know, and refreshed me on some things I had forgotten about. I definitely didn’t think it would have much of anything new that I didn’t already know, but I was wrong. It truly is real and useful information for making money online.

Here’s a quick list of my positives about it:

It works – I know that the stuff they are teaching actually does work. That’s really all that matters and the #1 reason why I recommend it.
Several hours of video – Everything is shown to you so it is much easier to understand and implement.
Solid advice and training – Not a bunch of fluff and filler. It’s packed full of truly useful stuff.
Easy to follow – You aren’t left more confused than when you started as tends to happen with other internet marketing products.
Great value at a low price – They massively over-deliver.
Up to date – They continually update as needed.
Active forum – Lots of discussion going on in there about all sorts of different internet marketing and money making topics.
Amazing support – Questions are always answered.

And a couple very minor negative things I found:

Design – I know this doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things but it’s not a pretty site or back end by any means. I think it certainly could have been designed much better. That doesn’t take away any of the excellent content but it does make the membership seem less professional.
It could use more ebooks to follow – The videos are great and you can watch them over and over again as needed, but sometimes I like to have text to read and reference if needed. That would have been the icing on the cake. There is a very handy “guide to everything” that does pretty much sum it all up in an easy to read and follow fashion, but I still would have liked more of the sections broken down into ebooks.

One thing I want to make very clear about Bring the Fresh is that it is not a scam, or rip-off, or fraud in any sense of those words! It’s also not one of those stupid “get rich quick” schemes. I’ve seen a few bring the fresh scam reviews and I have no idea how or why they would say that because it definitely isn’t. I have many years of internet marketing experience so I have seen a lot of scams, ripoffs, schemes, misleading information, and everything else under the sun. In my opinion, this is one site that certainly doesn’t deserve the negative reviews. It is the real deal.

Once again, Bring the Fresh is NOT a scam! It is 100% legit. I give it my highest recommendation! Even after several years since I first got my membership, it is still a high quality product with very useful and usable information. They keep it up-to-date and make sure the information is always relevant. I’ve been an internet marketing specialist doing SEO and making money online since all the way back in 2003, so I have tons of experience, and I still use BTF as a guide to help me with new tips even to this day.

It’s rare for me to fully recommend a product but in this case I do. I see no reason why BTF should be avoided in any way. There are few products I’ve ever seen that I can confidently say that about. It is legitimate and if you follow the things they teach and take action on them, you will make money online. There’s not much else to say so that is the end of my honest bring the fresh review.

Hopefully this has helped you make an informed decision about BTF.