30 Ways to Make Money Online – Part 8

22. Selling an Ebook/Digital Information

Using a website to promote a related ebook is a very efficient way to generate revenue and is one of the earlier money making approach on the web.You could either structure the website around the book itself, like SEOBook.com, or launch the ebook based on the success of the website, like FreelanceSwitch did we the book How to be a Rockstar Freelancer or Like Steve Pavlina launched “Personal Development for Smart People” after success of his website.

You can visit following sites for further tips:
Writing an ebook for your blog
How to sell ebooks
Processing payments for your ebook
How to sell digital products online
List of ebook selling software

23. Email Lists or Newsletter

Email lists and newsletters represent one of the most powerful marketing and money making tools on the Internet because these have a very high conversion rate and have the capacity to call people to action in a very efficient way. Creating a big list is a difficult task though, so if you have a popular website you could leverage it to increase the number of subscribers on your list. Yaro Starak is a famous Internet marketer, and if you visit his blog you will notice that right on top he has a section encouraging visitors to subscribe to his email newsletter. I have learnt that Yaro generates five figures in revenues each month from his email newsletters. This proves efficiency of the system; but of course, you have to have a high traffic website to make this system work.
Here is a list of software to manage email newsletters, if you intend to publish one:
AWeber
SendStudio NX
PHP Autoresponder
Constant Contact


24. Selling Templates or WordPress Themes

As more and more people decide to get on the web and have their own website/blog, market for website templates, blogger and WordPress themes is also becoming hotter and hotter. TemplateMonster is one example which sells templates while there are individual designers who design and sell their work independently. Unique Blog Designs is another example which makes money with the sales of premium and custom WordPress themes.

30 Ways to Make Money Online – Part 7

19. Audio Ads

This advertising method, which is also known as, PPP (Pay Per Play), was introduce by Net Audio Ads. It works like this: every time a visitor enters into your website, the programme plays a small audio advertising (usually 5 seconds). The user is not able to stop it. This creates a 100% conversion rate. Though still being tested, some website owners have reported to earn from $4 to a $6 CPM. Word of caution; it is a very intrusive form of advertising. That is the reason many website owners, including myself, are not inclined to use it.

20. Selling or Renting Internal Pages

The concept is that the website owners sells for a single fee or rent for a recurring fee internal pages on their domain. Usually they have either high Page rank or high traffic, so that people purchasing a page will be able to benefit in some way. Million Dollar Wiki made this concept popular, but it was being used on the web for a long time around (e.g Pagerank10.co.uk).

Implementing this method on a small blog with low traffic would be difficult, but the concept is interesting and could be explored at later stages, once sufficient traffic has been built.

21. Selling the Website

Selling your website could be your last resource, but it has the potential to generate a big sum of money in a short period of time. Market places on online forums like DigitalPoint and Sitepoint are always active with website buyers and sellers. Keep in mind that they most used parameter to determine the value of a website is the monthly revenue that it generates, multiplied by a certain number (the multiplier can be anything from 5 to 30, depending on the expectations of the seller, on the quality of the site, on the niche and other factors).
Some people also make money trading and flipping websites. They either create them from scratch or buy existing ones, and after some revamping they sell them for a profit.
Related links:
How To Buy A Website And Flip It For Profit
How To Sell A Website - How Much Is Your Website Worth?
Where to sell a website? How to go about selling it?

Free 3- Column Blog Template for Blogger

Blogger.com offers a number of ready made blog templates for beginners like me who do not have knowledge of HTML. If you use blogger.com for your blog, you must be knowing that all the standard templates have two columns. I had been using 2-column template for quite some time. However, I was not very happy with that. I thought that a 3-column blog would serve my requirement better. So I did some google to find a free 3-column template for blogger. I could not find any ready made, simple to download 3-column blog template. May be there are some available on the net, but I gave up after two days and decided to tweak the existing HTML code of my template and convert it to a 3-column template. I googled again; but this time for tips on tweaking the existing template. After a couple of hours reading information and tweaking the existing HTML code, I have managed to convert my blog to 3-columns. The results are not very great; there is room for improvement. But being a person who believes in action and follows “Ready – Fire – Aim” approach, I am happy with the results. I know I’ll be able to improve it over the period of time. The best part of whole exercise had been that it has given me a fair insight of HTML code as well as the confidence that I am able to modify the code to meet my requirements.

Very frankly, now as I am through with the exercise, I can say that it takes only 5 minutes to modify a 2-column template’s HTML code to convert it into a 3-column template. Though I spent couple of hours to accomplish this otherwise 5-minute task, I am happy that I did the exercise. The lessons learnt and the knowledge gained is worth the effort.

If you also wish to convert your 2-column blogger.com’s blog into a 3-column blog, I encourage you to do the exercise. It is worth your time. However, in case you don’t want to invest the time and are happy with the looks of my blog, feel free to leave your e-mail address in the comments. I’ll send you a copy of HTML code for this blog.

30 Ways to Make Money Online – Part 6

16. Marketplaces

A market place is essentially a website that allows visitors to buy, sell and trade products. With increase in traffic and popularity, the blogger may start charging a small fee for new product listings. The problem with this method is that there are no standard software on the web, so a blogger would need to hire a coder to get a marketplace integrated into his/her website. Example of a marketplaces being used are Sitepoint, EasyWordpress and Mashable.


17. Paid Surveys and Polls

There services pay the blogger/website owner to run a small survey or poll on your website. One of the most popular one is Vizu Answers. The website owner needs to sign up with them, and select the kind of polls that he/she wants to run on the site. Most of these services operate under a CPM model.


18. Highlighted Posts from Sponsors

I have not practically applied this technique. Techmeme probably pioneered this idea, but somehow it has not spread to other websites. The tech news aggregator displays editorial posts on the left column, and on the sidebar they have a section titled “Techmeme Sponsor Posts.” On that section posts from the blog of the advertisers get highlighted, sending qualified traffic their way. I have read that monthly cost for one spot is $5000 and that they have around 6 sponsors at any given time; it must be working well for them.

30 Ways to Make Money Online – Part 5

13. RSS Feed Ads

RSS technology has been adopted by millions of Internet users, enabling website owners monetize this new content distribution channel for more profits. The implementation is simple: The publisher displays the ads, which are either CPM based, PPC style or a combination of both. Links for affiliate programmes may also included in the RSS feed. Some bloggers sell banners or sponsored messages on their feed directly. Feedburber already has its own publisher network, and one can sign-up to start displaying CPM based advertising on his/her feed footer.
Available options for RSS Feed Ads are:

Pheedo
Feedburner
BidVertiser


14. Sponsors for Single Columns or Events

Bloggers may find sponsors for some specific columns or events (e.g., a weekly podcast, an interview series, a monthly survey etc) in their blog. This method increases the monetization options for website owner, while giving advertisers the possibility to target a more specific audience and with a reduced commitment. An example of this money making option is Mashable , which has several advertising options on the site, including the possibility to sponsor specific columns and articles. At times, Problogger also runs group writing projects, and before proceeding he publicly announce the project asking for sponsors.



15. Job Boards

All the popular blogs are trying to leverage job boards to make some extra income. Guy Kawasaki, ReadWriteWeb, Problogger are but some exam-ples. However, to create an active and profitable job board, a blogger need first to have a blog focused on a specific niche, and reasonable traffic. The advantage of this method is that it is passive. Once you have the structure in place, the job listings will come naturally, and you can charge anywhere from $10 up to $100 for each.

List of popular job board software:
JobThread
Web Scribe Job Board
SimplyHired Job-o-matic
Jobbex

30 Ways to Make Money Online – Part 4

10. Sponsored Reviews

This option was pioneered by PayPerPost. This was soon followed by other companies, including Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe, which refined the process and expanded the payment models. ReviewMe is service that connects companies or websites looking for buzz with bloggers who want to generate some cash from their blog. Joining one of these sponsored reviews marketplaces will give a blogger the opportunity to write sponsored posts on a wide range of topics. However, not all bloggers are willing to get paid to write about a specific product or website, as it might compromise their editorial credibility.

The sponsored reviews and paid blogging networks include:
PayPerPost
Sponsored Reviews
ReviewMe
BlogVertise
Smorty

11. Private Forums

Although majority of forums on internet are free, there is always the possibility to create a private forum where members are required to pay a one time or monthly/annual fee to join and utilise the services. SEO Blackhat is one example which charges $100 monthly from its members. The network has thousand of members. To charge such a price for a forum membership, a bloger must obviously provide real value for the members, which could be secret techniques, tools, offers etc. To benefit from this technique, a blogger must find an appealing angle that will make it worth for the members.

List of popular forum software include:

vBulletin
Simple Machines Forum
phpBB
Vanilla

12. Selling Books

Many authors and journalists leverage their blogs or websites to sell copies of hardcover books. Examples include Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin , and Malcolm Gladwell. While most of these people were already renowned authors before they created their website, one could also follow the other way around. Lorelle VanFossen did exactly that with her Blogging Tips book, while Steve Pavlina used his blog to help his book to rise to top ranking in Amazon’s list.
List of self publishing and publishing services:

Lulu
Self Publishing
iUniverse
WordClay

30 Ways to Make Money Online – Part 3

7. Pop-ups and Pop-unders

Not one of my favourites: Pop-ups are a common yet annoying form of advertising on the Internet. You can use this scheme if you wish to increase your monetisation options. However, due to their annoying behaviour, I really suspect that these will affect youre traffic.
Ad networks that use pop-ups include:

Tribal Fusion
PayPopup
PopupAd
Adversal

8. Text Link Ads

After Google declared that sites selling text links without the nofollow tag would be penalized, this monetization method became less popular. Many website owners are still using text links to monetize their sites, though, some using the nofollow tag and some not.
The advantage of this method is that it is not intrusive. One can sell text links directly through his website or use specialized networks like Text-Link-Ads and Text-Link-Brokers to automate the process.
Text link marketplaces and networks include:

DigitalPoint Link Sales Forum
Text-Link-Ads
Text-Link-Brokers
TNX
LinkWorth

9. Monetization Widgets

It is a recent trend on the web that makes use of widgets to let you monetize your website. Some of these services operate under a PPC scheme, others behave like text link ads, others yet leverage affiliate links. Their main differentiator, however, is the fact that they work as web widgets, making it easier for the user to plug and play the service on its website.
List of companies that provide monetization widgets:

WidgetBucks
ScratchBack
SmartLinks

30 Ways to Make Money Online – Part 2

4. Direct Banner Advertising

If you want real business, then selling your own advertising space is one of the most lucrative monetization methods. It enables you to cut out the middleman commissions as well as to determine your own rates. But on the other hand, direct banner advertising requires big audience to attract advertisers, and the blogger will need to spend time managing the sales process, the banners and the payments. If you wish to try direct banner advertising, you can start from:

Openads Ad Server
OIO Publisher Ad Platform
How to Find Advertisers for Your Website
Direct Advertising Sales for Beginners
Finding Advertisers for Your Blog

5. In-text Adverting

I will consider it as an extension of PPC scheme, though a frustrating one for me due to its intrusive nature. The publisher puts sponsored links inside the text. These links come with a double underline to differentiate them from normal links, and once the user rolls the mouse over the link the advertising will pop. Should the user click on it the site owner will make some money. Some people make good money with this method, but generally, bloggers and publishers avoid it. Two examples are

Kontera
Vibrant Media


6. Affiliate Marketing
This is one of the most popular money making approach on the Internet. It is also called CPA (cost per action) or CPL (cost per lead) based. The merchant lets the affiliates to sell directly or indirectly its products and services, in exchange for a commission. The affiliates send potential customers to the merchant using several tools, from banners to text links and product reviews. List of popular affiliate marketplaces and networks:

ClickBank
Commission Junction
Azoogle Ads
Link Share
Amazon.com

30 Ways to Make Money Online – Part 1

This is part 1 of the series of articles on one of the most demanded and read topics on the web. The title says “30 ways”, which does not mean that there are only 30 ways to make money online. In fact, these are the ways I have researched and listed so far. There may be more. Within each list as well, there are other sources of revenue generation then those I have covered. So don’t get surprised if you see this list going beyond 30 ways and lists of options within each way growing over the period of time. If you know a method that is not listed below, just let us know and we’ll update it.

I want to clarify here that this list guides you to ways of making money, not the ways to optimise ways of making money. That I’ll cover separately. To highlight the difference between two, I’ll say that PPC is a way of making money, whereas optimisation of PPC programme (getting more traffic, getting more targeted traffic, improving click-through rate etc) are the ways to improve the rate of income generation.

Now why I am giving only five tips? Because if I give all 50 ways now, most of the bloggers will become overloaded by information and will be unable to act. So read the first 3 and let these 3 sink in. Wait for the next post to see the next 3. Keep on trying 1-2 methods (each method offers a number of options) every week. Different people get different results with different tactics. See which one suits you and your blog the best and delivers and then continue and optimise that one.

1. Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising Networks
Google AdSense is the most popular option under this category and almost every blogger know about AdSense. However, there are others as well. The implementation is simple: You have to sign up with the network and paste some code on your website. The network will then serve contextual ads (either text or images) relevant to your website, and you will earn a certain amount of money for every click.

The amount of money that you are going to make depends upon

traffic volume
Cost Per Click (CPC) and most importantly
Click-through rate (CTR)

The CTR depends on the design of the website. Ads placed abode the fold or blended with content, for instance, tend to get higher CTRs. The CPC, on the other hand, depends on the niche of the website. Mortgages, financial products, money making sites are examples of profitable topics, while technical topics tend to receive a smaller CPC.

The source of the traffic can also affect the overall CTR rate. Organic traffic (the one that comes from search engines) tends to perform well because these visitors are already looking for something, and they tend to click on ads more often. Social media traffic, on the other hand, presents terribly low CTRs because these visitors are tech-savvy and they just ignore ads.
List of popular CPC advertising networks:
Google Adsense
Chitika
Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN)
Clicksor
BidVertiser

2. CPM Advertising Networks

CPM stands for Cost per Mille, and it refers to the cost for 1,000 impressions. The blogger gets paid according to the number of impressions (i.e., page views) that the ads displayed on your site will generate. For example, a blog that has 50,000 page views monthly and displays an advertising banner with a $2 CPM, therefore, will earn $100 monthly.

CPM rates vary with the network, the position of the ad and the format.

The better the network, the higher the CPM rate (because they have access to more advertisers).
If the ad is closer to the top of the page, the higher the CPM.
If you have bigger (in terms of pixels), the higher the CPM.

CPM generally ranges between $0,10 to $10, though may go beyond $10 in some special cases. CPM advertising tends to work well on websites with a high page views per visitor ratio (e.g., online forums, magazines and so on).

List of popular CPM advertising networks:
Value Click
Advertising.com
Casale Media
Burst Media
Right Media
Advertising.com
Tribal Fusion

3. Donations
This concept has gained popularity recently. Placing a “Donate” link or button on a website can be an efficient way to earn money, especially if your blog is on a niche where readers learn and gain value from your content. For example, personal development and productivity blogs tend to perform well with donation based systems. The blogger either asks for the donation directly or can use a new plugin called Buy Me a Beer. This WordPress plugin enables you to insert a customized message at the bottom of each article, asking the readers to chip in for a beer or, if you don't like beer, any drink.

Blogging for Money? Think Again

If you are thinking about blogging to earn money, the first question is
Is it possible to earn a decent money from blogging?
The (good) answer is YES. It is possible.

The second question is
Can most people do it?
The answer is NO. A big NO. Many people start blogging to earn big money. They fail. In fact, it is said that about 99% of the bloggers fail to generate decent income (an income that may be considered as their primary income).

Getting depressed? You need not to be. Look around. In all businesses which have a low entry point (does not required very high skill/education level or money etc, for example acting, writing or music) the failure ratio is similar. Since the entry is easy, many people jump without much thinking and planning. But irrespective that how low is the entry point, success required skill and hard work. Those who are not willing to plan, sharpen their saw and work hard, will soon give away.


So my conclusion is that while most people can’t make a living from blogging, intelligent hard working people can. I believe you are one of them, so here are my tips to help you appreciate the requirements and plan better.

Blogging for (big) money is difficult. Blogging itself is easy; very very easy. It is free as well (blogger.com for example). However, blogging for big money is difficult. Just accept this point. It is not to discourage you but to make you aware of the reality and prepare you to plan and work accordingly.

Pick your niche wisely. Pick a niche you love and stick with it. Make sure that your niche is not very broad, but just big enough that you can build significant traffic. You must have some significant expertise in your chosen field. Think about what you love most, and find ways to make your topic attractive people. Consider what will provide genuine value to your visitors. It’s all about what you can give. If you choose a niche for money only, you’ll lose interest as well as run out of ideas soon. Choosing a niche for money only is a sure recipe for failure. So spare some time and brainstorm the topics that you care about most, then pick one and blog about it exclusively.

Start with one blog. What if you have expertise in multiple areas and you want to start a number of blogs? My advice is to start with one topic/blog. Don’t divide and dilute your efforts. In requires significant efforts and time to add valuable content to one blog. Once your first blog is has sufficient contents, you may start the second blog.

Test drive. Before spending some money or having a long term commitment with hosting service, test drive your blogging project. Try a starter blog on a free service such as Blogger.com or Wordpress.com. Have the feel of it for a few weeks. If after the initial period you find that you’ll be able to continue, go for long term commitment.

Become web smart – Blogging for fun is OK, just like basketball for fun. But for earning decent money from you blog, you must become web smart, just like a professional basketball player trains and learns the skills. You can start the blog using an existing template from blogger.com, but be ready to learn web technology. Including (but not restricted to):

blog publishing software
HTML
pings
search engines and search engine optimization (SEO)
blog carnivals (for kick-starting your blog’s traffic)
affiliate programs
traffic statistics
Ads
blog comments
RSS

Remember, the list is non-exhaustive; it is just the tip of the ice berg.

Contents (pots’ length and frequency) There is no specific rule about number of articles/entries that you posts and length of each post. Briefly, the length of each post depends upon the topic and how deeply you want to cover it. So it could be anything from 200 words top 10000 words. Also, depending upon your niche, you may be required to post 4-20 posts per week to make your blog a success. So considering that an average size blog takes 3 hours to write and you intend to post 3-4 articles/ports per week, make sure that you have at least 10-15 hours every week to spend on your blog.


Writing skills I have already covered web skills required for blogging. You also have to have writing skills to come up with good articles that will attract an audience. Blogging is not just about producing words and pasting these on your website with lot of ads around; it requires good content that provide value to people.


Blog for long term. Blogging will not generate you money in short term. That is the reason most bloggers that start blogging for money abandon their project within 3-6 months. The irony is, blogging starts generating money after around six months. So make sure that your blogging plans are sustainable over long period of time (1-12 months, to start with).

Learn monetising and optimising skills. Once you have started blogging, try to learn as quickly as possible monetising and traffic optimising skills. These include search engine optimisation, ads placements, affiliate programmes, click through rate etc.



Enjoy yourself. Many people try to blog for profit and fail. If you approach blogging with a mindset of enjoying it (writing on a niche of your choice and passion) you’ll be able to write about it months after months. If you combine it with realistic expectations, willingness to learn and good planning, you can definitely earn a decent income from your blog.

Blogging Helpline

Bloggers.

What they really want?

They want strategies to increase traffic.
They want strategies to increase revenue.
They want tips to improve blog layout.
They want help to add valuable content to their blogs.
They need motivation to continue.

If you are a blogger, and you want all these, and much more, then you are at the right place. Here you will get all the information, strategies, tips etc to improve your blogging and to achieve your blogging goals.

So welcome to blogging world.