Over and over you hear internet marketers making the claim that you need your own website to make money online through affiliate marketing. You own website is your real estate online and like a store in the real world it’s your place in cyberspace, so it’s important, right.

I personally have my own websites and they give me a sense of security, well more so than my free web sites do. And it may be true that having your own website can be a huge help in your quest to achieve online success but it certainly doesn’t mean you can’t make money online without a website, especially in the affiliate marketing. Yes, you could make a living online as an affiliate even if you do not have the advantage you receive from your own website!

Let’s discuss alternative strategies that allows you to make the most out of your affiliate marketing campaigns without a website. Read the rest of this entry

I am not the fastest reader, not even close, so when I find audio or video that explains things I love to share that with others. This course, by Jimmy D. Brown, on how to build a profitable email list is delivered in several audio segments as well as a pdf transcript. Right up my alley.

Jimmy’s course is broken down into 6 sections.

1. Promote your List
2. Reward the Optin
3. Offer a Proposal
4. Fixate Attention
5. Initiate a Response
6. Thwart the filters

In addition there is also an intro and a wrap up.

Jimmy offers a free report on his site that includes a complete overview of the List PROFIT System. You can get a copy on this page www.ListProfitSystem.com if you’d like further explanation of each of the steps.

Review: I love how simply this system is laid out. Jimmy goes into great detail on anything from how to create an optin to specific subject ideas for the email messages and even how to make sure your emails are delivered to the recipients without getting caught in a spam filter.

He also has some great ideas on how to get people in front of the optin page and onto your list. This course is perfect for someone who has never built a list but also has advanced enough ideas that an experienced list marketer can profit from it.
I highly recommend this to anyone who is thinking of building a list or have a list that’s not quite as big or responsive as they’d like it to be.

Criticism: My only criticism is on the audios. Because of the way he named them, they don’t play in sequence on my MP3 player unless I rename all of them. It also sounds like he had a cold the day he recorded this. In one of the audios he clears his throat rather loudly. The information itself is “packed” with value for such an affordable course.

http://www.listprofitsystem.com

My first tip for those that would like to create a blog to make money online is to do your market research so you actually find a niche that you can survive in. So many new marketers take on internet marketing as their niche and then wonder why they don’t get the traffic and income they expected.

As with any business, remembering your blog is your business and you are the boss, you will not earn much if you don’t have target traffic with money to spend. You can get all the traffic you want and still not make enough to cover your expenses, so play close attention to who you are getting as visitors.

I have a number of hobbies that I love to spend money on. My friends that share my hobbies spend plenty of money on their hobbies as well. Get the idea??

I am a bit fanatically about fly fishing for trout and that makes a great niche for me. I also have a dream home with a huge backyard, which got my wife and myself into gardening, so backyard gardening has become a passion for both of us. This niche is great and that fact the both of us love it gives up plenty to write about.

We have plenty of other hobbies allowing us to have blogs that make money online and it gives us multiple streams of income so when a few of our more seasonal blogs slow down other ones pick up momentum. So, as my friends say, it’s all good.

So tip #1 when you think about creating your blog to make money online is to do something you love and would most likely do for free anyways. Also stay away from markets that have major competition as you may just find yourself sinking instead of swimming in money.

When I first started to make money online I used eBay to fund my entire fishing season for that year. All brand new rods, reels, waders, and boots, along with my license for the season. I was immediately hooked on eBay.

If you have ever bought or sold something through eBay, you know it can be a very easy process. Opening up an eBay store is also simple and easy, and it can expose your business to customers who may not have otherwise found you.

Opening up an eBay store gives you many benefits and resources not given to someone who is listing their item the regular way. In order to receive these benefits, you’ll need to pay a monthly subscription for your eBay store. The subscription prices vary depending on how many catalog pages you have. They start out at around $15 per month and go up from there. eBay will also assign other fees associated with listing and selling your items, in addition to the cost of your eBay store.

Some of the benefits and resources you receive from opening an eBay store include access to eBay’s business resource library, the ability to list your items for a longer amount of time, the ability to send newsletters to your customers, monthly sales reports and your own URL which you can promote and drive traffic to. An eBay store can also offer you an increased level of credibility and can help you gain repeat customers.

Of course, you will need products to sell in your eBay store if you plan to make money online. If you do not make your own products, you can research how to find a product online. If you find yourself only listing an item occasionally, you may not want to have an eBay store, as the monthly fee can get costly.

With an eBay store, the items you list will not be included in eBay’s main listings. To find your item, someone will need to search through the eBay Stores link. While many people who wouldn’t have otherwise found you can find you this way, you may also want to advertise and market your store as much as possible. Simply opening an eBay store and listing your item will not guarantee success.

Even though eBay will provide you with your own URL, you may want to consider registering a domain and creating your own website. If you plan on offering niche products, such as various bath and body products through your eBay store, you could create a website that has content relating to skincare, relaxation, home spas, organic products, etc and have links to your eBay store throughout the site.

Someone searching online for organic bath and body products could find your website, which will then lead them to your eBay store. That person may not have thought of going straight to eBay. This will allow you to further increase your sales and establish yourself as an expert in bath and body products.

If you enjoy eBay and already sell quite a few products through their site, you may want to look into opening your own store.

Your opportunity to make money online is directly connected to your keyword choices. Choosing the right keywords for your website is important for a few reasons, but the main one is traffic.  Without the right keywords, people may never find your site even if it has the exact information they are looking for.

Keywords play a part in the way your site is ranked on search engines so you’ll want to make sure you are using the right keywords to get those rankings up and bring those visitors in.

Here are a few tips to consider when trying to choose the right keywords for your website.

1.  Using a tool such as WordTracker.com will help you to determine what keywords people are actually searching for, how stiff your competition might be for certain keyword phrases and can even reveal hidden gems that you may not have thought about originally.

2.  Just because a term is searched frequently doesn’t mean you should always focus on that keyword.  If you have lots of competition for a really hot keyword phrase, the likelihood of you making it to the top of the ranks in the search engines drops dramatically.  Think about who your competing with and possibly search for a better, less searched phrase to help target in on your market even better.

3. Include variations of your keyword phrases in more than one way on your site. Don’t overdo it by stuffing your site with keywords.  People want quality content and if you have an article on your site that has your keyword phrase in it everyother sentence they won’t stick around and what good is traffic if it leaves and never comes back?

These are just some basic tips to help you get started on the right foot.  You can find tons of information on choosing the right keywords as well as tips for using them correctly on your site by doing a simple search online.  I personally use Google to research my keywords because I make money online with Google traffic far more than any other search engines I am listed in.

AdBrite has the option for you to be an Advertiser, purchasing ads to display on other web site, or you can be a publisher like myself and display other people’s ads on your web pages.

Like so many other ad sites AdBrite will sell ad space on your site for you. You can choose from multiple format to generate revenue from your site. Of course you have the option to accept of reject the type of advertising you would like on your site.

Ad types include:

• Text only (links to advertisers sites)
• Combination of Banners and Text (alternates depending on demand)
• Full page advertising (shown between pages on your site)
• Inline ads (keywords are highlighted and may be clicked)
• BritePic (monetizing photos)
• InVideo (monetizing your video)

Text only, and text w/banners work much like Google AdSense, advertisers may choose to place their advertisements throughout the network. When using the text w/banners, text will display when banners are not available.

Full page advertising appears between webpages on your website. When a visitor moves from one page to another they are shown an advertisement with the top of the webpage identifying your site and the bottom of the webpage is an ad. Each visitor will only see one full page ad per visit because we know how annoying it can be to see an ad over and over on the same site.

Inline Ads highlight keywords on your page by underlining them. When the mouse hovers over the word an advertisement appears to grab their attention and a click on the word earns you revenue. These ads are very unobtrusive and a nice supplement to other forms of advertising on the page.

BritePic ads allow you to monetize your pictures. By using the AdBrite system they place an advertisement at the top of your picture. When clicked you earn revenue.

InVideo ads allow you to monetize your videos. By using the AdBrite system they place an advertisement, much like BritePic, at the top of the video and you earn revenue when clicked.

You may choose any or all of the above. We will write about each advertisement type and test each one.

Make money online with multiple streams of income.

I have been using Paypal to accept payments from people for years now and without a hitch I might add. I love to make money online but it would be a pain to try and get everyone to send me checks. It’s much easier and faster to setup a Paypal account of your own.

PayPal is a one of the more well known ways to accept and make payments for your online business.  The process of setting up an account is fairly simple and you’ll see all the steps required below.

Step 1 – Type the URL (https://www.paypal.com) into your browser.

Step 2 – Click the Sign Up link!

Step 3 – Follow the prompts and answer a series of questions about you and your business, including demographical information, annual sales, bank account information, etc.

Step 4 – Once your account has been set up PayPal will make 2 small deposits into your bank account on file.  Once you receive those deposits you will need to return to the PayPal website, sign into your account and confirm the amounts of the deposits.

Step 5 – You may also be required to confirm other things, such as credit card information, email addresses etc.

Step 6 – Once you have confirmed everything necessary you can now begin to use your PayPal account to not only pay for items online where PayPal is accepted as a method of payment, but you will also be able to receive payments.

Take the time to really browse your account and learn all you can about how to use it to your advantage!  It will be well worth the time invested and will definitely make the financial side of your online business easier for you.

As a webmaster I help my clients earn a living online and as a blogger I make money online to feed my family and pay for my hobbies and travel. Bloglines has increased my productivity 10 fold making me a happy camper.

How much time each day do you spend reading other people’s blogs or news feeds. Are you spending way too much time like I was? If you answered yes you are in the majority of bloggers. I was spending half my day just keeping up with what others have to say. Well I was until I was introduced to Bloglines and that all changed over night.

Allow me to explain just exactly what Bloglines is and how you will benefit by joining.

What is Bloglines?

Bloglines is a FREE online service, a news aggregator, that helps you manage lots of web information through news feeds, weblogs and audio. Bloglines tracks the information you’re interested in, retrieves new posts as they are created, and organizes everything for you on your own personal Bloglines news page.

Bloglines is free and couldn’t be easier to register. It takes all of two minutes or less.

Once you arrive at www.bloglines.com look in the top right corner for the Register link or right in the middle of the screen, then click the link to create your own free account.

Registering is as simple as entering your desired email address, a password of at least 6 characters and then re-type it to verify you have it correct. Next put in your time zone and your preferred language and then click the Register button below that and your good to go.

You have now registered but you still need to check your email for a verification email. Once you verify that you truly are the owner of that email account you’re ready to start using Bloglines to save you huge chuncks of time.

Cool New Features

Even though you are just new to Bloglines and all the features are new, you should still check out the new features as most people won’t and you will be leaps and bounds ahead of them.

Start Adding Your Favorite Blogs And RSS Feeds To Your Bloglines Account.

There are a couple of ways to add feeds to Bloglines. 1. You can enter the URL or feed address directly into the subscription box, and 2. you can use the RSS button at the right hand side of your browser’s address bar. It will show you the button if you are on a page with a feed.

To subscribe to feeds or blogs click FEEDS tab in the top left area of your screen. From there you can click the ADD link. The subscribe frame opens showing you the feed box where you can type or paste the favorite blog or news feed. Then click the subscribe button. From there…

… you will be taken to a screen where you can enter some particulars about this feed.

At the top of this frame you will see the available feeds from that link, so you know you have submitted the correct link, otherwise you can click your back button and re-enter the feed link.

Next you can specify the location or folder you want this feed to be placed in. It is important to be clear about the folders you use as this will make your task even easier. I like to make lots of relevant folders so I have easy navigation. I am not too wide awake in the early morning hours so the easier the better.

You have the option to create new folders from this drop-down menu.

The rest of the option I leave as is and click subscribe at the bottom and you are done for that one. Just continue doing the same thing for each feed you want. I have dozens on the go and I have more than one account. Each account does require a unique email address, but I find it is much easier to keep on topic this way.

Bloglines is going to keep track of your favorites now and all you have to do is log in any time you want to catch up. I start my Bloglines before I get my coffee and then read them while I am using that coffee to wake up.

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Bloglines to the rescue. Whether you are blogging for profit or fun things can get confusing.

When you take the time to create a blog and work it for a few months you know just how many posts you can have. It can become a little overwhelming to keep up on others blogs that are doing the same thing, increasing the size of their blogs. Well that is where Bloglines came in for me. Out of confusion comes order, finally.

My normal was to navigate to each of my favorite blogs, reading them and bookmarking the ones worth noting so I could read them again later but that usually never happened, just too many great posts in those blogs I love to read, so they end up just piling up and I never get to the great content.

Then I was introduced to Bloglines and my life, especially in the early morning, has become so much easier and organized. Now I just add my favorite blogs, directly from my address bar, right into Bloglines, just a couple of clicks and it’s now part of my early morning reading, through Bloglines.

Clutter keeps me confused and that is what all my bookmarks were, just a bunch of clutter I never got around to cleaning up and it only gets worse each and every day. Even though this was me you may think I am talking about you. If this is the case you need to join Bloglines.com and get those blogs organized into something you will enjoy.