25 December, 2011

8 Steps To Repackage Your Knowledge For Making Money Online

With the entire globe struggling through one of the darkest periods in world economic history, the number of people joining the ranks of those out of work and looking for jobs is rising fast. Coping with being made redundant or watching your debts spiral out of control can be really difficult, but it is possible to carve a path through your difficulties simply by re-packaging your existing knowledge and distributing it online.

Exploiting online opportunities by following these 8 easy steps can help you showcase your talent, help you find freelance work in your area of expertise and kick-start your progress towards financial health even if you’re currently searching for work.

Step 1: Tackle debt problems

Pack of creditIf money worries are beginning to weigh you down, it’s important to get urgent issues resolved as soon as possible. It’s hard to concentrate on building an online profile and finding work whilst debts are hanging around your neck.
If you can no longer meet your financial commitments, it may be time to set up a Debt Management Plan. This is an effective way to get your finances back on track and repay the people you owe money to in a structured and manageable way.

Step 2: Set up an online bank account

Once you’ve taken care of any large, outstanding debts, make sure that you can send and receive money easily online. If you are planning to apply for freelance work using the internet you may need to pay website subscriptions fees and you’ll hopefully need to receive payments, too, so a good bank account is essential.
If your current bank has downgraded your account due to a poor credit rating, consider moving to another online bank account that can meet your needs.

Step 3: Decide what to be an ‘expert’ in

This is perhaps the most critical step of them all.
Decide what area of expertise you want to establish yourself as an expert in?
Did you used to work in IT, qualifying you to write authoritatively about computing? Are you an ex-marketer who can become a social media guru? Everything you do in life – from being a parent to indulging a hobby – gives you expert, insider knowledge.
Just decide on the area that interests you most and off you go.

Step 4: Register for freelance websites

Once you’ve decided how to pitch yourself, register for as many freelance websites as possible, putting websites such as Elance or People Per Hour at the top of your list. There are plenty of freelance exchange websites out there – websites that put those who need freelancers in touch with people looking for work – just try to pick ones that seem active in your chosen area of specialism.

Step 5: Build an online portfolio

Most people will want to see evidence of what you can do before hiring you. If you already have a portfolio of previous work, great, just get it up, online, looking as good as possible. If you’re starting from scratch, that doesn’t matter.
Use anything you can from your career to date and if all else fails, create some ‘worked examples’. Write an e-mail campaign for a local business, design a website for a fictional company.
It doesn’t matter as long as it puts you and your skills in the best possible light.

Step 6: Upload a presentation to Slideshare

Slideshare is a great way to position yourself as a subject expert. Put together some slides on your chosen area, including as much background info and stats as you can. There’s no end to the number of different slide decks you can create and upload and, each time you do so, you’ll be growing your reputation as a subject expert.

Step 7: Set up a blog

People want to connect with individuals. They like to see what you think about things, what your style is like and whether you have interesting comments to add to the equation.
Writing a regular blog is a great way to help people find out who you really are and offers a free route to advertise yourself online as well.

Step 8: Write an e-book

And once you’ve honed those skills creating presentations and setting up blogs, how about an e-book. Uploading an e-book using Amazon’s Kindle service has never been easier.
There’s no longer anything standing between you and an appreciative audience… as long as what you write is interesting and compelling.
Amazon will pay you a royalty every time someone buys your book and, who knows, if another job doesn’t come knocking on the door, you might just have found your niche as an author instead.

Summarizing the steps…

To understand more clear on this topic, lets summarize what we discussed above:
  • Identify your debt problems and make a debt management plan to fix it immediately.
  • Have an online bank account which allows you to transact for your online business/work without limitations.
  • Identify your area of expertise and what you are interested to work for the long term.
  • Join freelancing web sites, create great profile and start your online work with Elance or PeoplePerHour as a first step.
  • Build your portfolio with all your experiences, work samples and show that you are an expertise in the market – and ready to serve customers professionally.
  • You can also setup a blog and share your own knowledge/experiences which attracts similar people in the market which helps to grow your online reputation for the long term.
  • Consider writing an ebook which takes your profile higher and you can also make money from selling ebooks.
Good luck

How To Earn More Freelancer Income ?

Freelancing is a sort of working independently, self-employed and is not under any commitment to a particular employer or company. Freelancing is what most people prefer to do since you control your work time and your job as well.

With this, many employer prefer to hire a freelancer since they do the job quickly and is more efficient since payments are done after the work is done, thus forcing the freelancers to get the job done as soon as they can. Hence freelancing is classified as Work and Earn model.
In this beginner article, i will take through the methods or tricks which helps to earn more income by freelancing.

Basics on Freelance income.

Payments usually differ from each other and sometimes based on your work.
There are payments such as project based, hourly rate, fixed price and some do offer payments when you reach a certain milestone.
These payments also has sub-categories like paying freelancers 50% and the rest upon completion or percentage upfront or whole payment will be done upon completion. But these rates and payments are also based in what both parties have agreed and signed in a contract.
Contract is essential since it is the proof of your agreement so if you are an employer better place that contract in a safe place and this also goes for freelancers.push button for freelancer showing Find Job

Work Load and Time Frame.

Before being hired, employer and the contractor will discuss the project and its details. Exchanging ideas on, how to make the outcome high standard and sometimes talking about when and how much work can a contractor do within the given time frame?
  • Time frame is important since all work should be done and should produce outputs which earns money for the employer. Time frame also differs depending on what kind of job was given to a freelancer or contractor.
Example, if you are given an article writing job, then turn around time will be less than 1 week, if the load is not that much while programming jobs may take up to 1 month before finalizing and submitting it to the employer for checking.
  • Workload on the other hand is the amount of work given to a contractor. Again, it also depends on what kind of project is given. Article and editing jobs can be given more loads while programming is constant to a single load due to its complicated way of getting it done.

Pleasing your Employer.

Pleasing your employer can be somewhat difficult, if you are not focused on your work.
Without focus and self-orientation, your work can turn out to be a disastrous one, believe me.
  • To please your employer, do the things that needs to be done and agreed before they hired you such as producing high quality work, delivering it to them on time with less errors – that is why you should always proofread your articles (for article writer) and double check it (for programmer and writers as well), before finalizing it and submitting it to your boss.
In this way, he or she will see your extra effort and will be pleased on the extra steps you did to save them time and money – beware not to overdo it since some employers tend to get mad when contractors do things which are not told to do.
Happy employers trend to pay good and it builds long term relationship which gives you more work opportunities.

Importance of Self-Management.

For a freelancer to increase his online income, self-management is important. When i say self-management, it includes Time Management and Work Management.
The amount of quality time that you spend for a freelancing job decides your income. When you spend more time, you can earn more.
So plan your time.
If you are working as a part-time freelancer then you must plan your day. Based on the work load, you must allocated time so that you can complete the assigned jobs on-time. Learn these time management techniques specially defined for freelancers.
  • For example, if you need 2 hours per day to complete the assigned job – do plan for it and stick to your timings. This way, you won’t get into the trouble of not completing the jobs – also, you can do more work on week ends so that you can easily increase your income. Hence practice to manage your time, it pays you back well.
Next comes, Work Management which involves, what job you choose ? how do you prioritize the job ? basically, the work strategy.
Without experience, you could not gain this management skill and this is one of the required skill for a freelancer.
You must be able to pick the right jobs based on your knowledge and more important, the confidence to complete the job.
Similarly, when you are doing parallel-work, you must be able to prioritize the jobs.
  • For example, if you are engaged in 3 jobs at same time, you must be able to allocate your time based on the Job Complexity as well as the Employers Expectation. Similarly, if you are engaged in a highly complex job which needs more dedicated time to complete then stick only to that job – don’t get into a mess by putting your leg into multiple jobs.
However, when time passes you will understand the importance of Time and Work management and also, you will get practiced well which pays you back based on your own efforts.

Building your own Online Portfolio.

For a freelancer, portfolio is vital and it helps to show your expertise to every one.
Not only inside a freelancing web site, you must also create a portfolio outside the freelancing web site.
  • For example, you can setup your own blog and put all your work samples, experience in it. You can tell people that you are available to serve them best. This way, your online reputation increases which creates lot of exposure to your profile. Chances are high that many people will come to hire you and you will be in demand.
You can also hire some other freelancers to work with you as a team.
This way, you don’t need to dependent on freelancing web sites as well as your online income increases day-by-day. Don’t miss this excellent opportunity to get more exposure.

Conclusion.

To sum it all up, there are different factors that need to be taken into consideration to earn more freelance income. Money as we all know can only be earned, if we work hard and by working hard. You are actually doing the right thing and not just for the sake of having some employer pay you – practice to manage your time and work load, efficiently and effectively.

7 Practical Tips For Profitable Freelancer

Freelancing is one of the profitable method of making money online. It is highly dependent on your own skill set as well as the time you spend for freelancing jobs. There are lot of freelancing web sites and you can easily get into them free of cost as there are no registration fees to begin.

The hardest part is to get noticed by employers and get hired for the jobs first time.
It depends on numerous factors like: your freelancer profile, work history, ratings as well as your communication.
Being a profitable freelancer takes time and you could not become rich the next day. You have to spend time in completing the assigned jobs every day and slowly your profile becomes good enough to attract more employers. To begin your freelancing career all you need to get your first job done…
In this article, I will take your through the practical tips which involved in becoming a profitable freelancer that too for the long term.

#7 – Great Freelancer Profile

As a freelance, you do not just by yourself but instead you are working for different people and with different people everyday. And because of this everyday work, you have to make sure that your profile is good, great and presentable.Here is a freelancer....
  • Include all work you have finished as well as present or active jobs to show other employers that you are really into freelancing job.
  • Make your profile simple yet full of information about you, your job and your expectations.

#6 – Effective Time Management

A freelancer should manage his or her time effectively not only to have time to each and every employer but also to increase the efficiency and productivity. Within time management, there are many factors which needed to be considered for you to have your time managed effectively. Understand the freelancer way of time management.
  • Planning, setting of goals for each employer, allocating time that will be spent (approximation) on a specific goal, monitoring, deciding which one to prioritize and then proceeding with caution.
  • Remember to work fast but sure in order to fulfill the quantity and quality with ease.

#5 – Focused Area of Expertise

In the time management part, there is a factor there called the prioritizing. It does eventually has a connection with focusing yourself on what you really know or your expertise. In this way, you can eliminate the easier tasks and projects with ease while still having the confidence that you are doing it correctly.
  • Let the hard tasks be the last and eat up the rest of the time, do the easier part first to make the time allotted for the other tasks longer than what you planned.

#4 – Practical Hands-on Knowledge

Do things that you have done before and not the things that you just think you can because if it fails then you’ll be sorry. If you memorize what you must do then do not do it, but if you are actually doing something that you are really doing everyday then do it and the result will come out naturally.
  • Always keep your learning curve up so that you can build your knowledge every time you work on a job.
  • Learn from your own mistakes and don’t repeat those mistakes again.
This way you can build your knowledge every day as part of your work and you will become a successful freelancer soon.

#3 – Wisely Choosing Job Offers

Being a freelancer means you are actually marketing yourself and what you know to other people. In this kind of job, you are not given any time to be trained since you are only selling what you know and not what you don’t know.
  • In choosing the right job for you, always remember to carefully study the job you have applied for.
  • Know and only get what you can do and do not force yourself to take a huge paying job if you do not know what to do, this will not only waste your time but to the employer as well and may be the cause of bad profile for you in the future.
  • Learn these tips to select the best job offers.

#2 – Careful Job Bidding

When it comes to payment and job offers many freelancers expects to be paid more than they are really worth while some are underpaid but this can be avoided by careful bidding. Remember, bid around what you think you must.
Before proceed to bidding for a job, take a pencil or a pen and paper and jot down notes such as resources needed for the job like electricity, printing if it needs to be printed, time and many more.
If you find it hard to get my point then here’s a sample, before I accept a 300 words article, I’ll think how long will it take for me to write, let’s say half hour and researching is included in that time frame as well so it is better to just bid a 2 dollar per article such as this. Hope you get my point.

#1 – Be Professional Every time

Be professional means, do what you said you will do, promises are what employers hold when they employ you so be careful in promising or it will ruin your profile some day.
Meet all deadlines and if necessary submit all work a day before. Check your work if it has error and eliminate those error, remember that you have to submit high quality output since you are a professional.

Conclusion…

I would these are the practical tips to make profits from your freelancing jobs. However, i would also say that these are the most common mistakes done by beginner freelancers.
Just read this article again and understand, all the tips better so that you could avoid them at the earlier of your freelancing career. As i mentioned earlier, it takes time and you have to prove yourself as an established freelancer in the freelancing web sites.
  • You can also build a profile outside these freelancing web sites like: building a blog and sharing your knowledge, experience as a portfolio.
  • This way, you could attract more customers and slowly you could turn your job as a full-time business. You can also hire other freelancers to work with your projects and hence you can make profits for the long term…
Good Luck

Twitter Business Features Enhancing To Use Contributors

Twitter has various business features and it is well known that many of the business firms are utilizing Twitter. Recently, a news from twitter blog says that they are working on enhancing the business features of Twitter. As part of their enhancement, the feature “Contributors” is under beta testing. Twitter will be adding this feature to both the web and their Twitter API’s.

Generally, whenever a tweet is made the byline holds the user name. For business accounts, there may be multiple persons operating a single Twitter account. Say, for example a business firm may do customer support through Twitter and they have multiple persons working on the support team. In that scenario, multiple users are added as “Contributors” to a single account. Every individual has the right to tweet using one single account. Also, the byline contains the username of the Contributor which tells the exact name of the one who tweets that message. For sure this kind of feature may help business firms who are willing to operate their twitter account with multiple resources.
For example, if the @bizmanager calls @bizsupport1 to make a Tweet then at the bottom of the tweet message (byline) will have the username as @bizsupport1 instead of @bizmanager. That’s more of adding personal to your business support right ?
The following is the note mentioned on this blog post – feature test with businesses,
The feature we are beta testing is called ‘Contributors’ – it enables users to engage in more authentic conversations with businesses by allowing those organizations to manage multiple contributors to their account.
Initially, this feature will be released to their Ecosystem partners & business user. Based on the feedback and after doing additional improvements (if any) they will launch this feature to every business users

5 Ideas for Putting your Writing Skills to Work

There are a lot of people attempting to break into the freelance writing business as a work-at-home opportunity. It can be a reasonable source of income but finding the right working situation can be a real challenge. The websites for bidding on freelance work can be frustrating due to the competition and low bids that come in from all parts of the globe.

However there are a lot of companies and websites for companies that need quality copy written. If you can develop a handful of clients that continue to need work, you can take yourself out of the bidding wars and settle into a business at home that brings a steady stream of work to your desktop.
As with most businesses it is crucial to develop a working relationship so that your sources for jobs are comfortable with you and the quality of your output.
Finding those employers might be the most creative part of establishing a home freelancing business. Just bidding on jobs through Guru or similar sites will generally prove to be an exercise in frustration.
Here are five suggestions for finding steady freelance work:

1. Local news outlets often take freelance submissions.

The newspapers and television stations that are trying to build an Internet presence are doing so on shoestring budgets. Contact your local paper and see if they will take feature pieces on a one-off basis. Keep in mind that the printed news business is a very shaky industry these days; working with freelance contractors is more attractive than carrying full time employees.
here is a writer...This is one of those jobs that can turn into steady work, if you develop a relationship with the editorial staff – but your research may take you on the road occasionally.

2. Regional magazines accept freelance articles.

Many of them survive with a skeleton staff, using freelance writers to generate their content. You’ll be investing some hours in turning out product that may be rejected but it’s a good outreach tool. If you sell one article you will have established some credibility for future ideas. However, you must have the right knowledge based on the magazines theme so that you can deliver quality information.
In other words, you can find out such magazines based on your own interests or skill sets and you can also take this as a opportunity to prove your expertise. This directly or indirectly brings you more employers as you gain popularity through these magazines.

3. Online retailers need reams of copy.

The websites that sell hundreds of products have brief descriptions written for each of them. Someone is turning out that copy; the trick is finding your way to the person who is responsible for populating all those web pages with pictures and descriptions. It’s assembly-line work but it will keep you busy for many, many hours. I found this marketplace to be a good way to start out.
Interestingly, the work load never goes down because new products will be introduced into the market every day and you have to create product pages for those new products. Hence you will constantly get writing jobs through out the year.

4. Local website designers are often looking for good writers.

Working in the graphic arts and generating compelling written content are two very different functions.
If you can arrange to provide written material for a local site developer you’ll have a connection for occasional work, generated as the web developer lands new clients. Find them online and send them a pitch e-mail with a couple of writing samples.
This creates you a stream of work because whenever the web designer gets an offer, he will come to your for content writing. If you get in touch with 10 such designers, you can sit and do the work through out the day making lot of cash.

5. Occasionally you will find advertising agencies or PR firms that work with freelance writers.

Working in these fields requires the ability to grasp promotional concepts and generate written content that works with the overall plan. It can be a challenge to try and decipher what a creative director is thinking and put it into copy format, but these are also industries that find freelance talent valuable as opposed to keeping writers on staff.
To begin with you can find such firms through freelancing web sites and slowly get into offline contact. This way, you can build long term relationship with these firms and you will be engaged with work every day.

Bonus Idea: You can publish your own Profitable eBook.

eBooks are always popular over Internet and the demand varies based on the market or topic. Find out interesting topics that you love and write an ebook.
  • List down the problems in the market and address them with your own solution.
  • Even if you don’t have the knowledge, you can spend time to understand the market.
  • You can show your potential writing skills to make a great ebook – information when neatly organized, people won’t hesitate to pay for it.
  • You can also bring in affiliates to make your ebook more profitable than your writing jobs (that’s passive income).
  • Have a look on this another article on writing a new ebook and definitely, you don’t need to have master’s degrees to publish your own ebook.

Conclusion.

Writers are always in demand as long as Internet is alive. It all depends on your writing skills and more important how you communicate with the employers. If you have the capability to understand the employers requirement and able to meet their expectations you will be praised. You will automatically gain more exposure to many such employers because you have a great profile.
All these takes time and you have to work persistently – have a long term plan for your writing career and break them into short term plans to work ever day. Hope you are clear with these ideas, now go ahead and put your writing skills to work !

How I Increase To 600+ Twitter Followers (With Proof) By 10 minutes Per Day ?

Increasing the twitter followers is one of the goal of my blog. I tried many ways to increase the followers, more important i tried natural ways. Do that increased by followers ? Yes, but the results are not as expected, it takes hardly more time to search for related people and to get them follow me. Here is a method which worked for me to increase the twitter followers from 200 to 600+ within a month.

Aim To Increase Followers.

For growing blogs, its definitely a tough job to get more twitter followers. Because many people will follow, only if you have many followers or simply saying, your twitter account should look matured. For beginners, many people don’t believe in following you (because your account is not matured). This was the case i realized when i have less than 200 followers.
Finally, i took a resolution and aimed to get 500 followers within a month. To frankly tell, i spend only 10 minutes per day. Even i don’t find much time for writing a blog post, for me its tough to spend time. So i decided to spend 10 minutes per day for Twitter, only to increase my followers.

How I Increased Followers ?

I used a tool (don’t worry i am not selling any products) which helped to find more followers. More interestingly, i am able to find more followers who are related to my niche. The end result, i gained targeted followers who are interested in my topic. That’s Buzzom, an online tool which helps you to organize/manage your twitter account. I felt, its very simple to operate buzzom and you could simply login with your existing Twitter account (you don’t need to register).
It has the option to Follow your followers, Grow your followers, Reciprocate follow and much more. I am more interested with Growing followers.
What I did ?
As mentioned, i spent only 10 minutes per day by doing the following:
  • Click the Grow button.
  • Buzzom lists the followers who are related to your niche/market.
  • Manually select followers who have good profile.
  • Follow them.
  • Repeat the steps…
So every day, i followed many people (say 20-100+) and i found at least 50% of them are following back. Every day i gained followers and once in a week, i will clean my list (i will delete those who are not following me). So in a month time, i increased my twitter followers from 200 to 600+ by just spending 10 minutes per day.

Proof On Twitter Followers.

To make this post valid/true, i have shared the proof which shows, how the number of twitter followers had grown in a month ? From the day, i started doing this, you could see spikes in number of followers. If you see the graph, on 10th of July i have gained +123 followers (in one day itself).
Proof: Increase in Twitter Followers
Proof: Increase in Twitter Followers
I am planning to repeat these step again. Now I am aiming to increase my Twitter followers by 1000+ within a month (i will try to spend more than 10 minutes per day). Also, i found there are sites which sells twitter followers but i don’t believe in them and i don’t want to spend money for this too.
  • Interestingly, the traffic coming from Twitter had increased to this blog when compared to last month.
  • And more interesting, Twitter traffic spends more time on this blog, (avg: 4+ minutes more than Search traffic) that means Quality traffic.

Writing for web – What has changed with the Panda Update?

There must be hundreds and thousands of people out there working as a part time or full time writer. There’s just so much to write for web, from on site content to press releases, articles for article marketing campaigns, blog posts, guest blogs, tutorials, reviews, and the likes. The demand grows with the addition of each new website in the already sprawling cyber world.

When I first started as a freelance writer, writing for web was a straightforward task, especially for some of my peers, who have made it sound extremely simple by adopting a methodology that was anything but creative writing. They will simply pick one or two articles from the web on the same topic, and simply proceed to rewrite. One article was changed into a dozen articles and the entire “writing an article” job used to take not more than 20 minutes, that was what they considered as “content writing”.
To be brutally honest, I used to frown upon the practice and tried my best to avoid these short cuts even if they were churning out three articles in the time I take in writing just one. That worked for them, worked for their clients, and most importantly, it worked for the clients’ websites, who was I to complain?
And then came the Panda update, and it changed everything, for good.
I’ve no doubts in saying that Panda has pretty much changed the dynamics and requisites of writing for web, and the changes are good for everyone, even for the people working as content writers, because it will help them grow as a writer. Following are the changes that I am talking about.

Unique means your own Thoughts not just Words:

As I said, it was common practice to rewrite an article, check it via some service like copyscape.com and then pass it on as unique if the search doesn’t bring any results, which means, we saw literally the same information with slightly different wording everywhere on the web. In fact, people have stopped bothering about the uniqueness altogether and they were using the same content while just linking to the original source at the end.
Google panda's kick
Google Panda's kick :)
Not anymore, Google has discarded the value of duplicate content altogether. So much, that you can’t even use the same content with minor tweaks, now you’ve got no choice but to do your readers a favor and “think”.
You have to come up with your own thoughts, not just your own words. Get a topic, read about it, make your own mind, and then get down to writing.

Cover the topic instead of just touching it:

Another thing wrong in the early writing procedure was that writing an article meant barely touching the 350 words mark on the topic. In most cases that wasn’t enough to cover a single point, let alone covering the entire topic.
Thankfully, Google Panda has taken care of this practice as well, now the web page covering a topic in detail is preferred over a page where you will find just 10, 12 lines barely touching the topic.
As a web writer, you will have to write extensively and cover each and every topic in detail.

Your readers come first – search engine comes second:

That was something made obligatory by the clients who were so obsessed with the keywords that writers keep getting the instruction to somehow cram they keywords in the articles, by hook or by crook. In fact, some even went to the extent of letting them compromise the quality if needed for the sake of keyword stuffing, and the writers obliged.
End result was a second rate article, so dull that even the writers didn’t like to give a second read. Much to the relief of genuine writers, the trend is fast changing and finally the web publishers are realizing the importance of providing quality content to readers instead of the search engines.

Best Practices After Panda Update:

The following video from SEOmoz helps to understand the best practices of SEO, writing after Google’s Panda Update…don’t miss it.

image:greece

Start Up Online Business – Creating Social Media Presence

This article is part of the Start Up Online Business – Beginners course which helps you to setup your own online business from scratch. In this course, we discussed everything from bringing an idea to building a web site and making money out of it. We also discussed the importance of branding and understood that Logo, Slogan are required to make your business presence online.

Apart from on-page branding, it is really required to have a social media presence to build off-page branding.
The entire world is inside the social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus etc. Hence, for a business, social network stands like a major source to find new customers as well as helps to hold them into your own business network.
It builds your brand and also, drives you lot of visitors for your business site apart from search engines (or SEO traffic).
Creating a social media presence for your online business helps:social media
  • to find new customers for your business
  • to keep hold of your visitors under your own network
  • to quickly ping your followers to come back to your site
  • to show a brand and to build TRUST between your business and customers
Overall, social media presence is required for your online business to grow as well as to survey.
Lets quickly get into the steps on how to create a social media presence for your online business.
I want to keep these steps short and simple to understand….
For an online business to grow, you have to create a social media presence and you must utilize it well. This helps to diversify your online business dependencies especially the traffic source.
For example: Search engines are so dynamic and it may or may not send you visitors every day because of constant algorithm changes which affects your business a lot. In that case, social media helps to diversify the traffic source and it helps to balance the business risks. Make use of it…
Go back to course page.

Ad Fish Review – Money Making From AdFish Affiliate Network

Ad Fish is one of the performance based affiliate network a division of Trancos Inc., and its ranked 90 on Inc Magazine in the America’s 500 Fast growing companies. There are tonnes of affiliate network available in the market and every day new companies are coming in-and-out of the industry.

Ad Fish is one of the affiliate network which promises that they have hundreds of CPA based clients. It is important to diversify your blog income more than Adsense or if you have started with well known affiliate networks.
Ad FishEven though i am not an user of AdFish, today i came across this affiliate network and as usual i am publishing a pre-Review of this network.
As a note, Ad Fish claims that:
  • they are offering high payouts in the industry compared to other affiliate networks
  • the ad campaigns are highly converting
  • provides access to real time tracking and conversion
  • & they have experienced affiliate managers to help publishers
Signing up with AdFish is simple, fill out the joining form here (no affiliate link) and get your web site approved.
  • For US users, Ad Fish has the option to receive the payment via ACH (Electronic Fund Transfer) or regular Live Check method
  • Payment will be made no later than the 30th day after end of the month in which revenue was earned.
  • Minimum payment threshold is $50 – that means you will be paid only if you earn $50 and above – otherwise, your earnings will carry forward to next month.
  • Refer publisher terms for more information….
I did a bit of research on various forums to understand more about AdFish, however i really could not see many discussions happened about AdFish.
I hope the following reviews/discussions may help you with some information about AdFish.
As a are beginner if you are looking to diversify your blog income then you could take a try of AdFish affiliate network.
Any one using Ad Fish network ? What about your earnings ?
Leave a comment below…

3 Steps To Brand Your Blo

I believe your are stunned about seeing branded blogs on the Internet. And you are looking to brand your blog too, right ? Then you are in the right place to learn the simple BUT effective steps to brand your blog.

Branding is an art of giving a shape, visualization, remembrance for your business.
So if you are blogging for business or running your blog as a business then you should pay importance to branding. This article tells you 3 simple steps to brand your blog in minutes or less than a day. Lets see them in detail.

Create A Brand Logo For Your Blog.

A brand Logo gives the visual impression for your blog. Good logo’s easily sits on the readers mind. If you think Yahoo, you could remember that Y! & if you think IBM you could remember their grooved logo. That’s called branding. Simply, apply your creativity and correlate the logo to your blog topic.
Now, where to create logos ? Creating a logo is a simple task, one way go to  Pixlr a free image tool, which helps you to create a logo online. Or Go to Logotion & buy a logo for your blog. But more important, Keep your logo simple & creative.
Note: It’s good to associate a slogan to your logo/blog. For example, this blog has the slogan “Anatomy of Online Business”, you could name a humorous sentence too. And you could see Mr.Ven’s logo at many places of this blog.
Logo'z
Logo'z

Formatting links, texts and colors.

Now the second step is customizing or formatting the text, links & their colors on your blog. Select the text color & background color first. Use color matching tool and find out more matching colors. Now use them for links, titles. Keep your text, links to follow the same color through out the blog.
Also, decide the font size for texts, titles & use them the same everywhere on your blog. Formatting the texts & colors don’t take much time but finally you will see a well formated + branded blog.
Note: Use light, dark color combination’s & keep the font size readable.
Linking Link'z
Linking Link'z

Be Professional & Speak Unique.

To retain or to maintain your brand value, you should act as a professional. And your words should be unique when compared to other competitors in your business. Have a unique way of speech to your readers, it makes them to love your blog and your content. Don’t use horrible or more complex words, try to keep your words as simple as possible. Also, deliver your message clean & clear to understand easily. That helps you to build a reader friendly blog too which is more important to retain your brand value.
Note: Use short sentences as much as possible. It shows that you are professional/soft in nature & makes more reader friendly.
Be Professional
Be Professional !
These 3 steps are really simple to build a brand for your blog. BUT to build a well established brand, it takes time. You should consistently serve your visitors & customers by means of quality service. There is not replacement for quality to build a branded blog.

10 Sites For Writing Articles And Earning Money

Welcome dear ! and its happy to hear that you are looking sites for writing articles and to earn money from that work. That’s a good idea too ! Because, writing and publishing articles is funny job that even I love too. But that depends on individual interest and abilities. Okay, lets come to out topic.

In general, there are 3 reason for writing articles on article writing sites.
  • To promote a product or business online.
  • To gain back links to your site or blog.
  • And, to earn money for writing articles.
So our focus is towards the 3rd reason. There are various sites where you could publish your articles and earn money from that. The sources of income could be either based on the traffic derived or its purely revenue sharing or promoting your affiliate link. Lets see 10 such famous sites where you could write articles and earn money.
Squidoo - The well known famous article publishing platform and each of the published page is termed as “Lens”. Squidoo has variety of topics covered and you have the full freedom to manage and write your content same like your own website. The advantage is that you could connect with other squidoo users. There are millions of squidoo users who are making fun out of creating lenses. It has more than 1,000,000 lenses.
You could signup for Google Adsense and get a percentage of adsense income from squidoo. Apart from that you could get a share for Amazon products sold and much more. Refer their Getting Started page for exact sharing details.
Hubpages – The alternate site to Squidoo and its also the most famous article writing site. I have used hubpages and found its too fun. Because, its quite easy and simple to create well formatted content. More interestingly, Hubpages get more traffic from search engines and for sure you could make good income from this site. It shares you Google Adsense income, its quite simple to integrate your Adsense account into hubpages or you could get one account from Hubpages.
Apart from Adsense, you could use Amazon, eBay, Kontera etc on hubpages and you will earn a percentage of income from hubpages. Just refer their Tours page for exact sharing details.
Xomba – An instant to write article, opinion, news or anything from short to long that you post on xomba. Posts are called Xombytes. It’s again Google Adsense reveneue sharing site. Generally, xomba is use to create quick back links and to drive quick traffic to your own blogs but you could make some extra income by joining Xomba. The advantage is that you can write short posts on xomba, especially for Lazy people :-)
Flixya – A good site to share everything from writing articles, sharing videos and images. The best thing is that you will be paid 100% revenue that you make out of your pages or videos or images. Not only your writing skills, you could organize your own videos and images on Flixya. Its more fun to work with Flixya because you could manage your personal videos and images online by making extra money. You could create a cool profile, make friends and enjoy working with Flixya. Register with Flixya here for free.
Bukisa – A site to share your knowledge and earn money for that based on the traffic you gained. Publish articles on Bukisa, drive traffic and get earn money for every 1000 hits your page makes. You will be paid a fixed amount for every 1000 hits and more traffic you generate, you will earn more money. The earnings are not so great but you could make few extra money.
There are few more sites like,  Triond , Helium, Oondi, She told me , Digital Journal and much more….
Conclusion on Writing Articles for Money.
It’s a good idea to write articles for any of these sites to earn money. BUT you should do all these only for gaining extra income and you could not make huge income from this type of work.  Instead, i would strongly recommend you to start your own blog, write for your blog and attain success. Also, use these kind of sites to promote your blog and to earn some extra money ! That’s a better approach, I could suggest !

Best 5 Systems To Earn Extra Income Online From Home

What does it take to an extra income online ?

Earning an extra income from your home does not necessarily need money to start it, though it may require a little to start up with but I can tell you that if you can strategies on how to go about it, then you would make it.
As we proceed, you will get to understand different systems on how to earn without stress or hard work as an extra income.
So you are interested in making money online ? Then let’s take a look at the best 5 systems which works. It is almost free to begin them.

1. Affiliate Business

This is a method whereby you promote other people’s product and you get a commission when they finally buy.
Affiliate business is very interesting because you don’t need to provide any product or service of your own; your job is to give your readers details on how the product works.
For you to make more money with affiliate business you have to build up enough recursive responsive list, with that you would be able to secure a stable income at the end of every month. The success hardly depends on your target audience and the product that you promote which must solve the buyer problem.
Learn how to start affiliate online business ?

2. Freelance Writing

Writing can help you earn a lot of money when you actually love what you are doing. Freelance writing is a method of writing for other people like bloggers and Internet entrepreneurs.
looks....she is earning extra income !
looks....she is earning extra income !
As a freelance writer you are you’re your own boss. Investing time to write these articles can yield decent income for you. You don’t have to be 100% perfect, just make sure your articles are readable and informative.
When writing as a freelancer, you have enough time to yourself. You are self employed. The income you earn from this business models depends on several things; as well as the agreement you signed with your client.
Apart from freelance writing job, you can also do software development, web design, data entry jobs as a freelancer. The income varies based on the amount of quality time you spend for your freelancing job as well as how well you are completing the assigned jobs.
Lean how you can start money making as a freelancer and also, how to earn more freelancer income ?

3. Graphic Designs

Graphic designs is a lucrative business. How do you make money online with this method? We all know that Internet business is already popular and thousands of people are starting up businesses online each day.
All you have to do is to strategize and be unique. As a graphic designer, you make use of your skills by creating logos that have quality and you would be selling them, advertise on your blog that you are a graphic designer and highlight your expertise.
As mentioned above, Internet business is growing by the day and a lot of people who started their website needs a logo and custom images to beautify their blogs. It’s your duty to fill this gap and earn extra income right at home. You must need the right tools and skill set in graphics design – you can also hire other designer to help in taking more projects.
This is a kind of service based business where you take offers, serve the customer and get paid for the project. Learn how to start you own service business online ?

4. Create Your Product

If you really want to make a lot of money online then this method is very good for you. Be creative and start creating top notch information products.
Create your own product and sell. In this case you are entitled to 100% of the profit. Creating your own product is different from affiliate marketing where you get part of the money paid by a customer, but you would be fully paid because the product is yours.
Create quality product if you want to make lot of sales. Your product can be anything. The easiest way to get started is to write a short report that explains a particular topic. Short reports sell very well online, depending on your marketing guts.
When I launched my first coupon site that shares 6pm discount deals and sittercity coupons, short reports helped me to make greater sales.
Become creative today by knowing what your customers need and how desperate they want answers. Basically, you have to address the buyers problem in your product with an effective solution.
Learn more on selling your own products online.

5. Consulting Services

There are several ways to make money online. As a blogger you should be exposed to new insights, strategies and ideas on how to succeed as a consultant.
When you give you’ll definitely receive. The role of a consultant is to liaise with corporate firms. Once you win a contract, you then outsource it to capable hands.
As a consultant you can get contract from people, firms etc. your job is to get the contract, look for people to execute the contract for you, pay them their commission and when the job is being delivered you get your profit.
Finally, as you engage yourself in one of the systems highlighted above you would begin to add some extra dollars to your bank account every month. Understand all these earning methods, choose the best one which suits your knowledge and based on the availability of time.

Top 10 Business Lessons from Bill Gates


Top 10 Business Lessons from Bill Gates
Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard in 1974.
In I975, he co-founded Microsoft – a computer software company that would eventually make Gates the world’s wealthiest man. He earned the money by masterfully guiding the world into the era of networked personal computers.
Today, Gates is no longer the world’s wealthiest, but he’s still worth a healthy US$ 59 billion.
He’s retired from his role as Microsoft’s CEO and instead devotes himself full-time to philanthropy through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Below, you’ll find 10 business lessons from the life of Bill Gates.

#1 Get Lucky

bill gates mug shot Top 10 Business Lessons from Bill Gates
Gates is a very smart man, but he’s benefitted from more than his fair share of dumb luck.
In 1968, Gates was an eighth grader, attending a private middle school in Seattle called Lakeside. That year, the school invested $3,000 in a state-of-the-art computer.
13-year-old Bill joined computer club and was instantly hooked. He and a handful of other enthusiastic students racked up hours and hours on the machine, learning how to program through trial and error. It was the beginning of a journey that would propel Gates to astronomical success.
Here’s where the dumb luck comes in: in the 1960s, very few colleges had computer labs and a middle school with a computer was unheard of. The chances of a 13-year-old having access to a computer were pretty much one-in-a-million.
If Lakeside hadn’t purchased a computer, then young Bill might never have discovered his love for computer programming and he never would have started Microsoft.

#2 Make the Most of the Luck You’re Given

Bill may have been ridiculously lucky, but all the computer time in the world wouldn’t have meant anything if he hadn’t dedicated himself so fully to master it.
Ultimately, it was the thousands of hours of focused labor that made Gates into the type of computer genius who could start a successful software company.
We don’t always recognize it, but each of us is uniquely lucky. Whether through our natural talents, our circumstances, or our relationships with others, we’re all fortunate to have many paths to success in front of us.
Take in your luck for a moment – and then capitalize on it.

#3 Bite Off More than You Can Chew

altair microcomputer Top 10 Business Lessons from Bill Gates
Microsoft’s big break came from Bill Gates telling a fib.
Gates called up a computer company called MITS and told them that they had developed a BASIC interpreter for their microcomputer, the Altair 8800.In 1975, Gates and his childhood programming buddy, Paul Allen, were looking for a way to turn their shared computer hobby into a career.
MITS was interested in seeing a demonstration of the software. This presented a problem, since the software Bill had promised didn’t actually exist.
Gates and Allen developed it in a hurry, presented it to MITS, and made the sale. They officially founded Microsoft one month later, in April 1975.
“An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he’ll quickly learn how to chew it.”
– Roy Ash, co-founder of Litton Industries
By always pushing yourself to deliver a little bit more than you’ve proven yourself capable of, you’ll go further, faster in your business ventures.
That said, I don’t recommend that you follow Bill’s lead and actually lie to your potential clients.

#4 Quality Control is Crucial

microsoft early logo Top 10 Business Lessons from Bill Gates
As Microsoft grew, it began hiring more and more programmers.
Gates had taken on the role of CEO and his job didn’t call for any programming. But that didn’t stop him from reviewing – and often rewriting – every single line of code that the company released.
Bill’s keen eye for detail ensured that Microsoft always shipped quality software. It also made sure that he never lost track of his team and that he was always intimately familiar with Microsoft’s products.
As your business grows, you’ll likely have to hire a team of employees. It may be tempting to just let them work and trust that they’re doing a good job. But your company has a reputation to protect, so take a page from Gates’ book and keep a close watch on your team’s output.

#5 Revolutionary Ideas are Shown, Not Told

Computer screens once displayed just text.
In the early 80’s, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer would travel around the country delivering seminars about how graphic interfaces were the operating systems of the future – but nobody believed them.
Computer companies told the Microsoft boys that graphic interfaces would be too slow and that it would be difficult to write the software for them. They were less than enthusiastic when Microsoft announced in 1983 that it was developing Windows.
apple macintosh Top 10 Business Lessons from Bill Gates
Attitudes changed quickly in 1984, when Apple launched the Macintosh. It became the first commercially successful computer with a graphical user interface (GUI).
All of a sudden, it was obvious to everyone that the wave of the future involved windows, icons, menus, and a pointing device. Within a few years, the market was flooded with graphical OS software. Notable examples include Deskmate, Workbench, and – of course – Microsoft Windows.
Microsoft was able to release Windows 1.0 in 1985, just a year after the Mac’s success, because they had actually started developing the software two years earlier.
If you’ve got a revolutionary idea, don’t worry if other people don’t get it. Start developing it now so that you’ll be prepared when the time is right.

#6 Persevere

There is nothing that was overnight.
– Bill Gates
income diary windows 3 Top 10 Business Lessons from Bill Gates
income diary windows 3 Top 10 Business Lessons from Bill GatesWindows 1.0 actually wasn’t much of a success.income diary windows 3 Top 10 Business Lessons from Bill Gates
Microsoft released Windows 2.0 two years later, in 1987, but it didn’t fare much better. It found moderate success thanks to software – in particular, Excel, Word, and Aldus Pagemaker.
It wasn’t until 1990, when Microsoft launched Windows 3.0, that they found significant success with a graphical operating system. It was a big moneymaker for the company and it sold over 10 million units in just two years.
Microsoft had found the model that would transform them into a computer software giant.income diary windows 3 Top 10 Business Lessons from Bill Gates

#7 Share Your Vision with Your Team

Just as Gates has seen the advent of the graphical interface years in advance, he predicted the preeminence of the Internet long before the average Joe had a dial-up connection.
By May 1995, Gates was so convinced that he Internet was Microsoft’s future, that he felt compelled to write a very, very long memo to his company. It concluded:
“The Internet is a tidal wave. It changes the rules. It is an incredible opportunity as well as incredible challenge. I am looking forward to your input on how we can improve our strategy to continue our track record of incredible success.”
Gates took the time to write this memo because he recognized how important it was for his whole team to be on board with Microsoft’s mission. The result: Windows 95 came bundled with Internet Explorer.

#8 Marketing is Simple

People don’t buy a product because it’s got a great logo or a low price. They buy because they’ve got a problem and they’re convinced that the product will solve it.
The most difficult part about marketing, then, isn’t coming up with the right tagline. It’s providing a great solution to an actual problem. If you can do that and then demonstrate it, then marketing your solution is simple.
If you show people the problems and you show people the solutions, they will be moved to act.
– Bill Gates

#9 Don’t Learn From Success

It seems obvious that we should reflect on our successes and learn from them. If we can recognize the factors that contributed to that initial success, we should be able to repeat them and repeat our success.
But Gates has argued that success can actually cloud our vision, causing us to become over-confident and unprepared for the new challenges that the future holds.
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.
– Bill Gates
We shouldn’t ignore the patterns of our initial success. But neither should cling blindly to particular actions or strategies simply because they’ve worked in the past.

#10 Learn from Unhappy Customers

Over the years, Bill Gates has made a ton of his customers unhappy.
Anyone who has stared at the “blue screen of death” understands why.
But as much as people love to complain about Windows, they continue to use it. Windows has been the world’s primary operating system since 1990 and it boasts a stout 82.5% market share as of August 2011.
The reason is simple: Microsoft continues to respond to customer feedback and improve their products. The attitude starts with Bill Gates, himself:
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
– Bill Gates

Looking Forward

Bill Gates Looking Forward Top 10 Business Lessons from Bill Gates
Bill Gates career has been marked by his incredible vision. Microsoft beat out the competition largely because they were always looking one step ahead, to the next revolutionary idea.
The lesson here: if you want to get ahead in business, think ahead.
Gates was still thinking ahead when he retired from Microsoft in 2008. He told PC Mag that he thought the Tablet PCs, Internet TV, and natural user interface would be thriving in the near future. History is proving him right.
So, if Gates knew what was coming next, why didn’t he stick around to make it happen? Surely, he could have added a few billion more to his bank accounts.
The answer is that, at some point while thinking about the future, Gates started giving more importance to health care, poverty, and education than he did to the next hi-tech gizmo. He’s making a bigger impact on the future through The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation than he would have made by continuing to run Microsoft.

Make Money Online With A Blog


Make Money Online, My Personal Story, How I Created IncomeDiary.com
A frequently asked question these days – is how did I come to create IncomeDiary.com? With this post I hope to answer that question, let you in on some of my secrets and also hopefully inspire you.
Since creating such a well known brand and popular blog, it has allowed me to team up with people and create a number of seriously profitable businesses such as Popup Domination, Site Profit Domination and Blog Creation Domination!
Before creating IncomeDiary.com, I had a few major websites – the young entrepreneurs website: RetireAt21.com and a web design blog which I sold for over $20,000 only 6 months after starting it.
Both sites earned me good money, but nothing impressive. My ambition was to have a website that could earn me at least a 6 Figure income.
With my other sites I had become very knowledgeable about blogging, about content generation and about getting heaps of quality traffic to my websites. I was also increasingly being asked by visitors to my websites about how to build a website like RetireAt21.com
Looking back now at an amazing last 7 months or so I am in particular struck by something that I read in a survey about entrepreneurs recently:
Entrepreneurship is about solving the problems of society, not starting a business for one’s own sake
Now it would be a bit over the top to suggest that I started IncomeDiary.com to solve the problems of society – but it would be true to say that I started it because I wanted to solve a ‘problem’ – the problem of being constantly asked questions about how to create a blog or how to make money online?
It was out of solving this ‘problem’ that IncomeDiary.com was born – the original idea being to share my experiences with blogging and making money online while at the same time inspiring others with features about other bloggers who had done amazing things online.
It has actually been quite therapeutic writing up this post. It really is amazing what can be achieved in a few short months when you put your mind to it. If there is one lesson in particular I would like to share it is:
That in order to RECEIVE, you must first GIVE
So many bloggers get excited about setting up a blog, but cannot for whatever reason get over that hurdle that exists when you first start out – of writing content, researching posts, building relationships etc (The GIVING bit) with very little in the way of income coming back in return.
So often I visit a Blog and see that in the first month of operation there are plenty of posts but come the second or third month the posts have become less frequent.
I wish I could say Blogging is an easy way to make money – but I can’t. I can however say it is an excellent way to make money and frankly it does eventually become quite easy, but not until you have first gave of yourself and created something of value that other people will follow.
I started out small, and I even remember getting excited when I started to make $10 a day with Google Adsense a few years ago – fortunately these days the numbers are quite a bit higher and I am even starting to experience some $1000 Days of earnings.
I hope you enjoy My Story and I hope it Inspires you.
To all our Successes

Top Earning Websites

Top Earning Websites

Today I created a list of the top 30 earning websites in the world, for some of these websites, $50 million in revenue a day is just a typical day, crazy isn’t it? And it was all created in the last 10 or so years! I usually would do a write up about how the list rocks and why you should do it to but I think the figures speak for themselves, enjoy!

30 Websites That Make A Lot Of Money Online

 Rank  Website  Founders  Annual Revenue  Per Second
 1  Google  Larry Page and Sergey Brin  $21,800,000,000  $691.27
 2  Amazon  Jeff Bezos  $19,166,000,000  $607.75
 3  Yahoo  Jerry Yang and David Filo  $7,200,000,000  $228.31
 4  eBay  Pierre Omidyar  $6,290,000,000  $199.45
 5  MSN/Live  Nathan Myhrvold.  $3,214,000,000  $101.92
 6  PayPal  Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek  $2,250,000,000  $71.35
 7  iTunes  Jeff Robbin  $1,900,000,000  $60.25
 8  Reuters  Marshal Vace  $1,892,000,000  $59.99
 9  Priceline  Jesse Fink  $1,884,000,000  $59.74
 10  Expedia  Added Mark Schroeder  $1,447,000,000  $45.88
 11  NetFlix  Reed Hastings  $1,200,000,000  $38.05
 12  Travelocity  Terry Jones  $1,100,000,000  $38.05
 13  Zappos  Nick Swinmurn  $1,000,000,000  $31.71
 14  Hotels.com  David Litman  $1,000,000,000  $31.71
 15  AOL  Erik Prince  $968,000,000  $30.70
 16  Orbitz  Jeff Katz  $870,000,000  $27.59
 17  Overstock  Robert Brazell  $834,000,000  $26.45
 18  MySpace  Tom Anderson  $800,000,000  $25.37
 19  Skype  Niklas Zennstrom  $550,841,000  $17.47
 20  Sohu  Zhang Chaoyang  $429,000,000  $13.60
 21  Buy.com  Robb Brock  $400,000,000  $12.68
 22  StubHub  Eric Baker  $400,000,000  $12.68
 23  Alibaba  Jack Ma  $316,000,000  $10.02
 24  Facebook  Mark Zuckerberg  $300,000,000  $9.51
 25  YouTube  Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim  $300,000,000  $9.51
 26  Blue Nile  Mark Vadon  $295,000,000  $9.35
 27  Tripadvisor  Stephen Kaufer  $260,000,000  $8.24
 28  Getty Images  Mark Getty  $233,200,000  $7.39
 29  Bidz  Garry Itkin  $207,000,000  $6.56
 30  NYTimes  Henry Jarvis Raymond  $175,000,000  $5.55