John Mathews asked:


It’s easy to make money from blogs. There are all kinds of programs, affiliations available to make money from blogs, in fact, even easy money.

What is a blog?

Blog is a personal space, rather a personal diary, with the difference that it is not a closed diary but one that is open to anyone to walk in and read and leave a comment. There are various types of blogs, some are business blogs, and some are social networking blogs. Some blogs are personal some are professional but most of them have a theme on which the contents are based. Creating a blog is easy, even a child make a blog.

Types of blogs

Comment blogs are the ones that offer comment on events in the writer’s life. It takes a subject or incident and makes a comment which the reader may be interested in. Comment blogs often substitute for newspaper editorials. Needless to say they are a combination of news and opinions. Blogs are tools in the hands of writers to keep in touch with each other and also to inform the world about events in the writer’s life. Recently, there have been instances of bloggers updating the world about events in countries that have undergone political change, when no other traditional media was allowed to cover the events.

The other type of blog is filter blog. Filter blogs are similar to comment blogs but point to other locations within the internet for articles and have minimum of content, and more of links. Owners of such blogs can be requested for links to sites, for a fee, of course. You can make money online using these blogs.

You can opt for any of these types to make money through blogging. Most blogs such as blogger.com and wordpress.com are free to subscribers and you can easily create a blog in a few steps and earn good money.

Creating a Blog

Blogs are easy to create on Blogger.com and wordpress.com. There are other blog creation sites such as typepad, and MSN’s live.com. It only takes a few clicks to create a blog. Have a name that is appropriate to the theme of your blog so that they will show up in search engine results and it can also impact your ranking on search engines. For example if your blog is about mobile blogging have a name such as mobile-blogging.blogspot.com. Do not combine the two words, i.e., don’t create a blog with the name as mobileblogging.blogspot.com. It’s a better strategy to use the former to let search engines find your blog.

Promoting Your Blog

First of all submit your blog to the major search engines before you can earn money from blogging. Slowly, your traffic will build and you can paste a visit counter to check the progress of visitors on your blog. Also send a link to your friends and extended contact lists to visit your blog and link to you. When the number of links of your blog increases, so will your popularity and your rating with the search engines. Keep promoting your blog without let up.

Apply to Affiliate Programs

When there is a constant flow of visitors to your blog everyday you can start the process of earning money from your blog. First apply to affiliation programs which pay money to feature their ads on your blog. After registering with them copy and paste their code in the appropriate sections in your blog. Affiliate programs pay per click or pay if a sale is made through a click from your blog. So choose your affiliate program wisely.

Register with Google Adsense

Google runs their advertising program on websites and blogs which is called Google Adsense. When you register with Adsense, Google supplies you with the code that you can copy and paste on your blog. Once you do this you can track your blog’s performance by registering on Google’s analytical tool – Google Analytics. This free analytical tool will analyze the number of visitors to your site each and also give you the demographic data of the visitors.

Do not give up. As the popularity of your blog grows, both traffic as well as ranking on search engines can only become better. So the more popular your blog the more will be your revenue from Affiliate programs and Adsense.

Most importantly, if you are seeking to make money from blogging, spread your interests across multiple revenue streams so as not to put all your eggs in one basket.

Some Good Money Making Affiliate Sites:

www.google.com/adsense

As mentioned above, Adsense is Google’s advertising program and when featured on your blog can bring you revenue when a visitor clicks on the ad links. If you place the adsense code strategically on your blog then you can get more clicks. It should be right at the top of the blog, and preferably at the top right hand side. Also you can choose an ad size that is prominent enough to display it prominently on your blog.

www.amazon.com

Amazon has an affiliate program that includes products like books, CDs, office products, household products, etc. It also has a contextual advertising program in which you have to place a code in your page and all words on your page that has association with Amazon products will turn into a link. This has more chances of making money as the reader is directly reading content relating to the advertisement, and therefore has a greater chance of clicking on the ad.

www.register.com

Register.com is a website that is in the domain booking and related services realm. It has an affiliate program by which their ads can be featured on blogs and the blogger can earn referral income. For more details read the affiliate page on the website.

www.g2bux.com

Though G2bux doesn’t have an affiliation program it rewards members with G2points which can be converted into cash when it reaches a certain limit. Users can find tens of ways to make money online on G2bux. It is a good site to make money from and offers a number of modules through members can earn money. Registration is free and is open to all.

www.ebay.com

Ebay.com also has an affiliate program in which bloggers can become a member. Ebay is a popular site for buying and selling used and new products and your visitors would certainly be interested in the products for sale on the site. Visit ebay.com for their affiliation program and sign up if you think it will work for you.

Dr. Johnson C. Philip asked:


Whether one should go for a conventional website or the modern blog setup for one’s income generation site is a recurring question. My unwavering answer is: opt for the blog software unless you have a compelling reason to opt for the conventional website setup. Here is the reason:

Why Prefer Blog Software: Blogs were invented for writing personal journals, but the format has become so popular that thousands of people around the world have developed new and highly refined blog softwares that are totally free. These programs offer numerous advanced facilities, user-support from the developer and user-community and also numerous add ons.

What Are Add-ons: Most blog softwares are very versatile. However, the programmers realize that given an opportunity, others can add to the functionality. Thus most blog software offer a facility for “plugins” which are software developed by others and which can be “plugged in” to the original software.  These add-ons or plugins are easy to add, and offer numerous facilities.

Which Blog Software: Several free software are available, but I would strongly recommend WordPress because if the ease of installation, ease of use, and the unbelievable range of plugins available totally free. What is more,  thousands of free themes are available which means that you can almost always find a theme that suits your purpose.

Which Version of WorPerfect: Each new version of WordPerfect comes with added facilities but the installation remains easy. What is more, even the webmasters control-panel is easy, and has been becoming easier and more user friendly with newer versions. So go for the latest version and download it from www.WordPress.org

Which Add-ons (Plugins) To Use: There are thousands of plugins, and it is better for you to choose them after you have some experience with the blog first. Needs vary and so do the plugins. The WordPress site maintains a good list of plugins.

Which Theme: There are thousands of themes and  you can locate them either by going to the WordPress site or through a net-search. However, I wish to sound two notes of caution. First, do not go for the more flashy type of themes because they are slow to load and divert the attention to themselves from the product itself. Second, prefer a normal three-column theme because ads when displayed on both sides give maximum exposure and maximum click-through.

Persist: Please remember that persisting with two to three selected blogs is the key. While you might see click-through from the start, it takes a little time to grow. It takes 12 to 26 months on a well-executed blog for ad-income to cross the satisfactory barrier. Count this time as essential investment. Give another 12 months for it to attain a level that can be called exciting.

Persist and you will surely win!

Michelle Greene asked:


It’s been said that affiliate marketing is, without a doubt, one the quickest and most efficient ways of making money online. There are several reasons for this. A big attraction is that most affiliate programs don’t require any enrollment fees. There’s no financial investment on the part of the affiliate. Plus, it’s an excellent way to earn money online without having your own products to sell. You can simply choose a product you are interested in, and set up a web site to promote it.

An affiliate’s only job is to generate traffic to their unique affiliate link by pre-selling the merchant’s products. The sales page, the payment processing, the digital delivery, and the post sales services is all handled by the affiliate merchant.

An affiliate tracking link will track how many sales you make from your website, and you’ll be rewarded with the commission earnings.

What You Need To Be A Successful Affiliate Marketer

An affiliate network to manage your sales. This is not mandatory, but is preferred for beginners as you are able to manage your sales and statistics from one central interface. Also, many networks contain several affiliate products, so you can group similarly themed products to sell.

Two of the major affiliate networks are Commission Junction and Clickbank. Amazon and Ebay also have their own affiliate programs which can be quite lucrative. There are hundreds of other affiliate providers and you can use your favorite search engine to find them. Just enter the terms ‘affiliate networks’ and hit search.

Sometimes, to achieve better results require some expense. Getting a web host, for example, as well as a domain name, would require you to spend money. Getting professionally made graphics to make your website attractive can also cost dig into your pocket. Pay Per Click advertising, commonly referred to as PPC advertising can be costly if not done properly. These are just a few things to keep in mind.

A Website

You will require a web site or at least one page on an existing web site you might own. It’s not always necessary to set up a whole website to promote one affiliate product. You might choose to dedicate just one single page to this product, and this is fine. This method can actually be very successful. If you don’t know HTML, the language required to build a website, you can consider using a blog.

WordPress Blog Platform

WordPress is a movable-type blog. It’s a software program you download and use to create your own blogs which you could upload in your own server. You won’t have to settle for the words ‘blogspot’ or ‘livejournal’ or ‘xanga’ to be attached to your URL. You could host your blog under its own domain name, or as another page in your main website.

Blogs are great marketing tools. They get indexed quite quickly by the search engines, and often, the figure prominently well in the search engine results pages (SERPs). They could also give your main website the backlinks it needs to boost its own page rank. Additionally, a blog can be customized to become your main website.

The primary advantage of this approach is the convenience you’ll receive when it comes to publishing content. Download the WordPress client for free from www.wordpress.com .

A Product To Promote

Preferably this will be a product you have purchased yourself, as you will want to be fully aware of all aspects of the product so you can produce truthful reviews and promotions for it.

It’s best if you can choose a product that you truly like, as people will prefer your honest opinion on it and can generally tell if you are only promoting it “for the money” rather than from your own experience.

Clickbank.com and Commission Junction for example, have thousands of products that you can choose from in a wide variety of niches. These are good places to begin to find a product to promote as an affiliate.

Text That Sells The Product (Copywriting)

This is where you make your sales. You need to tell people why they should buy this product, what is in it for them?

Often this can take the form of a product review. You might casually review the product you are promoting, and subtly add an affiliate link during and after the article. This method works well as it doesn’t directly look like you are selling anything.

Those are the basics of starting your affiliate internet marketing business.

Jim Thompson asked:


One of the quickest and easiest ways to make money online is by flipping websites. If you haven’t heard of this term before it means that you create a website and sell it for some quick cash. Decent sites can sell for thousands of dollars.

I must admit, I didn’t think I could be successful at selling websites even after reading several website flipping ebooks. I recently purchased an ebook by Kitwana Akil called Pimp My Flip. I decided to purchase the book after reading several positive feedbacks about it in a popular forum.

I know you’re thinking I’m just saying that to convince you to buy the ebook, but I have to admit this book far exceeded my already relatively high expectations of it. I actually sold a website I spend under an hour creating for $75, not bad for my first ever website flip.

Why am I telling you this because this? Because this book is a great investment if you are willing to take action I genuinely want you to make money online and this is a great way to do it. With all of the economic problems isn’t it time to look for more sources of income?

Here’s a little about the book. The author is Kitwana Akil and yes his English is very readable. It starts off by going through how to buy and choose the right domain (website address) name. He tells you of some free tools that will help you choose a good domain name.

Next is a great section on creating your own custom wordpress themes (website) or choosing cool free themes including how to create headers and get photos for your wordpress blogs. This section is excellent and worth the price just for this information alone.

The next section is on plugins these are alterations that you add to your wordpress blog to make it better. This section is excellent at providing good plugins for easily making money with the blogs as well as enhancing the search engine placement. These plugins will help sell your sites easier when combined with a good wordpress blog theme.

Another great section is on quickly creating good content for your blogs. These strategies will save you tons of time and allow you to quickly create sites, because creating content can take lots of time if you do it on your own. Tons of great information is provided about getting good content and continuing to get fresh content for the site. This will allow your site to sell easier because let’s face it many people are lazy especially those buying websites. Having content will make selling sites much easier.

Finally, Kitwana Akil goes over the whole process of flipping a website so you know exactly what to do step by step. This will save you tons of time and headaches by knowing exactly how to flip a website for quick cash. The great part is creating one website can pay for this great information source and allow you to continue to make quick cash throughout the year.

Creating one great site can make you over $1000, for only a few hours work. Do you honestly think this isn’t something to consider spending a few measly hours doing? Take action now and start making quick money using pimp my flip.

Brandon Hong asked:


One of the keys to creating massive wealth in life is to create multiple streams of income or passive income.

After all, the reason why most people work is to earn an income to support their standard of living.

When you work in a job, regardless of the position and level you are in, you are basically trading your time and skills in exchange for a regular paycheck. People who depend solely on their job as the only source of income are highly at risk.

This is because you can only continue to work in your job provided you are healthy and the company and economy is doing well. However, during recessions, with corporate America ever trying to please shareholders and investors, naturally the first thing that comes to mind is cost cutting. This normally translates to layoffs and retrenchments.

Technological advancement brought about the Internet, which was initially used more for research purpose. It was not long before companies, businessman and entrepreneurs discovered the potential of Internet in conducting business.

There are many online business models that can be used to create multiple income streams.

For example, one popular marketing strategy employed by marketers is to set up a one page site offering free gifts or information like an e-course to people who opt-in to their list.

Next, using an auto-responder, they will then follow-up with these prospects seven times or more until eventually they purchase some product either their own, or other people’s products.

Another business model that can be used is Google Adsense, which is becoming increasingly popular. There are frequent stories of ordinary people earning a substanstial amount of passive income each month just based on this method alone.

Today, you can set up an online store, a directory of pages, an affiliate site, a blog for for many, many times lesser than what it would cost you to set up a brick and mortar business.

For less than fifty dollars, you can register a domain name for just $6.95 for one year, sign up with a $9.95 a month web hosting to host unlimited domains and spend the remainder of the money to drive traffic to your sites using pay-per-click programs.

If you want free traffic, you can use a myriad of strategies available to small and medium online business owners, such as article marketing,blogs, rss feeds, podcasts just to name a few.

What has all this got to do with you, you might ask?

Simple. Going back to the fact that one can only work a fixed number of hours in a day, the only way to increase your wealth is to create additional income streams for yourself.

Setting up your own online businesses to create multiple income streams is one of the easiest and most inexpensive ways to do so.

Blogs, or more specifically niche blogs offer the budding entrepreneur the best of both worlds in terms of traffic generation and the flexibility of multiple income streams all on one site.

The idea behind niche blogs is this: Set up a blog on a niche topic, for example acne causes and solutions, post articles on it and add in income streams such as Adsense, Amazon, Chitika and even Clickbank.

Next, use the blog’s built in rss feeds and submit them to rss directories to start driving traffic to the niche blog.

The result? You’ve just created your first stream of passive income.

Imagine creating 10, 50, 100, 1000 of these niche blogs. How many streams of income would you have created? You can create a niche blog in basically any niche, for example coin collection, keeping aquariums, candle making just to name a few.

Start taking charge of your financial future now and create your own niche blogs.