You have probably heard that one of the ways of making money online is to write articles. Good articles would bring you readers, which mean traffic. If you place affiliate links in your articles, and if you manage to raise the interest of your readers, they would eventually go and buy those products you've written about, and you'd earn commissions from the manufacturer.
How much money you could make from these articles depends on many factors, such as how popular your site is, how good are the affiliate programs in your niche, and how much effort and time you are willing to invest in building your site to be an authority in its niche.
Content is not everything, you'll need to think of making your site known, and this can be done without too much spending by doing a good SEO optimization. This means that you have to make sure you use the keywordsyou like people to find you for in your article titles, headlines, in the text and in anchors of internal links.
Some people say that they make a lot of money by writing articles online, and judging from my own experience, they are probably right: if you are serious and treat it like a real business, a website can bring you as much as $5000 - $1000 per month, or even more.
Your income can come from many sources, both active and passive. The passive or recurring ones can come, for example, from promoting affiliate programs for web hosting, or membership sites, which require monthly payments from subscribers. Each moth you'll get new commissions from the old members, without doing anything more. This is passive income. Another source of passive income is selling ads on your site. You can sell ads either directly, or join an ads network and place their ads on your pages. Active income can come from writing paid articles, either on your sites, or ghostwriting for other people's sites. Depending on your writing talent and skills, you can earn between $5 - $100 per article, or even more, if you become an authority in your field.
After you have built one successful site, you can choose to go on building a second one, then a third one, adding every month some sources of income to your portfolio. The more sites you build, the better your income will be. Plus, you'll be on the safe side if one of the sites crashes or loses Google rankings.
Most of all, remember that building the first site is the biggest challenge of all. The next ones will seem much easier, because you'll already have experience of things which work well and things which don't, so you won't be guessing in the dark anymore.
Simonne Matthew is an entrepreneur, running a small online business, and writing for a series of online publications. She helps people to make money online, by publishing case studies from her practice, and reviews of the methods of making money from home.
Article Source: http://www.wahm-articles.com/
Friday, February 29, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Network Marketing: Four Questions That Can Make or Break Your Business by Liz Monte
WHAT are you marketing? WHY are you marketing what you're marketing? WHO are you marketing to? HOW are you marketing?
The answers to these four questions lay the foundation for your network marketing business. You need to be clear about the answers yourself, AND you need to be able to convey those answers to your prospects.
Of course, it's obvious to you WHAT you're selling, and you probably have a pretty clear idea of WHY you're selling what you're selling. (Something to do with a beach house in Jamaica, right? Or is it Maui?)
I'll bet you're really good at explaining the WHAT when you're recruiting, too, giving out an abundance of info on your products and services, your company, and your compensation plan.
I'll also bet you know that to be an effective enroller, you need to explore your prospect's WHY, encouraging her to open up and share with you all her frustrations, hopes, and dreams. You want your new recruit to be motivated, after all. And you want to be able to demonstrate how your opportunity can help solve her frustrations, and turn her hopes and dreams into reality.
This is all good.
But when we come to the WHO and the HOW, many network marketers fall flat on their faces.
Your prospect needs to be able to envision herself doing this business. She wants to know exactly HOW she's going to market your company's products and opportunity and WHO she's going to sell them to.
I'm sure a prospect has asked you this before. "What, exactly, will I be doing?"
What do you tell her?
If you give her the usual lame explanation that she'll be "sharing" with her "warm" market of family and friends and that she needs to make a list of everyone she knows right away, chances are she's going to be skeptical.
Anyone who's done network marketing before or whose brother-in-law or coworker ever hounded her to join a business is already hip to the fact that this approach will take her down the road to humiliation and social isolation. No one wants this.
Plus, there's the dirty little secret that out of all the highly successful people in network marketing, hardly any of them got there by recruiting friends and relatives. I'm not saying it never happens, but in general, you can't rely on the warm market strategy to get you where you want to go. And recommending it to your prospects just compounds the problem.
So what IS the HOW? And who IS the WHO?
What if you don't really know the answers to these questions yourself?
To shed some light on this, let's take a look at another group of professionals - real marketers. In other words, professional business people who actually make a living marketing products and services.
You don't see them hitting on their family and friends. Or putting flyers on windshields, or tacking up posters on coffee shop bulletin boards, or dropping their business cards in restrooms, or inviting their neighbors over for product parties.
This is the scatter-shot, if-I-just-shoot-enough-bullets-in-that-general-direction-maybe-I'll-eventually-hit-a-duck approach. You're going to run out of ammo long before you see any results. You do these things if you want a hobby, not a business.
By contrast, professional marketers know exactly WHO makes up their target market - people who already see a need and have a desire for the marketer's products or services. Their HOW uses laser-focused, thoroughly tested strategies to reach that target market.
If you really want to have a business that will allow you to quit your J.O.B., to support you in your retirement, to give you the lifestyle of your dreams… then you need to treat it as a business and start using the marketing strategies that real, successful businesses use.
You need to discover how real marketers reach thousands of prospects and sift and sort and qualify them so they only talk to the best ones?
If you learn to do that, and learn how to teach it to your downline, what will it do for your organization?
I know -- it takes digging, and researching, and lots of reading to learn real, effective marketing techniques. Fortunately, you can find plenty of resources out there to help you. And when you're done with your basic research, you'll want to try things out and experiment to see what works best for your business.
You'll experience a very steep and exhilarating learning curve for a while. But believe me, you'll think it's SO worth it when you've joined the ranks of the really successful network marketers and you're sipping Mai-tai's in Maui.
Would you like to begin learning effective, real-world marketing techniques today? Liz Monte is the author of "Basic Training: The 21st Century Approach to Network Marketing," which will give you a major headstart. http://www.wisenetworkmarketer.com/.
Article Source: http://www.wahm-articles.com/
The answers to these four questions lay the foundation for your network marketing business. You need to be clear about the answers yourself, AND you need to be able to convey those answers to your prospects.
Of course, it's obvious to you WHAT you're selling, and you probably have a pretty clear idea of WHY you're selling what you're selling. (Something to do with a beach house in Jamaica, right? Or is it Maui?)
I'll bet you're really good at explaining the WHAT when you're recruiting, too, giving out an abundance of info on your products and services, your company, and your compensation plan.
I'll also bet you know that to be an effective enroller, you need to explore your prospect's WHY, encouraging her to open up and share with you all her frustrations, hopes, and dreams. You want your new recruit to be motivated, after all. And you want to be able to demonstrate how your opportunity can help solve her frustrations, and turn her hopes and dreams into reality.
This is all good.
But when we come to the WHO and the HOW, many network marketers fall flat on their faces.
Your prospect needs to be able to envision herself doing this business. She wants to know exactly HOW she's going to market your company's products and opportunity and WHO she's going to sell them to.
I'm sure a prospect has asked you this before. "What, exactly, will I be doing?"
What do you tell her?
If you give her the usual lame explanation that she'll be "sharing" with her "warm" market of family and friends and that she needs to make a list of everyone she knows right away, chances are she's going to be skeptical.
Anyone who's done network marketing before or whose brother-in-law or coworker ever hounded her to join a business is already hip to the fact that this approach will take her down the road to humiliation and social isolation. No one wants this.
Plus, there's the dirty little secret that out of all the highly successful people in network marketing, hardly any of them got there by recruiting friends and relatives. I'm not saying it never happens, but in general, you can't rely on the warm market strategy to get you where you want to go. And recommending it to your prospects just compounds the problem.
So what IS the HOW? And who IS the WHO?
What if you don't really know the answers to these questions yourself?
To shed some light on this, let's take a look at another group of professionals - real marketers. In other words, professional business people who actually make a living marketing products and services.
You don't see them hitting on their family and friends. Or putting flyers on windshields, or tacking up posters on coffee shop bulletin boards, or dropping their business cards in restrooms, or inviting their neighbors over for product parties.
This is the scatter-shot, if-I-just-shoot-enough-bullets-in-that-general-direction-maybe-I'll-eventually-hit-a-duck approach. You're going to run out of ammo long before you see any results. You do these things if you want a hobby, not a business.
By contrast, professional marketers know exactly WHO makes up their target market - people who already see a need and have a desire for the marketer's products or services. Their HOW uses laser-focused, thoroughly tested strategies to reach that target market.
If you really want to have a business that will allow you to quit your J.O.B., to support you in your retirement, to give you the lifestyle of your dreams… then you need to treat it as a business and start using the marketing strategies that real, successful businesses use.
You need to discover how real marketers reach thousands of prospects and sift and sort and qualify them so they only talk to the best ones?
If you learn to do that, and learn how to teach it to your downline, what will it do for your organization?
I know -- it takes digging, and researching, and lots of reading to learn real, effective marketing techniques. Fortunately, you can find plenty of resources out there to help you. And when you're done with your basic research, you'll want to try things out and experiment to see what works best for your business.
You'll experience a very steep and exhilarating learning curve for a while. But believe me, you'll think it's SO worth it when you've joined the ranks of the really successful network marketers and you're sipping Mai-tai's in Maui.
Would you like to begin learning effective, real-world marketing techniques today? Liz Monte is the author of "Basic Training: The 21st Century Approach to Network Marketing," which will give you a major headstart. http://www.wisenetworkmarketer.com/.
Article Source: http://www.wahm-articles.com/
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Resource page updated
I have added a couple of new articles to my resource page ~ The Secret To Writing Success and Keeping Track of Your At-Home Business Expenses.
My goal for the new year is to add to the resource page monthly if not weekly, along with updating the blog.
If there is something special that you would like to see address, send me an email and I'll see what I can come up with.
Copyright © 2008—All Rights Reserved - Written By Nancie Dumdi of The Speckled Goose, Craft E Newsletters, Nancie's Country Collectables, and Creative Web Design by Nancie
My goal for the new year is to add to the resource page monthly if not weekly, along with updating the blog.
If there is something special that you would like to see address, send me an email and I'll see what I can come up with.
Copyright © 2008—All Rights Reserved - Written By Nancie Dumdi of The Speckled Goose, Craft E Newsletters, Nancie's Country Collectables, and Creative Web Design by Nancie
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Great info for Small Business Owners
I just found this wonderful blog and I thought that all of the rest of you shop owners would like to read this shop owners blog.
http://shopowner.blogspot.com/
Lots of great ideas and inspiration.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Cinna-Minnies and Friends
2007 Holiday Special E-book
2007 Holiday Special E-book
The Cinna-Minnies and Friends 20007 Holiday Special E-book is ready for you to download. The theme of this years E-book is centered around how to plan the best cookie swap ever.
Each participating vendor was asked to share a tried and true familycookie recipe and or one of their family traditions. This years e-book is set up as follows: You will find a listing of all of the vendor's recipes and/or holiday tradition followed by their special offer with a link that is clickable to their website.
The resource page is full of useful links to websites with secrets to making the perfect cookies, fantastic photos of a cookie swap, and party games and icebreakers just to name a few. You will find at the end of the E-book an invitation, recipe cards, a cookie swap to do list, cookie swap planner, etc. all as a gift from me to you. You may print these out to use for your own cookie swap.
The E-book is free to all to download, Please share with everyone you know.
Click on the banner below to download your FREE copy.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Three Ways To Get FREE Advertising This Holiday Season!
I'm so happy to announce that Cinna-Minnies and Friends is in the process of creating their second annual "Holiday 2007 Specials E-Book" featuring holiday ideas, family traditions, recipes, and holiday discounts from many of our vendor friends.The theme for this year is three-fold and centers around traditions.
In exchange for FREE ad space within the eBook we are looking for one of the following: 1) "How You Decorate For The Holiday Season", 2) "A Family & Holiday Tradition of Yours", or 3) "A Tried and True Family Holiday Recipe." So if you're looking for FREE advertising this holiday season and are willing to offer a "holiday special" to readers of the eBook all you have to do is contribute one of the three spotlighted "holiday tradition ideas."
The holiday season is filled with so many holiday traditions. We thought it would be fun to spotlight three "Holiday Tradition Ideas" and they are as follows: "Decorating Ideas", "Family & Holiday Traditions", and "Tried and True Recipes".
Our E-Book is distributed based upon the Viral Marketing Theory which involves the sharing and promoting of the E-Book. So, If you would like to participate as a vendor shown below is what you need to do once the E-Book is published:
1 - Put the E-Book .PDF download link and our E-Book graphic on the home page of your website and/or blog.
2 - Send a personal email to members of your mailing list, to members of any groups you belong to, to your blog subscribers via a blog post, and everyone you can think of inviting them to download their own copy of the E-Book on your website or blog. Sample E-mails will be provided, if need be.
When each of us sends an invite to the aforementioned the impact for sales can be tremendous. For example, half of my holiday sales last year were a direct result of the ad I placed in our first E-Book. I have a mailing list of close to 1800 which grows each day by 5 to 10 new members per day.
3 - Within your email invitation you will need to include the following text except you would replace your website name and URL where "Cinna-Minnies website http://www.cinna-minnies.com/ is in the example below:
Pick Up Your FREE Cinna-Minnies and Friends 2007 Holidays Special E-Book
at our Cinna-Minnies website at http://www.cinna-minnies.com/
Whatever else you wish to include in your email invitation is up to you.
As we don't not want to overwhelm the E-Book with vendor specials we are limiting our ads to 20 vendors. To date we have received 5 "Holiday Tradition Ideas." We will be accepting 15 more.
If you are willing to offer a "special holiday discount" to readers of the E-Book and contribute either "How You Decorate For The Holiday Season", "A Family & Holiday Tradition of Yours", or "A Tried and True Family Holiday Recipe" then we would love to include you.
AD DEADLINE DATE - October 28, 2007 as we need to have the E-Book ready to send no later than the end of October.
SAMPLE "Holiday Discount Ad" -
Please visit Cinna-Minnies at for http://www.cinna-minnies.com/ for our Holiday 2007 Special Offer
When you place an order for one pound of our Cinnamon Clay,
you will receive a FREE bottle of our cinnamon oil and a cookie cutter.
Holiday Discount good until December 20, 2007.
Neenee is in charge of collecting your decorating ideas, family & holiday tradition ideas, and recipes so please email these to her. Please type Cinna-Minnies Holiday 2007 in the subject line.
Use the same heading as shown above, but substitute your own website name and link where http://www.cinna-minnies.com/ is shown, and include your e-mail address accordingly.
If you are interested in participating as a vendor in Cinna-Minnies Holiday 2007 Specials E-Book please email Rochelle.
We hope you decide to participate in what is the second of what we hope to be an annual tradition.
Thanks from
Rochelle of http://www.cinna-minnies.com/
Neenee of http://www.kklprimitives.com/
Linda of http://www.lindawalshoriginals.com/
Nancie of http://www.craftenewsletters.com/
In exchange for FREE ad space within the eBook we are looking for one of the following: 1) "How You Decorate For The Holiday Season", 2) "A Family & Holiday Tradition of Yours", or 3) "A Tried and True Family Holiday Recipe." So if you're looking for FREE advertising this holiday season and are willing to offer a "holiday special" to readers of the eBook all you have to do is contribute one of the three spotlighted "holiday tradition ideas."
The holiday season is filled with so many holiday traditions. We thought it would be fun to spotlight three "Holiday Tradition Ideas" and they are as follows: "Decorating Ideas", "Family & Holiday Traditions", and "Tried and True Recipes".
Our E-Book is distributed based upon the Viral Marketing Theory which involves the sharing and promoting of the E-Book. So, If you would like to participate as a vendor shown below is what you need to do once the E-Book is published:
1 - Put the E-Book .PDF download link and our E-Book graphic on the home page of your website and/or blog.
2 - Send a personal email to members of your mailing list, to members of any groups you belong to, to your blog subscribers via a blog post, and everyone you can think of inviting them to download their own copy of the E-Book on your website or blog. Sample E-mails will be provided, if need be.
When each of us sends an invite to the aforementioned the impact for sales can be tremendous. For example, half of my holiday sales last year were a direct result of the ad I placed in our first E-Book. I have a mailing list of close to 1800 which grows each day by 5 to 10 new members per day.
3 - Within your email invitation you will need to include the following text except you would replace your website name and URL where "Cinna-Minnies website http://www.cinna-minnies.com/ is in the example below:
Pick Up Your FREE Cinna-Minnies and Friends 2007 Holidays Special E-Book
at our Cinna-Minnies website at http://www.cinna-minnies.com/
Whatever else you wish to include in your email invitation is up to you.
As we don't not want to overwhelm the E-Book with vendor specials we are limiting our ads to 20 vendors. To date we have received 5 "Holiday Tradition Ideas." We will be accepting 15 more.
If you are willing to offer a "special holiday discount" to readers of the E-Book and contribute either "How You Decorate For The Holiday Season", "A Family & Holiday Tradition of Yours", or "A Tried and True Family Holiday Recipe" then we would love to include you.
AD DEADLINE DATE - October 28, 2007 as we need to have the E-Book ready to send no later than the end of October.
SAMPLE "Holiday Discount Ad" -
Please visit Cinna-Minnies at for http://www.cinna-minnies.com/ for our Holiday 2007 Special Offer
When you place an order for one pound of our Cinnamon Clay,
you will receive a FREE bottle of our cinnamon oil and a cookie cutter.
Holiday Discount good until December 20, 2007.
Neenee is in charge of collecting your decorating ideas, family & holiday tradition ideas, and recipes so please email these to her. Please type Cinna-Minnies Holiday 2007 in the subject line.
Use the same heading as shown above, but substitute your own website name and link where http://www.cinna-minnies.com/ is shown, and include your e-mail address accordingly.
If you are interested in participating as a vendor in Cinna-Minnies Holiday 2007 Specials E-Book please email Rochelle.
We hope you decide to participate in what is the second of what we hope to be an annual tradition.
Thanks from
Rochelle of http://www.cinna-minnies.com/
Neenee of http://www.kklprimitives.com/
Linda of http://www.lindawalshoriginals.com/
Nancie of http://www.craftenewsletters.com/
Monday, October 8, 2007
Website Design from a Consumer's View
There is a lot of talk about website design and I thought that I would share my thoughts on design from a consumer point of view. Yes, I design websites, but I also do most of my shopping on-line. I definitely have some likes and dislikes when I visit a website and I thought that I would share them with you. Again this is my personal likes and dislikes ~ but remember that I am not alone.
What I like to see and what a site must have to keep me around to do some shopping:
Your website must be easy to navigate ~ I don’t want to spend my time searching the site to find what I am looking for. I want to see an easy navigation system. Not too cluttered ~ too many graphics, banners, or information in a haphazard style. Put your banners and advertisement on a separate page. Keep them to a minimum on your home page. Remember why you want consumers on your site. Do you want to steer them to someone else’s site?
Easy to read ~ Keep the different font styles to no more than 3 throughout the entire site. Make sure that you can read the font against your background color, your font style is easy to read, and that the font size is a size that is comfortable for the consumer to read. I don’t like to strain to read a webpage.
Consistent throughout ~ graphics and style should be the same throughout your entire site. You should not have different graphics on each page. Consumers want to see consistency.
Do Not have music playing on your site ~ When I visit a website I do not want to hear music. I already have music playing and I will immediately leave a website that plays music on it.
Falling snowflakes ~ I find falling or trailing cursors irritating and will leave a site when I come across these. If you like these, put them on a personal site, but not on a business site.
What I like to see and what a site must have to keep me around to do some shopping:
Your website must be easy to navigate ~ I don’t want to spend my time searching the site to find what I am looking for. I want to see an easy navigation system. Not too cluttered ~ too many graphics, banners, or information in a haphazard style. Put your banners and advertisement on a separate page. Keep them to a minimum on your home page. Remember why you want consumers on your site. Do you want to steer them to someone else’s site?
Easy to read ~ Keep the different font styles to no more than 3 throughout the entire site. Make sure that you can read the font against your background color, your font style is easy to read, and that the font size is a size that is comfortable for the consumer to read. I don’t like to strain to read a webpage.
Consistent throughout ~ graphics and style should be the same throughout your entire site. You should not have different graphics on each page. Consumers want to see consistency.
Do Not have music playing on your site ~ When I visit a website I do not want to hear music. I already have music playing and I will immediately leave a website that plays music on it.
Falling snowflakes ~ I find falling or trailing cursors irritating and will leave a site when I come across these. If you like these, put them on a personal site, but not on a business site.
Keep your navigation hierarchy to a minimum ~ I don’t like to have to click through several different pages just to find one of an item. Example:
Furniture
Outdoor Furniture
Benches
Iron Benches
Then you find a photo of one bench. There is nothing to look at on the first four links, but links. Think about how many times a consumer has to click on links before they get to see a photo of something that they may want to purchase. Will they stick around to click on several furniture links to find the one thing that they are looking for?
Contact information ~ make sure that your contact information is easily available. If the consumer has a question you want to make sure that they can easily email or call you.
Policies ~ make sure you spell out your policies including return, shipping, payment, guarantee, and privacy.
Keep your website content and graphics fresh. I don’t want to go out to a site in February or later and see Christmas graphics on the site. I would be hesitant to purchase something from this site.
Again, this is just my personal opinion. But I hope that I have given you some food for thought as far as what a consumer is looking for in a website, and remember more and more of us are shopping on-line. There are a lot of places to shop on-line ~ make yours one that is comfortable to spend time on.
If you have any questions or comments please send me an email and I will be happy to answer them.
Copyright © 2007 — Nancie Dumdi — All Rights Reserved
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