Thursday, June 08, 2006

Home Business Or Job At Home

A lot of people would wonder what the difference is. Are we splitting hairs? Isn't it the same thing regardless of what you call it? Actually, no. There is a very big difference between working at home or building a home based business. In some areas there is overlap, but for the most part there is a big distinction between the two.

A work at home is just that, a job. This is where you get paid a certain amount of money, either hourly or salary for doing a particular job from your home. This is often referred to as telecommuting. Common telecommuting jobs would be data entry, typing, Internet research and web design.

For example. Let's say you head on over to Monster.com and find a telecommuting job for web designers. You send in your resume and they hire you. They will then contact you with an assignment. XYZ company wants to have a web site designed for high school students. They send you the specs and tell you when they expect the job to be completed by. They will also tell you what you will be paid, whether for the assignment itself or for how many hours it took you. If hourly, they'll make you fill out a time card and send it to them.

That is an example of a work at home job. There is no overhead, no advertising expenses, you're paid for the work you do and most likely you'll get a 1099 at the end of the year so that you can report all the money that you made. The only difference between what was described above and an office job of the same type is the location from where you're working.

A home business is something quite different. For starters and this is the most important difference, you're not paid for the work you do. Yes, you may ultimately make some money and hopefully a lot of money, but there is no guarantee of payment. You're putting in the work you do in the hopes of being able to make some kind of income from it. You may ultimately decide to start your own web design business and do the same kind of work that you did at the job but here is where the two are quite different.

In starting your own web design business, nobody is going to give you an assignment. You have to advertise your business and let people know that you are available to do custom web design. You'll put up a web site, do some advertising on the Internet at a number of places and then sit back and hope you get a few emails with requests for work. You will then have to tell your customers what your rates are, how long the job will take and then finally get the specs for the design itself. You are in charge of and responsible for everything.

There is of course a plus side to running your own home business as opposed to working a job at home. With a job at home, there is only so much you're going to earn. With your own business, while you may make absolutely nothing, there is a very good chance if you promote regularly and work hard that you can turn your business into a very lucrative income.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Russell

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Perils of Affiliate Programs

Most authoritative experts on Internet marketing or money making opportunities recommend affiliate programs as the starting point for Internet entrepreneurs. Although affiliate marketing is a powerful technique to increase revenue, it is *NOT* an easy way.

After trying out affiliate programs, most budding entrepreneurs end up frustrated, disillusioned and even confused. Despite the hard work, time and money invested, results are below average at best.

This post would not discuss the benefits or the details of embarking on an affiliate marketing. Instead it would discuss the potential show stoppers that new, startup entrepreneurs would face.

In short the perils of affiliate marketing:

a) Affiliate marketing, just like any other online marketing technique relies on traffic. Most affiliate marketing programs gloss over this important and crucial aspect. Instead, they mislead the new entrepreneur by driving the focus on good affiliate selection and good product selection without explaining the importance of traffic. Put it this way, you may be able to sell the best converting product or offer, but without a sound traffic management program, your sales would most likely to be zero.

b) The techniques outlined by most affiliate marketing techniques are outdated and not effective. They are outdated as these techniques are already well known on the Internet. You would be practically doing the same thing as what 1 million other affiliates are doing. Worse, most affiliate programs promise a step by step system. Such a system might have been effective a few months ago, but in Internet time, they are already outdated.

c) Most people purchase an E Book or a subscription to an affiliate marketing system due to impulse purchase. Most customers have been converted by the blood boiling and full of hype sales page (eg. "Become an Instant Millionaire Through affiliate Programs"). Such purchases are poor as they prey on the emotions of the entrepreneur. Affiliate marketing is not for everyone, by forcing affiliate programs down the throat, most budding entrepreneurs would be instantly closed to other opportunities such as Search Engine Marketing and Viral Marketing.

Entrepreneurs are strongly encouraged to expand their minds and consider other forms of Internet Marketing before committing their resources to affiliate Programs. Even experienced entrepreneurs in affiliate Marketing should take some time off to explore other forms of Internet Marketing to optimize their monthly earnings.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=CK_Fong

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Niche Blogs and WHY They Make Such An Excellent Affiliate Marketing Tool

Blogs or more specifically... Niche Blogs are simply blogs that are topic focused and target a specific market and/or niche.

More importantly though, these blogs contain targeted information that their target market is searching for.

This is KEY.

As an affiliate marketer we are always told that information, whether its an article, review, ebook, ecourse, report, mp3 or pod cast, is a key Pre-Selling tool before your potential customer decides to buy what it is that your offering.

This is where Niche Blogs come into play because of there many capabilities and functions.

The biggest advantage Blogs have is they give you the ability to syndicate your content and/or information through a technology called RSS(Real Simple Syndication).

The types of content you are able to syndicate are as follows:

- Articles

- Product Reviews

- eBooks

- eCourses

- Special Reports

- Mp3 Files

- Steaming Video(A.K.A Pod Casting)

Are you starting to see the advantages to blogs or more importantly, having a network of affiliate Niche Blogs?

I hope so.

Also, with your blog comes an RSS Feed that your potential visitors can subscribe to.

Whats this mean for you?

Simple. When ever you post to your affiliate Niche Blog or network of Niche Blogs guess who will INSTANTLY receives that post?

That's right, who ever subscribes to your RSS Feed.

Are you starting to see the many benefits of having a Niche Blog and incorporating it into your affiliate marketing mix?

Only you can answer that.

Another great thing about Blogs in general is that search engines love them and everytime you post to your Niche Blog it "Pings" the search engines and other RSS Directories you've submitted to letting them know that there's new fresh content for them to come and index.

The more you post, the more pages that will be produced, which means... more for the search engines to index, which means... more traffic to your Niche Blog.

The best way to take advantage of your new source of traffic and maximize your Niche Blog profits is to modify your blog template and add Google Adsense and your affiliate programs marketing materials to it.

By doing this, everytime you post to your Niche Blog your marketing message will always be there and Google Adsense will display targeted ads related to your content.

Now, I can't go into alot of detail on how to modify blog templates in this article simply because that's an article within itself and then some.

All I really wanted to get across to you is the advantages to having your own Niche Blog as part of your affiliate marketing mix to help market your affiliate programs to your target audience.

Blogs are here to stay so we might as well take advantage of them in any way that we can.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Cory_Threlfall

Monday, June 05, 2006

Make Money Online With Affiliate Programs

If you have wanted to find a way to make money from home without all the hassle of selling products out of your own home yourself, perhaps you should take a look at affiliate programs.

Affiliate programs are an excellent way to make money from home. You can substitute sales pages, which are complicated to work with, with content and draw in more people to your website in the process. You do not have to make the actual sale.

How Can One Make Money Online With An Affiliate Program

It all starts with a web site. People crave content websites. Videos, articles and chat rooms are all different types of great content. Your job is to choose a theme and stick with it. Develop the articles or other content and people will come to it.

As said before, with affiliate programs making you money from your online website, you do not have to worry about putting sales pages that would appeal or trying to convince your visitors to go to a website. Your sole concentration is visitors, guests to your website means more people clicking on banner advertisements.

Once your website is running, with great content that people are coming to see, you can consider picking an affiliate program to run off your website to earn an income.

Connecting with Affiliate Programs that Make You Money Online

Once you’ve developed your website, the next step is the affiliate programs.

But how do you choose an affiliate program that is right for you? Generally, you’ll want affiliate programs that are in the same vein as your niche website. If you love pineapples and your website was all about pineapples, you wouldn’t put a squash advertisement up, would you?

In addition, you also want to look at the affiliate programs to make sure you pick the best deals. If you wouldn’t buy things from the website, why would your customers? Pick a company that you like, but stands a good chance of you making decent money.

Figuring Out Which Affiliate Program Works Best To Make You Money Online

You might try a few affiliate programs and wonder why you don’t make any money with them. It’s not an easy task trying to get to know what your readers want as far as advertising. Of course, all of them would say they wouldn’t want advertising at all.

There are several things to look at when you are displaying your affiliate programs and picking the right ones for the right pages. You don’t want 100 different affiliate programs. If you are looking to make serious money online with your affiliate program, you will need to pick just a small handful to make this work.

Set up your content pages and place your advertising around and below your pages. One or two adverts per page should be enough. If you bombard you visitors with ads, they’ll go elsewhere for content.

Try picking affiliate programs that offer a free trial. These work well when you are first starting out as it concentrates your efforts into giving away free stuff. Free is easier to sell these days.

All in all, use your own best judgment. If something doesn’t look to be making money, drop it and swap for a different. Try new things and see what works best.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joel_Teo

Sunday, June 04, 2006

AdSense Money Maker through Blog Niche Marketing

You too can build a money making site from home, that will earn you extra money for that vacation you want to take, for that car you need to purchase or those inflating credit card bills.

First step: you need to pick a Niche market. What is a Niche market you may ask? It is a topic that is more focused, and does not take the general aspect of a topic. You want to pick something that is out there, but is focused so you can get up there in search engines and build traffic to your site.

Want an example of a Blog with Niche Marketing?

Mesothelioma Info and Updates at http://mesotheliomainfoupdates.blogspot.com. This site taylors to Mesothelioma, a rare disease caused by Asbestos, and the site goes in depth about the Niche Market of "Peritoneal Mesothelioma". Asbestos would be more of a General Blog without Niche marketing, while drilling down to "Peritoneal Mesothelioma" is a niche market.

Another example of a blog that is not Niche Marketing is the Domain Names and Web Design Info blog at http://domainnamesatretail.blogspot.com. This blog is maintained in a general sense that it discusses topics from Web Design, Web Hosting and Domain Names to Money Making strategies. It is not focused to one single topic.

Once you have picked your Niche market, you have to find out if it pays well through advertising, and has actual advertisers willing to pay you to advertise the site!

The Overture bidding tool will tell you just that! Go to: http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/

Type in your niche market term, and it will tell you how much people on overture are willing to pay for each term. If it pays well, and is worth your while, then that will be your niche market you want to pursue.

Now you need to find the keywords you want to target and rank high for in Google. The suggestion tool located at will help you find just that: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Type in a keyword and it will show you what people search for and how many times per day. Pick a keyword that has a good daily search, but does not have too high of a number. This will allow you to have a fighting chance to cracking the top position for this search term. For example you may want something with about 100 searches per day.

Once you pick one, go to http://www.google.com, and search for that term and see how many results show up. If you have less than 1 million results, then that is ideal. Now take a look at the current #1 spot. See their page rank and how many links they have. If you think you can outrank them, then you are good to go. Target that keyword with your Niche market, and your site research is done.

Once you have the research complete, you set up a blog or web site.

To Set up a blog, go to one that I use Blogger at http://www.blogger.com. Set up your blog and begin posting in no time. This is a good and quick setup for getting your site started and getting searched by Google. However, your own site with its own domain name and hosting, tends to come up higher in search rankings. Also, having your own unique Blog Design as opposed to using a Blogger template, will help your site stand out from the rest. Emenki Web Solutions can provide you with such a custom template.

To set up your web site, purchase a domain name and web hosting. Download the Web Site Startup Handbook Ebook to learn more at http://www.domainsatretail.com/DomainsAtRetail.pdf. Then get free Blogging software and begin to run your site. Search on http://www.hotscripts.com to find Blogging software that you can use for Free.

Run your said Blog for about two weeks with at least 1-2 posts per day to develop enough content for search engines to consider placing you site in its rankings and for you to build traffic.

Once you have done this, set your site up for Google Adsense (http://adsense.google.com). Remember to follow the Google Adsense Terms of Service.

Once your site is approved for Google Adsense, place the AdSense code and begin to market your site through SEO software like Traffic Blazer and One way Link Building Strategies!

Read up on SEO techniques to get your site to the top! Once you are there, you will generate traffic and if you have enough click through on your ads, you will make money!

Thanks for coming out and learning how to become an AdSense money maker!

Purchase your Blog Domain Name and Web Hosting at Domains at Retail (http://www.domainsatretail.com).

Learn what else you may need to start up your Adsense Money Making Web Site in the Web Site Startup Handbook (http://www.domainsatretail.com/DomainsAtRetail.pdf)

Need a custom Blog Template for your Money Making Site? Contact the professionals at Emenki Web Solutions (http://www.emenki.com)

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Kralj