Internet Income Opportunities
Even though the economy is running extremely rough right now, we are still lucky because the internet has opened up so many new income generating possibilities. The sad thing is that so many people are unfamiliar with the various ways of making money online and many people, who simply don’t know any better, will dismiss internet income opportunities as scams. While it’s true there are scams online, and off, it’s also true that you can make real money online and one of the best ways for a beginner to make money online is starting to blog for money.
A blog is simply an online journal, the name comes from the words web log, blog. You can start a blog for free and learning how to set up your blog is very easy to do even if you don’t know anything about computers or websites. Most people will learn all they need to know in a few hours. You can pick various themes and there are several things you can add to your blog that will help you monetize it.
The first thing you need to decide is what the theme of your blog be. It could simply be something that you are interested in and know a lot about such as a hobby, or if you really want to make a lot of money, you could learn the secrets to picking an extremely profitable niche market and start your blog around that niche. This will enable you to get more leverage out of your blog and make more money.
When it comes to earning money from your blog you have several choices, the two main options are with affiliate marketing and Google Adsense. Affiliate marketing is a business model where you sign up to become an affiliate, for free, for a certain product or service, advertise that product or service on your blog, and when someone buys that product or service from the unique URL of your site (which will have your unique affiliate id embedded in it) you will earn a commission.
Google Adsense is a process where you allow Google to place ads on your blog, ads that are related to the topic of your blog, when someone clicks on one of the ads you will earn a commission. With adsense the amount you make per click can vary dramatically based on the popularity (and thus the amount of money advertisers are willing to spend to place the ad) of a certain topic. The more popular the niche you’re in, the more advertisers will spend on the ads and the more you’ll make when someone clicks on those ads.
Don’t let the ignorance of others scare you off of learning how to blog for money. Sure, it’s true that there are a lot of scams online, just like there are anywhere else if you’re not careful, but the reality is that if you’re willing to invest some time to learn some simple skills you can turn your hobby into an income… maybe even a full time income.
Using A Blogging Guide
Blogs aren’t just for telling your far flung family members about your recent trip anymore, they are used more and more as a way to drive highly targeted website visitors to your site with the intent of making a sale. The reason blogs are becoming the mainstream for internet marketers is due in large part to the way search engines work, for that reason you need to have some basic understandings of the ins and outs of blogging, and that’s where a blogging guide can help.
I mentioned search engines and the way they work as the driving force behind the increasing popularity of blogs as a business website, here’s what I mean. All search engines love to give their customers, anyone who uses that search engine to find things online, quality results. Very often quality results and fresh content go hand in hand. For this reason the search engines love fresh content. When you put up a ‘regular’ static website the content doesn’t change very often… if ever. With a blog, on the other hand, the content changes often which keeps that site fresh which keeps the search engines happy and they will reward the blog owner by giving them a higher page rank.
When your blog gets a high page rank you will get a lot of free, targeted traffic and that is the name of the game. There is one thing that all online businesses have in common, they all need a constant supply of targeted visitors to their website. Any tool or technique that can help a website owner get more traffic, especially for free, is a welcome addition.
The next thing you’ll want to keep in mind when starting your blog is that if you want to build a business around it you need to be willing to invest a little money. You don’t want to stick with the free WordPress or Blogger platforms because you don’t actually own anything. If you buy your own domain name (for around $10) and you have that domain hosted (around $10/month) you will actually own that little piece of internet real estate. You can do whatever you want with your domain, including sell it.
You also want to think carefully about what the topic of your blog will be, this is really important if you plan on making money with your blog. Careful choice of the niche market you’re going to build your business in is something that is too often overlooked. If you take some time to pick a good niche market, the rest of your business building will be much easier. Picking the right niche is about 90% of the battle.
Using the information in a blogging guide can really help you set off on your new blogging career on the right foot. Just be willing to invest some time to learn new concepts, than put into practice what you’ve learned, and you’ll be amazed at how much money you can make online, and how much fun you can have making it.
An Introduction To List Building
By now, you probably understand the importance of capturing your website visitors contact information using an opt in form and building a large email list of potential customers. This is an extremely effective tool to help you develop a relationship with your online visitors. For the most part, this is the only way to build a relationship since many of these people won’t come back to your website again. Once you’ve got an email list you can use broadcast email marketing to let them know about any new product or service you’re offering.
When it comes to contacting your email list you basically have two ways to do it, you can just load a series of pre-written emails into an auto responder service that will send out the emails over whatever period of time you choose. That way every one who signs up to your list will receive all the emails in your series one after the other in order until they’ve received them all, or you’ve added more.
This method is a fantastic way to keep in touch with the people on your list and since the method is all automated it doesn’t take any time from you (once you’ve written and loaded the emails, of course).
But if you’ve got a sale coming up or you’ve just added a wonderful new service and you want to let all of the customers on your email list know about it right now, you want to send an email broadcast. You can set this message to go out at a certain time or a certain day but the point is that everyone on your list will get this email at the same time… if that’s what you want.
You can even customize a broadcast so that only part of your list will receive it. It’s up to you. But this is the method you will want to use if you have some hot news that you just want to let everyone know about right away without adding this message to your series and have to wait several days for some of the people on your list to receive it.
In order to be as effective as possible here are a few things you need to make sure you are doing when it comes to composing your email messages:
1. If you want as many of the people on your list to actually open and read your email as possible you have to make sure that whatever headline you choose is interesting and compelling. You want to excite your readers and make them eager to open your email. Make an interesting headline.
2. An interesting headline will only take you so far though. It’s also important that your message is on point and short. For the most part you want your reader to be engaged in your message before they’re finished reading the first paragraph. If you can hook them and get them to read your whole message you will have a much better chance of getting them to take the desired action.
3. Don’t be afraid to ask them to make a purchase, or do whatever else it is you want them to do such as sign up for your newsletter, etc. You’d be amazed at how many marketers actually fail to ask for the sale. Whatever action you want them to take, provide them with a clear and easy to understand call of action such as: buy now!
Broadcast email marketing is a great way to let everyone on your list know about something special all at the same time.
Continued in Part 4…