Scour is now paying people to search the web. Search results are fetched from Google, Yahoo and MSN. I tried the search engines with many different searches and it returned the results what other search engine returns.

How Do You Make Money?
You make money for:

• Joining - 150 points
• Invite friends - 250 points
• Search - 1point
  
• Every vote on search - 2 points
• Every comment on search - 3 points

All the addition of points are in real time and you can see them accumulating. When you reach 6500 points you can exchange them with $25 gift visa credit card. Or, when you reach 12,500 points, you can exchange them with $50 visa credit card. Similary, 25,000 points for $100 visa card.

You can also refer friends and earn 25% of what they earn. That is really good affiliate program I would say.

So does this Scour actually pay? To be frank, I don’t know. I joined them recently. But the site looks professional. I will surely try them. There is no harm in trying. I think you should also give them a try. There is a cashout option in the control panel. I will try cashing after I make total of 6500 points. Then I will write a detailed review on the site. So, go try them.

Introduction to Making Money from Blogs
Should I blog for Money?
Making Money From Your Blog - Direct Methods
Making Money Because of your Blog - Indirect Methods
How Much Money Can a Blog Earn?
Introduction to Advertising Optimization - Traffic
Introduction to Advertising Optimization - Ad Position,
Introduction to Advertising - High Paying Ads

How do bloggers make money from blogs?

I’ve been reflecting this week about the amazing diversity of opportunities that are opening up for bloggers to make money from blogging.

I’ve long advised that bloggers seeking to make money from blogging spread their interests across multiple revenue streams so as not to put all their eggs in one basket.

The wonderful thing is that this is becoming easier and easier to do 2005 has seen many options opening up. I thought I’d take a look at some of the methods that bloggers are currently using to make money through blogs.

Income Streams for Bloggers - How to Make Money Blogging

Advertising Programs - Perhaps the most obvious changes in the past few months have been with the addition of a variety of viable advertising options for bloggers looking to make money from their blogs. The most common way bloggers seem to earn money online is via the contextual ad program from Google - Adsense. A more recent addition that many are using successfully are Chitika’s eMiniMalls and WidgetBucks, Text Link Ads.

Azoogle Ads, Intelli Txt, DoubleClick, Tribal Fusion, Adbrite, Clicksor, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, Pheedo, TextAds, Bidvertiser, Fastclick and Value Click (to name just some of the options) and there is a smorgasbord of options. Of course there is more to come with MSN Adcenter and YPN both in beta testing and with a variety of other advertising system currently in development (YPN is only available to US publishers).

Lastly there’s BlogAds - one of the first blog specific ad networks.

RSS Advertising - The past 12 months have seen some advances in RSS Advertising also. I’m yet to hear of any bloggers making big money blogging through it to this point - but as improvements are made to the ad programs exploring this I’m sure we’ll start to see examples of it being profitable.

Sponsorship - In addition to the array of advertising programs that are available to join there is a growing awareness in the business of the value and opportunity that exists for them to advertise directly on blogs. I’m hearing more and more examples of this and have been fortunately to have a couple of ad campaigns of my own in the past month - one with Adobe a couple of weeks ago and another just completed with Ricoh for a new digicam over at my Digital Camera Blog. These are not isolated cases - as I say I know of many blogs exploring sponsorship with advertisers at present and suspect we’ll see more of it in the year ahead. Sponsorship is also happening on a post by post basis with some bloggers being paid to write on certain topics by companies - either in one off or a regular fashion - and they are able to make big money from their blogs doing so.

Affiliate Programs - There are larger affiliate programs like Amazon, Linkshare, Clickbank and Commission Junction but also literally thousands of others from the large to the very small.

Digital Assets - Increasing numbers of bloggers have been developing other digital assets to support and add revenue streams to their blogs. By this I mean that I’m increasingly seeing e-books, courses and tele-seminars being run by bloggers. My recent foray into this with the first series of the six figure blogging course that Andy and I ran a few weeks ago and have just released the study version of. This type of activity will only increase in future - in fact this week I’ve seen numerous examples of bloggers running courses.

Blog Network Opportunities - with the rise in popularity of Blog Networks - bloggers are also being presented with more places to earn an income from their blogging - by writing for and with others. While it might be difficult to get a writing gig with one of the bigger networks - there are plenty who are always asking for new bloggers to join and who are willing to pay bloggers using a variety of payment models. While there are distinct advantages of blogging for yourself - blogging for an established network who will handle a lot of the set up/promotion/admin/SEO etc has it’s advantages also. More and more bloggers are combining writing for themselves on their own blogs with taking on blog network blogs as additional income streams.

Business Blog Writing Opportunities - as blogging has risen in it’s profile as a medium more and more businesses are starting blogs. Many of these companies have internal staff take on blogging duties - but an increasing number of them are hiring specialist bloggers to come on and run their blogs. I know of a number of bloggers who in the past month or two have been approached for such paid work. Check out Bloggers for Hire if you’re looking for this type of work.

Non Blogging Writing Opportunities - Also becoming more common are bloggers being hired to write in non blogging mediums. Manolo’s recent coup of a column in the Washington Post is just one example of this as bloggers are increasingly being approached to write for newspapers, magazines and other non blog websites. Along side this is the rise of bloggers as published book authors - this is to the extent that one blogger I spoke with this week complained to me that they were one of the few bloggers than they knew who didn’t have a book deal!

Donations - Tip Jars and donation buttons have been a part of blogging for years now but this last year saw a number of bloggers go full time after fund raising drives. Perhaps the most high profile of these was Jason Kottke of kottke.org who through the generosity of his readership was able to quit his job and become a full time blogger.

Flipping Blogs - Also more common in 2005 was the practice of ‘Blog Flipping’ - or selling of blogs. This has happened both on an individual blog level (I can think of about 20 blogs that sold this year) but also on a network level (the most obvious of these being the 8 figure sale of Weblogs Inc to AOL).

Merchandising - My recent attempt to sell ProBlogger.net T-shirts wasn’t a raging success, but it is an example of how an increasing number of bloggers are attempting to make a few extra dollars from their blogs by selling branded products through programs like Cafepress. While I didn’t have a lot of success with merchandising - quite a few larger blogs are seeing significant sales - especially blogs with a cult following. I’m not at liberty to discuss details - but I know of one largish blog which will see sales over $20,000 in merchandise for the calendar year of 2005.

Consulting and Speaking - While it has been popular for established consultants to add blogs to their businesses we’re also starting to see bloggers with no consulting background able to make money by charging readers for their time in consulting scenarios BECAUSE of the profile that their blogs have built them. Blogging has the ability to establish people as experts on niche topics and we all know the value of being perceived as an expert. I spoke to one blogger last month who charges himself out at over $200 an hour for speaking and consulting work - his area of expertise was something that he knew little about 18 months ago - but through his blog he’s become a leader in his field and a minor celebrity in his industry.

As time rolls on there are more and more ways that bloggers make money from their blogs opening up. Feel free to suggest your own ideas and experiences in comments below.

1) Comment on Blogs
Look for large traffic Blogs in your niche, visit them and leave your comments on their blogs posts. You may use blog search engine like www.blogsearchengine.com, www.google.com/blogsearch and www.searchengineblog.com to find blogs in your niche.

2) Submit Articles
Write articles that are related to your blog and submit them to popular article directories such as ezinearticles.com, Isnare.com, Articledashboard.com, Articlealley.com and goarticle.com. Quality articles may drive you a lot of free targeted traffic.

3) Participate in Community Forums
Use google to search for forums that are related to your blog. Look for forums that has over 10,000 members and read the rules of the forums to see whether you can promote your blogs and websites in your signature. Join forums that allow you to add a link to your blog in the signature and start participating in discussion. You can ask questions, answer other members questions and post your articles, ideas and thought in the forums.

4) Submit Your Blog to Directories
This isn't working to me but some bloggers claim that they gain a good amount of traffic from their listings in directories.

5) Post Often
You can lose traffic if you seldom update you blog, try to make it at least 5 posts per week. This not only will maintain your traffic but possibly attract more readers.

6) Write about Blogging
Write helpful and quality articles related to blogging can attract other bloggers link to your articles and gain may be truckload of free traffic.

7) Post Breaking News
If your found a breaking news of your niche very earlier, post it to your blog. It may give your blog's traffic a boost.

8) Social Bookmarking
Bookmark you blog posts in the large social bookmarking sites like Netscape.com, Digg.com, Simply and Reddit.com.

9) Run a Contest
Start a contest on your blog. Think about the prizes that people really want. It will create a viral effect and bring in new visitors.

10) On-page Optimization
Make sure your blog's title tag and description tag contain your targeted keywords. When you have posted plenty of quality blog post and done a lot of blog promotion, don't be surprise to see your blog ranks top 10 in Google and get free search engine traffic daily.

Blogging has undergone something of a revolution in the last 2 years on many fronts. The number of people blogging has exploded, the number of tools and services available for bloggers has risen (and their quality has been raised incredibly) and the profile of blogging in wider culture has increased also (I find I only have to explain what a blog is to 50% of people these days).

Along with these developments has been an increase in focus upon making money from blogging. This is a trend that is happening across all levels of blogging, from very prominent blogs right through to many hundreds of thousands (millions?) of smaller blogs.

I’m now going to turn the attention of this series onto making an income from blogging. The following posts will begin to introduce bloggers to making money from blogging and will examine the following questions:

• Should I Blog for Money?
• What Income Streams are available to be used by Bloggers?
• How Much Can I Make?
• How can I maximize the success of these income streams?

I’ll tackle each of these questions in turn over the coming days. In continuing the ‘beginner’ focus of the series these posts will be very introductory.

It should be stressed at the beginning of this mini-series of posts that bloggers need to enter into an examination of this topic with realistic expectations. While millions of bloggers are experimenting with advertising and affiliate programs on their blogs, the vast majority of them are only supplementing their income by doing so. While some bloggers make a full time living from blogging - most are not and are at a level of paying for a daily (or a weekly for some) coffee or are using the income as a way to offset some of their Internet access costs.

We now turn our attention to ways of making money from blogging that are more more ‘indirect’ in nature - or how to earn money because of your blog rather than from it.

Many of the following methods are the result of the profile and perceived expertise of the blogger themselves (whereas many of the direct methods mentioned previously are less reliant upon this).

Building a profile as a blogger doesn’t happen quickly and starting a blog with some of these hopes should be seen as a long term thing. My own experience in this area is that now after 18 months of blogging here at ProBlogger that it’s only been in the last few months that I’ve had opportunities open in most of these areas.

• Consulting - when you are perceived as an expert on a topic you will find that people naturally come to you for advice - some of them willing to pay for it. Some niches are probably better positioned than others for their bloggers to get into paid consultancy work of course. I spoke with one blogger recently (blogging in a business/technology field) who was able to charge himself out at $600 per hour to give advice to a large company. Interestingly I’ve heard of a number of companies in the last 6 months who are developing VOIP services that bloggers will be able to add to their sidebars to enable them to be called by readers for consulting. The systems would have per minute rate on them to automate this consulting process.

• Employment Opportunities - Just this last week PR blogger Steve Rubel announced that he’d been hired by a bigger PR firm. While he didn’t say it explicitly in his post I suspect that one of the reasons for him landing the job was the profile he’d built over the last year and a half from blogging. Steve’s case is not the only one - bloggers are increasingly being targeted by companies because of their demonstrated abilities in their field of expertise.
• Business Blogging - Similarly there are some businesses who employ people to blog for them either as their main role or part of their role. One example of a company who employed a couple of bloggers was Vespa who now have two blogs. BloggerJobs is one site worth following if you’re looking for these types of jobs. Most of the jobs there are from blog networks but occasionally they include businesses looking for bloggers also.
• Book Deals - Some days as I read through the RSS feeds that I follow it seems that every blogger I read has a book either in progress or coming out. Once again it’s about being seen as an expert in your field - if you can achieve this you will find publishers are more receptive to having an idea pitched to them and at times will even seek you out. This is becoming more and more common with publishers as they are seeing not only some great writers but that many of them already have large amounts of content on their blogs ready to be pulled together into a book!
• Offline Writing Gigs - Manolo from Shooeblogs recently landed a writing gig in the Washington Post Express after he was discovered via his blog. These types of opportunities can be in the form of newspapers, magazines, trade publications etc.
• Online Writing Gigs - Similarly some bloggers also land jobs writing for other forms of websites as a result of being discovered from their blogs.
• Selling e-resources - I wasn’t sure whether to classify this as direct or indirect (and depending upon how you do it you could probably go either way) but some bloggers are leveraging the expertise they have in an area by putting together their own ‘e-products’ such as e-books, tele-seminars, courses etc and selling them to their readers.
• Business Partnerships - One of the benefits of blogging about a niche topic that interests you is that you will begin to connect with others who have similar interests and expertise. As you interact with them it’s amazing to see the opportunities for working together that arise.
• Speaking Opportunities - Once again this is dependent upon the topic you’re writing about but some lucky bloggers end up with all kinds of opportunities to speak at conferences, workshops and seminars on their topic of choice. Sometimes they are freebies, other times the conference will cover costs and on other occasions there are speakers fees.

If you’re planning to use some of these indirect ways of making money because of your blog it’s important that you think seriously about building your own profile and credibility as a blogger. Think about the types of people that you respect and look to as experts an consider what they offer in their fields.

These people are generally original thinkers that not only report what others are doing, but who provide answers and vision for their industry. They are also often well networked and have the ability to draw others along with them.

What does this mean for your blog? Here’s where I’d start:

• provide useful content that shows an understanding of your niche.
• network within your niche. Work on being connected with other key players (big and small).
• use your blog not only to report and rehash news but to also show initiative in proposing solutions. Be proactive in your blogging and lead the conversation rather than just react to it.

High Yield Investment Program (HYIP) is a investment program that anyone can join online and deposit fund, in return the member will earn high interest in short period of time. There are tons of HYIPs on the Internet and most of them are closely monitored by HYIP rating sites and HYIP forums.

HYIPs have different investment plans. The interest and return offered by HYIPs usually anyway between 0.3% to 100% daily, weekly or monthly. You can make fast and easy money investing HYIPs. However investing in HYIPs involve high degree of risks. HYIPs generally stay online anywhere between 1 day to 1.5 years so if the HYIP you invested closes down, you may lose all or part of your initial capital. One strategy you can use to minimize the risk is diversify your investment into several HYIPs equally and don’t leave any interest in your investment accounts for compounding, withdraw them to your e-gold account or other e-currency accounts immediately. HYIPs rank high on rating and monitor sites tend to last longer than those at lower rank and new HYIPs.

You can find HYIPs from those HYIP rating and monitor sites. HYIPinvestment.com is one of the biggest HYIP rating and monitor sites. They provide a long list of HYIPs with latest comments, rating and payment status on each HYIP. If you plan to join HYIPs, invest only the amount you afford to lose because your principle and profit aren’t guaranteed. Also you will need an e-gold a/c to deposit fund and receive interest & return. Below are steps that can help you get started to invest in HYIP:

Step 1
Open an e-gold a/c at http://www.e-gold.com. You will find detailed instructions on how to fund your e-gold a/c from e-gold.com.

Step 2
Visit HYIPinvestment.com and find the HYIPs that interest you. Read the comments and ratings of each HYIP to make sure they are paying to members before you deposit fund to the HYIPs programs you selected. To lower your risk you must diversify your investments into several HYIPs (you may start off with HYIPs).

Step 3
Most HYIPs pay daily. So you need to login to your HYIPs a/c daily to withdraw interests to your e-gold a/c. If a HYIP's website down, there could be 2 possiblility:
1) They are experiencing technical, IT problems or security issues which wil be back online later usually.
2) They have closed down and you lose money or you still earn some money overall.

Again high return means high risk. So only invest the amount you afford to lose.

1. Have a bumper sticker printed up with your web site address and other business information. Place it on the bumper of your car. People will see it when you're driving.

2. Have some t-shirts made with your web site address and other business information. Your family or friends could wear them almost anywhere.

3. Have some ball caps made with your web site address and other business information. Wear them to keep the sun out of your eyes and promote your business at the same time.

4. Have some business cards printed up with your web site address and other business information. Pass them out to people you meet or that might be
interested in your business.

5. Have a magnetic sign made with your web site address and other business information. Place it on your car door or roof when you are traveling.

6. Have some flyers printed out with your web site address and other business information. Keep a few with you to hang on bulletin boards you see.

7. Have some jackets printed with your web site address and other business information. Give
them away to family and friends. When it's too cold for t-shirts, you can wear jackets.

8. Have some mugs imprinted with your web site address and other business information. Use them when you have company or give them away to friends and family as gifts.

Creating a website to generate income online is one of the most common methods these days. You can earn money from a website by:

a) Marketing your own merchandises/products and services.
b) Joining affiliate programs to promoting other companies products or merchandises.
c) Participating in Google AdSense Publisher Program to start generating AdSense commission from your website.

Option (a) & (b) require a lot of time, effort and advanced Internet marketing knowledge before you start generate profit from your site. The third choice is much simple and faster to profit online with a website. To launch an AdSense campaign you must first sign up to become a publisher of Google AdSense program. You are going to submit your website for review when applying an AdSense account.

The first step of building a website is deciding the content of your website, your content can be related to any subjects as long as they comply with AdSense program policies. Google AdSense policies can be found at https://www.google.com/adsense/policies. Your interest, hobby, past experience and area of expertise may help you decide what topic or subject you are going to write. You can provide helpful content like advice, educational articles and so on to others on your website if you are an expert at something. If you like to travel you may write about the places and countries you have visited and share your traveling experience and tips in your website.

There are plenty of online companies providing web design service but it is expensive using the service of a web design company. Hiring a web designer to build a website via freelance marketplace like guru.com is much cheaper than using a company. However this is still not the most effective way to cut your cost to minimum. The cheapest way to create a website is by using a free web development tool or software. There are getting more and more free web development tools on the Internet and I recommend Bluevoda website builder. You can download Bluevoda website Builder at http://www.bluevoda.com. Bluevoda allows user to create websites without technical knowledge. Users can create almost any kinds of website with little limitation. Create websites using Bluevoda is free. You only pay for the domain name and website hosting.

After you finish designing your website, it is time to publish it on Internet and promote your website to earn AdSense revenue. There are a number of ways to promote your website to bring traffic (visitors) to your site.

Pay-per-click (PPC) Advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising companies let you advertise your website on search engines using keywords-bidding system. When a visitor enters a keyword you bid on in search engines to find something, the visitor will see your ad and if the visitor clicks your ad, you will be charged based on the amount you bid. The two most common PPC advertising programs are Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing but they are quite expensive to advertise with due to tough competition in the keywords-bidding system. You might encounter the problem of your PPC cost higher than your AdSense revenue and lead to a loss. Luckily, there are low cost alternatives such as Bidvertiser.com, searchfeed.com, Bidclix.com and so on. These PPC companies allow you to drive instant targeted visitors to your site with less than $0.15 per visitor.

Provide free content
Creating articles and sending them to content websites like online article directories is a no cost way to gain further exposure for your website. You will promote your website and get traffic by writing about yourself and your website with a live link points to your website in the author’s bio of each article published on content websites.

RSS advertising
RSS advertising is another free method to increase your website’s traffic. There are people reading information and news online using RSS readers or news aggregators. This has created another opportunities for webmasters to boost the websites traffic. By creating your own RSS file and submitting it to search engines and RSS directories, the links to the content in your website will appear in front of those who read information using news aggregators and as a result driving free visitors to your website.

1) Cost-Per-Click (CPC) Advertising Programs
CPC advertising programs are the best money making programs for most of the bloggers. They are suitable to all kind of blogs with family-friendly content regardless of their traffic level and age. CPC programs work well on blog because they display contextual ads that are highly relevant to blogs content and bloggers will earn anywhere between 10 cents to 50 cents for each contextual ads click by their visitors. With proper CPC ads optimization and consistent amount of traffic, a blogger can earn a steady amount of money displaying CPC ads on his/her blog. Google AdSense is no doubt, the undisputed king of CPC advertising programs and Yahoo Publisher Network is the closest alternative of AdSense.

2) Cost-Per-Action (CPA) Advertising Programs
CPA programs is quite similar to CPC programs except CPA programs don't pay bloggers for each click on the CPA ads hosted by bloggers. The blogger only makes money when the visitor takes an action on the CPA advertiser website. The action can be a sign up, making a purchase, generating a lead, downloading a product and more. CPA networks pay a lot more than CPC programs, for a visitor sent by the blogger from his/her blog to a CPA advertiser website and the visitor taken an action on the advertiser site, the blogger can earn few dollar to fifty dollar depend on the niche. But CPA ads tend to work well on large traffic blogs only. AzoogleAds.com, Commission Junction and Advertising.com are some of the largest CPA networks.

3) Promote Affiliate Programs
Marketing affiliate programs is very common nowadays. You sign up with affiliate program of an online company, then decide whether to use the company's text link or banner ads on your blog to promote the company's products or services and earn affiliate commission when a visitor make a purchase through your affiliate link. Affiliate programs can be promoted without a website and blog too.

4) Pay Per Post Programs
Pay per post programs started last year. The programs pay bloggers to write a blog post about a sponsor's website. The paid blog post can be a review or an introduction on the advertiser's website, products or services. The blogger will be paid a least $5 for each sponsor post. Blogs that have massive traffic, high Google PR and large number of subscribers can charge a few hundred dollar for just writing one sponsor post. Here's are the two most popular Pay per post networks that offer this type of earning opportunities:

www.reviewme.com
www.payperpost.com

The downside of pay per post is that writing too many sponsor posts that are not relevant to your blog content can seriously affect your traffic.

5) Sell Text Link Ads
Selling text links on your blog can be a great source of additional online revenue. It is not difficult to get started, just go to Text-link-ads.com to sign up an account, then decide which part of your pages you want to display paid text links, set your price and you are ready to take order. Text-link-ads.com will handle all the promotional works. Another company that offers the similar services as Text-link-ads.com is Reverselinks.com

6) Hosting Web Poll
Vizu Answer offers a pretty new way to monetize your blog's and website's traffic. The pays the publishers on a cost-per-thousand impression (CPM) basis for hosting targeted web poll. The money a blogger can earn from hosting poll is depending on the page views. The more page views, the higher the earning.

There are plenty of ways of making money on the net without requiring Internet marketing knowledge and I have introduced a number of them in the previous posts of this blog. For easier searching, I decided to combine them into this post. Here are them:

Work Online for Others
Guru.com and Elance.com are freelance marketplaces with tons of online job opportunities. Getting an online job through freelance marketplace is similar to getting an offline job, it involves competitions. You search for an online job that is right for you in freelance site, then you bid for the job. If your bid is the lowest, the employer will usually award the job to you.

Another site offers online job opportunities is Clicknwork.com. Unlike freelance marketplaces, there are no bidding competitions involved. They will assign the work to you. But to become their home-based professionals or workers, you must pass a difficult test.

Submit Articles for Cash
If you are passionate about writing, you may submit your articles to the below sites for publication and earn cash for each article published:

Developershep.com/writers.php - Accept articles related to web development and Internet marketing.
Associatedcontent.com (AC) - You become their member and submit articles in wide array of topics for payment consideration. Available to US only.
Newsforge - Pay $100 to $300 for each article about Linux, open source and free software.

Try Companies Offers
The concepts are simple. You join a website that contains a list of offers you can sign up or try. For each offer completed and approved, you'll be credited an amount of money into your account. Most of the offers available to US residents only. Treasuretrooper.com is one of the programs allows you to earn by completing offers.

Submit Photos and Images to Photo Agencies
Web designers, magazines and press need new photos and images often. They will look for photo marketplaces and agencies to buy photos that fit their need. You can submit your photos and images to these agencies and they will sell the photo and images for you. Below are some of the photo agencies:

www.dreamstime.com/sell
http://submit.shutterstock.com
www.scoopt.com

Write Products Reviews
Have something to say about the products and services you have used? Send your product comment to products reviews websites. If they decide to publish your review, you'll be paid.

Softwarejudge.com - Reviews software and online games.
Reviewstream.com - Plenty of product categories to review.

Be a Paid Bloggers
Here are the blog networks you can apply for a blogging position:

www.creative-weblogging.com
www.b5media.com/jobs
www.knowmoremedia.com/write-for-us.html

Upload Videos
Large video sharing websites like Metacafe and Break willing to pay people for uploading interesting videos such as funny, amazing and entertaining videos. You can earn hundreds to thousands of dollar, if your original video attracted tons of views in these video sites.

1) Sell Used Cell Phones on ebay
The demands for used cell phones with brand names like Nokia, Motorola, Kyocera, Alltel, Ericsson, Sprint, etc in ebay are pretty high. Many of the used cell phones auctions in ebay usually attract bids.

So how to find used cell phones to profit on ebay?
Many people change their cell phones every year. If you are one of them, probably you already have 2 or 3 used cell phones kept at home that can sell on ebay. Your friends may also keep a few of old phones left unused. You can buy from them and resell on ebay.

To get a consistent supply of cell phones, you may think about placing classified ads in newspaper states that you pay money for used cell phone. You shouldn't pay much when buying used cell phones. Do a little research on ebay to find out how much used cell phones are generally selling. If a used cell phone sell at a price of $50 in ebay, you should pay not more than 30% of the price to buy it. If the phone is a recent model you can pay little more and cut a little if it is old and nothing special.

2) Sell Used How-to Books
Used how-to books are quite easy to find and inexpensive to buy. They can be bought at $1.00 or less. You can buy how-to books from thrift shops, estate sales, used book stores, yard sales, etc and sell them in ebay for high profit margin. You can also get how-to books from Book Sale Finder. Here are the type of books you should look for:

Hobbies
Photography, blacksmithing, clock building & repair, woodworking, magic, treasure hunting, iron work, pipe smoking, dog training, antiques, coins, buttons, medals, drawing, painting, craft making, dolls, pottery, etc.

Home and Garden
Home decorating, home remodelling, garden trellis, etc.

Misc
How to repair (watch repair, door repair, pipe repair), how to play, lost treasure, eary aviation, etc.

When you list your books in ebay, you can either list them in the "Book" category of ebay or in the subject specific category of ebay. For instance, If you are selling a book related to home decorating, you may be making more profit if you list the book under the "Home Deco" within the "Home & Garden" category of ebay campare to listing the book under "Book"

3) Sell Gift Cards
Gift card is another profitable market in ebay. There are many people possess gift cards but not everyone of them will use their gift cards. If you can offer to buy these unused gift cards for a price at 20% or less of the value of the gift certificates, they will sell to you. You can advertise your offer in local newspaper, penny shop and trading post. You are looking for gift cards that are still valid (not yet expire). Most gift cards have a toll-free number on the back you can dial to check whether the cards are still valid.

When determining the buy and sell price of a gift card, you should do some research on ebay. Try to look for auction that sell the similar card. See how much the card sells in the auction and set you buying price at 40% to 50% of the selling price of the auction. The starting bid and winning bid of the auction can also give you an idea on how much your card can sell on ebay.

1) Comment on Blogs
Look for large traffic Blogs in your niche, visit them and leave your comments on their blogs posts. You may use blog search engine like www.blogsearchengine.com, www.google.com/blogsearch and www.searchengineblog.com to find blogs in your niche.

2) Submit Articles
Write articles that are related to your blog and submit them to popular article directories such as ezinearticles.com, Isnare.com, Articledashboard.com, Articlealley.com and goarticle.com. Quality articles may drive you a lot of free targeted traffic.

3) Participate in Community Forums
Use google to search for forums that are related to your blog. Look for forums that has over 10,000 members and read the rules of the forums to see whether you can promote your blogs and websites in your signature. Join forums that allow you to add a link to your blog in the signature and start participating in discussion. You can ask questions, answer other members questions and post your articles, ideas and thought in the forums.

4) Submit Your Blog to Directories
This isn't working to me but some bloggers claim that they gain a good amount of traffic from their listings in directories.

5) Post Often
You can lose traffic if you seldom update you blog, try to make it at least 5 posts per week. This not only will maintain your traffic but possibly attract more readers.

6) Write about Blogging
Write helpful and quality articles related to blogging can attract other bloggers link to your articles and gain may be truckload of free traffic.

7) Post Breaking News
If your found a breaking news of your niche very earlier, post it to your blog. It may give your blog's traffic a boost.

8) Social Bookmarking
Bookmark you blog posts in the large social bookmarking sites like Netscape.com, Digg.com, Simply and Reddit.com.

9) Run a Contest
Start a contest on your blog. Think about the prizes that people really want. It will create a viral effect and bring in new visitors.

10) On-page Optimization
Make sure your blog's title tag and description tag contain your targeted keywords. When you have posted plenty of quality blog post and done a lot of blog promotion, don't be surprise to see your blog ranks top 10 in Google and get free search engine traffic daily.

Practical Tips for Creating AdSense Websites to Make Money Online Google Adsense is still one of the most reliable and efficient pay-per-click advertising programs for web publishers to make money on the web. This is because Google has continuously created new features for AdSense and changed the AdSense program policies to ensure the quality and effectiveness of the program.

The web publishers will be able to display content-targeted AdSense ads consistently on their websites and earn a steady income from the ads. The good thing about AdSense is that almost all the technical work is done by Google; the webmasters only need to plan and optimize carefully in order to make their sites compatible with the Google AdSense contextual ads.

Below are some of the tips for building a niche site to effectively make money with Google AdSense ads:

Focus on Publishing Quality Content
Plain content wouldn’t do any good for your niche Adsense site. You need to provide quality and unique content. The kind that your visitors are looking for.

The content will help your readers or entertain your readers and attract other site owners to link to you. The key factors to quality content are relevancy and value.

Setting up a niche website with some content only isn’t enough. Your site has to publish good and helpful content consistently. So, it is necessary to polish up your writing skill and do research on other articles to get good content ideas. This way you will be able to write and post useful content on an on going basis.

Structure Your Website Well
Besides quality content, the way your construct your website is also important. Both your website navigation menu and internal linking structure need to be designed properly. The site’s navigation menu or links should be easy to use so that your visitors can reach the content they want to read quickly and reliably. If your site have sub-topics, you should provide a list of links to all your sub-topics so that the visitors can easily find the information they want.

A well-structured AdSense website can ensure your visitors enjoy a good experience on the site and therefore they will want to stay longer on your site or bookmark it to come back next time.

Comply with Google Adsense Policies
Google keeps on making changes to their AdSense program policies in order to provide the best value to their advertisers. So, there is a need to re-read their program policies in every 1 or 2 months to make sure your site isn’t against any new rule. You may visit AdSense office blog to get the latest update on AdSense program development and policy change.

If you don't meet certain rules, your AdSense account may be suspended by Google and if that happens, all your hard work will be wasted.

Optimize Your Website for AdSense Ads
Seriously, if you don’t know how to effectively optimize your website, you wouldn’t earn much AdSense revenue even your site get massive amount of traffic. You will need to find the good locations of your website for placing AdSense ads. Placing your AdSense ads on the right locations will increase your AdSense Ads click-through rate (CTR) and improve your AdSense earning.

Google’s AdSense Help Center has explained a lot about AdSense optimization, ad placement and implementation. So, it is probably the best place for you to start learning how to maximize your AdSense earning.

Drive in Targeted Traffic
Quality content plus well website optimization and plus massive amount of targeted traffic will equal to AdSense success. Thus, you will need to drive as many targeted visitors as possible to your website in order to make the most out of AdSense. Your targeted visitors will read your quality content then part of them will click on your relevant AdSense ads and you will earn AdSense revenue

The AdSense King
Jimmy Chen is a web publisher who has achieved some success with AdSense. He learned a lot about building niche sites to effectively make money with AdSense. And now he has put together a package of free AdSense training materials for anyone interested to get started with Google AdSense program.

Going Natural 4
Andy Jenkins and Brad Fallon from Stompernet.com have been providing tremendous Internet marketing content in their training video series 'Going Natural 2.0 & 3'. Few days ago, their newest series 'Going Natural 4' has released also with the first video tutorial posted. This time they will focus on topic of increasing online sales and response for your products or services. You'll learn how to do it professionally, but inexpensively.

Report - The Great CopyWriting Conspiracy
website promotion and marketing are important to you if you are earning income online through a website. You got to be able to write compelling ad copies for your marketing campaigns to get targeted traffic. Inside The Great CopyWriting Conspiracy report, you'll find 1,500 effective and compelling words and phrases you can use to better market your website and products.

There are many different direct income earning methods and each will have it’s own ways of being optimised - but the following are principles that many bloggers find across different forms of advertising programs (for the sake of this post I’ll mainly use blogs using AdSense as examples - but much of what I write can be applied to different ad systems).

The basic factors that I’ll be covering in the following posts are:

1. Traffic
2. Ad Position
3. Ad Design
4. Ad Relevancy
5. High Paying Ads

I believe that all five elements are important to running profitable ads on a blog. Take any one of them out of the picture and you decrease the overall earning potential that you have. ie a blog with high traffic but with ads that no one see’s is never going to earn much. Likewise a highly trafficked blog with well positioned ads that are completely irrelevant to the topic of the blog are less likely to perform to their potential… you get the point. Each element should be considered and worked on simultaneously.

I’ll start briefly with the first one in this post and will follow in the next day or two with a post on each of the following four:

Principle 1 - Traffic

The frustrating thing about blogging for an income is that you can have perfectly positioned, designed and relevant ads that would pay a fortune but still be not making any money at all because your blog has no traffic. So while I encourage publishers to work on design, placement and ad relevancy, it’s worth remembering that you shouldn’t do any of it at the expense of developing a quality blog that people will come and read.

This isn’t the post for talking about traffic building strategies - but a holistic approach to building an online income will definitely factor traffic building as a primary objective.

Speaking from personal experience - I know how easy it is to get sidetracked by the other factors mentioned - but if you simultaneously work on building a readership you’ll build a much more profitable blog.

Ad Position

Perhaps one of the most common mistakes that I see bloggers making with the positioning of advertising is with regards to position. In fact this is not a unique thing for blogs or even just online advertising as effective advertising relies upon positioning in all of it’s forms. This is why ads at Prime Time on TV, in the front pages of magazines and on the big billboards at busy intersections are in high demand (and are at a premium price).

The theory is pretty simple (and logical) really - if you increase the number of people who see an ad you increase it’s chances of converting (note that position isn’t the only factor, as we’ll explore later).

A good question to ask yourself as you consider ad placement on your blog is ‘where are people looking?’ Some of the factors to keep in mind when answering this question include:

Above The ‘fold’

When you look at the front page of ProBlogger you will notice that only part of the page is showing. This is because I have more content than can fit on the screen (unless you have a massive screen of course). The only way you can see everything on the page is to scroll down.

If you were to draw an imaginary line across Problogger’s front page at the point where you had to start scrolling this line is known in web circles as ‘the fold’.

Research shows us that elements of a website below the fold are seen by significantly less readers than elements above the fold. Of course it doesn’t take a genius to realise that in general (and there are some exceptions which I’ll outline below) this will mean a lower conversion for your ads.

Content

The content of your blog is hopefully the place where most of your readers are drawn to (if it’s not you might have a problem). This is the case whether your content is text, video or image and as a result one of the best converting positions on a blog in terms of advertising is within or close to content.

Different bloggers have different opinions on both on firstly whether ads should be put near content (that’s a debate for another post) as well as what is the best method to do so - but in general there are a number of fairly common ways that it is done. Let me outline a few:

• Between Posts - perhaps one of the most common ad placements running on commercial blogs at present is to place a rectangle or small banner ad between posts when running ads on the front page and/or category pages.

  One example of a blog using this strategy is megablog - which places a rectangle AdSense unit between the second and third posts on it’s front page (see screen cap below).

  

  In fact Engadget use this strategy between many of their posts on their front page (and category pages), using a mixture of AdSense ads and other ads (probably sponsorship deals). (Note: Engadget runs more than the normally allowable number of AdSense units per page. AdSense reportedly has deals with some larger publishers that allows this).

  I currently use this strategy here at ProBlogger also on my front pages - inserting ads between my second and third posts.

  AdSense themselves have recommended this position in a diagram that they produced to show which positions work best (below):

  

• Before Content - Placing an ad unit slightly above a post can be an effective placement, especially if using an ad with a smaller height. 468 x 60 pixel ads are one such ad, as are the horizontal ad link units from Adsense which often are placed across the top of a blog just above a post’s title. My own experience is that ads above content are not quite as effective as ads IN content (see below) - but they are generally less intrusive than IN content ads.

  One warning however with these ads - if you use an ad that is too large you can actually push your content too far down the page and actually end up with a page that has little content above the fold (something that is likely to frustrate your readers).

• In Content - There is some debate around this method of ad placement but in my experience it is by far the most effective in terms of Click Through Rate.

  While readers do scan content - their eyes are generally in it’s vicinity and to have ads in this position means they naturally see it and if the ads are relevant to the content itself they are much more likely to click.

  Ad sizes in this position vary in terms of conversion from blog to blog but some bloggers use a rectangular ad block aligned to the right or left

  For example - The Movie Blog uses a rectangle ad directly under it’s titles and aligned left on individual pages

  

  Another example is here at ProBlogger where I insert a smaller ad (aligned right) into my individual pages.

  

Comments

Another hotspot on many blogs is in the vicinity of the comments section. There are a number of reasons for this position converting well. For starters, comments are at the end of a post and at a point where a certain percentage of your readers are looking for something else to do. They’ve consumed your content and will either be looking for more of the same or wanting to take some action as a result of what they’ve read. As a result - an ad that is contextually relevant is sometimes quite clickable. The other reason ads near comments do well is because they are a place that draws the eye of your reader. The discussion that happens on a post can be just as valuable to readers as the post itself and so they become hotspots.

Here at ProBlogger I place a rectangle ad at the end of my posts and a bit above comments. I find that these ads can some days get a higher CTR than any other ad on the blog.

Images

A strategy that some bloggers use is to draw the eye of their readers towards their ads by using images or other visual aids. While there are many poor examples out there of people doing this (many of which break the Terms of Service of programs like AdSense in my opinion)

Left Hand Side

When I first started experimenting with ads the advice I was given was that ads on the right hand side of a page did best because people looked over there to use the scroll bar. In more recent times the research and expert opinion on the matter is that the left hand side is best. Perhaps this is because those of us from countries which read from left to right are wired to look left when viewing a page - or perhaps there is some other reason - but from my own experience in tracking ads - it does seem to be true.

AdSense published the following ‘heat map’ to illustrate where they found ‘hot spots’ to be on web pages. As you’ll see - ads positioned to the left tend to do better than those on the right.

Of course there are many other things to consider when working on the placement of ads - two that I’ve written about previously (this is a post well worth reading if you’re using AdSense - it outlines how it’s possible to have less ads and be more profitable).

Ad Design

Another factor to consider with many advertising systems is the design that you’ll go with on your ads. While some ad systems do not let you customize the look and feel of your ads (ie many impression based ad systems like Fastclick) a growing number do allow you to not only choose from quite a few different ad sizes but also give the option to change colors of different elements including the text, links, borders and background colors (for example AdSense, Chitika, YPN, AdGenta all give some ability to change the look of your ads etc).

There are as many opinions on ad design as their are on ad positioning - but the trend at the moment amongst most publishers is to go for a blended look with your ads.

One might think that the best performing ads would be ones that stand out from the rest of your page and draw the eye - but most publishers that I speak with have found that such a strategy not only annoys readers but brings about results that underperform when compared to more subtle and blended designs.

In general - to blend an ad using a system like AdSense, YPN or Chitika you’ll want to:

• make the background and border colors for your ads to match the same color as the background of your blog
• make the links (title and URL) on your ads the same color (or a similar one) to other links on your blog
• make the text color in the ad the same as text on your blog

So on a blog that looks like ProBlogger ads might turn out like this:

There are of course exceptions to this and some publishers do mix things up a little in an attempt to both keep the look of ads fresh (to combat ad blindness of loyal readers).

For instance some publishers make the text and URL (at the bottom of ads) a lighter color in an attempt to highlight the title/link. Others rotate different ad color variations and even types to make every impression a little different in the hope of keeping them somewhat fresh looking (you can do this in AdSense by holding down the Control key and select up to four colour palettes when generating your ad code in the Ad layout code page of your account).

Having said that the blended look is popular among most bloggers there are also some publishers that I know of who take the exact opposite approach in their ad design and make their ads as loud as possible. Their ads annoy me of those TV ads that are full of screaming announcers and flashing visuals that obviously want to break through into TV watchers numbed state by being as visually and auditarily (is that a word?) offensive as possible. I actually saw one AdSense ‘expert’ a few months back advising publishers to make their ads a bright red background with a bright yellow text and links. Their argument was that these were the colors of McDoncalds which were scientifically proven to trigger people into a buying frenzy.

My own feelings on this that ads like that might be trigger a slightly different reaction in readers (violent ones) but I guess it’s each to their own.

The key with ad design (in all ad systems) is to experiment and track your results. Most ad systems allow you to do this in one way or another. AdSense especially allows it by adding channels which means each ad unit on your blog can be tracked to see how it performs. Some bloggers also use other AdSense trackers like AdSense Gold (aff link) to track their results as they give a lot more information which is especially helpful in working out what design and ad positions work best.

Ad Size

Another aspect of Ad Design that publishers can choose is the size of the ad. There are many ad sizes available for publishers in modern day advertising systems (almost too many to choose from at times). It is difficult to make sweeping statements about what ad size works best on a blog and as with everything I’ve written above you’ll want to experiment quite a bit with what works for you.

AdSense always advise that rectangle ads works best (300 x 250 for example). This size seems to suit many blogs not only because it fits nicely into numerous positions - but also because it allows image ads to be used (something that on one hand can be more lucrative in terms of income - but something that can also interrupt the design/flow of your blog as at times image ads can be very dominating and can even clash with your overall page design).

I also find that 468 x 60 pixel ads can work quite well as they don’t dominate a page quite as much as a rectangle ad as they are not as high - yet they show two ads. Once again they allow image ads if you choose to have them activated.

Keep in mind that you’ll want to choose a size that fits naturally into your blog in an optimal position without crowding out your content. The temptation is often to use a large size, but this can often leave little room for content above the fold. Usability for readers needs to be kept in the forefront of you mind when considering these factors.

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“If my blog has ((insert daily number of impressions or page views of your blog here)) how much should it be earning?”

This is one of the more common questions I get asked by bloggers just starting out with making money from their blogs.

On one level it’s a valid question to ask - after all if you’re going to put time and energy into building something it’d be great to know up front what rewards might be awaiting you.

On another level - it’s an almost impossible question to answer because there are so many factors to take into consideration.

As I look across the blogs that I am involved with (around 100 in number if you count b5media’s 80+ blogs) there is a massive variation in the earnings that blogs are pulling in. It is very difficult to make sense of it as it not just a matter of traffic levels.

For example - As I write this I’m looking at the earnings for January of three blogs that I have some involvement with (I don’t get into what specific blogs earn so don’t ask) and here’s what I see:

Blog A: For the month this blog had a total of around 20,000 page views from about half that number of visitors (ie they viewed 2 pages each. The Total earnings of this blog (all from contextual advertising) was $790.91 (USD).

Blog B: This blog had just over 40,000 page views over the month, this time from about 13,000 visitors. It’s total earnings from contextual advertising (same amount of ad units per pages as the other) was $99.08 (USD). it also earned around $35 from an affiliate program.

Blog C: Our last example is a blog that had around 160,000 page views over the month from around 80,000 visitors. It earned $515.12 from contextual ads and somewhere in the vicinity of $2,500 from affiliate programs.

Factors to Contribute to a Blog’s Earnings…

It’s pretty obvious from those figures that there is no ‘normal’ earnings based upon traffic alone. Many factors are obviously at play. Let me unpack a few:

1. Traffic Levels: While the above examples show that traffic is not the only factor at play in determining the earning capacity of a blog - it is a significant one.

2. Source of Traffic: Of course all not all traffic is equal when it comes to earning an income online. blog traffic largely comes from a three sources - Loyal Readers (including RSS), Search Engines and Referral Traffic (from other sites).

Each type of traffic will have a different impact upon your earning potential depending upon your earning strategies. Lets look at each in turn:

• Loyal Readers - loyal readers are a wonderful thing to have on a blog because they can add a sense of community and participation. In my experience of picking up consulting and speaking work and even in developing products for sale - most the the opportunities have only come from established relationships that I’ve managed to build with readers.

  Loyal Readers have also been known to respond to affiliate programs as a result of the trust and relationship that you might have built up with them over time. The longer term and more loyal your reader is the more weight your recommendation is likely to carry. Of course you won’t keep readers loyal for long if your recommendations are not on the money so be careful with that.

  On the downside - loyal readers are generally not good for advertising in most forms. When a reader sees your blog every day Ad-blindness tends to kick in pretty quickly unless you’re pretty creative with your ads they often go unseen.

  RSS readers are particularly difficult to monetize with ads on your blog as so many of them rarely see your blog if you publish full feeds rather than excerpts.

• Search Engine Readers - readers coming to your blog after searching for a keyword you have used are a very different type of reader to the ‘loyal variety’ when it comes to what they respond to. Anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that visitors from SE’s quite often only stay on sites fleetingly. The typical SE users is in search of specific information and if they find it quickly they might stay for a little while but if they don’t they are likely to click on link to something else that might be a better source of information or hit their back button to return to the search engine.

  This makes them almost the opposite of loyal readers in terms of indirect income earning methods. It’s very difficult to build your profile if people are one off 10 second readers
  

  When it comes to more direct income earning methods SE traffic is traditionally more responsive as they tend to be more aware of your ads (if they are well placed and designed) and they are actively looking for information and things to click on that might give them the info they are searching for. This is especially true for contextual advertising like AdSense which can show ads on your site that are triggered not only by what your content is about but on what people came to your blog searching for in Google (or so some people believe).

  In terms of affiliate links - SE traffic is less likely to click them as a result of your profile but could be open to them more just because they are there. They can be hit and miss depending upon your topic

• Referral Traffic - It is difficult to make generalizations about this category of traffic because it depends a lot on the type of site that is linking to you and the way in which they do it.

  For example the last two times I’ve been linked to from brought incredibly different results in terms of the money earned from the traffic. On one occasion there was barely any discernible difference in my AdSense earnings despite having 10 times the traffic I normally would get in a day. On the next link up earnings increased proportionally with the increase in traffic (it was and probably still is my best earning day ever). I can only really put this down to the difference in tone of the linking post at Slashdot and the type of post that I’d written (which in the later case probably triggered more relevant ads).

  In general, traffic from larger sites like Digg and Slashdot don’t convert too well with advertising and affiliate programs. There is an opportunity however for capturing these first time readers and converting them into loyal ones which as we’ve said above is good for indirect income earning down the track.

4. Income Stream:The actual method you use to monetize your blog impacts the amount you might earn. This is pretty obvious so I won’t go on about it too much but it’s worth saying here as it’s a definite factor in mix when looking at other factors.

5. Topic: In the three blogs that I mention above I would say the major difference in their earning capacity was their topic.

• Blog A has a pretty specialized topic that not many would be too interested in (hence it’s lower traffic). On the other side of things it has well paying ads in YPN on a per click basis and triggers ads that are very relevant to the topic. As a result despite it’s low traffic it earns quite well.
• Blog B has a very popular topic but there are very few advertisers interested in buying ads with those keywords in contextual ad systems. As a result it’s Click Through Rate (CTR) is very low and click values are low also. It’s also yet to generate enough traffic to make much from impression based ads (although there is potential here - it’s a reasonably newish blog). As a result while it has more traffic than Blog A it’s earning considerably less.
• Blog C is again on a popular topic which doesn’t convert brilliantly in contextual ads in terms of CTR and ad value. It does have a reasonable reputation in it’s niche and affiliate recommendations are responded to well by readers (and they have a good value per sale also which doesn’t hurt).

Why Topic Matters

• Contextual Ads - Different topics and keywords within topics will trigger different ads in contextual ad programs and as a result will earn different levels ‘per click’
• Affiliate Programs - Similarly, different topics will open up different levels of earnings when it comes to affiliate programs. For example a blog about books that uses the Amazon program is only ever likely to make small commissions per sale as the average book might only be worth $20 and the commission with Amazon is generally in the 5-8% range. On the other hand I know of publishers in the financial website game who use affiliate programs that can pay out at $100 per sale.
• Indirect Methods - Obviously different opportunities (with different income earning potential) arise for bloggers with a profile in different niches. For example a blogger known for his movie review blog might not have much demand for consulting work but could find a way to syndicate his blog to magazines or newspapers. A blogger with a good profile in the PR industry might not get picked up as a writer in magazines but could land himself a well paying job or some consulting work.

6. Age of Blog: - a good wine matures with age - as do many profitable blogs (and most profitable businesses for that matter). There are many reasons why this is the case and while some blogs do seem to rise from nowhere to dominate the blogosphere - most do not. Here’s a few reasons why blogs tend to get better with age:

• Quantity of content - I find myself saying this to new bloggers repeatedly but don’t expect to get a lot of traffic to your blog until you have a substantial level of content in your archives. Of course quality of content is vital, but at least at some level numbers of posts do count and unless you’re going sell your soul and to get into splogging quantities of content take time.
  
• Search Engine Optimization - While some SEO experts claim they can have you at the top of Search Engines quickly (and some can), sustaining high rankings through legitimate (white hat) methods means building a site over time. Climbing the rankings in SE’s is the result of many things including good content (lots of it) that gets links from others - both things that take time.
• Reputation - Building an online profile and presence takes time n the same way that it takes time in real life. People look for consistency in your blogging overtime and will want to see that you not only talk the talk but walk the walk. As you do this you’ll find your readership grows.
• Network - Connected with a good reputation comes networking opportunities. Two years ago if I had wanted to start a new blogging project with someone else I would have had little chance of convincing anyone to join me - but since that time I’ve worked hard at my relationships with fellow bloggers (and other online and offline contacts) to the point now where my problem is becoming too many opportunities to collaborate.
• Web Smarts - I shudder when I look back at my first blogging efforts and how naive, ill-informed and poorly run they were. I have a long way to go when it comes to learning about the web, blogs, design, writing etc - but over time my own skills and knowledge in these areas have grown. You can read all the books, blogs and articles you want on blogging (and I’d encourage you to do so) - but so much of what you can learn about blogging for money has to come from on the job experience - which again only comes with time.

7. Time Invested: Lastly I’ll add that the time a blogger is willing and able to invest into their blog is a factor worth considering. I’m fortunate enough to have been able to work myself into a position where I can blog full time. This didn’t just happen overnight but as I was able to put more time into it the rewards increased. This is a bit of a catch 22 situation of course (the more you earn the more time you can put in and the more time you put in the more you can earn) but it’s a principle I’ve discovered that is worth adding into the mix.

So How Much Can a Blog Earn?

I’ve been avoiding the question for over 2000 words now and I’m not about to put a definitive answer on it except to say that every blog is different and the evidence that I’ve seen from interacting with thousands of bloggers and their blogs over the past year is that bloggers are earning anything between nothing at all and millions of dollars. The upper end of the spectrum is of course rare and those earning very little are in the majority, but bloggers earning decent income is becoming increasingly common. Here’s a couple of recent ProBlogger polls that might illustrate how the spectrum is spread in their earnings of AdSense and Chitika.

I’ll finish with this:

Probably the best way to find out what you can earn from a particular blog is to start that blog and test the waters.

Give yourself a time limit of a few months to get a feel for the topic and see how it goes. While it’s important to realize that a few months is not really enough - it is enough to get an understanding for whether it’s a topic you feel you can sustain, what the click values and CTR might be in contextual ads and even to get a feel for what type of readers you’ll attract. If the signs are good - invest more time into it - if they are not, consider trying something else.

That’s my 2 (or 2000) cents worth on the topic of how much blogs can earn. What’s yours?

I speak with bloggers every day who have heard the stories of blogs that make big dollars and who want to try to make an income from blogging also. One of the pieces of advice that I attempt to convey (and I’m afraid it doesn’t always get through) is that it’s worth pausing, before running out to slap ads on your blog, to ask yourself whether making money from your blog is right for you.

While this might seem to be a silly question to some (what’s wrong with earning money?) I think it’s worth at least asking the question.

Not every blog is suited to blogging for money.

Does it Fit with Your Blog’s Goals and Objectives - There are many reasons why people blog and the motivation of money is just one of them. Here’s some of the responses I had when I asked why people blog:

• ‘I blog for recreational purposes - to help me relax’
• ‘I blog as part of my plan for world domination’
• ‘I blog to help me promote my book/business’
• ‘I blog to keep a record of the life and times of me’
• ‘I blog because I want to help others’
• ‘I blog to because I’m lonely and want to connect with others’
• ‘I blog to pick up cute girls/guys’
• ‘I blog because it’s fun’
• ‘I blog because I want to build profile - I want to be known’
• ‘I blog to make a living’

Now there is nothing wrong with blogging for more than one reason - but bloggers considering adding income streams to their blogs need to consider the possibility that there are implications of going in that direction that MIGHT impact their other goals.

Let me share some scenarios of real cases that I’ve come across (no names given) where putting ads on a blog wasn’t a good idea. If I were a betting man I’d say that they represent the story of many bloggers and that others could add more scenarios:

Scenario 1: Business Blogs - I remember one blogger who added contextual advertising to their Business Blogs (blogs which had primary goals of promoting a business’s services) only to find that the ads that were served to their blogs were for other businesses in their field who they were competing with. While they could block some of the ads they found that more ads replaced them. In the end they felt it was better to remove the ads and keep the focus on themselves.

Scenario 2: Reader Uproar - Another blogger who I have been talking with recently told me the story of the day she added impression based ads to her blog and created a mutiny among her readers who were angry that she’d gone that route. While on some blogs reader ownership are not very high, there are other blogs where for one reason or another that readers take great offense to bloggers changing the rules midstream - especially when it comes to ads. Depending upon the community levels and the way you introduce the ads you can end up losing readership and you need to consider whether the benefits of the income will outweigh the costs of fewer readers.

Scenario 3: Money Obsession - Perhaps one of the saddest examples that comes to mind is of a blogger who had been running a really interesting and reasonably successful blog (I wouldn’t call him an A-lister but he had a small loyal following) who got bitten by the ‘money from blogging’ bug so badly that it ended up killing his blog. Ultimately he ended up deleting a lot of his archives (the ones that had no income earning potential) and slapping so many ads onto his blog that it was hard to find any content. He ended up only ever writing on topics that he thought were ‘earners’. In doing so he lost the vast majority of his readership and ended up with a pretty poor blog. Greed took over.

Scenario 4: Poor Conversion and Clutter - A number of bloggers come to mind who have announced that they are fed up with ads on their blogs largely because the payoff has not been worth giving the space over to the ads. Ads do add another element of clutter to your blog and if the conversion isn’t sufficient they can seem quite pointless. This varies from blogger to blogger and sometimes comes down to the type of ad chosen and the topic that they are writing about - but it’s one of the main reasons I see bloggers taken ads off their blogs.

Scenario 5: Reputation - My last example is of a blogger who was blogging to build his own reputation in an industry. He’d been blogging for a number of months and was slowly become better known (although had a way to go). His problem started when he started promoting affiliate products that he’d had no knowledge of and which (he later found out) were actually ripping people off. In doing so he ended up doing the exact opposite to what he’d set out to do - he destroyed his own reputation.

I’m aware that this post has a somewhat negative tone to it and don’t want to disillusion readers too much. On the flip side of these stories of bloggers who found that blogging for money is not the answer for everyone are many more stories of bloggers who have found ways to supplement their income via blogging (and even a few stories of bloggers who now blog full time).

It’s to these stories (and the strategies that these bloggers are using) that we’ll now turn our attention next in this series.

Hello and Welcome back.

Today, we are going to learn all about the Google Referral Program.

And for people who have no idea what the program is, we will start from the beginning.

The Google Referral Program or in short- GRP, lets you publish referrals to different Google products:
- Google Adsense.
- Google Adwords.
- Firefox browser.

How do you get money for referring to Google's product's?
Well, first of all, you must have a Google Adsesne account. (Referral at top of posts.)

After you have an account, you want to start earning money. This is basically how it works:

For Google Adsense:

You Refer a new publisher to AdSense.
They qualify for the program and sign up.
They earn $100 from clicks.
You get paid $100.

*For Google Adwords:

You Refer a new publisher to AdSense.
They qualify for he program and sign up.
*They spend $100 from clicks.
You get paid $100.

For Google Firefox Browser:

You refer a user to the Firefox browser download page.
They install it on their computer.
You get paid $1 after they run it for the first time.

Now we'll discuss whether or not it's worth referring users to Google's Product's or not.
But before we start discussing, I'll let you know the answer is YES.

Why?
Because:
1. It costs you absolutely nothing to refer people the products. You loose nothing, you can only benefit from it.
2. The person you refer to the product, has to spend absolutely nothing. *except for the Google Adwords program.
3. People are interested in Google's FireFox browser, because it's fast and has tabs.
4. Simply- Why not?!

That's it for now.

Ok, if you are reading this post right now, I have to assume you've read the previous post. If not, please do so. It's crucial for the understanding of this post.

Ok, now were good to go!

As you have learned in the previous post, the referral buttons are a good way to add money to your site's income. Now we're going to learn how we can make the most out of the buttons, and Boost our referral's success.


First of all, and most important- Choose the referral button, that suits your site the best.

For example if you're sites outlet and backgrounds are all pink, do not use an orange referral button. Now you must be thinking- 'Well, that's obvious!'. My answer to you is- 'Yes it is'.
But still, you find many web sites and blogs, which make this newbie mistake. And they do it because they think that if the button is BIG & COLORFUL, every one will want to click it. And as you probably know- That's not the case.

Another thing is making sure the size is right. As I mentioned above, do not always go for the biggest button. Sometimes choosing a nice elegant button, which sits nicely in your site, is better than a huge ugly button.


Secondly- Choose the most attractive content for your referral buttons.

Google offers us plenty of different contents for the buttons. I personally think that the most attractive content for the Google adsense program is, "Generate revenue from your website". It's simple, and most important- it tells you exactly why you should be interested in it.
For the FireFox referral button, I think the most attractive content is, "Browse the web faster. Get FireFox with Google toolbar". And yet again- it's simple and informative.


And last but not least- Make sure you know what you're doing.

Do not put referral buttons in the middle of the text. It doesn't look good. It looks as if you are intentionally trying to make the reader click on the button. You need to let people make their own decision, you cant just stick it their and expect people to click it. If someone really wants to download FireFox because he believes Google's browser provides faster browsing and better features, he will click on the referral button. You can mention somewhere on your site that if someone is interested in the software, he is welcome to download it easily threw the referral button on your site.

But make sure you never encourage someone to click on a button. It is against Google's policy, and it can get you're account banned. Never say something like- 'Click this Button!! If you click it you will have a happy marriage!" (I hope you get the idea..)


That's it for now. Next update soon, make sure you come back.

You may find many Adsense Gurus on the net, offering you thousand ways to improve your Google adsense earnings! Mind you guys, just buying some genius adsense template and expect it to produce thousand dollars a day is a sure impossibility!

I am telling you with my practical experience that nothing would work unless you are prepared to go that extra mile. You should get hold of the adsense secrets that are unique to your site. You must be prepared to make continuous changes and measure effectiveness on a continuous basis.

Following are simple but effective steps successfully followed by the author, which may help you to improve your adsense earnings by five folds or even more! However, keep in mind that nothing would work unless you customize these options to suit your requirements.

The Best Position - This is always the demarcation point which decides you should be earning in hundreds or thousands! You must identify the most likely position where the reader would be most tempted to click. At first you might have to follow what Adsense Gurus have suggested. However, you must keep in mind that what they have said is not unique to your site.

You should be bold enough to do your own research and identify the best positions unique to your site, 'cos there could be exceptions to what Adsense Experts have proposed. Best example I can quote is 'Plentyoffish.com' a dating site which earns half a million Dollars a month just by displaying a single Google ad in each page with completely different link color format than the rest of the site using!

White Is In Demand - Having more white space around the article and the Ad will definitely increase your click through rate. In my case, this is one of the real secrets behind the high click through rate in my Adsense ads. Your objective should be to get the

reader's attention to the Adsense ad and the article. Therefore, it is important to have other areas blank as much as possible to centre reader's attention to the Ad and the article. Remove all unnecessary items which are cluttered around the article and the Ad and have more white space on either side of the page.

What is Your Ad Size? - Highly effective Ad formats are 336x250 and 768x120. However, it is up to you to find out the best size for your site. These are the widely tested and accepted sizes. Tyr them out and see the outcome.

Be Discreet - I personally don't prefer to server image ads in my Adsense campaigns because they dilute the effectiveness of the Ads. It is starkly obvious to the reader that they are clicking on Ads and the sole purpose of putting them is to make money! Just don't make it so obvious! Instead, include text ads which are relevant to the theme. Place the ads where the reader is likely to seek a break while reading the article or your copy.

Artistic Way To Be Discreet - The font, color and texture should match with the rest of the page. This will make the ad looks like part of the article. You have the options to use either an ideally matching color or a contrasting color. Either way is effective.

Use The Maximum but Have a Balance - Always try to use maximum number of adsense ads in each page. Don't lose balance however! Ads should not dominate the page.

Measure the effectiveness of Ad units - Always make use of Google Adsense channels to identify which position or format has produced high click through rates. Be prepared to change the Ad format, color and position according to your findings. These simple but effective methods surely drive you more income you never ever expect if you are prepared to follow those in your own way. Find out your way out today.

Direct Income Earning Methods - these methods are where a blogger earns an income directly FROM their blog.

Indirect Income Earning Methods - these methods are where a blogger earns an income BECAUSE of their blog.

Most blogs tend to fall into one or the other of these methods - although there is nothing to stop bloggers experimenting with elements of both.

In this post I’ll look at 8 direct income earning methods and in the next post of this series I’ll explore indirect methods. Please note that on occasion in the following post there will be few affiliate links to services that I use and have had some success with. These will be marked with (aff) after them.

Direct Income Earning Methods for Bloggers

1. Advertising

There are many ways of selling advertising space on a blog (this could almost be a series of it’s own) but some of the different advertising options that I see bloggers experimenting with include:

• Contextual Advertising - Programs like AdSense and YPN (beta) are very popular with bloggers and are probably the most common income stream being used by them today (MSN are developing one too). In short - these programs scan the content of your blog to assertion what it’s topic is and attempt to put contextually relevant ads (text and image) onto your blog. They are generally simple to use and involve pasting some code into your blog’s templates. Payment is on a ‘per click’ basis (referred to as CPC or ‘cost per click’ ads). Contextual ads suit blogs that have a particular niche topic, especially if it has some sort of commercial angle (ie it has products and services associated with it). They are not so good with ‘general’ type blogs (ie many topics) and/or political/spiritual blogs which argue just one side of a case (this confuses AdSense).
• Other CPC Advertising - There are a variety of other ad systems that pay on a per click basis which are not contextual in nature (which is important as systems like AdSense do not allow you to run contextual ads on the same page view as them). These systems include Chitika’s eMiniMalls .
• Impression Based Ads - Impression based ads pay a small amount for every person who views the advertisement. The amount that they pays varies from program to program (and ad to ad) and is generally a fraction of a cent. There are a variety of ad systems around like this including Fastclick (aff)and Tribal Fusion. Impression based ads won’t earn you much if you don’t have a lot of traffic but can be great if you do.
• Blog Ads - BlogAds have become something of an institution when it comes to advertising on blogs. They traditionally have had a focus upon monetizing political blogs but are expanding their focus lately. The beauty of them is that bloggers set their own rates and can accept or reject advertisers that apply to them to be featured on their blogs. These ads put the control of what ads show and how much they earn into the hands of the blogger. The downside is that if you price them too high you could never have any ads showing at all. They can also be difficult to be accepted into as a publisher as these days they only accept people into the system if they have a someone who is already in ’sponsor’ or recommend the new publisher.
• Text Ads - Another increasingly popular way to sell ads on your blog is to look into text links. The beauty of these are that they don’t take up much room and that depending upon the system you choose to run them you can have control over which advertisers you accept and reject. AdBrite (aff) is one such system that gives you control in a similar way to BlogAds in that you set your own prices and approve all ads. They also other other formats of ads. Text Link Ads (aff) is another text link seller that more and more bloggers are using. The beauty of both of these systems is that they have a pool of advertisers already so you don’t have to go looking for your own advertisers. Their systems are also both very automated and are just a matter of pasting some code onto your blog. I use them both and while they don’t earn anywhere near as much as AdSense or Chitika for me they add up over the year and have done well for me. Bidvertiser and Adzaar are other system that I know are popular with some (we’ve used them quite successfully on b5media although I have little personal experience with them).
• RSS Ads - An increasingly popular way for people to read blogs is via RSS. As a result publishers and ad providers have been keen to find ways to place ads in feeds. These attempts have been met with a variety of success levels. I’m yet to hear of too many people making big dollars with RSS ads yet but the ad systems seem to be improving. AdSense offers RSS ads to some of it’s publishers (you have to have a certain number of impressions first) as does YPN. Feedburner is a tool I’ve used to help monetise my own feeds - they give publishers three options (1. AdSense if you’ve been approved by them, 2. Amazon affiliate program and 3. if you have a lot of subscribers (over 500) they have an Ad Network). Pheedo is another system that you might like to try (although I’ve not had much experience with it).
• Other Ads Systems - In addition to the above systems (most of which I’ve used myself) are many other advertising options which I’ve not had experience with and so won’t personally recommend. I’m sure they are worth experimenting with however as I see many of them being used by bloggers every day. Here they are in no particular order:
• AdGenta, CrispAds, Clicksor, Intelli Txt, Peak Click, Double Click, Industry Brains, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, AVN, Pheedo, Adknowledge, YesAdvertising, RevenuePilotTextAds, SearchFeed, Target Point, OneMonkey, and TextAds. Feel free to add your own and tell us how you’ve gone with them in comments below.

2. Sponsorship

Another form of advertising that a smaller number of bloggers are using is to find their own advertisers. All of the above systems have the advantage of finding you advertisers (or at least assisting in the automation of ads to your blog) but as your blog grows in profile and influence you might find other options for private deals come up.

The big blog networks have people dedicated to the task of finding advertisers (often working through ad agencies) but smaller bloggers might find this worthwhile also. I’ve been selling ads on my Digital Camera Blog for two years now and as it’s grown in traffic and profile and managed to attract larger companies (who are willing to pay more) to buys space. Currently the blog features ads from Adobe who have bought a combination of banner, newsletter and text ads.

The key if you’re going to take this approach is to target advertisers in your niche that have products that closely relate to what you’re writing about. There are a variety of ads that you can offer them including banner ads, buttons, text links, mentions in newsletters and even individual post sponsorships. I would highly recommend that you always make it clear to readers that your post is a sponsored one when you’re writing a sponsored post.

3. Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are where you take a commission for referring a reader who purchases a product or service to a company. Probably the most common of these for bloggers is Amazon which has tens of thousands of products that you can link to (I reviewed it here). Other affiliate programs that represent many different companies and products include Linkshare, Commission Junction and Clickbank.

Affiliate programs take some work if you want to get the most out of them (perhaps more work than advertising) but can be lucrative if you match the right program with the right blog/topic. If you want to explore affiliate programs more you might like to read 10 tips for using affiliate programs on you blog.

4. Selling/Flipping Blogs

The idea of selling (or flipping) your blog is one that many bloggers have in the back of their minds for ‘one day’ but in reality it is not something that is overly common… yet (I think this is changing). Probably the largest sale is that of Weblogs Inc (a network of blogs) which sold to AOL for a reported $25 million. Of course this is the stuff that most of us can only dream of - but there are examples of smaller blogs being sold, either privately or via auctions on sites like eBay and SitePoint. One such auction was that of the Blog Herald which took place here.

Starting a blog with the main goal of selling it down the track is one that I’ve heard of a number of bloggers doing but few have been successful. Rather than starting with this intention I think if you start with the intention of building a quality site that has a large readership and it’s own good income stream you are more likely to find buyers down the track.

5. Donations and Tip Jars

A very small number of blogs have a history of making good money with these (Jason Kottke being one of them). To be successful with asking for money from readers you’ll want to have a large and loyal readership (and a rich one might help too). Most bloggers just don’t have the critical mass or the cult following to make it work.

6. Merchandise

Another method that some blogs use with reasonable effect is to sell T-Shirts, Mugs, Stickers etc with the blog’s name, logo and/or taglines on it. This is another idea that will probably only work if you either have a brilliantly designed merchandise range and/or you have a cult-like status as a blogger with some fanatical readers who are a little obsessive about your blog. Some blog topics lend themselves to this more than others.

7. Selling Subscriptions

The idea of charging readers for content is one that surfaces from time to time. While there are numerous websites around the web that do this successfully (community membership sites) I’m yet to see many (any) blogs do it well. The problem that most bloggers who have tried it have run into is that most topics that you could think to start a blog about already have free sites available. To make it succeed you would need to have some sort of premium/exclusive content and/or real expertise on a topic.

8. Blog Networks

Another emerging income source for bloggers are blog networks. There are two ways to make money here. Firstly you can start a network and contract bloggers to write for you or secondly you might like to join a blog network as a writer. There are many networks out there and all have their own strengths and weaknesses. I’ll attempt to write a post on what to think about when you’re looking at whether to join a network later in this series.