3 Quick And Easy Ways To Provide Your Website With Fresh Content - Every Time!

Written by Fabian Tan

The phrase 'content is king' has been said so many times that is a cliché. Yet it is true! The Internet is purely an information based media. Users look for it while publishers create content. Having regularly updated and fresh content is one of the toughest challenges of online entrepreneurs. So how do you automate your content creation as much possible?

Here are 3 amazingly simple ways...

1) Use RSS on your website. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS displays fresh RSS feeds every time your user visits your website. It does this via an RSS aggregator. To do this, you just have to subscribe to an RSS syndication service, and copy the source code over to your website. This is one of the easiest ways to create instant content every time, with or without your presence!

2) Run an article depository. Allow users to submit articles that may be published in this depository. This is another great way to create content that you did not write! You'll be ensured of a great supply of content, since people like being published!

3) Create an interactive forum. A forum allows users to make posts and chat with each other about relevant topics. Again, this is user-created content at it's best! You'll be guaranteed of a fresh supply of constantly updated content every single day, and the search engines will also love it!

So there you have it. These strategies are being used by Internet website owners everyday. Not only does it provide useful content for users, you will also nip your content creation problem in the bud!
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About the Author:

Fabian Tan is the author of the free 51-Page Report:

"Murder Your Job: How To Build Cash Sucking Autopilot Businesses In 30 Days Or Less!"

Head over to MurderYourJob.com to get your free copy now before it's gone!

More Ever-lasting Habits of Highly Successful Webmasters

Written by Daniel J. Briere

I didn't see this one coming, but the popularity of my article entitled Ever-lasting Habits of Highly Successful Webmasters caused me to take a look and see if there were any other "habits" I could share that are used by successful webmasters. And indeed there are, as I share here today:

1. Making Use of SEO

Every good webmaster should use search engine optimization techniques for their website. At first glance, this can seem to be an intimidating area to get into, and when you don't have a very large budget, you may think that it is impossible to use SEO to your advantage. However, there are several free, and/or low-cost, tools on the Internet that will help you out. In addition, websites such as PromotionWorld and SEO-News offer a wealth of content on the subject of SEO. And even Google offers up some candid advice on giving your site an advantage in its results pages. Yes, SEO work takes a large investment in the way of time, but the results of continuous hard work will pay off - there are many companies today that do not use any form of paid advertising because all of their website traffic comes exclusively from non-paid search engine links. I suggest that you give search engine optimization a try for awhile, and see what happens.

2. Exchanging Links with Related Websites

Much has been said lately about the benefits of links, both outgoing and incoming, on the overall marketing success of a website, especially since Google's Jagger update. The common perception has always been that you need as many incoming links to your website as possible, and that you should spend all of your time exchanging links with everyone you can think of. While I could write a whole article on the myths of links and link exchanging (and I probably will at some point), I'll try to stay basic here. The main thing to know is that if the site that links to you - or the site you are linking to - has nothing to do with your website, it will do you no good, and may even penalize you in search results. Exchanging links can not only bring you actual traffic, but a link to your website can also act as a "vote" for you in the search engines' eyes. So choose your link exchange partners wisely. Do not use link farms. Do not blanket the Internet with links to your website. Instead, choose quality, non-competing, content-related websites that are willing to link to your site, either for a fee, or in exchange for a link from your website back to theirs. A strategic link-sharing campaign will be of much greater value to you in the long run than a poorly-planned "blitzkrieg".

3. Examining (and Conforming to) Customer Needs

Of course, you do know what your customers want, don't you? So often, entrepreneurs jump into business without even asking potential customers what they really want. This mistake can be deadly, and certainly won't earn you any friends. And just because you are currently successful does not mean that this will always be the case. Constantly ask your customers what they think about your products and services. Get their suggestions. And if a customer complains to you, or offers up a suggestion on their own, take it to heart - they have gone out of their way to communicate with you, meaning they want some sort of resolution for the situation; this is a golden opportunity to keep them as a customer for life.

4. Keeping Things Simple!

My own company, GlobalWebBrands, made the near-deadly mistake of "over-expanding" in two-thousand-and-five. I will always remember last year as the year that we tried too hard. Things have since settled down, but I will never make that same mistake again.

Please allow me to offer any startups or struggling businesses a very important piece of advice: when you start in a certain line of business, stay in that line of business! Until you have actually been there, you cannot imagine just how much trouble you will get into by rapidly expanding the number and type of products and services you offer, or the number of payment methods you offer, or the number of brands you have, or in the cases of some - the number of physical locations you have.

Diversify - ah yes, the golden word of the past fifteen years. Everybody has been chanting it: business 'gurus', personal investment 'gurus'. Folks, these people are not really gurus at all; rather, they're goons looking to make a little bit of money!

Customers today want simplicity. They want stability. They do not want everything from one person. Wal-Mart is failing, and they are proving that you just cannot be everything to everybody. Become the expert in your field, and not the Wal-Mart. Be one thing to everybody, and you will be successful beyond your wildest dreams.

In other words: Keep it simple, stupid!
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About the Author:

Daniel J. Briere is the CEO of Netpreneur Host, a Web hosting and domain registration company for Webmasters and Internet entrepreneurs.

Ever-lasting Habits of Highly Profitable Webmasters

I've got a two-part article series by Daniel J. Briere that I think you will find as informative and inspirational as I did.

This article details a few simple things that seasoned webmasters do that allow them to pull ahead of their competition. As a savvy web hosting customer and webmaster, these are steps you can take yourself.

1. Off-site Backups - It amazes me whenever I hear of a website hosting user complaining about "that great twenty-dollars-a-year website host I was using that disappeared and took all my files with them!" This is a consistent complaint in the industry, and it is so easily prevented. How do savvy webmasters avoid losing their files? Keep a backup either at your physical location, or on a web server in a different geographical region than the one your website is hosted on.

2. Independent Domain Registration - The second most-common complaint is a domain name that is held hostage by a web host, either because of misunderstanding between the client and the host, or because of an underhanded host. How can you prevent this? Register your domain name at GoDaddy.com, Netsol, Register.com, eNom, or one of the other domain registrars. Then, just point the domain to your hosting account. This way, if your host goes under or you decide to cancel your hosting account, you won't have to worry about losing your domain.

3. Good Client-Host Host-Client Relationship - As lame as it may sound, it helps to have a positive relationship with your host. You need to trust them 100%, and they need to trust you 100%. If this is not the case, neither one of you are benefiting the other, and it is a relationship that should be broken off.

4. Regular Website Updates - Want to know what irks users more than anything else? A website that never changes! Even if you have only five minutes a day to devote to managing your site, you should have some little tidbit of information that changes on a daily or weekly basis. Site visitors like to know that there is really a living, breathing thing on the other side of that website, and one way to convey this is by showing change.

5. Prompt Reply to Emails - Well, maybe this irks users more than anything else. It's probably a toss-up between points four and five. But the point is this: When someone sends you an email, they expect it to be answered right away. So answer it right away! If you can't do this, hire someone who can. One of the best things you can do for your company's image is to answer every single customer inquiry in a super-fast manner. Not only does this impress your customers, it also shows them that you truly care.

Follow this advice, and I guarantee you'll see more success from your web-based business!

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About the Author

Daniel J. Briere is the CEO of Netpreneur Host, a Web hosting and domain registration company for Webmasters and Internet entrepreneurs.

Auctions are a great way to make money online with some investment

Online auctions have incredible potential to make money online. The most popular of course is eBay. But there are others you might not be aware of such as Amazon.com Auctions, Yahoo! Auctions, uBid, and eBid. Since most of my experience is with eBay, but I could write a whole other article about it, I'll briefly talk about it.


Many people have made their fortunes on eBay. There was actually an article in this month's Entrepreneur featuring success stories and eBay tips from successful eBayers. I would link you the article but it doesn't seem to be online. There is, however, an article with 51 eBay tips from PowerSellers and eBay instructors. A tip that isn't included in either article is one that is very useful not just for auctions, but when researching niches in general. You can find out all the latest, hottest items out there in any category on eBay. First and foremost, there's eBay Pulse. It shows you the most popular searches on eBay. There is also a monthly report called "Hot Categories Report" and it comes as a pdf file. It has all the hottest items in each category all laid out for you. Copy and paste it: http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/hotitems.pdf


I'll get into more detail on how you can use this in more ways than one another time because I don't want to turn this into a 5000-word eBay article. So how do these guys make money? Some of them go wholesale. Some use dropshippers. Finding good wholesalers is difficult, though, because many are just "middle men." Middle men in the context of wholesaling are companies that buy items from a real wholesaler or the manufacturers, then raise the prices a bit and pretend they're a wholesaler. The result is diminished margins on your end. You can also use dropshippers. When I used eBay I loved dropshipping. If you don't know, dropshippers have the item you're selling and when you make a sale, they ship it for you on-demand. No need to fill your garage with boxes of Bluetooth headsets! If you've ever bought an electronic item like an mp3 player or a headset or similar item and it unexpectedly came with a manual written in Cantonese or Mandarin, your seller probably used a dropshipper! Anyway, there are many places you can go to find cheap items to sell. Two good places are Overstock and Liquidation. If you want to get into finding manufacturers, a good place to start is Alibaba.

Advertising to Make Money

Advertising is huge on the internet. Some people hate it, others (like you after you read this) love it. If you remember my posts about traffic, this is one of the easiest ways to make money with lots of traffic. Some of you out there avoid ads like the plague, but I assure you that a lot of people do click and are making publishers a lot of bank. Here are the major ways you would be compensated through online advertising:

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) / Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

Cost-Per-Impression/Thousand (CPI/M) / Pay-Per-Impression (PPI)

Pay-Per-Action (PPA) / Cost-Per-Action (CPA)

Individual Advertisers

CPC is the most common form of advertising these days. Ever notice those links on websites with "Ads by Google" somewhere pasted around them? Those are Adsense ads and they are CPC. Every click generates the site owner some money. Each click could generate a few cents, to tens, to hundreds(?) of dollars. There are restrictions, such as you can't have a page with just ads, you can't click on your own ads, and you can't coax, cajole, or otherwise entice your visitors to click on the ads... otherwise you can say bye bye to your account. From what I hear it's almost impossible to get unbanned from Google Adsense. But Google isn't the only CPC advertiser out there. Yahoo! got into the CPC game with Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture), and Microsoft very recently (2006) has been using Microsoft adCenter, which works the same way as the other two. There are also other similar ad services, like AdBrite. And don't forget banner ads that are PPC. In most cases, these are contextual ads, meaning they change dynamically to match the page's content.


CPM, or Cost-per-Thousand (M is the Roman numeral for 1000), is also fairly common. You get paid per impression or more commonly, per 1000 impressions. An impression is a "view," so for every 1000 people who view the ad, usually a banner, you get paid a certain amount. Obviously, this is a great idea for high-traffic websites, although in my experience, it was never as profitable as CPC or affiliate marketing.


PPA is great if you're the advertiser. Publishers are paid per action, which usually means signing up for something or using a search engine. Clicks don't cut it with PPA. It's harder to make money because surfers are generally a lazy bunch, but you're usually paid higher per action (high-paying keywords in PPC are the exception).


You can also get money directly from individuals for ad placements. This is actually a lot more common than most people think. Say you have a site with over 4 million unique visitors a month. A banner in a hotspot on your front page would be an attractive piece of virtual real estate for an advertiser. In most cases you would agree to a fixed price and keep the banner in place for a certain length of time (weeks to months). I wonder how much money MySpace is getting to host those ads at the top of every user page...

Affiliate Marketing – As Easy as it Sounds?

Originally written by Charlie Essmeier

The business world is competitive; that certainly will not surprise anyone, as it has always been that way. The introduction of the Internet as a tool of commerce has changed the nature of business, as the playing field is now more level than it has been previously. It may be hard for a small business to contend with a large storefront in the world of retail sales, but the Internet makes it easier for the small business and the big one to compete more fairly.

One of the most popular means of attracting paying customers to a Website or product is through affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, the company with the product to sell pays a commission to other advertisers, or affiliates, who send customers to the retailer. It's a win-win arrangement for everyone; the seller has customers sent his way and the affiliate gets a percentage of the sale for a small bit of work. Affiliate marketing has been promoted on quite a few Websites and in many books as a good way to make "quick cash". Is that the case?

Affiliate marketing is no easier or harder than any other business project. In order to make money using this technique, you must make effective use of the following:

Find a good product or service to sell. There are actually hundreds of products available for which the publisher will pay a percentage to affiliates. A lot of of these products are either software or electronic books. The products, the pricing, and the topics vary tremendously, so you should choose something that interests you.

You will certainly need a Website to advertise the product. Many people customers search for reviews of products prior to buying. Building a Website with accurate, current information about the product you are promoting will help attract paying customers.

Your Website will need promotion for people to find it. This is the hardest part of any Internet-based business, as marketing Websites is a significant industry unto itself. You can find loads of information about this topic by doing a Web search for either "search engine optimization" or "Website promotion."

It is certainly possible to make money through affiliate marketing, and a great number of people do so regularly. Like any other business endeavor, it requires a bit of time and effort to make it work. The rewards can be terrific, but like anything else you might do, the rewards are strictly related to how much work you are prepared to put into it.

©Copyright 2006 by Retro Marketing. Charles Essmeier is the owner of http://www.Retro-Marketing.com, a firm devoted to informational Websites, including http://www.seoelite-exposed.com, a site devoted to search engine optimization.

5 Essential Things You Must Find In A Winning Affiliate Program

It's very important you choose the right product to promote, as some aren't worth the trouble! A well-known affiliate Franck Silvestre gave me a few tips on how to find the perfect affiliate.

Many affiliate marketers don't make any significant amount of money online because they don't know what to look for in a good affiliate program.

It is sad because even if you promote like crazy, you will not make any money marketing an affiliate program with poor conversion rates.

Happily, once you know what to look for before you choose to promote your affiliate program, everything becomes easier.

Let's discover these five points right away...

Point #1 - High Conversion Rates.

The website you are promoting must display its conversion rates inside the affiliate members area. Don't waste your time with affiliate programs that don't take care of their affiliates, and don't help them to earn more money.

A great (or good enough) product plus a solid copy will get high conversion rates, and hence, more commissions for you.

Be sure that the merchant is continuously testing his website. Why? Because overtime, you will earn more affiliate commissions.

Be aware that video is quickly becoming a major element of sales page online, and even simple landing pages.

Point #2 - High Commission Rates.

Try to always chose the product with the highest commission rate. After all, you are here for the money. The goal of any business is to make more money.

Point #3 - High Quality Product.

Always over-deliver. Your customers must say wow, when they buy the products you recommended or endorsed. When this happens, they will buy more than one of your recommendation, but several of them overtime.

Video products sell very well, so you should pay close attention to them if you are not already marketing info-products.

Reason #4 - High Quality and Reliable Tracking System

You don't want to promote a winning product, and find out that commission were'nt tracked! So be sure to have a system in place to detect a problem, and make your research before you start your massive online advertising campaign.

So be sure to check that there is a

Reason #5 - Reliable Commission Payments Software.

You also want to be sure that you will receive your hard earned money (affiliate marketing is not so easy...).

The ideal solution is to be paid instantly. As an affiliate, the only system I know for this is the seven dollar secret system.

You are paid instantly into your paypal account when you make a sale! See an example here: http://www.makemoneyonlinehow.com.

Otherwise, being paid every two weeks is acceptable as well.

If you look for these five points before starting to promote your affiliate products, you will see a nice increase in your affiliate revenue, so do your home work.

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About the Author

Refine your marketing skills with Franck Silvestre, a Top affiliate. For the best affiliate marketing tools, and learn how to protect your affiliate links. Visit his blog now: affiliates blog for mo

How to Find a Niche

Finding a good niche is something of an art. I have a number of pointers that will help you out.

Research, research, research. If you’re going all out in one niche, finding the niche is the hardest part of the whole process. But this is also where a lot of people fail. They don’t think about how tight their niche is, or if it’s even profitable.

So where do you find niches? Everywhere. Niches are all over the place. Go into a bookstore or a magazine stand and look at all the niche magazines. Bodybuilding, women’s health, internet, computer gaming, business, trade magazines, etc. You can get a whole buttload of ideas from magazines. You can go online and see what’s hot nowadays. Check out Amazon.com and look for the top sellers. Just as I was talking about pets as a niche, I see that the sixth best selling magazine subscription in Home and Garden is The Bark, a magazine dedicated to dogs and their owners. It’s number one in the Animal Care & Pets subcategory. But it doesn’t stop at magazines. There are books, DVDs, tons of products representing many niches.

You can use eBay Pulse and their hot items list to find hot niches. All this will be much more important when developing an information product, which is the topic of one of my next articles coming up. The unfortunate thing about looking for the hottest niches is just that: they’re hot. You think you’re the only one marketing the booming knitting niche? This is where keyword research comes into play. With something like the Adwords Keyword Tool, you can see how popular certain search terms are with visitors and advertisers. You can also look at keyword trends at Google Trends to see if your niche is declining in popularity, has a seasonal cycle (I imagine Christmas-related niches don’t do so well January to October), or is getting a boost because of something in the news, which Google conveniently provides articles for. Perhaps you could find an untapped subniche in the knitting niche!

With respect to affiliate programs, you want to use keywords, examine the stats on ClickBank or Commission Junction or whatever you use, and see what sort of niche isn't very competitive. Sometimes a niche isn't competitive because people look over it, sometimes it isn't competitive because nobody knows how to make money in it, and sometimes it isn't competitive because it's waaaay to small, like a few hundred searches a month or less.

CLIFF NOTES

1. Niches are everywhere. Magazines, bookstores, television, etc.
2. See how competitive niches are by using AdWords tool, other keyword tools, looking at what kind of ads are up for your keywords, and affiliate program stats.
   

How to Get Traffic, Part 4: Web 2.0

This is the last post about traffic (for now!) and it's about using Web 2.0 to get surges of traffic.

But Web 2.0 is really a buzzword describing new user interactions on the web, and encompasses many aspects, from blogging to wikipedia. What it's really about is using things like social networking and social bookmarking. How does it work? Basically, you use a site like Digg, Slashdot, MySpace, or Reddit and link back to your site. You will get immediate exposure and if you do it right, you'll get floods of traffic.

How do you do it right? There is no easy way to go about it, and if you blatantly advertise your site, your link will be removed at the least. You must offer valuable content. Perhaps write an opinion piece. A sure-fire way to get all these people interested is if you write about a recent, controversial topic. As of this writing, Paris Hilton is serving time in jail. This is a highly publicized topic, and if you could develop a product or write something that would catch the eyes of these surfers, you will generate server-crashing loads of traffic. Speaking of Paris Hilton, there was in fact a fake news site stating that she committed suicide. I saw it posted on several sites I frequent, so I imagine it was getting a lot of exposure online. If that site was monetized in any way with ads, they definitely saw a nice little increase in revenue during that time.

That's just one example of how to capitalize on Web 2.0 traffic. The potential is huge, and Web 2.0 marketing in general is really a broad topic on its own.

How to Get Traffic, Part 3: PPC Advertising

Just a small blurb for this topic. There is a third major way of getting traffic. It can be very targeted, but expensive depending on the keywords. Notice the ads when you do a search on Google, Yahoo, or MSN Live? If you click one, the people who put them up have to pay some price, ranging from a few cents to tens or even over a hundred dollars.

This is a great way to get to the top of the search engine results without actually being listed as a search engine result. You can set your bids for certain keywords, and even set up negative keywords. So if you're selling keychains, you can set up "free" as a negative keyword, meaning if someone types in "free keychains" your site will NOT appear. Succeeding in PPC advertising depends how well you can write a very short ad, how well you can select good, cheap keywords, and how well you can turn that visitor into a customer when they arrive at your site!

How to Get Traffic, Part 2: Search Engines

Kjo përmbledhje nuk ofrohet. Kliko këtu për të shikuar postimin.

How to Get Traffic, Part 1: Links

Today I figure I would go over how to start getting traffic if you're just beginning in this business. First of all, you will need traffic no matter how you make money online. Second, you need to consider the quantity and quality of traffic.

Quantity and quality? Yes. In general, the more traffic you have, the better. The more targeted the traffic is, even BETTER! You want high volume, high quality traffic, however, you can sacrifice one over the other. If you're getting maybe a few hundred hits a day or a week or even a month, if it's very highly targeted you can make money. This will become even more clear when I discuss how to find a niche in another post.

So how do you get traffic? Depends what you're doing. For almost any kind of full-blown website you can submit to many web directories and get your site listed. Here is a short list of directories you can submit to:

http://www.dmoz.org
http://www.siteranking.com
http://www.mostpopularsites.com
http://www.lii.org
http://www.illumirate.com
http://addaurl.info
http://www.7cd.us
http://www.999pro.com
http://www.a1directorysearch.com
http://www.bhanvad.com
http://www.searchsight.com
http://dir.yahoo.com
http://9ug.com
http://www.360webdirectory.com

They are all free to submit to, but there is usually an option to pay for a faster listing or to give your link a higher priority over the others (leading to higher exposure and more traffic). Do a Google, Yahoo, or MSN Live search for more directories. There are literally hundreds!

If you have a blog, you can submit it to these special blog directories. They only accept blogs so don't submit your other sites!

http://www.bloggernity.com
http://www.blogcatalog.com
http://www.blogarama.com
http://www.addurlblog.com
http://www.globeofblogs.com
http://www.bloguniverse.com
http://www.blogsearchengine.com
http://findingblog.com
http://emarketingblogs.com
http://www.bloggeries.com
http://www.blogexplosion.com/directory/
http://www.blogoozle.com
http://www.bloggapedia.com
http://www.blogtagstic.com
http://www.blogbunch.com
http://theblogresource.com
http://www.myblog2u.com
http://www.bloghop.com
http://www.lsblogs.com
http://blogcarnival.com

These are all free. The last one, blogcarnival.com, is a directory of blog carnivals. At these blog carnivals, bloggers get together and submit their articles on a particular topic, not unlike a publication where you have various articles by contributing authors.

Another way you can get traffic is by trading links with other webmasters. Go around on forums where there are other like-minded webmasters or even contact site owners directly and see if you can put each other's links on your websites.

So this concludes Part 1 on how to get traffic. I'm already working on Part 2, which talks about Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.

Affiliate Marketing 101

I talked about how I got my start in affiliate marketing. What is affiliate marketing?

Essentially, you are pushing, pitching, selling someone else's product. But you don't deal with the customers. You don't deal with shipping and handling. You don't deal with any of that. All you do is refer the customers to them, and if they buy the product or whatever they sell on their website, you get a cut of the sale! Some important skills you should hone to blast the competition away as an affiliate include copywriting and persuasion. This gets much more important if you are shamelessly plugging someone's product. Fortunately there are ways to not be so "in your face" and gently lead a potential customer to their website.

What kind of affiliate programs are there? How do you sign up? It's easy. There is affiliate program for almost any product or service out there that is advertised on the internet. Here are four big sites where you can promote a whole smörgåsbord of products. All affiliate programs are free to sign up for, since you are essentially being "hired" to sell their products.

Amazon.com's Associate Program
If you sign up for this program, you will have access to promoting every single product on Amazon! Because these are all physical products, your cut will be lower (generally below 20%, often below 10% per sale), so I would focus on selling more expensive items, especially if you are using paid advertising.

Commission Junction
This is probably the best place to go to promote physical items and services. Many large companies host their affiliate program here. From airline tickets to insurance companies, CJ.com has it all. It's trusted and will definitely be around for a long time.

ClickBank
This is the mother of all affiliate program sites. There are literally thousands of affiliate programs here, and it's incredibly easy to sign up for them. These products are all or mostly digital products, meaning there is no "real" manufacturing, shipping, and handling costs. This means you get a much bigger piece of the action. Most products give you a 50% share or higher on every sale. If you develop your own product, you can set up your own affiliate program and get people to refer potential customers to you.

Paydotcom
This is a new, up and coming affiliate program site. It's a lot like ClickBank, but hosts a number of different affiliate programs. Highly recommended.

There are literally thousands of affiliate programs out there. Visit most sites and you will find one (look for "affiliate" or "webmasters" somewhere on the site).

2 Mistakes People Make When Starting to Make Money Online

People starting out in this sort of business make two fatal mistakes... or rather, one fatal assumption and one mistake.

The fatal assumption is that making money online is easy. No! It's not easy. Making money online is easy to get into. Anybody with a computer and internet access can tap into the vast wealth of the internet. If you're dirt poor you can still use various free methods to start earning money online. It'll be harder, but it's not impossible. Remember, making money online involves selling or pitching something to the largest market in the world. It's easy to enter that market, but it's hard making a dent. Especially when you start out. And this is where people give up, sadly. Stick through it and keep learning the ropes and you will see money. It took me over 4 months before I saw my first check, and I've been receiving checks and bank deposits ever since.

Now, the mistake people make is jumping into so many things, starting so many projects at once. There are literally dozens of ways to make money on the internet, and you could split those into dozens more strategies and techniques. People become overwhelmed. I was doing affiliate marketing and a little bit of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising for those 4 months. If I had jumped into MySpace or Facebook marketing, adult webmastering (which includes blogs, TGPs, galleries, linkdumps, freesites, etc.), or anything else, I'd be doing too many things at once, I would have never seen a check, and I would've given up.

But don't put all your eggs in one basket. If you're making money with a blog, set up more than one once you start making money with the first. Maybe dabble into affiliate marketing. Vesting your financial future into only one website is too risky. Once you get a foothold in this business, expand!

Prologue: What's so good about making money online?

Imagine, waking up whenever you want, lying in bed at noon. You prop yourself up, your back still lying on top of your fluffy white pillows, and you grab your laptop from your bedside table. You turn it on and you're instantly connected to the internet wirelessly. You go online and find out that you made $145.82 while you were sleeping. You then begin to work, in bed, for a few hours, and then spend the rest of your day doing what you want.

This is what happened to me when I first started making money online. Unfortunately, it isn't always like this, and although it's very easy to get into, it takes dedication to get to the point where you work only a few hours a day or less.

A few hours a day or less!?

Yep. And it's not wishful thinking. Depending what sort of work you do online, you can setup systems that will work for you. If you are an affiliate marketer, your sales copy, your pitch, is your 24-hour, 7-day a week salesman who will work tirelessly for you. If you run ads, they will run while you sleep. If you're doing more "traditional" e-commerce, your online store will take orders while you relax, sleep, eat, play with your kids, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is why people who do this fulltime eventually have more time on their hands than when they had a job with paid vacation, holidays, etc.

Now imagine yourself on the beach, somewhere in the Caribbean, or perhaps a Mediterranean island, or perhaps in some exotic place on Earth. You have your laptop by your side, connected via satellite internet, and the screen is updating your earnings every minute. While you lay out in the sun, you're earning hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Not many people get to this point, but it is very possible for many internet entrepreneurs. So what is so good about making money online in a nutshell?

• you can work anywhere and everywhere in the world there is a computer and an internet connection
• what you put out on the web stays there when you're not online, and will work for you like a fulltime salesman, manager, etc. while you sleep
• earnings can be directly deposited into your bank account, so you don't have to deal with checks from dozens of streams of income
• at first you have to work hard, but once you set up streams of automatic or near-automatic income, you can spend less time working and more time doing what you love

The internet is the largest global market the world has ever seen, millions more people are connecting to the internet every year. This means your income potential is virtually without limit.