Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Surviving a Financial Crisis


It’s been said that money makes the world go ‘round.  But when a financial crisis strikes, your life doesn’t have to stop in its tracks.  You just need to be responsible with your finances in order to survive in the event of an economic depression.
In a financial crisis, the key to survival is to save.  Start a savings and investment account and put money into it regularly.  When you get your paycheck, set aside the amount needed for your daily expenses and deposit the rest to your account.  If you get a bonus, rather than blowing it all off, save at least half of it for your account.  Even keeping a piggy bank at home can be useful.  Collect the change that you have each day and drop them into the piggy bank, and then you can take all the change that you’ve collected in a month and deposit them to your savings.  As they say, every little bit helps.
Unemployment is one of the major problems that you might encounter during times of economic turmoil.  In such an event, it is good to have an emergency fund saved up to live on should you happen to lose your job.  Ideally, you should have 3 months worth of your income set aside.  If you cut down on your expenditures, you should be able to survive on this much money for about 4 to 6 months until you can get back on your feet.  However, it is advisable that you don’t put this fund into a single investment vehicle.  As the saying goes, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.  Placing money in several types of investment vehicles exposes you to various ways of investing, allowing you to understand which ones yield low and high interest rates.  It is also advisable to save or invest in different financial institutions as there are institutions that shut down during a financial crisis.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Subliminal Message – How to Join Contests to Win Money and Bring Home the Cash


Subliminal Message – How to Join Contests to Win Money and Bring Home the Cash

Want to get some money fast? What’s the faster way of getting money than winning it in a contest? You don’t even have to work for it.
Subliminal Message - How to Join Contests to Win Money and Bring Home the Cash
Subliminal Message - How to Join Contests to Win Money and Bring Home the Cash
There are a lot of contests to win money these days. However, a lot of people miss out on what could possibly be the chance of a lifetime to become the instant millionaire they’ve always dreamed of becoming just because they didn’t take the chance. Joining contests to win money is worth the little time they usually take, especially if you apply these money-winning tips:
1. Change your mindset about contest odds. Most people walk away from the chances to win money because they think the odds of them winning are too small. But how can you really tell that? A lot of people hope to win the lottery, but they don’t even try buying a ticket because they think they won’t win. The question is, how do you know you can’t win?
The first step is to not focus on the odds and to actually join the contests. Your chance of winning grows the moment you go out to buy an entry into the contests. If it grows by 1%, that’s still way better than the 0% you get when you don’t buy an entry.
2. Attract it with positive thinking. Now that you have a ticket, all you have to do is attract victory to yourself.
Do you know that your mind can attract anything into your life? When you buy a ticket or enter a contest to win money, you are just setting the wheels in motion, but at least you’re getting started. Now, all you have to do is wait and attract victory into your life with positive thinking. This is what the law of attraction states. Your mind holds the power to bring anything you want into reality. All you have to do is attract your desires with positive thoughts.
When you enter a contest to win money, just how much do you believe you can win? If there are people who don’t buy tickets at all, there are some who buy tickets but only have the faintest belief in their winning the contest. That’s even worse than not buying a ticket at all. So if you buy a ticket, make sure to fully believe you can and will win.
3. Get rid of your doubts. The question is, how can you plant this belief into your naturally doubtful mind?
The truth is, your mind is not naturally doubtful. It is naturally powerful. Unfortunately, it has been programmed to think doubtfully because of the negative feedback it receives from society. What’s this negative feedback? Haven’t you noticed how the society programs us to think that we need to work our heads off to earn money? That’s why we don’t easily believe in our chances of simply winning money without doing anything to earn it.
But the natural power of the mind says that we can get anything as long as we focus the power of our mind on it 100%. To harness that natural power, you first have to remove the negative beliefs and doubts that have accumulated in your mind.
To do this, you can use positive affirmations or subliminal messages. These are messages designed to communicate with the subconscious. The subconscious is what powers our belief systems. This is where the mind’s power lies, and this is also where all the negative feedback from outside accumulate. The purpose of the subliminal messages is to overwrite the negative thoughts and beliefs in the subconscious, with positive thoughts like:
I am going to win this contest.
Winning comes naturally to me.
I am grateful for winning money in a contest.
I attract victory.
I am focused on winning.
I regularly win.
Nelson Berry is the Pioneer of Subliminal Video and Subliminal Audio Subliminal Messages.
Click either link to get 4 Free Subliminal Video Downloads (valued at $160). Click now.:)

Saturday, July 14, 2012

How to Easily Set Up Your Own Online Store


By Tricia Dickson

BTH webmaster message: Nowadays, it's so easy to setup your own online store. There are many sites that will have a store setup for you with a few clicks. But I would warn you that many many other people are doing the same thing, and this leads to unbelievable competition. So the hard part is not setting up an online store, it's marketing your store. I would advise, before you setup an online store, to do some learning in Web Marketing.

As the internet becomes a more and more integral part of our daily lives, the eCommerce sector is growing exponentially. Whether you already have a business that you want to take online, or you're looking to start up a new company, your store front will be one of the most important aspects of your business. Setting up a store might seem daunting at first, but if you follow the easy steps outlined in this article, your company will be online in no time.

Start with deciding what you're selling. You should consider narrowing your scope to capture a niche market, however, not so narrow that it's hard to find customers. For example, if you are thinking of selling books, selling vintage books might be a better option. On the other hand, only selling 17th century Mongolian ghost stories probably won't take you very far. If you are serious about your online store, you will probably spend a lot of time constructing and tweaking your website and especially marketing it, so choose something you have some interest in.

Next you need to decide what kind of store you need. There are a ton of options out there, so before you choose you should sit down and decide exactly what features you do and do not want in an online store. There are 3 main types of sites you can choose from, which are explained below:

A. If you're looking for something more low maintenance and don't want to deal with the hassle of supplying and shipping your own inventory there are numerous large websites that will let you set up a more specialized store selling their products for a commission.

B. If you want to supply your own inventory and you're willing to pay a monthly fee there are multiple options. Most have a ton of features and start at about $40 a month plus a set up fee of $50 and sometimes even transaction fees at around 1.5-3 percent. If you are going to pay a monthly fee, make sure to do a lot of research first.

Make sure the site is easy to use and organize, because if you decide you want to switch sites later, you'll have wasted that money. Also, when choosing a site with a transaction fee, consider your profit margins, as they are based of total price of the item, not your net profit.

C. If you want to supply your own inventory and don't want to pay a monthly fee, or you want to get your feet wet before committing so a monthly program, you should look for a site that is 100 percent free (no monthly fees, transactions fees or hidden charges), and has an upgrade option. This way, you can get your store up and running, earn some profits, and get used to the site before deciding if you want to pay for extra features.

It's win-win because if you decide you never want to pay for it, you don't have to, and if you decide you need the extra features you don't have to go through the giant headache of moving stores. If you do the legwork, you can find a free hosting service in which the standard store is already feature rich and very user friendly, thus providing a great entryway into eCommerce.

Once you have chosen your hosting service, you need to set up your store. This is where the work comes in. You'll need to get all of your details together and sit down and fill out all of the necessary information. All of the above mentioned sites are easy to use and don't require much tech savvy.

Enter all your products, payment options, shipping options, applicable taxes, etc first. Check and double check them; it doesn't matter how good your site looks if the customers can't use it. That being said, it is extremely important how your site looks. Obviously, you need to make sure it is professional and aesthetically pleasing, however, you also want to make sure it is easy to navigate and find products.

You should organize all of your products into intuitive categories and sub categories. If your hosting site has "featured products" or "best selling products" options, you should set those up as well. You should visit your store front often and try to navigate yourself frequently during the set up process. Having friends and family test it out can also be quite helpful in figuring out any problems with your layout or checkout process.

One of the most important aspects of this whole process is marketing your store. There are a lot of stores out there, so make sure to market, market, market. An online store is not like physical store where people will just pass by on their way to other things even if you aren't advertising. You will need to make sure to use a lot of keywords in your store text and create many backlinks (links to your store from other sites) in order to drum up traffic and move your way up the search engine results.

First you should research keywords by searching for them in Google or Yahoo! or your search engine of choice and gauging the popularity of the keyword. If it gets millions of hits in .25 seconds, it's going to be very hard to climb up the results and get your store seen. At the same time, if it gets 4 hits, odds are you aren't going to drum up much business that way either, so be sure to choose a happy medium. Once you choose your keywords, be sure to use them!

Blogging is a great way to do this, especially if you are posting relevant, interesting posts and not just advertisements. For example, if you have a vintage book store, you might have a blog where you discuss interesting passages or tidbits or articles about vintage books with links back to your store. Make sure to use your target keywords in your blog frequently. You'll also want to get as many subscribers as possible and try to get as many people as possible to link back to you.

Now that you have your store all set up and a steady stream of customers, make sure to keep it maintained! You want your customers to keep coming back, so update your inventory and featured products regularly.

You'll also want to update your keywords to make them more effective. To do this, sign up for a service such as Google Analytics so you can see what people searched to get to your site. From there you can see which keywords are working and which ones aren't and tweak your keywords accordingly!

Tricia Dickson works at MiiDuu.com and has helped countless people with their own free online stores, which can be created in just minutes! MiiDuu.com offers customers 100 percent free online stores without requiring advanced internet knowledge. MiiDuu.com in in the business of providing to solutions for all of your eCommerce needs, and we take care of business so you can focus on yours. To get started in eCommerce visitMiiduu.com today!

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Fraud, Chargebacks, And How They Affect Your Online Business


by Vladimir Tuporshin

Online merchants all over the world have to deal with fraudsters who are trying to steal their products or services through bank or credit card fraud.

When a purchase has been made by a customer, and you have received the so-called "authorization" from your credit card processor, it would seem logical simply to deliver the purchased items. Unfortunately, that is not true.

Never forget that the "customer" may well be a fraudster who has entered other person's payment credentials attempting to purchase the product or service with someone else's money. The victim whose bank card has been used for such fraudulent payments will file a claim to his⁄her bank to have the illegally withdrawn funds returned to his⁄her account. This return of funds becomes a chargeback to the merchant whose product was stolen by illegal use of the bank card.

Banks initiate chargebacks to merchants after receiving documentation from cardholders that specific transactions were fraudulent. Funds are then withdrawn from the seller's merchant account to be returned to the cardholder. In this way banks and payment systems protect customers from unscrupulous online sellers and unauthorized use of their bank cards. In addition to reversal of fraudulent payments, online merchants are assessed an additional fee by their own processing banks.

Although it is the online merchants who pay very high fees to credit card processors and banks, these companies offer no protection or assistance to merchants, who have had their products or services stolen. Instead, the banks add insult to injury by adding the chargeback fees which increases sellers' losses. Automatic detection software offered by banks and card processors is ineffective; e.g., it notifies sellers of multiple card attempts long after the merchant has already identified that issue.

The biggest danger is that if a company's business results in a large number of chargebacks during some arbitrary period of time, its bank or credit card processor may refuse to accept bank card payments to the merchant. You, the online merchant, are then out of business.

For these reasons, we recommend verifying bank card payments before completing any online purchase order. The person(s) responsible for this process should be fully aware of how important verification of online payments is to the success and even the survival of your online business. It is essential to pay close attention to all orders paid using bank cards or via PayPal so that ordered products and services are provided only to genuine customers.

Below are some statistics which we have collected over the past five years from our clients. Data is based on an analysis of 16,793 transactions.

6.17 percent (1048 of 16973) orders were flagged as suspicious and customers were requested to provide copies of identification documents.

Over 46 percent (486 of 1048) of suspicious payment attempts turned out to be fraudulent. Among them is a minor portion of genuine customers who refused to send copies of documents as a proof of a valid transaction. Some of those clients later emailed to explain their refusal; however, most of those who did not respond to verification requests are definitely fraudsters who were using stolen bank card data.

Nearly 2 percent of orders (11 of 562) for which copies of identification documents were sent still resulted in chargebacks. This group includes fraudsters who have physically stolen somebody's bank card and⁄or its photo image and so-called chargeback fraudsters.

The latter type of thief may pay for their order and receive the ordered product (mostly intangible such as software or media files) but then request a chargeback claiming they did not order that product, and that their bank card must have been fraudulently used by a third-party "hacker".

A reliable way to counteract such behavior is to store information about access to the purchased products. If a seller has solid proof of such access, he can win a counterclaim against such chargeback fraudsters.0.67 percent of orders (107 of 15925) were shipped without verification requests to customers, who later turned out to be fraudsters.

Such fraud cases are very difficult to battle, because these transactions look very similar to those of genuine customers. As experience is gained from processing more and more payments, this type of chargeback steadily declines. From our perspective, this is a cost incurred as an inevitable consequence of our loyalty and service to our genuine customers.

As a final note to the above statistics, I would like to point out that, without payment verification in place, there would have been 604 chargebacks in the same period. That equates to 3.56 percent of the total number of orders paid using bank cards (16,973), and would have been five times as high as the actual percentage of chargebacks — 0.7 percent (118 of 16,973).

This article was written by Mr. Vladimir N.Tuporshin, founder of WebAsyst and several other software development companies during a successful career spanning more than 20 years. Sign up for free online versions of his practical and useful applications which can help you manage your business effectively.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

A Primer On The Many Ways To Make Money Online


by John Maynard Garcia

There are many ways by which you could earn money online. There are ways that could earn for you a lot of profit at a relatively short period of time. There are ways that would require a gestation period that would take a little more time to pay off. There are ways that would require a lot of work. There are ways that would afford you a lot of time to relax, but would be just as profitable, if not even more.

Naturally, the popular option would be those opportunities that would demand less from you but would promise more rewards. Yes, these opportunities exist, but are they the right ones for you? That remains to be seen, though by the end of these lessons, you'll be armed with everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, you need to know to succeed in whatever online field you will decide to pursue.
“ the internet opens the way to a global market
The fact is, the opportunity you will choose must be complemented by your own skills, your own passion and your own interests. Loving your work would make the latter less onerous, after all, and this would result in a more fulfilling experience for you. More importantly, loving your work would make you more committed to your field, and this would result in better products and better production for you.

But before we could study your skills, we should first study the online opportunities that you could choose from. Here are some very profitable moneymaking options on the internet:

1. Telecommuting. Telecommuting is like working for your employer. The difference is that you could work from the comforts of your own home. You won't have to spend for transportation. You won't have to deal with nosy and irritating officemates. You won't have to settle for claustrophobia-inducing cubicles.

Whatever the employer will ask you to do, and whatever is included in your job description, you could carry out from your own home, thanks to the wonders of modern technology. All you need, really, are a computer, a phone line, a reliable internet connection, and in certain instances, a fax machine.

2. Selling your services. Whether you're proficient with writing, graphic design, web design, programming, and the likes, you will always find some clients for what you could offer.

Remember, the internet opens the way to a global market. Yes, the entire world is a well of potential clients! If you can do what they need to be done, then rest assured that you'll be in business for a long, long time.

3. Selling your own tangible products. You could sell some physical goods online. Whether they're something that you create yourself, or something that you have bought from suppliers and you wish to trade for a higher price, the internet will forever be a channel where you could peddle your goods to a worldwide market.

You could sell them through your own website, or through some established auctions sites like www.ebay.com , where millions of dollars exchange hands every single day without fail.

4. Selling information products. I could discuss this forever, and I will never be able to convey the amazing potentials of this option. The internet is called the information superhighway for a reason. It's because information fuels the various processes online.

If you have information that other people would need, then you'll be doing good - nay - great business. And the fact that information is cost-effective to create into distributable form, and the fact that information can easily be distributed through online channels, makes this very commodity the most lucrative product for an online undertaking.

5. Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing. With the advent of Google AdSense, the online world changed. Many even attribute the web's fantastic recovery from the dot com bubble burst early into the millennium to the introduction of PPC programs, led by Google's moneymaking offer.

Today, a lot of webmasters create hundreds upon hundreds of websites, EACH, with all of them imbued with the PPC code that earn as much as $25,000 in earnings per month. But don't be misled by such a high end statistic, as such is quite rare and is reserved for the best and most experienced PPC veterans. $400 to $4,000 would be a more realistic goal when it comes to this opportunity.

6. Affiliate programs. Many claim that affiliate programs are the quickest and most efficient way of making a living online, and it's true. There are no enrollment expenses, and you won't have to take care of processing payments, providing technical support, and delivering the products that must be sold. All you have to do is to pre-sell an affiliate merchant's products and you'd stand to earn the most generous commissions possible, in the range of 20 percent to 95 percent per sale.

These three options are perhaps the most profitable opportunities available for you. They, together with the other options discussed in the previous lesson, will be discussed in full details in the coming days. But most of our focus would revolve around these three opportunities, as I believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are the best choices towards online prominence and prosperity.

There are other options, of course, like product creation, resale rights marketing, joint ventures and the likes, but they are merely incidental to the above. But let's leave those for subsequent articles, shall we?

John Maynard Garcia is a lawyer, a freelance writer and NETrepreneur. He left a rewarding legal career to pursue an even more promising career in internet marketing. He offers free lessons on how to make money - REAL money - , online in his blog.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

101 Proven Ways to Make Money Online Starting Today


By Khanum Khatun


In this article I've collected 101 tips to make money online. Each of them is real and proven. Best of all, you can apply some of them and earn quick cash just today.

1. Try new business opportunities which offer various gifts, discounts and even cash as a sign-up bonus.
2. Join all-in-one business opportunity (offering you a FREE website + special guides, tutorials, business tools and software, as well as marketing tools) so that you can make money asap.
3. Sell various stuffs on e-bay.
4. Create a list and make money by selling numerous products and services to your subscribers.
5. Join high-paying affiliate programs and start to earn your commissions.
6. Join a business opportunity that also involves one-on-one mentoring to guarantee your success.
7. Create and sell your own info-product over and over
8. Write and sell articles.
9. Create and sell websites .
10. Offer article submission service on forums.
11. Sell your SEO service.
12. Offer advertising service.
13. Offer internet marketing service.
14. Get an online store and start selling various stuff.
15. Create a blog and earn from Google AdSense adding fresh content every day.
16. Transcript audio files.
17. Translate from one language into another
18. Offer a newsletter creation for business people.
19. Give away freebies, especially free e-books, reports, DVDs on your website and make money with such huge traffic in various ways.
20. Offer your coaching at the area of your interest and expertise.
21. Become a regular blogger or columnist for magazines⁄newspapers.
22. Visit "Wanted" threads of the most popular forums with high-traffic and offer your service to forum members.
23. Get Free or cheap ebooks with resell rights and sell them for expensive.
24. Create a blog, generate good traffic and start selling advertisement places on it.
25. Create a paid membership site on any niche.
26. Earn on writing product reviews for special sites that pay for it.
27. Answer others questions and earn some quick cash on special sites.
28. Create a paid newsletter with valuable information.
29. Read some free valuable copywriting resources and become a copywriter offering a sales letter writing service.
30. Write for some sites (helium, squidoo etc.) and get paid based on revenue share from Adsense.
31. Write and submit articles to special sites like associatedcontent.com and get paid on average $3 - 10 per article.
32. Get paid to submit blog posts in some directories such as CreamAid.com.
33. Write a short tip for DayTipper.com and earn $3 per tip every day.
34. Get paid for advertising of websites, products and services from Blogsvertise.com in your blog.
35. Sell advertising links on your blog if you generate good traffic.
36. Display Yahoo ads on your blog⁄website and get paid.
37. Place Amazon's products on your site and earn up to 10 percent per every sale.
38. Start your own Cafépress.com store and earn affiliate commissions by selling your personally branded products.
39. Make money selling vital software for business people.
40. Become a virtual assistant at home, spending more time with your family.
41. Make money online, posting in get-paid forums.
42. Earn money online uploading and sharing your pictures on special sites that pay for it.
43. Make money per view of your videos on sites such as YouTube.com.
44. Earn money for voting on special sites paying for it.
45. Get paid to search on sites paying for it.
46. Buy domain names for cheap and sell for expensive.
47. Sell original digital photographs online.
48. Find jobs for your friends and get paid for connecting your friend and employer.
49. Create a directory for listing websites and find webmasters ready to pay for getting listed on your site.
50. Build your list and sell your subscribers various products and services.
51. Create article directory and earn in various ways (from advertisement to Google AdSense).
52. Put RSS Feed Ads on your blog.
53. Create a paid private forum providing real value for your members
54. Sell Templates or WordPress Themes online.
55. Offer Consulting and other related services.
56. Write a business plan.
57. Open your own company and offer your service online.
58. Join social media websites and get paid via revenue-sharing system for participating in their community.
59. Create an auction site and earn commissions from both buyers and sellers.
60. Create a freelancing site where buyers and sellers will pay to post their projects.
61. Give online lessons at the area of your expertise, for example English, German or any other field.
62. Sell signature links on forums with high traffic.
63. Write press-releases for business people.
64. Sell ad places on your newsletter or ezine.
65. Become an online beauty consultant for popular cosmetics companies.
66. Become an online salesperson for individuals or companies.
67. Get paid to fill in surveys for sites ready to pay for your opinions.
68. If you are a programmer, create a hot-demand script⁄software and sell it online.
69. If you are a web designer, create logos or banners and sell them, or take orders on special forums.
70. Write a software review and get paid up to $50 on sites like SoftwareJudge.Com.
71. Offer news submission service to social networking sites.
72. If you have copywriting ability, write for others Google ads for $5-10 each.
73. Turn your hobby into an online⁄home based business.
74. Join high-paying referral programs and get paid for telling about it to your friends.
75. Get paid to read email.
76. Earn some commissions by offering exchange service of e-currencies.
77. Work at home as a forum moderator.
78. Work as an online admin from home.
79. Create videos on various hot niches and sell them.
80. Offer research service and determine your rates per project
81. Create a huge list of valuable directories or etc. that cannot be found online all together and sell it to webmasters as well as all business people who need it.
82. Write tutorials and guides on the area of your expertise and sell them at the price you want
83. Get hired to add daily news to blogs on various niches.
84. Get hired for posting on blogs on daily basis.
85. Get paid for uploading videos, files or some other stuff for individual website owners. You can find tons of such jobs in forums.
86. Get paid for commenting on bloggers sites, search for such jobs in forums, communities, etc.
87. Offer link submission service which you can automate thanks to special software.
88. Get paid for putting others AdSense code on your blog⁄site
89. Offer directory submission service (for example to Yahoo directory)
90. Look for fast copy-paste jobs that many forums members offer in the Marketplace thread and earn quick $5-10 an hour.
91. Offer promotion, especially for traffic generation service for blogs⁄sites and get paid.
92. Start a podcast and make money from ads.
93. Become a link broker connecting people who want to buy quality links for their websites with those who want to sell them.
94. Get paid $5-10 for any quick Photoshop job. You can find a large variety of such offers waiting on forums
95. Buy profitable websites even with income $5 a day and work on them. Then sell for more expensive price. Look at marketplace.sitepoint.com for such profitable ready websites.
96. If you are good with Photoshop, design T-shirt and sell it, or take orders from interested people.
97. Get paid for data entry jobs you can find on freelancing sites or various forums.
98. Test various products at home and get paid for it by many companies.
99. Create various templates⁄themes for Joomla, Wordpress, etc and sell them separately or as a pack.
100. If you don't have any valuable information or skills to create your own e-book, just search for free 101 tips how to ... and compile them into a hot-demand report.
101. Get free samples, trials or gift cards on various freebie sites or freebie threads of forums and then sell this stuff online.
Of course, you can benefit such a huge list and earn some cash starting just today. But if you prefer getting in a long-term steady income (at least $100-300 a day), then you should try most popular money making method of today - affiliate marketing and selling info-products.
Both of these above listed methods are very profitable but require a bit more patience and intensive marketing from which beginners may become frustrated.

If you want to succeed from your first day without making any errors and losing your valuable time then just go to Best Home Business Tips For Stay At Home Moms and subscribe to my FREE ($47 value) e-course that is really proven way not to fail as a beginner.

Friday, July 6, 2012

Top Seven Ways to Make Money Online


by Alan Liew

So you are ready to make money online. This article will show you several ways of making money online to help you find out which money making opportunities are right for you.

Google AdSense
It is getting more and more people like to make money with AdSense through a website. Creating an AdSense site is not difficult as there are a number of site builders allow people to build websites without programming knowledge and skills. To generate Adsense revenue from your website you need visitors. The more people visit your site, the higher your AdSense earning will be.

eBay Business
Have a lot of old stuff or unwanted things? Why not sell them on ebay and make some extra money. If you need to make more profit by selling a wide variety of products, here's how you can find products for reselling on ebay:

1. Buy from flea market.
2. Deal with wholesaler or dropship wholesaler.

Virtual Assistance
If you like to have a work at home job, consider becoming a virtual assistance. A virtual assistance work at home for a company or a business. The tasks of virtual assistances may include data entry, administrative works, book keeping, handling customers enquiries, issuing bills and many more. The pay rate of virtual assistances usually anywhere between $5 to $50 per hour.

Blog
Blog is often being as a personal diary. You can anything to your blog as long as the content is legal and ethical. So how to make money with a blog? Below are some of the ways:

1. Sell your own product using a blog.
2. Promote affiliate programs on your blog.
3. Host Google Ads and earn AdSense revenue.

Your success will depend on the popularity of your blog. The more reader read your blog, the more money you will make.

Affiliate Marketing Business

Affiliates make money by selling other people stuff. To generate sales, you need to drive potential buyers to your merchant's website. There are several methods you can use to send potential buyers to your merchant's site:

1. Open a Google AdWords account to advertise on Google.
2. Build an opt-in subscriber list through a website or blog and promote your affiliate products to your subscribers.
3. Article marketing.


Get Paid to Sign up Offers
Need an easy way of making money online? Joining Treasuretrooper.com free start earning cash by completing companies offers and building your downline. Most of the paid offers are available to US residents only. International members can still make money by referring new members.

Forex Trading
It is interesting to trade currencies. There are many technical tools you can use to form your own trading system and strategy. You can achieve high return month by month if your trading techniques consistently predict the market movement accurately. However forex investment involves high degree of risks. So it is not suitable for everyone. When trading forex, you should investment only the amount you afford to lose.

Alan Liew is the webmaster of Make Money Online which provides information, tips and ideas of how to make money online. You can also visit his blog to find out more ways to make money online.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

How to Make Money With a Content Web Site


By B Hopkins


Content is king on the Internet today and there can be much more to it than just throwing up a bunch of articles on your web site and hoping that you receive a ton of traffic from the search engines. The purpose of taking all of that time to create a content web site in the first place is to create a site that is an authority site in whatever specific niche that you have the most interest.

When your site becomes an authority site in your niche, your traffic will increase automatically. For one thing, people will automatically link to your website as a reference site. In order for this to happen, your web site can't be created from spammy "software spun" articles stuffed with keywords. No one will link to those kinds of sites other than to tell people to avoid them. The content on your site must:

1. provide value,
2. solve a problem,
3. answer a question,
4. be a one-stop resource for general information in the niche of your choice,
5. be trustworthy

Even before your web site has become established as an authority site, you can begin making money with your web site. You can earn revenue with a number of different revenue streams that are available. You can earn revenue with adsense, by promoting affiliate products, selling ad space on your website, selling your own products and services, or using your site to generate leads to sell to other business in your niche. Each method has a different strategy, but you can use multiple strategies on your website to maximize the traffic you get to your website.

The easiest thing to do first on your website, is to place adsense and text link ads on your content pages. You can begin making some immediate income using this method, however unless you are receiving a minimum of 200-300 unique visitors a day, don't expect to be able to earn a life-status changing amount of money with adsense. In the beginning, you could make enough to probably pay for your hosting and paying for someone to write articles for you. The same goes for the text link ads. One of the text link ad programs that are available is Kontera, and now Amazon has a text link ad program.

The next step would be to pick a well paying affiliate program and promote that on your website. You can easily do this by writing an article related to the affiliate program and placing your affiliate link in the article. A good place to start for most beginners is Clickbank. There is an information product in just about every niche that you could promote in Clickbank.

Another thing you can do to promote your affiliate product is to write a review about the affiliate product you are promoting. Make it a genuine review, so it should be a product you have used before and have had a good experience with it. If your visitors feel as if you are gaming them through great reviews of crappy products, then you won't build up an authority site. Another feature of authority sites is that they have integrity to them. People trust authority sites, so your site should be trustworthy.

These steps are a good place to start. Once you have implemented these methods to where you are making a good monthly income, you will want to begin to explore other areas of generating income with your authority web site such as lead generation, and selling your own products / services.

B. Hopkins has been written many articles about the Internet and provides Internet Business Strategies to businesses. Get a good review on a top notch service that shows you how to create an authority site from scratch. Get more info on how to make money with your articles with this article marketing resource.

Monday, July 2, 2012

Distribution Decisions - Drop Shipping or Inventory or Fulfillment House?


by Gary Granai


Selling products on the Internet is easy. Hundreds of thousands of people do it every day. The most difficult part of Internet sales is getting the products delivered to the customer, otherwise known as order fulfillment. Running a fulfillment system is a full time and trying job.

The Solutions
Here is a discussion of the problem and some solutions for you.
There are three basic systems - fulfillment systems - that you can use to get products to your buyers.

Inventory Model - You buy the inventory, store it in your warehouse (basement, garage, building) and ship it to your customers.

Fulfillment House - You buy the inventory and store it in someone else's warehouse. That someone else also does the shipping for you.

Drop Shipping Model - The drop shipper has the inventory. You just sell, get paid, keep the profits and send the order to the drop shipper who has bought the inventory and does the shipping for you.

Inventory Model
This is the method used by most small retailers. They order inventory from a manufacturer or distributor and store it in a place that they control. This business model has advantages:

You can ship products immediately because you have total control. The faster you can turn around the order, the more impressed your customer is, and the better chance you have of getting him back the next time.

You can provide excellent customer service. In case of a problem, you will have all the records at your fingertips to trace the order and make a correction.
The Inventory Method, of course, has its disadvantages, too:

You need the cash to buy and store inventory. Regardless of the size of your company, you never have enough cash to do everything. So tying up money in inventory that sits on your shelves can limit your growth.

Paid for inventory can sit on your shelves, tying up capital. When you own the inventory, you also own the risk if not being able to sell it. If a product doesn't sell, you're stuck with disposing of it at pennies on the dollar.

Fulfillment House
A second common Internet distribution model is the fulfillment house. A fulfillment house will store your inventory and run the fulfillment system for you.

A fulfillment house is nothing more than a warehouse operated by a company that provides storage and delivery services to other companies. They are specialists in getting products to your customers.

They will maintain inventory, assemble, pick, pull, pack, and ship. They do all do all this according to your specifications and with your labels. They can, if you wish, also handle the order taking, an Internet shopping cart, and provide an ordering and customer service call center if you need one. In other words, you can run an entirely virtual business, outsourcing everything to the fulfillment house, if you like. You provide them the inventory, you sell it and they take care of getting it to your customer.

This is the system used my most large mail order catalog companies and web sites that have the capital to purchase their own inventories.

Drop Shipping Model
One of the simplest order fulfillment models to use is the drop ship model. Every successful business person knows the importance of focus. Business people articulate their focus by talking about their "core business" activity. In short, it means the primary activity that generates cash for them. Some people focus on selling. Some focus on running a warehouse. Some focus on manufacturing a product. Others focus on advertising.

Mail order catalog companies and professionals who use the internet focus on selling. They are professional sales people who know their chosen target market and they find products to sell to their chosen market. These people do not manufacture product, run warehouses or run advertising services. They do not buy tons of inventory. They have manufacturers put products in fulfillment warehouses, at the manufacturers' costs and have the warehouses drop ship products their customers.

Let's put that another way. They have absolutely no stocked inventory and they spent absolutely nothing on inventory. They just have catalogs and web sites. They take an order from a customer. They keep the profit. They send the cost of the product to the fulfillment warehouse.

The fulfillment warehouse puts the catalog company's invoice in the box and sends the product to the customer. The customer gets the product and thinks that it came from the catalog company's own inventory in its own warehouse. The fulfillment warehouse drop shipped the product for the catalog company.

Drop shipping has some very strong advantages and a few disadvantages. Let's look at the advantages first.

You don't have to pay for anything until after you sell it.

You have do not have inventory costs. You know that purchasing inventory ready to ship to your purchasers is expensive. In addition to the out-of-pocket costs, you need a place to store the inventory. Finally you have to pick, pull, pack, and ship the products once the order is placed. Having the distributor or manufacturer take all these costs and responsibilities lifts a real burden off your shoulders.

A drop-shipper is transparent. With most of your drop shippers, especially those with whom you do a regular business, you can send them labels and forms so their package looks like it is from you. Your customer probably won't know that your hands never touched the product. The customer will think that you have a warehouse.

You can sell many more products than you could if you had to buy and store them yourself. Drop shippers give you a wide choice of products so you can sell a lot more.
It almost sounds too good to be true. But there are two things that you should consider:

Lower margins. While the manufacturer may be willing to sell you product for 30 percent to 40 percent of suggested retail, if you want drop-shipping services expect to see higher costs to you and lower profits when you sell. This is to be expected. There is a lot of work and expense in storing and shipping inventory. Someone has to pay for it.
On the Internet, some categories of products are very price-sensitive. If you are selling computer hardware, for example, and using the drop shipping model, you may find it hard to be competitive price-wise and still make a profit. The difference between making money and losing it may be only a few percent. So be sure to pick a product that makes sense to drop ship.

You will be using third party customer service so you will not have full control. Drop shipping is really outsourcing your order fulfillment services to a third party. You will be dependent on your drop shipper to have the products in stock, to deliver on time, and to properly pack and ship your products. So pick your drop shipper carefully.

At the end of the day, however, drop shipping exists because it works. And the largest catalog companies and web sites use it. And savvy small web sites and auction site sellers use it.

Your Choice
The choice of your model depends on you.

If you selling off line at fairs, trade shows, expositions or in a shop, then you need some inventory in your shop and the inventory model is for you. But do supplement it with drop shipping.

If you have enough cash to buy a substantial inventory for retail or if you want to be a distributor and sell to retailers, a fulfillment house will probably be your best choice.
If you are starting up or want to conserve cash while expanding your product line, then the drop ship model is for you.

A Word Of Caution
Be careful of scams and overpriced products. Many companies drop ship products to you at retail prices. And some companies take money and ship things that might not otherwise be able to be sold.

Stay with drop ship sources that have a proven record. If you have enough money to take a loss, go off the proven path and make a test purchase and evaluate the delivery service and the product before you offer it to your customers.

If you are just starting out, or if you don't have money to lose, I recommend that you find suppliers in one of the drop ship directories. The people who make the directories police the listings so you can be fairly comfortable that you will not get burned. That is not to say that you might not have some problems, but you will have a lot less than if you go off on your own.

Another thing to remember is that it may not be good to go off building a web site and setting up your business until you are fully prepared and have a comprehensive business plan that gives you a definite strategy for surviving against the competition.

End Note
Do some market research and think long and hard before you take off running. Don't get burned by something that sounds too good to be true.

Stay on the proven path. Plan, and work your plan.

Copyright 2005 - Gary Granai is the Director of the Poland Chamber, Inc , a small business trade chamber that assists small companies with drop shipping. He is also the author of the Drop Ship Guide that you can see reviewed at this link