Beginners Guide To Making Money Online

OV
ER
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PAG
ES
THE BEGINNERS GUIDE

TO MAKING MONEY
ONLINE
Practical Information with step-by-step explanation.
No pre-existing knowledge assumed!
www.IndusLadies.com
Global Online Community of Indian Ladies
Introduction............................................................................................................ 5
Why Work from Home?............................................................................................. 6
Lifestyle Benefits................................................................................................. 6
Income Potential................................................................................................. 7
Explore Passion................................................................................................... 7
Easy to get started................................................................................................ 8
What do you need to be successful?........................................................................... 9

Passion................................................................................................................. 9
Time & Dedication.............................................................................................. 9
Willingness to Explore & Learn........................................................................ 10
Basic Facilities .................................................................................................. 10
Patience............................................................................................................. 11
What can I do from Home?.......................................................................................12

How The Internet Makes Money For You...................................................................14
Affiliate Commission......................................................................................... 14
Step #1: Setting Affiliate Goals....................................................................................... 15
Step #2: Find Your Affiliate Niche................................................................................. 15
Step #3: Research Affiliate Merchants.......................................................................... 16
Step #4: Add Affiliate Links and Driving Sales........................................................... 17
Step #5: Measure and Improve your Affiliate Merchant Income. .......................... 18
Display Advertising .......................................................................................... 19
What Is Google AdSense?............................................................................................... 19
How Does Google AdSense Work?............................................................................... 20
Getting Started with Google AdSense.......................................................................... 21
Different Types of AdSense Ads.................................................................................... 21
AdSense for Content................................................................................................................ 22
AdSense for Search................................................................................................................... 25
AdSense for Feeds..................................................................................................................... 26
AdSense YouTube links............................................................................................................ 26
AdSense for Mobile Content.................................................................................................. 27
Google AdSense Tips and Tricks................................................................................... 27
Maximizing your AdSense ads....................................................................................... 28
AdSense Guidelines.......................................................................................................... 29
Premium Membership . .................................................................................... 30
What Is A Membership Site?.......................................................................................... 30
Types of Fee-Based Membership Sites......................................................................... 31
How To Make Money With A Membership Site........................................................ 32
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THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE
Maintaining and Growing Your Membership Site..................................................... 33

Selling E-books................................................................................................. 33
Writing Your Ebook ......................................................................................................... 34
Marketing Your EBook. .................................................................................................. 36
E-Commerce . ................................................................................................... 36
Consultancy Services........................................................................................ 37
Which Web Business Is Right For You?.......................................................................39

Blogs.................................................................................................................. 39
Niche Content Websites.................................................................................... 40
Forums............................................................................................................... 42
Pure Ecommerce Sites....................................................................................... 43
Building a Website, the Basics.................................................................................44

Coming up with a Name.................................................................................... 44
Registering The Domain................................................................................... 45
Choosing A Web Host....................................................................................... 46
Website Design . ............................................................................................... 47
Getting Fresh Content! ..................................................................................... 48
Building a Web Business..........................................................................................52

Building a Blog.................................................................................................. 52
What Is A Blog?................................................................................................................. 52
How Do I Create A Blog?................................................................................................ 52
Which Blog Software Package is Right For Me?......................................................... 53
Stay on Topic............................................................................................................................. 54
Be Creative................................................................................................................................. 54
Be Informative........................................................................................................................... 54
Plan a Schedule......................................................................................................................... 55
Create Stimulating, Keyword-Rich Titles.......................................................................... 55
Quantity and Quality.............................................................................................................. 55
Blogrolls....................................................................................................................................... 55
Blog Comments......................................................................................................................... 56
The Beauty of RSS.................................................................................................................... 56
Tag Your Posts........................................................................................................................... 57
Social Networking.................................................................................................................... 57
Social Bookmarking . .............................................................................................................. 58
The Importance of Images...................................................................................................... 59
Promotion................................................................................................................................... 59
Building a Niche Content Website.................................................................... 60
Usability.............................................................................................................................. 60
Design . ............................................................................................................................... 60
Navigation.......................................................................................................................... 61
Functionality...................................................................................................................... 61
Content............................................................................................................................... 61
Popularity .......................................................................................................................... 62
Building a Forum............................................................................................... 63
Planning Your Forum....................................................................................................... 63
Passion and Knowledge................................................................................................... 63
Forum Software................................................................................................................. 63
Creating Your Forum Content....................................................................................... 64
Rules for your Forum....................................................................................................... 65
Moderators......................................................................................................................... 66
Avoiding Spam on Your Forum...................................................................................... 66
Building a Pure eCommerce Site...................................................................... 67
eCommerce Software....................................................................................................... 67
What do I sell?................................................................................................................... 68
Prepare Your Product Information................................................................................ 69
Categorize Your Products................................................................................................ 69
Building Your eCommerce Website.............................................................................. 70
Testing Your Website........................................................................................................ 71
Marketing Your E-Store................................................................................................... 71
Traffic Traffic Traffic.................................................................................................73

Search Engine Optimization............................................................................. 73
What is a Search Engine? . .............................................................................................. 74
The Search Engines And Your Website......................................................................... 75
Submitting Your Site to the Search Engines................................................................ 76
Why Search Engines Are Critical To Your Success ................................................... 76
How To Optimize Your Website?.................................................................................. 77
Accessibility................................................................................................................................ 77
Title tags, meta tags, and image tags................................................................................... 78
Search friendly text................................................................................................................... 79
Site Structure............................................................................................................................. 80
Keyword Research............................................................................................................ 81
Keyword Research Tools......................................................................................................... 81
Keyword Research Exercise.................................................................................................... 82
Competition Research............................................................................................................. 84
Refining your Keywords.......................................................................................................... 85
Building Inbound Links................................................................................................... 86
Reciprocal Linking.................................................................................................................... 87
Link Baits................................................................................................................................... 88
Online Participation................................................................................................................ 89
Submitting to Niche Directories............................................................................................ 91
Article Submissions.................................................................................................................. 91
Advertising........................................................................................................ 92
Classified Ads..................................................................................................................... 93
Forum Marketing.............................................................................................................. 93
Google Adwords............................................................................................................... 94
Press Coverage.................................................................................................. 98
Press Release...................................................................................................................... 98
Local Media........................................................................................................................ 99
Staying Motivated ...............................................................................................100

Until Money Rolls In..............................................................................................100
Plan Your Schedule.......................................................................................... 100
Reward Your Achievements............................................................................ 102
Set Goals.......................................................................................................... 102
Limit Social Activities..................................................................................... 103
Dress For Success............................................................................................ 103
Adopt a Support Group................................................................................... 103
Take Time Out................................................................................................. 104
Be a Good Boss................................................................................................ 104
Glossary ..............................................................................................................106
Resources.............................................................................................................122
Introduction
For many people, the freedom and independence of owning and running a work from
home business is just a pipe dream, but you can turn that dream into reality by getting the
right advice and following a plan.
We have developed a simple and easy-to-follow guide to help you with the basics on how
to set up and successfully manage your own Internet business working from home.
Working step-by-step through the whole process from the dedication and commitment
required to get started, right through building your website and earning an income, to
maintaining a creative and organized workspace we describe and inform you with
effective tips, examples and tutorials.
By starting with the Beginners Guide to Making Money Online, you too could soon be
on your way to creating a profitable, stress-free income stream from your very own online
business!
Please enjoy!
Why Work from Home?

The most important step you can take in running your own home based business is
making a commitment to doing it, and doing it properly right from the start.
There are a huge number of home-based business opportunities available, making
money online while you work from home is affordable, relatively simple and loaded with
possibilities.
Whether you are a stay at home mom looking for some additional income to add to the
family household or you are stuck in a job that is taking you nowhere, your ability to make
money online from home opens a whole new world of opportunities for you.
Lifestyle Benefits
Lets start with some of the lifestyle benefits:
Your time is your own you can work when you want and for as many hours as your
schedule permits.
Online work from home costs very little to set up, operate and maintain. There are no hefty
upfront costs to outlay, you dont need to purchase special equipment or pay for stock.
You dont need to have special skills as long as you are motivated and dedicated to
succeed; the rest is easy to learn.
The flexibility of working from home enables you to be there for school activities, family
commitments or just a cup of tea with your friends. There are no deadlines to meet or
meetings to attend.
You save money and time on commuting to and from your workplace.
When you work from home, your productivity increases because there are fewer
distractions and interruptions to your work.
You dont have to search through your wardrobe each morning for a suitable outfit to wear
to the office. You can wear whatever makes you feel comfortable. You can even work in
your pyjamas if it suits you!
Working from home in an online business means you are likely to have everything you
need to get started a chair, a desk, a computer and an internet connection are all that is
required.
Income Potential
If you are worried about the earning or income potential of a work from home
opportunity, you can be rest assured that your efforts are going to be suitably rewarded.
You must however, give your business time to establish. Patience and hard work is the key
to a successful online business.
If you are ready to work hard and have a definite plan of action then the income that you
can earn working from home is simply phenomenal. With the setting up and operational
costs being minimal, most of what you earn is a positive contribution towards your profit.
The sky is not the limit and you would be glad that you can be the bread winner while
being there for your family. There are entrepreneurs who run very successful online
businesses that have an income potential of a few thousands to even millions. All this is
possible without moving out from the comfort and convenience of your home.
Explore Passion
Passion for anything you wish to do is a key determinant of success or failure. Being
passionate about something means you would put your heart and soul into what you do.
When you are completely involved in what you do, every effort is going to be one that
brings in positive results. If you love what you do, success is sure going to be by your side,
always.
Think about all the things you love to talk about, do, ponder, dream about, and theres your
answer. You would be very surprised to know that, in all likelihood, you know a lot more
about your subject of interest than most people. And thats a fact!
Then think about how rewarding it would be and how your self-esteem would grow if
you spent some time building on the knowledge you already have. Its as easy as creating
a building block tower. The base for the foundation is the information you already know;
then each additional level in your building is the information you learn as you go.
Some of the most successful Web entrepreneurs started with a simple plan to create a
website about something they knew a little about. They then built on that knowledge and
on the feedback from their visitors and went on to build huge and successful websites.
Get started with a niche you know about and truly love. This would ensure that you make
the effort to learn more about it and thus, not only you but also your readers are going to
benefit a great deal.
Easy to get started

The thought of setting up a website may sound like a Herculean task for those who are new
to the online world. However, this is not true. Imagine all the effort and expenses required
to set up a physical office and getting started with your business. In the online world, all
you need is a computer, a desk and chair, quality time and you are all set to get started
sitting right at home. Setting up an Internet work-from-home business is one of the easiest
small business opportunities available anywhere.
You neither need to have a huge sum of money (although there are some initial costs)
nor need to purchase stock or employ staff. You wont have to bother with rent, business
insurances or health plans. You dont need a College degree or any special qualifications.
All you need is the knowledge you already have and thats free! Most important you are
your own boss and get to decide the flow of events and also the working hours.
The only vital necessity you need is a computer and you have an opportunity that allows
you to turn your dreams into reality.
What do you need to be successful?

Passion
The most successful online businesses are those where the individual has a genuine
passion for what they do and has based the business on using that passion to create a
knowledgeable, helpful, friendly and expert website that visitors come back to time and
again.
No doubt many of you who have surfed the Net will have seen the vast number of Internet
job offers, promising you thousands of dollars for a couple of hours of work each week.
Dont go there! Remember the old saying, If it sounds too good to be true, it probably
is? Well, sadly thats the story with most of these so-called promises of untold wealth.
It is a much better (and safer) option to start your own online business from scratch, using
your unique skills and abilities.
When you are considering work from home opportunities, dont base your decision solely
on the potential income you could achieve. Consider first those things you enjoy doing
and are good at. Everybody is good at something.
What do you love to do? Is it cooking creative and nutritious meals for your family?
Perhaps it is creative needlework, dressmaking, or perhaps you enjoy a particular craft, like
designing hand-made cards, or making jewellery?
Alternatively, is there something you would love to learn more about? Most of us have a
particular skill or subject we would like to study in more depth. Now is your opportunity
to learn as much as you can!
Make an honest and thoughtful assessment of the skills and knowledge you already have
or those you would like to have, and then think about how you could use those skills to
build an online business.
Time & Dedication

Establishing a successful online business is about having the dedication and motivation to
put your ideas into practice. It also requires massive amount of time to build it and grow it.
Time is an important factor, as you would need to put in a few extra hours to experiment
with the various attributes and decide what suits your business best. Devoting time and
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being dedicated to your goal is the deciding factor that makes that huge difference between
a winner and an also ran. Make sure you manage your time well and focus on all areas that
need attention. It is extremely important to believe in what you are doing and to do it with
all your heart.
There is simply no point in wasting your time and energy if you do not feel strongly about
what you are doing.
Sure, its scary and requires you to step outside your comfort zone, but consider the
unlimited possibilities you can create by taking that leap of faith. And faith is what it is all
about.
All you need is to have is faith in yourself, faith in your abilities and knowledge, and follow
this step by step guide to beginning an online business from home. You can be sure of
building a successful and profitable online business.
If you are still in doubt, your family and friends are whom you should turn to for the
much-needed support and encouragement. Im sure they will be delighted to give you the
necessary encouragement to take that leap into an exciting new adventure.
Willingness to Explore & Learn

There will be a lot that you wont know. For success it is important to turn not knowing
into an asset. You must have the willingness to explore and learn and surely no one can
beat you.
You need to have the students mindset to go on a search for answers, explore and learn.
Remember the time in school or college when you would spend hours reading books
and magazines, searching the internet and going through the newspaper clippings to find
information for your project. You need that same enthusiasm, an open mind to accept and
learn new things and you can be sure that you are on the path to success. An unquenched
thirst for gathering as much information as possible will soon make you an expert into
your field
Basic Facilities
There are certain basic facilities that you need to get started. If you are worried about
having to set up an elaborate office and spend a lot of money, do not worry, just read on.
All you need is a computer with an internet connection, a desk, chair and most important
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a comfortable work environment that allows you to put all your ideas into practice.
A dedicated home office is not essential when you are starting your home based Internet
business. However, it is important to set aside an area in which you can work comfortably
and be free from distractions. This may be a corner of the bedroom or a small study room
you could use.
Ensure it is well lit, allows you some privacy so you can focus 100% on what you are
doing and has proper ventilation. Make sure that your small home office allows you to be
comfortable and concentrate on work. A comfortable chair and a clutter free desk with
all you need being easily accessible is the first step to making the right beginning. A small
filing cabinet or a cupboard to store your files also comes in handy.
Make sure that all information and details regarding your work is maintained
systematically and is easily accessible. It makes good sense to keep your working space as
clear and free from clutter as possible. You will want to make your time as productive as
possible, so keeping your desk tidy ensures you dont waste time searching for items that
are important.
Now that youve started your thinking and planning process for ideas for your work from
home business and have your working space in order, its time to get down to the more
serious stuff.
Patience
Starting any venture of your own requires a lot of patience. There is no definite salary or
return that you are assured of here. It is going to take some time for money to start rolling
in and thus, patience and hard work are very important to keep moving steadily towards
your goal.
Have a definite plan of action. Make sure to set realistic goals so that they are achievable
and you are encouraged to go on. Results and returns are not going to be instant, in fact, in
the initial days they may not be proportionate to the effort put in. However, it is important
to go on, for this is the case with all start-up ventures. Only those who believe in their
dreams and are ready to face all odds and overcome them will be able to achieve success in
their endeavours. If you continue to work hard and have the patience to wait, the fruits of
labour are definitely going to be sweet.
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What can I do from Home?

The possibilities of what you can do online are truly unlimited. For starters, here are a few
ideas:
An information website full of quality content about a subject you know or have studied.
You can write most of the articles yourself or decide to assign the task to paid writers. You
can even add a little twist to it by inviting guest writers. Once you have built an audience
base, you can make money from advertising products related to the subject matter. You can
also recommend products related to this topic area and make money when a visitor clicks
on the links and actually purchases the product.
Start writing a blog about a subject or niche that you are passionate about. This would
ensure that you are good at what you are doing and also able to provide more quality
content than the others in the field. You can earn money by offering your services for hire,
training/teaching or consulting. It doesnt have to be a high-tech topic. For example, if you
are good at Mehendi, you can possibly offer your mehendi services or provide good design
ideas to a bride-to-be or teach the skill to wannabe mehendi designers. You may even offer
your consulting/writing services to a publisher coming out with a book on Mehendi. The
possibilities are endless.
You are an expert in a particular area that people are willing to become paid subscribers
to get access to your content. This is most feasible if your content helps your audience
professionally. For example, you are an experienced chartered accountant and have the
expertise to de-mystify government laws & regulations and clarify ambiguous situations.
Practising chartered accountants can then pay to get access to that content.
What if you are not an expert? Most of us know much more than we give ourselves credit
for. The idea is to use the knowledge and skills you already have. Enhance your skills to
become an expert in your particular field. Becoming an expert in your particular field is
not as difficult as it may sound.
An e-commerce website where you sell products or services. If you want to dip your feet
in the water before committing yourself to a website, you could sell your products on
eBay, then advance to your own store. These products/services can come from a number
of different sources:
They can be your own, ie., you may have a wardrobe full of hand-made clothing youve
sewn in your spare time. Alternatively, you can upload samples of your work and offer
custom-making;
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You may be part of a creative collective. For instance, if making beautiful quilts is your
forte, you can sell your craft products online and give the member who made it a portion
of the proceeds when that item sells;
You may be part of a community group who specializes in something unique, for example,
you may be a member of a book club. You could publish an online book review site and
have links to the books you recommend. Every time a visitor purchases one of the books
you have recommended, you make money.
You can purchase stock from a wholesaler, either locally or overseas, and sell the products
in an online store. For instance, buying from China and selling it in India is a big business
nowadays.
You can create a Forum on a subject that you believe women would like to discuss with
other like-minded women.
In addition, you may have come up with a revolutionary new concept that hasnt even
been tried on the Internet yet, who knows? You might just end up introducing the world to
a new concept, idea or product.
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How The Internet Makes Money For You

Moving on from Working From Home - Where To Begin and Home Based Business
Opportunities on The Internet, now its time to get down to that all-important issue, how
do I make money online?
There is really no point in expending your time and energy creating a web based business if
youre not going to make a profit. Right?
So lets discuss all the ways and means you can earn anything from a reasonable to an
unimaginable income online:
Affiliate Commission
Creating an affiliate website is one of the most popular ways to make money online.
Perhaps because it is easy and cheap to set up, and once its up and running, theres very
little you have to do to maintain it. While there are countless ways to make money using an
affiliate website, the experts agree that the most effective way is to research a niche theme
and build a website using Affiliate links and AdSense ads.
What is Affiliate Marketing? Affiliate marketing involves setting up a website about
your topic of choice, then adding hyperlinks to products or services offered by an
affiliate merchant. Each time your visitor clicks on one of your hyperlinks, they will be
automatically transferred to the affiliate merchants website. If your visitor decides to
purchase a product or service from that affiliate merchant, you will be rewarded with a
percentage of the sale.
Lets use an example to illustrate:
Anjana has created a website about her passion, Bollywood fashion designers. One of her
favourite resources is Meghas website where visitors can purchase first-rate Bollywoodstyle churidhars.
Meghas website is a retail store where her beautiful creations are displayed and Megha
ships her stock to all parts of the world. It would be a waste of Anjanas time, money and
resources to pay for and stock Meghas garments. Instead, Anjana creates a content rich
web page about Bollywood fashion and writes about the quality and value her readers
can find at Meghas online store. Each of the text recommendations and the images she
displays are linked to Meghas website.
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Anjanas readers enjoy reading her engrossing articles and have come to trust her fashion
sense. They also love the images from Meghas store that Anjana features alongside her
article. So Anjanas visitors click on one of the links that takes them to Meghas website,
and purchase one of the garments Anjana has recommended. Each time a visitor
purchases a frock, or for that matter, anything else on Meghas website, Anjana receives a
commission usually based on a percentage of the purchase price.
Its a win-win situation. Anjana is rewarded for recommending Meghas website and
Megha makes a sale she wouldnt have made had it not been for Anjanas recommendation.
You will find an affiliate merchant for just about every product imaginable, so it can
provide a very useful and effective way to produce income with no expenditure and little
effort.
We present the 5 Step Guide to Building Your Own Affiliate Website
Step #1: Setting Affiliate Goals

Any success coach will tell you the best way to achieve success is by starting with a goal.
Lets be realistic and set an initial goal for your affiliate business of $300 per month. This
amount is certainly achievable, while at the same time not so low that its hardly worth the
effort. Can you visualize how an extra $300 each month would help you?
Step #2: Find Your Affiliate Niche

Choose a couple of topics you enjoy and subjects that are easy to write about
Research the topic(s)
Use a keyword research tool to explore the relevant keywords
Check out your competition
Eventually you will have to select ONE topic to base your website on, so it makes
sense to choose the most profitable niche. Given you will be using AdSense ads as a
source of revenue, it pays to find out how much advertisers are willing to pay for the
keywords or key phrases youre interested in. Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/
KeywordToolExternal where Google have a free keyword tool.
Lets say your interest is exotic Indian curries, type in that phrase and then click get
more keywords. Imagine you are willing to pay the maximum per click price, which
is US$100, so type that amount in. On the right side of the page, make sure you have
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selected Cost and position estimates. The Google tool will calculate the estimated
average CPC (cost per click) for the list of key words and phrases it has provided.
Experiment by re-calculating the above using different keywords and note how the CPC
changes. This may help you decide on the most profitable niche, as your Google AdSense
income is based on a percentage of the amount paid by AdWords advertisers.
Step #3: Research Affiliate Merchants

Before you decide on your niche topic, youll need to research suitable affiliate products
to match your topic. The two largest affiliate directories are www.linkshare.com and www.
commissionjunction.com. Between them, they manage some of the largest and most
profitable affiliate merchants available on the Web.
The advantage of using one of the major affiliate directories is that you can select any
number of affiliate merchants and the directory will tally up your total income and pay you
accordingly.
Once you have signed on to either or both of the above directories, you can browse
through thousands of affiliate merchants in hundreds of categories.
AssociatePrograms.com also has a vast affiliate directory that will help you with ideas. You
can find the directory at: http://www.associateprograms.com/directory/
Look at the products and services the affiliate merchant provides. The quality of their
website should also tell you whether they are a reputable company. Ask yourself:
Is the affiliate website professional looking?
Does the site look like they know how to sell their own products?
Do they offer a reasonable rate of commission?
How frequently do they pay commissions, and is there a minimum?
For what period do they hold the cookies*?
What are Cookies? A cookie is a small piece of code attached to your visitors computer
when they visit particular websites. This code contains valuable information that enables
the merchant to, say, welcome the visitor back by name next time they visit. A cookie is
not malicious and does not invade your visitors privacy. In fact, it is highly probable that
your own computer holds hundreds of cookies.
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Some affiliate merchants will retain the cookie indefinitely while others will only retain
it for 30 days (sometimes less). Statistics say that the average buyer has to see an item
they intend purchasing 7 times before they make the sale. If the merchant only retains
the visitors cookie for a short period of time, your visitor may return after the cookie has
expired and you lose your commission. Vice versa, the longer the cookie is retained, the
more chance you have of making the sale when your visitor is hesitant about making the
purchase.
Search for affiliate merchants that pay either lifetime commission or residual commission.
This means that every time your customer returns to the merchant site, you earn a
commission.
Another important factor is the rate of commission an affiliate merchant pays. Most are
set within an arbitrary industry standard, but if it comes down to choosing between
two merchants with similar products and service, go for the one who pays the higher
commission!
Step #4: Add Affiliate Links and Driving Sales

Once youve selected the affiliate products you want to use, weave the affiliate links and
banners into your website content.
In your mind, create a vision of the type of customer who is likely to purchase your
affiliate products, and then write as if youre writing to them personally. Be friendly and
conversational in your tone. As an affiliate, your aim is to help your prospective customer
make a buying decision.
Online sales research suggests that people buy products to help them solve a problem.
You need to convince your would-be customer how much they need your product. Start
by suggesting a potential problem, then you can discuss the appropriate solution YOUR
PRODUCT!
Once youve introduced the question and the solution, end the paragraph with a call
to action. An example would be, for the most beautiful kids toy storage ideas, www.
affiliatemerchantsite.com has the perfect solution!
Dont use click here, or find information here. It tells the visitor and the search engines
nothing. Incorporating your link text into the actual article is far more powerful.
This is the power of anchor text.
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Anchor text is the text included inside a hyperlink. In the above example, the link would
appear in your coding as follows:
<a href=http://www.affiliatemerchantsite.com>kids toy storage ideas</
a>
The words kids toy storage ideas in this example is your carefully researched keyword
phrase. Your visitors like descriptive anchor text because it lets them know immediately
what the hyperlink is about and the search engines love keyword-rich anchor text for the
same reason.
As an affiliate, its not your job to sell the product (that is up to the merchant). Your task
is to pre-sell; in other words, put your visitor into a ready-to-buy frame of mind, so that
when they click on the link to the merchants website, they are primed to purchase.
Step #5: Measure and Improve your Affiliate Merchant Income.

As an Affiliate and an astute work from home businesswoman, its imperative you keep
track of your affiliate income.
Create a spreadsheet where you can track the affiliate sales from each of the affiliate
merchants youve chosen. It will only take a couple of months for you to grasp which ads
are working and which ones are duds. Be ruthless in your choice of affiliate merchants.
There are millions of merchants out there vying for your business, so if one (or more) isnt
working, explore the reasons why.
Your affiliate merchant statistics will help you determine where the sale is being lost.
Investigate the number of links to the merchant, the number of click-throughs and the
number of subsequent sales. If, for example, during the last month you had 191 clickthroughs and no sales, then the problem is with your affiliate merchant. Your visitors are
clicking through to the merchants website, but the action stops there. On the other hand,
if you have 191 affiliate links on your website and only 4 click-throughs, then the problem
lies at your end.
One of the reasons may be you are not engaging your visitor enough to spark their interest
and click-through to the merchant.
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Consider:
Are your affiliate links too salesy?
Are you effectively pre-selling the product or service?
Do you have a clear call to action at the conclusion of your article?
While transferring affiliate merchants can be a time-consuming and tedious task, its worth
the effort if the merchant you are currently sending your business to is not living up to its
promises.
Its YOUR reputation at stake if you dont give your visitors the best service you possibly can.
Display Advertising
Another very popular way of making money through an online website is to place
banner advertising on the site. Most website owners initially start with Googles Adsense
advertising solution. As pageviews increases, they work their way up to selling banner
advertising directly to big brands which pay much higher than Adsense.
For a beginner Google Adsense is actually the best possible advertising program. The
package takes care of all your needs and by simply posting the Google ads on the website
you can start earning money. Google AdSense has revolutionized the world of Internet
advertising and marketing since its introduction in April 2003.
Once your website is online and active, you are ready to place your AdSense ads. We have
included an AdSense tutorial to help you make the most out of your AdSense ads.
AdSense is the perfect passive income generator. It out-performs all its rivals because:
You can set and forget. Once youve placed the code in your site where you want the
AdSense ads to appear, Google does the rest.
You dont have to worry about ad banners. Contextual ads are AdSenses strength.
What Is Google AdSense?

Like many billion dollar concepts before it, Google AdSense is brilliant in its simplicity. As
the Google AdSense Introduction page says:
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Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display
relevant, unobtrusive Google ads on their websites content pages and earn money.
Because the ads are related to what your users are looking for on your site, youll finally
have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages.
Here is an example of a block of AdSense ads:
Figure 1.1. An example of AdSense ads

Once your website has been approved to use AdSense ads, all you need do is add a few
lines of coding to your website to display Google AdSense ads in a number of different
formats anywhere on your page.
Every time a visitor comes to your site and clicks on one of your AdSense links, you earn
money. Its as simple as that!
How Does Google AdSense Work?

Millions of online advertisers want to display their ads across the Internet. They apply for
a Google AdWords account, decide which keywords they want to focus on, create a short
3-line ad, and Google places their ads on content-related sites.
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Advertisers pay Google on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis or a cost-per-1000-impressions

basis (CPM). Each time a visitor clicks on an advertisers Google ad, the advertiser is
charged a fee. A portion of that fee is then paid to the website owner who displays the
Google AdSense ads on her web page or blog.
Getting Started with Google AdSense

The very first thing you have to do is sign up for an account by going to: https://www.
google.com/adsense
Once you have provided all the necessary details (including your bank account details to
deposit your AdSense checks!), we suggest you read the AdSense Overview and AdSense
Program Policies.
Dont apply for an AdSense account until:
your website has been up and running for at least a month or two;
you are certain your site is easily navigable;
it has an adequate quantity of text based content (dont apply if youve only been
online for a week);
it must be written in English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese,
Japanese, or Spanish; and
you dont have excessive advertising or other contextual/competing advertising.
Once your website has been given the tick of approval, you are free to customize your ads,
decide on the layout, then copy the code on to your site.
Different Types of AdSense Ads

AdSense provides a wide variety of products that are all designed to be used in different
situations on your website or blog.
The main categories include:
AdSense for Content
AdSense for Search
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AdSense for Feeds

Video Units
AdSense for Mobile Content
AdSense for Content

Colors : Choosing the color scheme for your ads may involve some tweaking to get the
color scheme right and ultimately improve their performance. As a general rule, Google
researchers suggest the color palette you choose should complement or contrast with your
web palette.
Ads within content
Ads adjacent to
content
Light background behind ads
Blend
Blend or complement
Dark background behind ads
Blend, complement, or
contrast
Contrast or
complement
Your website
The following examples show you the various options: Blend, Complement or Contrast:
Blend
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Complement
Contrast
Formats : The Google Performance team believe the most effective ads are those with the
widest format. These include :
The 336 x 280 wide rectangle. Here is an example provided by Google:
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The colors used in this format blend in to the content surrounding it.
The large rectangle such as the example shown above can be used anywhere on the page,
however researchers suggest that if you have a page with relatively little content, the
rectangle should blend in as in the above example.
If your web page has more content, place the ad further down the page.
Another format ad is the Wide Skyscraper 160 x 600
The above example is blended within the content of the page. Notice how the text and link
colors are the same as those used on the page.
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You can place a Skyscaper ad on the left or right side of the page, depending on which
side you have place the navigational links. And finally, another example of the bestperforming ads is the Leaderboard 728 x 90:

In this example the ad has been placed in the middle of the text.
Often you will find the Leaderboard ads placed at the head of the text, sometimes above
the page Heading.
AdSense for Search

Providing your visitors with a search tool to not only search your site, but to search other
sites, on the Web, is a bonus feature that can also make money for you!
Here is an example of an AdSense Search Tool:
By adding the search feature to every page on your website, you are providing a very
effective tool for your visitors.
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The AdSense for Search tool comes in a variety of formats, so you can choose the option
that best suits the style of your site.
Each time a visitor types a search query into your Search box, Google presents them with
a number of linked search results both sponsored links and natural links. (Sponsored
links are links the advertiser has paid for). If they click on one of the Google sponsored
search results, you get paid.
AdSense for Feeds

AdSense for feeds allows web publishers to earn money by placing targeted Google ads
in their RSS feeds. AdSense for feeds works in the same way the rest of the AdSense
programs work: by delivering ads that are relevant to your content and your readers.
You can control the frequency, appearance, and positioning of Google ads in your feeds.
The ad size is automatically determined based on where your feed is appearing. Here is an
example of the AdSense for feeds buttons:
AdSense YouTube links

If you choose to display YouTube videos on your site or blog, you can incorporate Google
AdSense ads into the video feed. These ads can be presented in various formats, as can all
of the AdSense library of links.
Here is an example of an AdSense YouTube link. In this example, the ads are placed above
the video link:
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AdSense for Mobile Content

You can cash in on the ever-increasing use of sites specifically designed for mobile users by
using AdSense. Enhance your mobile website - and your profits - with targeted ads from
Google.
The benefits include:
Gain exposure to the large and growing number of mobile advertisers.
Readers will find your precisely targeted ads relevant and useful.
Finally unlock the full revenue potential of your mobile site by displaying Google
ads.
Google AdSense Tips and Tricks

Here are the Top Tips and Tricks for AdSense, as advised by the Google AdSense
Performance Team.
The aim is to improve the performance of your ads to maximize your AdSense income:
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Ensure each page of your website or blog is focused and content-rich.

Google cannot serve up appropriate, complementary ads if your pages arent optimized
and focused on particular keywords and key phrases.
Websites or blogs must be easy to navigate.
Google ads work most effectively when they are integrated into the body of your
page and look like part of the content.
Currently, AdSense publishers may place a maximum number of AdSense links on
each page. These links can be made up of:
up to three AdSense for content units;
a maximum of three link units;
two search boxes on each webpage;
you may also place one AdSense for video unit on each webpage.
Maximizing your AdSense ads

Illustrated below is what Google refers to as its Hot Spot Map. This map shows you the
most effective placement Google believes will improve performance.
The darker the color, the more hot the spot. . .
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AdSense Guidelines
While its important you read the AdSense Terms and Conditions as well as the AdSense
Program Policies before you begin using AdSense, here are a couple of points to keep in
mind:
According to Google AdSense Policy Guidelines, sites displaying Google ads may not
include:
Violent content, racial intolerance, or advocacy against any individual, group,
or organization
Pornography, adult, or mature content
Hacking/cracking content
Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia
Excessive profanity
Gambling or casino-related content
Content regarding programs which compensate users for clicking on ads or
offers, performing searches, surfing websites, or reading emails
Excessive, repetitive, or irrelevant keywords in the content or code of web
pages
Deceptive or manipulative content or construction to improve your sites
search engine ranking, e.g., your sites PageRank
Sales or promotion of weapons or ammunition (e.g., firearms, fighting knives,
stun guns)
Sales or promotion of beer or hard alcohol
Sales or promotion of tobacco or tobacco-related products
Sales or promotion of prescription drugs
Sales or promotion of products that are replicas or imitations of designer
goods
Sales or distribution of term papers or student essays
Any other content that is illegal, promotes illegal activity, or infringes on the
legal rights of others
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Its not uncommon for a website that draws volumes of traffic (visitors) to make in excess
of $100,000 each and every month! And all you need to do is add a few lines of code to
your website to reap the rewards. As your website gains popularity and attracts streams of
visitors, you may find advertisers knocking at your door. This means more money and also
fame for you.
In most cases, the advertiser will be a high turnover, high traffic site, somehow related to
your websites content (but sometimes not!), looking to brand their name as widely across
the Internet as possible.
Worthwhile advertisers will often select a particular page where theyd like their ad to
appear, or they could request site-wide or run of site advertising, which means they
want ads placed on every page of your website.
Beware advertisers who request a link or ad be placed only on your Home page. Your
Home page is a very valuable piece of Web property, so you should charge accordingly,
if at all. Countless other avenues exist that provide a reasonable source of income, so
we suggest you read this Guide all the way through to discover how you too can build a
successful work from home business.
Premium Membership
Membership sites are flourishing on the Internet largely because they can provide you
with a viable source of income.
What Is A Membership Site?

Membership sites come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Many switched-on web marketers
create membership sites to encourage and maintain genuine interest and to keep track of
the client base.
Basically, membership sites fall into two categories:
those who charge a membership fee, and
those who dont.
While you can make money online with a Membership that doesnt charge a fee by using
the vast array of money-generating activities, however, here we are going to focus on sites
that charge a membership fee.
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However, be warned, membership sites that charge a fee can be potentially tricky and
require skill sets not usually available to the novice webmaster. Dont be fooled into buying
a membership site package online. These supposed packages are, in almost all cases,
scams, where the only beneficiary is the shark who sold it to you.
So much of what is available on the Web is free, therefore its necessary to have something
your visitors really want in order for them to fork out their hard earned dollars for what
you have hidden behind code access only.
On the positive side, sure, youll earn income from members who sign up for your
mystery goodies. On the negative side, we all want value for money, so asking for a
membership fee means you have to provide something of real value that your visitor cant
get anywhere else.
It also means you have to keep the goodies coming! Your members will quickly become
disgruntled if they dont consider youve given them good value for money or you dont
continue to give them value.
Managing a Membership site can be a very lucrative online business opportunity, so taking
the time to do your research and discover a good niche topic can be well worth your while.
Types of Fee-Based Membership Sites

The following list outlines the methods the vast majority of Membership sites use
to create a fee-based client list.
Websites that contain a great deal of content, downloads, software packages and
various other goodies often provide a proportion of these products for free.
They then include the extra special goodies to paid members only.
Websites, particularly Internet Marketing websites, often charge a fee to their
members just for entry into the site. Its not uncommon to find that the amazing
content offered on these sites is nothing more than a bunch of re-hashed content
thats available free on other websites.
Often websites will offer special privileges to their paid members. These
privileges may include downloadable videos, CDs, DVDs, audios etc. that arent
available to general website visitors.
Trial membership periods are a clever marketing strategy on many Membership
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sites. Free 14-day or 30-day trial periods are offered where the member has to
include their credit card details as part of the sign-up process. If the member
overlooks cancelling their registration within the trial period, their credit card is
then hit with the Membership fee.
How To Make Money With A Membership Site

Membership sites can provide a highly lucrative residual income when you do the math.
Lets say you start a Membership site with a monthly fee of a mere $5.00 and your goal is
to get 3 new members each month. In the first year, you would make $825.00!
Just imagine the exponential growth as each new member compounds the multiplication
factor! The key is to find that unique edge that blows away your competition.
In a market where so many products, services, downloads and other paraphernalia are
available to the general Web browser for free, your subscription based site has to provide
something people want that they cant get anywhere else!.
After all, why would a customer pay to be a member of your site when they can get the
same product at Indranis website for free? So checking out the competition is vital in
deciding what kind of products or services you are going to provide.
Lets use an example:
Say you make beautiful household items from old saris, embroidered with Indian
mirror-work. Now thats something many other women would love to learn how
to make.
With the use of a digital camera and possibly a digital video recorder, you could be
well on your way to earning a substantial monthly income.
Each month you could feature an article/tutorial about one of the items you
make; lets say for beginners its an oversized, padded cushion for the day bed.
Your tutorial would need to include the necessary materials required and a clear,
precise guide on how to make the cushion, and then embroider it with mirrorwork.
Images help your customer enormously and also look very professional; thats
where the digital camera comes in handy. Its a very simple procedure to upload
your digital images to the Internet.
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You could become even more professional, and produce a video on how to make
your gorgeous over-sized cushion. Accordingly, you could charge extra for the
video.
Each month, or two months or even three months, you could produce a new
tutorial on all the beautiful items your customers can make using the skills you are
going to teach them. ( Just be sure to make it clear to your prospective members
how often your articles/videos will appear).
Maintaining and Growing Your Membership Site

One of the major tasks involved in successfully managing a Membership site is the backend software that controls your users, payments etc.
The backend script can also prove to be the most troublesome because good Membership
site management programs are often quite expensive. The less expensive models frequently
contain scripting errors and bugs.
A recent addition to the Membership programs software arsenal is a full featured,
reasonably priced plug-in to Wordpress (the blog software). You can discover more about
this new product at: http://www.wpwishlist.com/products.
Selling E-books
Creating your own e-book to download online is a sure-fire way to increase your online
revenue as well as your profile.
What is an EBook? E-books are books that can be electronically downloaded from
your website. They can become a great source of additional income if they are produced
professionally and marketed successfully. If you have both the expertise and writing skills,
you can create the ebook yourself. If you just have the expertise, but dont have the time
to professionally put together an ebook, you can get someone else to organize the content
and edit a neat ebook for you.
If there are other sources of income for your website, you can make these ebooks as
free giveaways to drive traffic and registration. Alternatively, if the content is useful in a
professional context, your customers can download once theyve paid for them.
In most cases, the topic of your e-book should relate to the theme of your website. An
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e-book can consist of only a few pages, say, a minimum of 10, up to a maximum of many
hundreds. Lets use an example:
Youve designed a website about the use of exotic Indian spices. Your website has a lot of
well-thought-out pages on all the possibilities that can be used for Indian spices. So now
its time to move on to the next step in providing your visitors with the ultimate website
experience.
You have hundreds of recipes that have been handed down through generations of your
family for Indian curries using exotic spices and youd like to share those recipes with
your visitors. Having said that, it is hard to get people to pay for content that is useful, but
available for free elsewhere. Content that is relevant in a professional context and enables
the buyer to make money from the content (Tax, Legal related etc) has been the most
successful.
Writing Your Ebook

Before you begin, here are some of the questions you need to ask yourself:
1) Who will be your target audience?
2) What benefits will your e-book give your customers?
3) Will you invite others to contribute?
4) How many chapters will your book contain?
5) What will be the title of your e-book?
6) Is it going to be available as a promotional giveaway, or do you intend selling it?
7) Will you encourage sales by providing excerpts from your book?
8) Will you turn your e-book into other promotional items like video classes, audios, a
webinar?
Once you have all these answers in your head, write your ideas down in a notebook.
The next step is to create a mud map of your book. Its best to do this on a large sheet of
paper with a pencil and eraser, so you can easily make changes. Write down all your topics,
including an introduction and perhaps a small piece on you and how you came to have
such inviting, exotic recipes.
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Then create chapter headings. You can record each recipe or piece of information in the
appropriate chapter. Also focus on any affiliate links or other advertising links you could
blend into the books contents. Once youve completed your rough draft, its time to plan
the structure for your e-book.
Remember to always start your chapters with the most interesting information. If you
dont consider yourself to be a whizz at writing, now is the time to plan how you would
like the contents completed.
You can hire a writer relatively inexpensively on sites like eLance or RentaCoder, or you
may have a friend or colleague who is willing to help you if you complete a draft copy.
Once again, remember to include Affiliate links or advertising links. Even in an eBook, if
one of your readers clicks on your Affiliate links and purchases an item or service, you will
be rewarded.
Its important to include the following chapters in addition to your content:
An illustrated or graphical front page, including the Heading, a Sub Heading, and
the authors name. The more enticing the cover, the more likely your readers will
be to want to read it.
A comprehensive Index. Microsoft Word has a formatting program that will
automatically include a Table of Contents.
An About the Author section. This would be the perfect section to include some
background about how you came to be writing the book.
A Bibliography, if necessary. This would need to include resources you have used.
Images! Readers will quickly lose interest if you dont include professional quality
graphics to illustrate your point, provide decoration or show the reader how the
end product will look.
A copyright clause on EVERY page of the book to protect your content.
Once you have completed your eBook, its vital you have someone proof-read and edit
it. There is nothing worse than trying to read a book filled with grammatical and spelling
mistakes!
Although its not imperative, most eBooks are published in PDF format. PDF stands for
Portable File Document and this format prevents anyone from making changes.
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Microsoft Word includes an easy tool for converting Word documents into PDF files.
Its as simple as clicking on a button and giving your PDF a file name!
Marketing Your EBook.

As we mentioned earlier, your e-book can be either :
a nifty enticement for visitors to subscribe to your newsletter, or
a bonus for your website visitors, or
a saleable e-product which will help you produce a secondary source of income.
Why make your hard-earned masterpiece free? There are any number of reasons more
than we can include in chapter about why you would create a FREE e-book.
The most important use for a free e-book is to entice your visitors to subscribe to your
newsletter. By offering your visitors something of value for nothing, you are building trust
and respectability and those visitors are more likely to return. Another worthwhile reason
is it gives you a foot-hold in the door to the massive Internet e-book market.
Having written one successful e-book, you have the power of a published manual to work
from, making future e-books more marketable. The first and most important point to bear
in mind if you are going to charge for your e-book is that IT HAS TO BE WORTH THE
COST!
There are zillions of free e-books available on the Internet, so your book needs to include
information visitors cant find anywhere else. Butthousands of web owners sell their
e-books online and make a very handsome profit. Do your research and find how much
your competitors are charging for comparable products. Remember that people are more
likely to purchase your book if its reasonably priced.
You may have to settle on a figure of, say, $14.95 for your beautifully produced 800+ page
book on exotic Indian curries, but 100 sales at $14.95 is better than 10 sales at $34.95.
E-Commerce
An eCommerce website requires a good deal more work, time, commitment and outlay
than an Affiliate site, but the rewards can make it all worthwhile.
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In simple terms, an online retail store is much the same as a bricks and mortar retail store.
As the website owner, you have to purchase the stock you wish to sell, add on your profit
margin and then sell the goods. The margin between your buy and sell price provides you
with an income.
On the upside, as a retail site owner, you dont have to pay rent and other outgoings
associated with an offline store. In addition, staff payments will be reduced because you
wont need as many staff.
On the downside, you have to purchase the goods you are going to sell, an eCommerce
website generally costs more to set up and maintain, and your back office accounts and
follow-up have to be maintained if you want to capture repeat business. In addition, a
number of the payment gateway facilities (the method by which your customer pays for
the goods) that allow you to accept credit cards charge a fee for providing their services.
With more visitors to your website and business being good, you would realize that all
the hard work and money spent is truly worth it. You can sit right at home and control the
entire flow of events.
Consultancy Services
Consultancy service is another area that has seen a lot of activity in recent times. If you are
an expert in any particular field and would like to begin work from home, a website is the
best way to make a beginning. This would help you to put your knowledge and education
to good use sitting right at home. The flexibility and income potential of working from
home is truly immense.
Your must ensure that your website is content rich, professional and must aim at
showcasing your expertise so that visitors who are in search for experts would be able to
find you easily. For instance, if you are a chartered accountant, interior designer, architect
or a chef who can offer valuable consultancy services, then a good website that brings out
clearly the services that you offer would provide a big boost to your business online.
The Web community often sees blogs as merely soap boxes from which you can express
your opinions and comments. Maybe so, but from your soap box you can tell the world
about your talents and the services you offer. Maybe you are an adept artist, or you have
years of experience as a book-keeper. No matter what your skill, tell the world about it!
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Dont be shy! Present your skills or the services you offer in a professional, realistic way
and describe the benefits your readers will receive by utilizing whatever it is you have to
offer.
New York based communications consultant Yvonne Eland says, Rather than write short
commentaries that begin a dialogue with readers, I write the equivalent of journalistic articles that
demonstrate my abilities, knowledge and the strategies I use. When it resonates, it means money.
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Which Web Business Is Right For You?

Whether you are looking at a full time or part time home based business opportunity, an
online web business is the most flexible, cost-effective and rewarding work from home
venture possible.
Online web businesses fall into a number of categories, so weve included an outline on
the various ways to make money online, making the decision easier for you!
Blogs
Blogs are certainly the flavour of the month on the Internet right now.
Countless numbers of bloggers are blogging their way to the bank, earning rich rewards
from their efforts. Blog is a shortened form of web log, because they began as a means
for individuals to keep an online journal.
Blogs have now become very sophisticated and technologically up-market tools which
cater to the hundreds of thousands (if not millions!) of bloggers out there in the real
world.
A blog provides you with an avenue to express your opinions, chat about whats going
on in your life, swap relevant and interesting information, or present an on-going
commentary about anything and everything. You must make sure that the blog has good
content so that it is able to attract potential customers and also be able to retain their
interest. Good content and traffic translates into success, money and fame in the blogging
world.
Bloggers make money online by:
using Affiliate links or banners in their commentary;
making use of Google AdSense ads throughout their daily/weekly journals;
requesting donations; and
placing advertisements on their blogs to grab the attention of their readers.
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Niche Content Websites

You will know from your own experience in surfing the Net that most of us are generally
searching for information good, practical, well-written and well-informed.
So it stands to reason that if you can provide an Internet portal that gives your visitors the
information and advice they want, then you are on to a winner!
It could be said there is no longer any such thing as a unique topic on the Internet, but
every day some college student somewhere is coming up with something original and
infinitely wonderful that hasnt been seen on the Web before.
So it IS possible!
However, lets assume you havent come up with a unique concept that is going to make
you a million dollars in just a few weeks.
So, its time to put your thinking cap on and consider all the possibilities that appeal to
you.
What subjects do you like to read about?
What do you enjoy doing?
What kind of magazines do you subscribe to?
Do you have any hobbies?
What topics do you discuss when you get together with friends?
These are the types of questions you need to ask yourself to help you brainstorm ideas for
your website. The idea is to come up with a niche topic thats not too general (too much
competition) and not so obscure that you dont have an audience (no visitors = no sales =
no income).
Here are some resources you can use to help you come up with niche topics to explore in
more detail:
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Go to the Magazines & Newspapers section on amazon.com;

Browse the types of websites being bought and sold at Sitepoint Marketplace;
Look at Google Trends for a list of the most popular search terms;
Google Hot Trends lists the current Top 100 search terms;
Yahoo! Buzz : the latest stories from across the Web;
Dummies.com: a guide to just about everything;
eBay Pulse lists the most popular product searches.
Research is one of those tasks most of us dislike, but its something that has to be done if
you want to get serious.
Using the example exotic indian curries, type the words into your Google search engine.
At the top right hand side of the search results page, highlighted in pale blue, Google tells
you there are 1,090,000 websites which use the keywords exotic indian curries. (Note:
upper and lower case letters arent important when doing keyword searches.)
Now that may sound like a lot of websites, but if you look closely, youll find some of the
search results are for Indian restaurants, cooking classes etc. They are NOT all websites
about exotic Indian curries. Youll soon discover there arent nearly as many websites
about exotic Indian curries as you first thought!
The next step is to look at the competition. Open the websites that appear to be based on
exotic Indian curries and pass judgement on how you think they rate.
Look for the following qualities:
How does the website look? Is it professional looking or does it scream amateur?
Glance through a couple of pages and note the quality of the content. Is it well
written and easy to understand? Are the paragraphs closely spaced so its hard to
read? Are there spelling or grammatical errors?
Is the website easy to navigate? Can you get back to the Home Page without any
trouble?
Does the website cover a broad range of subjects?
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By The Way: it doesnt hurt to note your competitions choice of keywords and topics you can
always use them for your own keyword selection!
You may have to attempt quite a few themes before you come up with a subject that feels
right and looks good, but it will be worth it in the long run!
As we explained at the outset, the objective in refining your niche topic (and therefore
your niche keywords) is to find a topic thats not so generalized the competition is
monumental.
At the same time, your topic has to be not so specific that nobody searches for it.
The example: exotic Indian curries fits nicely as a niche topic.
Indian curries is far too competitive, while exotic cardamom based Indian curries is
way too specific. Sure, youll get the occasional visitor, but well bet you wont make a
dime!
The major benefit in refining your niche topic is that youll draw a significant amount of
targeted traffic. And that equates to a better bottom line for you.
Targeted traffic means that your searcher is specifically looking for your niche website
articles, so targeted traffic is more likely to buy than traffic that is merely browsing.
Forums
Creating an online forum so that women can discuss various issues with others can
provide you with a steady income flow. Forums create an income stream in much the same
way as a blog.
Some of the best forum software programs are free to download and give you all the bells
and whistles you could possibly ever need. One of the most popular forum programs is
www.phpbb.com. You will find it used extensively on the Internet because it has a simple
and easy to follow interface.
Operating an online forum successfully requires quite a lot of your time as you will be
required to act as Moderator to maintain the integrity of the forum posts and to avoid
those dreaded spammers!
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Pure Ecommerce Sites

Most of you will be familiar with eBay; youve either visited eBay to window shop,
bought something or sold something. Many thousands of people have graduated from
simply selling their products on eBay to owning an eBay store.
An eBay store can be used as your stepping stone to a successful online business. It enables
you to sell greater quantities of goods than an individual seller, as well as a wider variety of
products. eBay maintains control over the type of store-front you can operate and how it
will look. They also monitor the type of products you are able to sell.
eBay wholesalers have proliferated on the Internet to cash in on the number of people who
want to own and operate their own eBay store. With an already established platform that
has a huge traffic, an ebay store would allow you to test the waters and analyse the kind of
clientele that exists for your specific product.
The one real advantage eBay stores have over eCommerce sites is that you have a readymade worldwide market on eBay, whereas you have to work harder to attract your
customers with an eCommerce website. Starting with an ebay store, you could slowly
move on to an ecommerce store of your own. A website of your own definitely means
more effort and also having to spend money to set it up, however, when money begins to
roll in, you would realize that its worth all the effort.
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Building a Website, the Basics

The chapters so far would have helped you come to a decision regarding the best web
business for you. If you havent already read the previous chapters it would definitely help
to go through that before you begin with the basics of how to build a website.
Now that you comprehend all the advantages and benefits that can be yours with a web
based home business, its time to get down to the nitty-gritty so you can learn how to set
up your own.
Coming up with a Name

Your domain name or the name of your website needs to clearly indicate what your
website is all about.
Choosing a domain name is one that needs to be done with care. Here choosing the right
keywords plays an important role. It can actually make or break your business.
Choosing a domain name like www.amritasplace.com, when your website or blog is about
Punjabi wedding customs may tell Web searchers that Amrita owns the website, but youve
told them nothing about your website that it is about the customs and folklore of Punjabi
weddings. An Internet surfer looking for that information will simply keep on searching
and pass your site over.
If your website is indeed about Punjabi wedding customs, then you could consider a name
like www.punjabiweddingcustoms.com, or www.punjabi-wedding-customs.com.
Website experts argue about whether you should hyphenate a domain name. Our advice is
if you are in any doubt; register the hyphenated domain name as well as the unhyphenated
name.
That way, you have captured the market for your particular domain name, and your
website visitors can type either name, and still land on your website. Furthermore, you can
register your domain name for as little as $10, so its really a very small price to pay.
Once youve decided on your domain name, registering that name is quite a simple
process.
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Registering The Domain

The most important aspect of choosing a domain registrar is selecting the best value for
money from the thousands of domain registrants available.
The main function of a domain registrant is to simply register your new domain name
with ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), which is a global
database of every domain name or number.
So, any bonuses or special offers a domain registrant offers, especially if there are
additional charges, are most likely not worth it.
Once youve selected a suitable domain name, the most important thing to do is check
to see if its available. The majority of domain registrants offer this service, so all you have
to do is type in the domain name you want to use, and the software will tell you if its
available.
If your chosen domain name isnt available with a .com suffix, the software will usually
offer you alternatives, like .net, .tv, .org or .info.
Always aim for a .com suffix, at worst, .net. If the domain name youve chosen isnt
available with either of these two suffixes, try a variation on the name rather than a less
well known suffix.
Here is a short list of some of the popular domain registrants available:
http://www.GoDaddy.com
http://www.networksolutions.com
http://www.hostgator.com
http://liquidweb.com
Its a good idea to register your domain name for 2 years; you will generally get a discount
and it suggests you mean business!. Checkout for latest domain registration deals at www.
indusladies.com/deals and you might save some money along the way.
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Choosing A Web Host

A web host is the conduit between the website you are going to create and the World Wide
Web.
Your web host connects your website to the World Wide Web. Without a web host, your
website or blog is simply a collection of images and code sitting on your computer.
You will find tens of thousands of web hosts online, so your choice is virtually unlimited.
Web hosts abound on the Internet, so its important to find one that is suitable for your
website.
Here are a few tips to look for in choosing the right web host:
How reliable is your web host? You want a host that guarantees to keep your site
online for at least 99.9% of the time.
How much technical support do they provide? You should expect no less than
24/7 availability as well as telephone support if you need to contact your web host
urgently.
How much bandwidth do they offer? The bandwidth is the amount of data your
visitors are able to download from your site. This includes text, images, documents
or other information your visitors can access.
How much disk space do they provide? Disk space is the amount of space required
to host your site. Most websites require no more than 10MB (megabytes) of space,
so dont be fooled by web hosts that tell you they provide 500MB of disk space.
You simply dont need it.
Does your web host have a control panel? A control panel is the simplest way to
change details about your site when necessary.
Do they offer PHP, MySQL and Perl scripts? These terms probably sound like
gobbledegook to you right now, but they may come in handy if you develop a
client database, for example.
How many email accounts are offered? When you set up your website, you will
need to have dedicated email accounts, like deepal@yoursite.com and accounts@
yoursite.com. In most cases, you wont need more than 10 email accounts, so
theres no need to pay for more.
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One of my favourite web hosts is www.hostgator.com. It has a very user-friendly Control

Panel that makes it a breeze to upload and download files and to make changes when
necessary. It also offers a wonderful tool called Fantastico, which will, with one mouse
click, automate the download of add-ons like a forum, shopping cart, blog or wiki.
Other popular web hosting services are:
http://www.GoDaddy.com
http://www.networksolutions.com
http://liquidweb.com
Although they may seem like a great alternative, steer clear of free web hosts. Generally,
they are unprofessional, unreliable and come loaded with compulsory ads that are
plastered all over your website or blog.
Website Design
If you are at all creative, now comes the fun part!
Even if you dont have an artistic bone in your body, designing your website can be as easy
as purchasing a template.
That is, unless you have learned all the basic programming languages like HTML, CSS,
Javascript, PHPthe list goes on!
As a beginner, or even if you know the basics of building and coding a website, a template
is still the easiest, most effective way to get started.
Web templates can be found by the thousands on the Web, most at reasonable prices.
One of the largest suppliers of web templates is www.TemplateMonster.com, where you
can find a massive range of templates starting at $5.00.
You may even find a variety of web templates that are free to download. They are often very
basic, but if thats what you want to do the job, more power to you! All you need do is type
free web templates into your search engine. But beware of tricksters!
Often your web host will have a heap of templates available to you for FREE! One such
web host, which offers great value for money and has over 4,500 free templates is www.
hostgator.com.
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Once youve downloaded your template, its usually quite a simple process to alter the
generic headings and text to suit your web content. This is where a basic knowledge of an
image editor, like Photoshop, comes in handy.
If you dont have an image editor, good quality free software is available at www.download.
com. Once youre at the site, type in free image editor and a range of products will
appear.
However, more important than an image editor is a web editor. This is the program that
enables you to build, edit and manage your website.
As a beginner, we recommend a WYSIWYG editor. This stands for What You See Is
What You Get and means you can design and edit your website with only a limited
knowledge of HTML and CSS code.
Although it may seem daunting at first, a basic understanding of HTML and CSS will
help you enormously. Free tutorials in HTML and CSS can be found at http://www.
w3schools.com, the home of web based tutorials.
With a little knowledge of HTML under your belt, its now time to search for a WYSIWYG
web editor. A great place to start is at the about.com Web Design section: http://
webdesign.about.com/b/2008/11/05/what-is-your-favorite-free-web-editor.htm.
We could write a book (in fact, thousands have been written!) about the basics of building
and designing a website. So lets simply say that almost every question you could possibly
imagine wanting the answer for is available on the Internet.
All you need to do is frame your question properly and we almost GUARANTEE youll
find the answer online. For example, if you wanted to know how to center your headings
(although most WYSIWYG editors will do that for you), type how to center headings
into your web browser and youll most likely come up with a couple of hundred thousand
results.
Getting Fresh Content!

Just like the 3 primary rules for property are location, location and location, the 3 primary
rules for growing a successful website are content, content and more content. Search
engine spiders love nothing more than fresh, exciting content; so the more you give them,
the more theyll lap it up!
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One of the major measures of your success (apart from the income!), is your page rank
and how easily Web searchers can locate your site.
Its a well established fact that search engine spiders will virtually book a permanent
reservation at your website if you give them adequate spider bait, ie. fresh content.
Not only will you keep the spiders happy, youll keep your visitors coming back for more.
And thats got to be a good thing!
How to find fresh content is an important aspect that you must be well-versed with. For
keeping the search engine spiders and your prospective customers happy, it is essential
that you update the content regularly. How to find Fresh Content?
Search through journals, magazines, newspapers, your local library, online articles,
or anything you can find that relates to your topic for fresh ideas.
Think laterally. Or try playing some word association games with your friends.
Give them a word associated with your websites theme and ask them to tell you
the first word that pops into their head. It can be a fun, challenging way to come
up with new topics you may not have considered.
Tangents are useful too! As an example, I built a website about engagement
rings for a company I was contracted to. Once we had exhausted every angle and
facet of engagements rings, diamonds and the works, we nonchalantly got into a
discussion one day about marriage proposals.
Our seemingly innocuous conversation led to a whole new angle we could explore
for the website. We even created a feedback page where people could tell us about
their romantic wedding proposal. The most interesting proposals were posted
online and it became a hit!
Because we cleverly crafted the keywords, and the pages associated with wedding
proposals were so popular, we scored very highly in the page rankings, thereby
further increasing our popularity.
Hire a professional writer. Employing a professional writer makes a lot of sense
when you become a successful Affiliate marketer.
Not only will a writer save you valuable time (which you can spend earning more
income!), they are likely to come up with new concepts and ideas you may not
have thought of. Websites like eLance and Rentacoder specialize in finding you
the right person to craft new articles for you. In most cases, all you need do is
outline the details of your project, define the keywords you want to use, and the
writer will do the rest.
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And best of all, harsh competition from the service providers means you can
purchase your articles from as little as $5-10 per item.
Although its not a method I recommend, most article directories give website owners
permission to download any article off their site. The proviso is that you must include
the authors name and website address (and often the authors bio as well).
In my opinion, the negatives far outweigh the positives.
For a start, it is not original content so articles published from article directories
dont score well with the search engines. Just as important is the fact that unless
the article is written by someone you view as an authority or expert on the subject,
you lose credibility by including other peoples work on your website.
Finally, you have to include a link back to the authors website. Every outbound
link that isnt reciprocated is a cross against you by the search engines.
As you become more familiar with the Internet, you may come across the term Private
Label Rights (PLR) articles or products.
In most cases, Private Label Rights refers to one or a series of products, such as ebooks and
manuals, that you purchase, re-brand with your own details, then on-sell on your website.
However, a number of sites have sprung up over recent years where you can purchase a
package of articles with Private Label Rights.
What this means is that someone has written a series of articles on a particular topic (or
range of topics) that they sell to a given number of website owners. On the plus side,
depending on how many buyers they sell each package to, the price per article can be very
cheap as low as less than a dollar per article. In most cases, the cheaper the price, the
more buyers are permitted to purchase the articles.
Conversely, some PLR sites sell their articles at a much higher price because they limit the
number of buyers who can purchase the packages.
As long as you purchase unrestricted PLR articles, you can edit the articles as much as you
please, then include them as fresh content on your site.
The downside to PLR articles is you can never be sure how many other buyers have
purchased the same articles. This means you can run into problems with duplicate content
unless you are willing to make substantial edits to the original article. As a result, you can
end up virtually re-writing the entire article to ensure the same content doesnt appear a
dozen or more times around the Internet.
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Publishing duplicate content can not only get you into trouble with Google (it has
restrictions on duplicate content), you can lose credibility with your readers if they see the
same or a very similar article on a number of websites, including yours!
A further concern is that you generally cant view the articles until youve paid for them,
so you cant measure the quality. Quite a few PLR sites cash in on the vulnerability of web
owners desperate for fresh content by creating sub-standard articles of little or no real
value.
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Building a Web Business

Building a Blog
Blogs come in all shapes, sizes and varieties, however, bloggers (the people who own and
write blogs) fall into two distinct categories: those who blog to make money and those
who blog for the heck of it. We are going to concentrate on blogging to produce an income
for your home based business.
What Is A Blog?
The word blog is derived from Web log.
According to blogger.com (a blog download site) a blog is defined as follows:
A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A
breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the
world.
Blogger.com goes on to say: Since Blogger was launched in 1999, blogs have reshaped
the web, impacted politics, shaken up journalism, and enabled millions of people to have a
voice and connect with others.
How Do I Create A Blog?

Blog software is available in a number of varieties. The software falls into two categories:
Those blogs that are hosted for you.
These blog services are managed for you, so you never have to worry about
technical maintenance of your Weblog. That means you can instead focus on your
blogs content and appearance. You can have your blog up and running within
minutes of signing up for an account, which is an advantage if you want to start
publishing as soon as possible. Many of these services, like Blogger, are free, but
some, including TypePad, may charge a nominal monthly fee.
The second category is blogs you host yourself. This means you will create your
own domain name and pay a small fee to have the blog hosted.
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Wordpress and blogger are two of the most famous blog softwares in the market. To find
out how these various blogs operate, just visit their website and go to the FAQ page, and
youll discover everything you could possibly need to know.
Which Blog Software Package is Right For Me?

The blog software listed above is only a small sample of the many packages available. The
type that suits you best: self-hosted or web-hosted, free or fee based, depends on exactly
how you intend using your blog and what you intend to write about. If your goal is to
create a profitable work from home business on the Internet, then the self-hosted blogs are
a better option. They allow you more flexibility and creativity to develop the kind of blog
you want.
In later paragraphs we will be discussing how to make money with your blog, so it is
important you choose a blog package that allows you to add the necessary components
required to make money.
A self-hosted blog gives you more control. When you have a self-hosted blog, the domain
name is www.yourname.com, which, like a brand name, gives you credibility and raises the
profile of your blog name.
A hosted blog service like blogger.com has restrictions on what you can include in your
blog. Your domain name on a hosted blog would be similar to: www.yourname.blogspot.
com, which doesnt give you the same credibility as having your own dedicated domain
name.
If you dont have your own domain name, you are building up someone elses asset. It is
in your best interests to build page rank and credibility for yourself, not the blog host.
Developing a self-hosted blog requires a bit more up-front work, but it will be worth it in
the long run.
Like any work from home business, whether online or offline, research is a major factor in
developing a profitable, successful business that will grow over time.
If youve decided a blog is the way to go to make money online at home, take the time to
research the various blog programs (they all have plenty of information about how they
work).
Also, compare the features by typing blog software review into your search engine. Youll
find there are hundreds of very good articles that compare and contrast the different blogs
and the features they have.
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You may find you still have to throw a dart blindfolded to decide on the right blog
software, but all the blogs we have suggested above will have the features you require.
And if you still cant decide, we recommend Wordpress. It is widely used across the blog
community and is reasonably easy to install and operate.
Now that you have decided on starting your blog as your home based business, let us learn
more about how to sustain and grow your blog, as well as your income flow!
Lets start with: how to write a successful blog.
Stay on Topic
Unless you have a remarkable knack for writing witty, humorous, cynical or outrageous
articles about your family life, most readers arent going to care whether you eat Cheerios
for breakfast or had garlic flavored pappadums for dinner last night.
Create a theme and stick to it. Of course, there is always room for opinionated stories on
topical and newsworthy events, but if your blog has a defined area of interest, stay on topic.
In this way, you will build a loyal following of interested readers.
Be Creative
Make your blog resonate with your personality. In your mind, create a picture of the one
person you are writing for. Model your image on an interesting friend, family member or
colleague. Then write as if you are having a chat with her (or him).
Capture your readers attention by writing in a conversational tone. Ask questions. Seek
rhetorical opinions. If you dont already own a Thesaurus, go out and buy one, or use www.
thesaurus.com to find fascinating new variations on the same old, hum-drum words.
Be Informative
If your blog is about a topic you know well, communicate that fact to your readers. Be
decisive, informative and when appropriate, opinionated. When you have something to
say, say it like you mean it!
Readers will quickly lose interest if you dont keep your finger on the pulse of the theme
you are discussing. Old news is not news, so stay up to date.
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Plan a Schedule
Whether you decide to write a new blog post every day or twice a week, plan a schedule
and stick to it. Composing a blog post takes time, so plan a realistic timetable that gives
you sufficient time to write.
As well as writing, theres research to consider, new advertisers to look at and new ways of
generating income. All of these tasks need to be factored into your schedule as well, so you
can still maintain a life outside of your blogging pursuits.
Create Stimulating, Keyword-Rich Titles

It may seem like a bit of a stretch, but its certainly do-able. Remember that your use of
keywords plays an integral part in how and where youll be found by the search engines.
Think outside the square for titles that attract attention. Be playful and quirky; do
whatever it takes to attract the attention of your readers.
Quantity and Quality

The search engine spiders love sites that are regularly updated with new content. So the
more you give them, the more theyll lap it up and the higher your page ranking will climb.
A quirky title and a few well chosen words are NOT enough. You have to keep that fresh,
lively content coming!
And before you post your latest entry, always ensure you have someone else edit and
proof-read your copy. Theres nothing worse than poor grammar and spelling mistakes.
Your readers will quickly click off your blog if they cant understand what you are writing
about.
Once you have your blog going and have regular content, it is all about building more
traffic to your blog. There are several ways in which you can increase the traffic to your
blog. Traffic and having satisfied visitors/customers is all that matters for your success
online. Here is all you need to know to build traffic and make those numbers grow.
Blogrolls
Set up a blogroll in the right hand column of your blog. A blogroll is a list of other blogs
you like. Your blogroll can include blogs in the same category as your blog, or they can
simply be blogs about anything and everything you enjoy reading.
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Not only are blogrolls an effective resource for your visitors, they are a great source of
backlinks to your blog. Generally, blog etiquette suggests that if you link to another blog,
then they should reciprocate with a link back to you. Vice versa, if another blog adds you
to their blogroll, you should review their blog to ensure its quality, and then add their site
to your blogroll. The more links you have on blogrolls, the higher your blog profile will
become and the more traffic you will create.
Blog Comments
Blog commenting is a simple and effective strategy to draw more traffic to your blog.
Firstly, you create loyalty and trust from your regular readers if you respond to comments
made as a result of your own blog posts.
Secondly, posting friendly, informative comments on other blog posts raises your profile
and increases your back links. Always remember to include your blog URL on your post.
Search out the high profile, well ranked blogs then look for a recent, relevant post you
feel you could respond to. Make your post thought-provoking, entertaining or extremely
useful so visitors to that blog will notice you. Engaging in a conversation with posts on
other peoples blogs increases the quality and quantity of links back to your site.
The Beauty of RSS

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.
RSS is a Web feed format used to publish frequently updated works - such as your blog
entries, news headlines, audio, and video - in a standardized format. An RSS document
(which is called a feed, web feed, or channel) includes full or summarized text, plus
data such as publishing dates and authorship.
RSS feeds benefit readers who want to subscribe to updates from their favorite websites or
blogs. RSS feeds can be read by using software called an RSS reader or feed reader. The
user subscribes to a feed by entering the feeds URL into the reader or by clicking an RSS
icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process.
The RSS reader checks the users subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any
updates that it finds, and provides an interface to monitor and read the feeds. While there
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are hundreds of RSS feeders (or aggregators) available online, we suggest the Google RSS
Feeder, as it is free and relatively simple to use. Follow the Google video tutorial in the link
above, and youll have your RSS feeder up and running in no time at all.
Tag Your Posts

Tags are a creative and useful tool to draw additional traffic to your blog. Tags are simply
keywords that are relevant to your post and tag tools are usually supplied as part of your
blog package.
Tags are also easily picked up by the search engines, in particular, the blogging search
engines, making it easier for searchers to find you.
Social Networking
With the advent of MySpace and Facebook, the Internet has become a hub for social
networking. You can use social networking to:
Increase your online marketing profile;
Meet other people who share the same interests as you;
Promote and share your blog topics with the world.
By incorporating social networking and Internet participation into your blog promotional
activities, youll quickly see your online profits grow in response.
Consider starting your own social networking page. We recommend Facebook as it draws
the more professional, older (by that we mean anyone whos beyond teenager stage!) and
more business oriented audience. Setting up a Facebook page is a simple process, and once
you have your profile online, you can begin searching out like-minded people to create a
social network.
The Web is littered with other niche social networking sites where you can interact
with like-minded people and subtly introduce yourself and your blog. Wikipedia has an
extensive list of social networking sites available.
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Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is a method for Web users to store, organize, search, and manage
blog bookmarks. When users come across a memorable blog post or website, they can
bookmark it using a social bookmarking system.
These bookmarks can be:
available to the public;
saved privately; or
shared with specific friends or communities.
Instead of using the traditional folder system to store bookmarks, social bookmarking sites
usually categorize your stored information using tags (although some sites allow you to
use a combination of folders and tags). This less formal system enables users to cluster
groups of bookmarks via a common word, like fashion for all your favorite fashion
bookmarks.
Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists of bookmarks,
including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new
bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users.
As these services have grown more popular, they have added extra features such as ratings
and comments on bookmarks, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers,
and emailing of bookmarks.
You may have noticed tiny icons on many blogs or websites like the following collection:
Stumble Upon
Facebook
Digg
del.icio.us
newsvine
reddit
These icons, or hundreds just like them, can be placed on your blog to make the task
of bookmarking your page easier for your readers. By clicking on the icon, visitors are
directed to the social bookmarking site where the URL details will be automatically
loaded. The user then tags the item and your blog post can be shared by bookmarking
communities across the globe!
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The Importance of Images

You would probably be surprised at how many visitors find your blog or website by
searching Google images. Thats why its essential you use <alt> tags to describe your
images. Not only does it assist vision-impaired readers and Web users who have the image
function set to OFF, the <alt> tag description is the method used by search engines to log
and index your blog content.
Promotion
Dont be shy when it comes to promoting your blog, both online and offline. The more
actively you promote your blog, the more people will take notice and the more visitors
youll attract.
Online marketing tips include:
Nominating yourself or other blogs or bloggers for blog awards;
Submitting articles to blog carnivals (blog carnivals are similar to article
directories, where you submit a blog post about a particular topic);
Joining as many online communities, networks and forums as you can possibly
manage;
Make yourself known as a personality. Dont wait to be introduced get in there
and get noticed.
Offline tips include:
Add your blog URL to everything, including emails, blog posts, forum posts,
community posts;
Add your blog address to your business card and other stationery;
Attempt to steer conversations around to your blog topic so you can talk about it;
Discuss your blog with friends and colleagues. Word of mouth can be a powerful
tool!
Speak out and get yourself noticed. Sadly, the world isnt going to come to you, so you
have to get out and grab the attention of the world!
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Building a Niche Content Website

Once you have decided on the topic for your niche website, its time to move on to
building a website that is worthy of your visitors attention as well as good search engine
rankings.
A website that ranks #1 for a number of highly competitive keywords or in a tough market
segment must be able to justify its place, or risk losing out to the competition.
Your goal is to have your website rank highly as the best, most user-friendly, functional
and informative site in its segment. By intertwining your sites performance and content,
you can ensure its long term prospects and its ability to stay at the top of the search engine
rankings.
Usability
The ease of use of your websites design, navigation, architecture and functionality provide
the best possible experience for your visitors. An intuitive, intelligently designed structure
will easily guide your visitors to their goal, resulting in a positive experience and a greater
likelihood they will stick around.
Design
A well executed graphical layout has a strong influence on how usable your website is for
your visitors. Standard features like blue, underlined links, navigational links at the top and
side of each page, your logo in the top left hand corner and uniformity and consistency of
all web pages may seem like rules which can be bent, but Internet research suggests visitors
are more comfortable with features they are familiar with.
Design also includes visibility, contrast, design elements, layout and compatible color
schemes. High impact, elegant and professional looking design is critical to your users
experience.
You must gain your visitors trust and respect, so a website that shrieks low budget and
unprofessional will result in users clicking off your site before they have had a chance to
draw breath. First impressions occur in less than 7 seconds, so thats all the time you have
to convey your message of professionalism, importance, relevance and quality.
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Navigation
Your navigational structure is imperative to your visitors experience. A system that ensures
all pages on the website are accessible is critical to usability and a positive user experience.
Navigation is one of the primary functions of a website, so its important to use
navigational standards, like :
Breadcrumbs; these are the links at the top (or bottom) of the page indicating
whereabouts on the site you are, ie., Home > Shoes > Designer Shoes > Prada
Shoes.
Alt tags for images; Alt tags describe clearly and descriptively the contents of the
image. If the image contains a hyperlink, you can indicate where the link will take
your visitor.
Well written anchor text; Anchor text is the highlighted text inside a hyperlink.
Links that merely say: Click here tell your visitor nothing about where the link
will lead. Instead, a well written hyperlink might say Find out more about our
great sale items.
Functionality
To create exceptional functionality, ensure your tools, links, images and scripts all function
as they are designed to do. The best adage you can use is Dont Make Me Think!, so
always assume your visitor needs as much information as he or she can get.
Content
The quality of your content cannot be overstated. Not only does it boost your search
engine rankings, it ensures your visitors are more likely to continue reading.
Make your headlines compelling and descriptive, and your text conversational, accurate
and of the highest quality. Research shows web users dont read a web page like they would
a book. So use defining features like dot points, highlighted text (ie., bold and italicized)
and short, descriptive sentences.
One question you should ask yourself is: Why should the search engines rank my site
above others in similar fields?
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Search engines attempt to rank websites with the most relevant content first in their
results. Great content ensures community based sites and other websites with relevant
content will want to link to you. Incoming links from other sites increases your popularity
and therefore increases your chances of being ranked well.
Popularity
Not only does your website have to be visitor-friendly as well as search engine-friendly, it
also has to be compelling and interesting enough for other websites to link to you.
Have fun with it. Let your personality be reflected in your writing. And be memorable!
One single piece of exciting content that attracts the web community en masse is worth a
small fortune in exposure and public relations.
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Building a Forum
Anyone who has ever started a forum will tell you its often hard work and not as easy as
they first thought, but it can be equally stimulating, entertaining and a wonderful source to
meet new online friends.
Planning Your Forum

Like any online business, a forum takes a good deal of planning and research.
While forum communities exist online that are a virtual free for all when it comes to
choice of topic, it is imperative that you base your community around a theme.
While it may not be as easy to focus on a particular keyword or key phrase on a forum page
as it would be if you were writing for yourself, as the Administrator of your forum, you still
have the power to direct the input.
Passion and Knowledge

Its simply not enough to have a passion for your theme topic when you operate a forum,
you also need to know your subject inside out.
Of course, this will come with time as you continue to research and read about your topic
of interest. In addition, you may be surprised at how much knowledge your community
members may pass on to you!
Your knowledge may also be required to correct misguided and incorrect information in
a friendly, open and honest way. As John Delaware, the owner of a number of healthy and
wealthy open forums has said, Having a Forum Administrator with a vague knowledge of
the subject is like having a dictionary with vague definitions, it just doesnt work!
Forum Software
One of the beauties of forum software is that the two major forum software packages are
both free.
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These are:
phpBB Forum
Simple Machines Forum
While both these products boast about their ease of use, user-friendly options and their
ability for full customization, they both require a certain level of pre-existing computer
knowledge.
If you have any doubts, I suggest you have the software installed and customized by a
professional. You will find professionals willing to complete the project for a minimal cost
on websites like eLance and RentaCoder.
Simply using a skin is not good enough. If you choose to have a skilled designer
customize your forum, ask to see examples of their work beforehand.
A forum skin is simply like a change of clothing. The skin is a small piece of coding that
affects the overall color scheme, buttons, fonts etc., but doesnt alter the basic structure of
the software.
An important point to consider is the look and theme of your community. Choose a
palette of colors which reflect the tone you wish to create. A brilliant tool which helps
you plan a complementary or contrasting palette of colors is ColorBlender.
The display asks you to select a dominant color, then provides examples of 5 other colors
that either complement or contrast with the main color youve chosen. Incorporate the
entire palette into your forum color scheme to create something that is unique to you and
will draw the attention of forum visitors.
Creating Your Forum Content

The most interesting and professional forums contain a wide variety of diverse topics,
usually all related to a central subject. A brand new forum is like a blank canvas waiting
for the paint to be added. In most cases, it will be up to you to draw the basic outlines to
allow your members to color them in accordingly. You will find most visitors are loathe to
initiate a new post or topic on a brand new forum.
However, you can encourage posts in a number of ways:
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Create a series of categories and sub-categories using your major keywords that
you want your forum to focus on. Make sure your choices of topics are easy to
understand so that would-be members are clear about the subject matter.
You can do this by creating a number of usernames and writing a friendly,
open-ended post as various members to challenge or inspire visitors to post
a response. Think how your user would think and write a post that not only
welcomes feedback, but one that encourages active thought and participation.
Using your Administrator name can be equally as daunting as leaving the forum
topic empty, hence the various usernames.
Take part in post exchanges. Find friendly cooperative forums where you can post
a series of new items for them in exchange for them writing a series of posts for
you.
Actively seek out forums where your input would be appreciated and announce
yourself. Always ensure your signature includes your name (or nickname), your
forum address and a brief catch-phrase.
You can employ someone to write a series of posts, say, 10 to start with, in the
topic areas you have selected. Many contractors will do this for as little as $1 per
post.
Ask your friends to start a lively chat by way of a forum post. Always ensure you
give them specific instructions about the topics about which they should write.
Remember, YOU are the Administrator, so the quality and content of forum posts
is YOUR responsibility.
Create an Introduction forum page where new members can introduce
themselves. Welcome each new person who adds a post.
Introduce a competition or topical poll and invite other websites and forums to
mention it on their website. Everybody loves to get something for nothing, so a
competition can be a great success. An effective win/win situation is providing
a prize to the member who refers the most new members. An amazon.com Gift
Certificate or a small gift from eBay would suit perfectly.
Rules for your Forum

The rules or Terms and Conditions are an integral part of the success of any forum.
Study the Terms and Conditions on as many forums as you can find, then incorporate
those you believe are important for your forum. Although its unlikely new members will
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bother reading the rules and conditions, they will come in handy if you have to delete a
post or member.
A critical factor in developing an open friendly forum atmosphere is making your content
open and available to everyone with as little moderation as possible. A closed forum,
where only members can view the posts, is an immediate turn-off.
Moderators
Unless you intend reviewing every post yourself which is quite possible while your
forum is in its infancy, but impossible once your forum gains momentum you will
eventually need to hire moderators to help you monitor the posts.
Once you have reached a stage where one or more moderators are necessary, the most
logical place to seek out good moderators is on your own forum!
Search out your most active participants and read their posts. Look for factors like:
Do they post regularly?
Are their posts written well and of high quality?
Do they participate in an active way or simply reply with one word answers?
Do they appear to be friendly, supportive and ethical?
When you have narrowed your selection, write to those who impressed you the most and
let them know a place has become available for a new moderator. If they appear interested,
perhaps suggest a trial one-month period so you can both assess their suitability.
In this way, if you find they are not suitable, you dont have to sack them, you are simply
not extending the trial period! However, if you find they excel, hire them. Never hire
someone who asks to be a moderator. They are often in it for the power trip, not to be a
friendly guide.
Avoiding Spam on Your Forum

Its inevitable that once your forum is listed in the search engines and gains popularity, you
are going to be inundated with spammers. Unfortunately, its a fact of Web life.
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Spam robots search the Web looking for forums on which they can post spam links,
usually to pornographic websites. The most effective action you can take to avoid
spammers infiltrating your website is to ask that all members register before they post.
Include a numeric and alpha graphic that new members have to identify before they can
complete the registration process.
However, there are spam robots which try to identify your alpha-numeric graphic. In most
cases, they get it wrong, but large numbers of people from third world countries are often
employed for very low wages to override these graphic systems.
Another effective method is to ask a question as part of the registration process that
requires a human response, such as: What is the day after Thursday?
You may need to change your question regularly because as soon as a human spammer
identifies the answer to the question, they have opened the gateway to your forum.
Finally, you can ask new members to confirm their existence via email confirmation.
All that is required is for you to send each new registrant an email which contains a
confirmation link. Your members must click on the link to activate their registration. Only
a real registrant will be able to do that.
Building a Pure eCommerce Site

To make money online with an eCommerce website, you have to think like a retail store
owner! Apart from the obvious differences between a bricks and mortar retail store and an
online retail store, the similarities are numerous.
eCommerce Software
Like most products available on the Internet today, your choice of eCommerce (or
Shopping Cart) software is almost limitless. But lets make it clear at the outset a superduper eCommerce website requires more computer skills than, say, creating an Affiliate
website or building a Blog. However, there are a couple of software programs that require
only a very basic understanding of HTML and CSS coding.
Two off-the-shelf e-commerce packages which make it easy for the beginner to get a retail
online store up and running as quickly as possible are the Network Solutions Ecommerce
package and the Yahoo! Small Business Ecommerce package. Both of these packages start
at very reasonable prices and are intuitive and user-friendly.
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For those of you who have a knowledge of website coding practices like HTML, CSS and
PHP, quite a few free eCommerce software packages are available. Two popular ones are
osCommerce and Zen Cart.
However, if your computer knowledge is limited but youd still like to use one of the free
eCommerce solutions, it is relatively easy to find a web designer who will customize and
build your retail store for you.
The eCommerce software weve mentioned is appropriate if you plan on building a big
website with a large number of products.
For smaller websites with a limited number of products, you can easily sign up for a free
PayPal business account and start accepting PayPal and credit card payments instantly.
Plenty of PayPal tutorials are available online.
What do I sell?
The possibilities of what to sell online are limitless. Lets face it you can buy anything
from a luxurious personal jet aircraft to the tiniest component for a hearing aid, and
everything in between. Sowhere do you start?
Perhaps you hand craft something of value that you know others would love to own? I
recently saw an online craft store that retails miniature Indian traditional costumes for
Barbie dolls what a unique idea!
Another possibility is buying items in bulk at a discount then re-selling them online.
Hundreds of wholesalers sell thousands of products online, or perhaps you know or live
near a wholesaler where you can purchase bulk orders.
Or maybe theres a particular speciality or traditional item from your region that you
believe would have international appeal?
A clever way to test the viability of your product is to buy just a few items and sell them
on eBay. If they sell well, then you know you have a marketable product. If not, its time to
try something else. When youve come up with an idea for a product you believe would
sell well on the Internet, do some keyword research to see if you have a potential market.
You may think you have a fabulous product you want to sell online, but if there is nobody
searching for it, then youre wasting your time and money.
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The advantage of selling something that is unique to your region or culture is just that its
uniqueness! You also have the advantage of knowing and understanding the product well,
which gives you the edge over your competitors.
Many overseas merchants purchase their products in India because of the inherent beauty
and workmanship involved. YOU have the upper edge over your competition with
your knowledge. As our world rapidly evolves into a global community, consumers are
becoming more eager for the exotic and original.
Prepare Your Product Information

The most successful retail websites are those which are organized in the same way as a
major department store.
Think about your shopping experience when you visit Macys or even WalMart. Products
are divided into separate sections, so that if you are searching for, say, a new leather jacket,
you know youre likely to find it in the appropriate department.
The same logical scheme should apply to your e-store.
A shopper should be able to browse through your website in the same way she would
browse through a department store. Once she has purchased all the items she intends
buying, she should be able to swiftly and easily move to the Checkout.
Categorize Your Products

Fail to plan and youll plan to fail. Prepare a summary of your products. This is vital!
Using a spreadsheet, create the following columns:
Major product categories
All sub categories
Product options, ie. size, color etc.
Product description
Product #ID number
Product image
Product price
Shipping costs
Tax calculations
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Pre-planning will make adding your products to your shopping site so much easier to
upload.
Building Your eCommerce Website

Whether you are going to build your own website or have a professional web designer
build it for you, once you have categorized your product list you are well on the way to
creating the framework for your site.
Here are the major points to consider:
Your Home Page should contain the following:
A well-written, keyword-rich summary of the products available
Links to all the major categories
A link to your Contact Us page
Links to your Privacy Statement page, Terms & Conditions page (including
your Refunds policy) and Shipping Costs page
Other possibilities you can consider are:
A newsletter subscription form to inform your shoppers of upcoming offers,
specials and new products;
A link to an About Us page.
Try to plan your categories and sub-categories around your researched keywords
and phrases.
Maintain a consistent theme throughout the website. Your theme includes:
The design, layout and colours of the product web pages;
The header image and the logo;
Your slogan, if you have one;
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The navigation structure;

The copyright wording.
Include descriptive paragraphs for each product including the relevant keywords.
Testing Your Website

Once you have uploaded all your products, descriptions and additional pages, its time to
test your site.
Look out for the following:
Broken links
Browser incompatibility (your website should appear the same in all browsers)
HTML validation
Contact Us link and newsletter subscription forms work
Site loading time
Ask a friend or family member to visit your site and theoretically purchase a product.
Test how long it takes them to find the product, add it to their Shopping Cart, and most
importantly, how long it takes to process the payment. (You can always delete the purchase
from your database after the test is concluded).
Research shows clearly that over 77% of sales are lost at the Checkout stage. Aim to have
as few steps in the Checkout process as possible.
Your shopper should be able to register and confirm their name and shipping details, add
their payment details (if they are using a credit card), have the payment confirmed, then
proceed to the Checkout.
Marketing Your E-Store

If you can come up with an original concept, one of the most effective marketing strategies
is to issue a Press Release.
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Here are some important points that you need to keep in mind to ensure that you have a
successful e-commerce site that makes money for you:
1) Do your market research as thoroughly as you can;
2) Plan your website with your long term goals in mind;
3) Focus on all angles of the business; from presentation, to marketing strategies, to
the efficiency of your back-end operations;
4) Make your customers your number one priority;
5) Stay ahead of the competition.
6) It is important to keep the communication lines with your customers open.
The most successful eCommerce stores send out an email immediately after the
purchase has been processed with the following confirmation details:
Full product details including size, product number and any other relevant
facts;
Approximate shipping and delivery dates;
A copy of the shopping cart checkout summary with all taxes;
A Confirmation Order No. to keep track of the purchase.
7) Ensure that there is no delay in shipment and delivery. Customers hate to wait.
To maintain the ultimate in professionalism, you need to ship within 2 days of
purchase. If there is a hold up in the shipping, contact your customer immediately
and ask if theyd like to wait or to cancel the order.
8) Provide multiple ways for your customer to contact you email, toll-free
number, online support so if a problem arises, you can address it swiftly.
Make your contact details available on every page. Providing fast, helpful replies
distinguishes you and your retail business as being ahead of the pack.
The exemplary service is the ONE factor that separates the wheat from the chaff. Another
online retailer may undercut your prices and fierce competition is always a factor that
is present in business, but a superior customer service ethic will earn your business the
reputation you deserve and the repeat business you desire.
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Traffic Traffic Traffic

Search Engine Optimization
If choosing the right keywords is the foundation for building a successful work from home
Web business, then search engine optimization (SEO) is the bricks and mortar that hold
it all together. Optimizing your website to attract visitors via search inquiries is one of the
essentials for creating a successful online business.
Having your visitors find you naturally by performing a search for your product or service
remains one of the most effective methods for drawing traffic to your site. However, once
theyve arrived, its your job to keep them there!
Stickyness is a term often used by the Web community to describe a website where
your visitors are enticed to hang around. As a Web business owner, you can create
stickyness by providing:
clear, concise navigation;
fresh, compelling articles;
a pleasant site design; and
a comfortable, friendly atmosphere.
SEO is a broad term that categorizes all the strategies website owners use so that the search
engines can easily find, identify and rank your site according to its value. Here we will
learn the working of a search engine and how you can optimize your site to increase the
traffic flow and have a greater online exposure.
In turn, if a search engine can find and identify the content of your site, it will be able to
transmit that information to visitors who are eager to find the specific product or service
you promote.
So, the end result? You attract more traffic to your website, build a worthy reputation and
more importantly, sell your products! Search engines are the most valuable resource you
have to increase the popularity of your website.
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What is a Search Engine?

Although nobody knows for sure, it is estimated there are at least 20 billion web pages
available on the Net.
Some of them are absolute rubbish, while others provide a worthwhile source of valuable
data, information, specifics, products and services. It is the job of the search engines to sift
through those billions of pages and bring some sort of order to the Internet.
They accomplish this by sending out a limitless number of spiders or robots or bots
(as they are often called), which are complex computer analytical programs that attempt to
classify and index each and every page on the World Wide Web.
This information is logged and stored in huge databases for retrieval whenever you search
for something, using one of the search engines. A major search engine like Google indexes
hundreds of millions of pages every day and responds to an equal number of search
queries.
When a Google spider looks at a web page, it takes into account 2 things:
the words within the page, in particular, the words in the <meta> tags like title,
description, heading and sub-heading, and any linked words; and
where in the document, the words are located.
The index the search engines build has one specific purpose to make search results as fast
and easy to find as possible.
Search engines have 3 key processes they use to deliver search results:
Does the search engine know about your site? Can it be found easily?
Can the search engine adequately index your site?
Does your site have relevant, quality information that can be used by the searcher?
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Fig 1.1. How web spiders work.

Image courtesy of HowStuffWorks.com
The Search Engines And Your Website

According to one of the co-founders of Google, Larry Page, the perfect search engine, is
defined as something that, understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly
what you want.
Your websites position in the search engine results (or its page rank), is determined by a
number of factors.
These include:
a clear hierarchy and navigational links. Every page should be reachable from
at least one static text link.
a site map that links to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger
than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.
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useful, information-rich content.

appropriate use of keywords and keyword phrases.
your websites popularity. In other words, how many sites link in to your site?
the use of text instead of images to display important names, content, or links.
The Google crawler doesnt recognize text contained in images.
your <title> elements and <alt> attributes in an image are descriptive and
accurate.
check for broken links and correct HTML.
if you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a ? character),
be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as
static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.
keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).
Submitting Your Site to the Search Engines

While it is inevitable that if your site adheres to the guidelines set out above it will
eventually be found by the search engines, it pays to do a manual submission.
The 3 major search engines Google, MSN and Yahoo! all have varying policies and
guidelines for site submission, so the best advice is to check out each of the individual
search engines and go from there. (You can do this by typing: submit site to Google into
your search engine window).
As well as the 3 major search engines, there are hundreds of smaller search engines you can
also submit your site to. A word of caution; you will find hundreds of websites promising
to submit your site to hundreds of search engines and search directories for a fee. Dont go
near them!!
You have no guarantees that they will do what they promise, and often, the majority of
directories they submit your site to, are worthless.
Why Search Engines Are Critical To Your Success

When was the last time you Googled a product or service, rather than turning to
traditional resources like the Yellow Pages or an encyclopedia?
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Nowadays it is becoming increasingly evident that we are referring to the search engines
for much of our information.
The sophistication the search engines now employ means that you are highly likely to get
the most relevant search results possible.
So the next question is: when you search for a particular product or service, how many
search result pages do you scroll through?
Internet research suggests that most people dont search through any more than 3 or 4
pages before either clicking on a link or clicking away. And thats the very reason why most
website owners strive to achieve high page rank and a No#1 ranking in the search engine
results.
Logically, the higher your websites page rank, the higher it will climb in the search engine
results and the more likely it is to be found by searchers looking for your product or
service.
It then follows that with more visitors, your sales and ad revenue will increase. In order
to achieve your ultimate goal: a No#1 page rank, you can use a variety of strategies
commonly referred to as search engine optimization (SEO).
Now that you understand exactly how the search engine works lets move on to how you
can make the most of the search engine by employing smart search engine optimization
tips.
How To Optimize Your Website?

The primary goal of the search engines is to send out their spiders or robots to find,
classify and rank websites using what are considered to be the most complex algorithms in
the world of computing.
When properly used, the following components are considered to be the most critical in
determining how worthy your site is, according to the search engines:
Accessibility
Your site needs to be accessible to your visitors (and the spiders) 99.9% of the time.
Factors which ensure a sites accessibility are:
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Uptime or the amount of time your website is displayed online. This can be
affected by the functionality of the coding and your web hosts efficiency.
Valid HTML & CSS coding incorrect or incomplete coding can damage your
websites credibility and the spiders ability to crawl its content.
Title tags, meta tags, and image tags
Tags are part of the website coding that enables a search engine spider to correctly classify
and rank your websites content.
Title Tags these are used in the <head> section of your website page coding to tell
your visitors and the search engines what the page is about.
As an example, in the upper left hand corner of the page you are now viewing, the
Title will read Strategies For Search Engine Optimization.
Most search engines will also use this Title as the blue underlined link text on their
Search Engine Rankings page (SERP).
Therefore it is imperative that you choose your Title carefully; utilizing keywords
where possible and making it sound compelling. After all, you want to draw as much
targeted traffic as possible, dont you?
Meta tags are also contained in the <Head> of your page coding.
The <description> meta tag is, logically, a well written description of the contents of
the web page.
Once again it is imperative that you utilize effective keywords in the description and
make it as interesting as possible.
The most effective <description> tag makes the targeted keywords prominent, helps
brand the web page and is clear and concise.
Most search engines also use the contents of the <description> tag on their Search
Engine Rankings page (SERP).
Here is an example:
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Figure 1.1 Example of <Title> tag and <Description> tag on SERPs.

The <alt> tag within an <image> link serves two worthwhile purposes.
Search engine robots cant read images so they skip over them. Even if your image
is extremely relevant to your text, it is useless as robot fodder.
However, if you use the <alt> tag in an image to describe what the image is about,
you are telling the spiders what the image is and how it relates to the content of
your website.
In addition, <alt> tags are textual aids to the visually impaired or those searchers who
have the image display option turned off.
Like a <title> tag and a <description> tag, it is wise to use the <alt> tag to enhance
your web pages message with prominent keywords and a well thought out
description.
Search friendly text
Writing search-friendly text in HTML code is critical to getting properly indexed and
ranking well.
If the search engines cant read your text, they have no way of determining what the page
is about. Therefore, they cant index it or give it a ranking, with the end result being your
visitors wont find you.
The art of writing well for both your visitors and the search engines is an art as well as a
science because the methodology used by search engines to score your text for indexing
and ranking purposes is only known to the search engines.
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Here are some of the basic rules you can apply to your web pages to optimize your content
for search engine rankings:
Aim to use your targeted keywords in the Heading and if possible, the SubHeading.
Use your keywords judiciously throughout the content of the page.
Search engines use sophisticated analysis to judge the quality of your content.
They can detect keyword stuffing (or overuse of keywords) instantly, to your
detriment. A web page that has been over-stuffed with keywords will rank poorly
with the search engines.
Besides, your priority is to provide excellent copy for your visitors, so they are
likely to baulk at a page over-filled with useless keywords.
Use a journalistic approach to your writing. Include the most pertinent points
at the beginning of your document (where you can incorporate your targeted
keywords). Describe the content of your article in the first paragraph and then
allow your text to flow through to a broader discussion.
If you want to include images on your content pages, add them only after youve
included enough copy to give the search engines a good idea of what the subject of
your content is about.
Dont break up a line or paragraph by inserting an image midway through your
text; add an image between paragraphs so the content flows smoothly.
The right use of keywords can work wonders for your website in terms of traffic
and revenue. Here we delve a little deeper into the subject of choosing the right
keywords.
Site Structure
Search engine spiders list and index your pages by following textual and image links, which
lead them further into your site.
By using a Site Map (a hyperlinked index of every page on your website), the spiders can
quickly determine your websites overall structure and the contents of each page.
Your Site Map should link from your Home Page, making it easy to find for both visitors
and search engines.
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You will confuse your visitors and the search engines without a hierarchical navigation
structure.
Start with broad based categories then work down to specific topics deeper within the site.
The broadest categories should appear on your Home Page so visitors and search engines
can arrive at the pages in one click.
Large sites can use mini-hubs (or mini Site Maps) for each major category, so that no page
on your site is more than 3 clicks from the Home Page.
Using a logical, on-topic linking structure lets the search engines know that your site is
well organized, highly relevant and covers all topics in depth.
Keyword Research
No matter what type of online business you choose to make money from home, the most
important priority is keyword research.
Keywords are the words Internet surfers type into their search engine when they are
looking for information on a particular product or service.
Choosing the right keywords can make or break your website business.
Keyword Research Tools
The Web is littered with keyword research tools some very good, some not so good.
As a general rule, youll find the better the keyword research tool, the more likely it is you
are going to have to pay for their services.
For this exercise, we are going to use one of the most popular and effective keyword
research tools available: http://www.wordtracker.com.
Wordtracker is an excellent tool for beginners, because you can take the 7-day free trial,
which comes loaded with additional features like free video tutorials and an excellent
Keywords Basics Guide.
If you find you need Wordtracker for longer than the initial 7 day free trial, you can
purchase their services on a month-by-month basis.
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Keyword Research Exercise
In this example, we are going to assume you have a supplier in India who makes beautifully
carved and decorated bird cages, and you are planning a website or blog with information
and affiliate links for bird cages.
Firstly, you enter bird cages in the keyword finder box on Wordtracker.
A list of keywords suggested by Wordtracker will appear below the box. Here is a small
sample of the 100 or so keywords selected.
Figure 1.1. Wordtracker keyword suggestion tool

If the keywords are relevant to your website content, click on the keyword link. In this
case, we are going to click on bird cages.
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Figure 1.2 Broadened list of keywords

Wordtracker will present you with a broadened list of keywords relating to the keyword
bird cages. It also provides the following information:
Count: This figure is the number of times the keyword has appeared in search
results found by Wordtrackers metacrawlers, which simultaneously search all the
major search engines.
The list is compiled from keywords found over the past 160 days.
Predict: This is the maximum number of keywords predicted for all of the major
search engines and directories today.
Dig: This tool enables you to dig deeper into the keyword analysis for each
keyword listed.
In the next graphic, we have used the Dig tool to find more keywords relating to bird
cages.
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Figure 1.3. Results for a Dig on the keyword bird cages

By using the Wordtracker keyword research tool, you are able to see which keywords are
the most popular, and discover new keywords you may not have even considered!
Continue clicking on the major keyword reference tool until you have built up a
comprehensive list of keywords and their relative values. Around 50 or more keywords is
a satisfactory figure to aim for.
Competition Research
Once you have compiled a list of suitable keywords, the next step is to check out the
competition.
By competition, we mean other websites that appear to be promoting similar products to
your chosen keywords.
By typing bird cages into the Google search engine, you will find there are 3,880,000
web pages listed.
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However, that doesnt necessarily mean there are over 3 million websites all about bird
cages. What it means is that over 3 million web pages mention the words bird cages.
Thats an awful lot of competition!
Figure 1.4. Google search for bird cages

Now, heres a little trick that will help you narrow down the search results to pages that
include the words bird cages in the Title of the document.
Including your research keywords in the Title means that page is more likely to be focused
on the keyword you have in mind.
Heres what you do:
In the search engine type in the command: allintitle:bird cages. The image below shows
you the revised results.
Figure 1.5. Google search using the command allintitle

The allintitle search command gives you a much more realistic result.
Refining your Keywords
OK. Now its time to get out your calculator!

You know from the Wordtracker results that bird cages is searched for 256 times every
160 days.
You also know from your Google search results that bird cages is included in the Title on
62,600 websites. So divide 62,600 search results by 256 web searches.
The answer is 244.5.
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The lower the results/searches ratio, the better chance you have of being found in the
search engines.
The results to searches ratio for bird cages is a relatively high ratio, making the keyword
an unsatisfactory choice.
In addition, bird cages is too broadly based. If you wanted to base your website around
bird cages, you will succeed with more descriptive terms, like decorative bird cages or
how to build a bird cage.
Using search terms like those mentioned above is a double-whammy. Youll get credited
with the search term bird cages as well as the additional keywords youve selected!
Keep in mind that your use of keywords and the general layout of your text and images is
important from a professional perspective, however, obsessing over keyword placement
will provide little overall benefit and cause you no end of stress!
Once youve established your Web business and set your monetization strategies in
motion, its time to focus on building targeted traffic.
Simple logic will tell you that you may have the best looking, most well constructed
website on the Internet, but if you dont attract targeted, ready-for-action visitors, your site
amounts to nothing. So how do you go about generating traffic, and better still, traffic that
is eager to look at what you have to offer?
We are going to look at some of the tested and proven methods for drawing a host of
visitors to your site.
Building Inbound Links

Inbound links are links from another website to your site. The search engines consider the
number of inbound links your website has as one of the most critical indicators of its
overall value. The more websites with links pointing to your site, the higher your page rank
will grow and the more popular your site will become.
A general rule to always remember is to attempt to limit the number of outbound links
from your website while trying to increase the number of inbound links. The value of your
website (as determined by the search engines) is expressed by its page rank, and the higher
your sites page rank, the higher up the search engine results page it will appear.
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Consequently, the higher your website appears in the search engine results, the more
targeted traffic you will attract. The emphasis on the value of inbound links (combined
with other SEO strategies) cannot be overlooked.
Reciprocal Linking
The most popular method used by most Web owners to build inbound links is reciprocal
linking or cross linking.
As an example, you have a site about Indian wedding traditions and you find a suitable
website about traditional Indian bridal saris. You will both benefit by linking to one
another and creating an added resource for your visitors.
Its best to create a separate page on your website called Links, because your aim is to
build as many quality links as possible.
Be choosy about who you link to. One bad link can undo all the good work you have done
to build your reciprocal links.
By using a simple tool called the Google Toolbar, (you can download the Toolbar by
clicking on the link), you can see at a glance what page rank the other site has. The higher
the page rank, the more valuable the link is to you.
A reciprocal link is usually made up of a title and description, utilizing your keywords as
effectively as possible.
So, using the above example, a reciprocal link may look something like this:
Bridal Saris For You Beautiful Indian Bridal Saris For Beautiful Indian Brides
Exquisitely tailored traditional silk bridal saris made to measure. Plus Indian bridal
accessories to make you a beautiful Indian bride.
In this instance, we have assumed that bridal saris, Indian bridal saris, silk bridal saris,
traditional silk bridal saris and Indian bridal accessories are all choice keywords.
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Link Baits
One of the natural ways to build inbounds links is to write content that would naturally get
people to link to you. Here are some brainstorming ideas to create link bait:
Free Tools or Products. Automated tools that provide a great resource for your visitors
are suitably worthy. Any tool that makes a visitors online experience easier is a bonus. As
an example, a mortgage calculator on a finance website is an excellent resource.
Whether its 7 pages or 70 pages, a free eBook is another excellent resource. Creating
an e-Book that deals with a subject relevant to your content is an attractive add-on,
particularly if it deals with something out of the ordinary.
Controversial Content. Most controversial content provides excellent link bait.
Writing a journalistic-style expos detailing the misdeeds of an organization, website or
individual (especially a celebrity!) is a sure-fire way to get your site noticed. Be very careful
to ensure your content isnt legally or morally unethical and guarantee your facts before
you broadcast them online.
Top 10 Lists. A great way to generate Web buzz is to create a numbered list
particularly if it ranks the items. A list of newsworthy items promotes discussion and
therefore encourages links from other websites.
Interviews with Experts. Candidates who feature regularly in your industrys press
make noteworthy subjects.
In most cases, individuals who have made a name for themselves wont hesitate to garner
more press coverage. Take time to carefully draft your questions so they dont become the
same old ho-hum lines. Try to find an interesting aspect about your subject and work on
that basis.
Surveys and Polls. Create a provocative or newsworthy online survey or poll and add it to
your website. Publish the results as they come in to create a link worthy resource.
Add A Video or Animation. A high quality, entertaining video or animation is a sure way
to attract interest from other websites.
If video or animation resources are unavailable, search for a relatively unknown YouTube
video that is relevant to your site and download it. Its amazing how quickly a YouTube
video can create a web-storm!
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Contests, Giveaways and Competitions. People love to receive something for nothing,
so create interest with giveaways (even if the prize is something as simple as a new
screensaver).
Trend Spotting. By subscribing to journals, magazines and papers relevant to your topic,
you can stay ahead of the competition. Identifying a new trend is definitely newsworthy
and encourages sites to reference you for creating a journalistic scoop.
Ask yourself if a blogger, writer or website editor stumbled upon your site, would they be
likely to consider it worth writing about? If the answer is yes, it qualifies as good link bait.
Online Participation
The key to building and enhancing your online reputation is by providing charismatic,
well-written content and becoming a trusted source. A variety of social networking sites
are available on the Internet that provide excellent sources for building your reputation.
Online forums and interactive blogs are great places to get started.
Honesty, integrity and a friendly outgoing approach provide the optimum chances for you
to be taken seriously and to eventually be seen as an expert in your field.
Forums offer a built-in opportunity for referring visitors to your site the signature link.
While there is much debate on whether the search engines count forum signature links in
assessing your rank, they serve as a fabulous referral source.
Create a memorable signature link by including your name, website address and a
compelling quote. Here is an example:
Mary Smith
www.myTravelSite.com
For the ultimate travel experience
In addition to forums, you can highlight your online personality with blog comments, chat
rooms, Yahoo! Answers and privately hosted boards.
Remain consistent across the Web by using the same voice, avatar (the image used in
forums), and username to build your reputation and recognition.
What you can say about your website or actions that would drive attention to your site?
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Influencing mainstream or niche press outlets can earn you a fantastic number of links in a
very short time. Dedicated Press Release sites like www.prweb.com and www.prnewswire.
com carry inestimable weight in driving traffic and links to your websites, as they both feed
the major online news search engines like Yahoo! News, MSN News and Google News.
Look at the links obtained by your primary competitors and ask yourself how you
can encourage those sites to link to you. Remaining competitive in the link building
stakes ensures you not only have an adequate supply of quality, incoming links which
significantly enhances your search engine ranking, those sites linking in to you also
provide a natural source of traffic.
Yahoo! provides the most accurate data for the number of incoming links you have to your
site. To discover how many external sites are linking to your site, go to the Yahoo! search
engine and type : linkdomain:sitename.com
Figure 1.1. Some of the sites that link to www.overstock.com from Yahoo! Search Results
Here is all you need to get started with a niche website. Get started, work hard, enjoy what
you are doing and the results would definitely speak for itself.
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Submitting to Niche Directories

Hundreds of generalized and niche directories exist on the Internet. A simple search for
search directory or your topic + directory should yield plenty of possibilities.
A search directory is simply a categorized index of hundreds (sometimes thousands!) of
websites.
While only a handful of visitors ever use a search directory to actually search for
information, their primary purpose is on creating a back link to your site.
Many search directories charge a fee for the privilege of adding your link to their site,
however a few still remain where the price is simply a reciprocal link on your site to them.
In the same way you publish a reciprocal link with a title and description using your
primary keywords, so should you publish to the search directories.
One point to note: the Google search engines have become familiar with the process of
submitting to a multitude of directories. To avoid being penalized by the search engines,
remember to alter your link titles and descriptions so they all read differently.
Article Submissions
Article directories are proliferating on the Internet as Web business owners realize their
potential for generating traffic.
Article directories are huge reference sources where you can submit an article on virtually
any subject and have it published for a worldwide audience. Article marketing can be a
very powerful way to get your name and website link spread across the Internet. Heres
how it works:
You write an interesting, thought-provoking article anywhere between 400 and
1200 words.
If the article is suitable for your website, you can upload it. But that doesnt
necessarily have to be the case: you can write about any subject you like and know
something about.
At the conclusion of your article, you write a brief bio, including your name, any
credentials you may have, and include a link to your site.
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Once youve proof-read and edited the article, choose one or any number of
article directories to submit it to.
The article directory publishes your article with your link included.
Other webmasters looking for good content see your article and decide they
would like to publish it on their website. According to article directory rules, the
article must be published in full, including your name and web link.
Continue writing articles and publishing them to a quantity of article directories
and you can create a major traffic generator!
Here is a list of some of the most popular article directories:
http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.webpronews.com
http://www.articledashboard.com
Search engine optimization (SEO) is critical to the success of your website. The more you
concentrate on SEO strategies, the higher your page rank will climb and the more traffic
youll attract. Your ultimate goal should be to have EVERY page on your website listed in
the No#1 position when a searcher types in your chosen keyword phrase. Well if not
No#1, at least in the first 30 search results!
Advertising
Swarms of targeted traffic WILL NOT arrive at your site if you dont work for it.
Maintaining an online identity and attracting new visitors involves perseverance,
perseverance and more perseverance! But, working for at least an hour every day to build
your Web business will eventually gain momentum and youll soon find your efforts
multiplying as more and more people find your links and discover all you have to offer
them!
Advertising plays an important role. There are several different techniques of advertising
that you can choose from to announce your presence online and drive home traffic.
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Classified Ads
Classified ads are a powerful tool to advertise your website or business online and best of
all, the majority of them are free to use.
Heres how to write a compelling, traffic-pulling classified ad:
Start with a compelling, attention-grabbing headline. This is the first thing
targeted visitors will see.
Keep your paragraphs short and use bullet points where possible.
Describe the benefits using emotion-driven words.
Include a call to action at the conclusion of your ad, like discover more
information by clicking this link, or sign up for your free newsletter here.
Once youve written a classified ad a couple of times, youll get the hang of which ads get
the click-through and which ones dont.
Here are some examples of classified ad sites:
http://www.usfreeads.com
http://classifieds.myspace.com
http://classifieds.yahoo.com
http://www.craigslist.org
http://www.adpost.com
Forum Marketing
While spamming forums is an absolute no-no, carefully worded forum posts which
describe your product or services can be richly rewarding.
Here is some helpful advice on posting to forums:
1) Find between 5 and 10 quality forums in your particular niche. It may take time
to develop a rapport with the general forum community, but with time and
perseverance, youll build a quality reputation.
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2) Create a compelling, noticeable forum signature that effectively promotes your

Web business. Include a call to action in the description.
3) Spend at least an hour each day posting to these forums.
4) Be informative, helpful, friendly and interesting. Become an expert in your
field and youll quickly gain a reputation as a worthwhile forum participant.
5) Dont get involved in petty arguments or differences of opinion. They are a
waste of time and energy!
6) Always be positive. Help others to solve problems and offer advice in a
positive way.
By developing a daily strategy of posting at least a couple of comments on up to 10 forums,
youll quickly develop an online reputation and a flood of traffic to your site.
Google Adwords
Google AdWords is Googles advertising program. AdWords lets you create simple,
effective ads and display them to people already searching online for information related to
your business.
Google AdWords are the ads you see listed down the right hand side of the page when you
enter a search query.
Here is an example:
Figure 1.1. Screenshot of Google AdWords
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The most valuable research you can do is visit the AdWords Learning Center where you
will find a host of information about how to set up a successful AdWords campaign.
When a searcher uses the Google search engine for an inquiry, Google AdWords displays a
variety of relevant search results related to that search query.
In the above screenshot, I used the search query google adwords. The results in the
left hand column are Google AdWords ads placed by advertisers who have targeted the
keyword google adwords or maybe adwords.
The beauty of Google AdWords is that advertisers can specifically target a chosen keyword
or key phrase set.
This is an example of a specific Google AdWord ad:
Figure 1.2 Example of Google AdWord ad

Adwords are small text ads made up of the following:
Headline (up to 25 characters including spaces). The headline is used to attract
buyers to your product or service.
Description (2 lines of up to 35 characters including spaces). These 2 lines
allow you to describe your product or offer as clearly, concisely and compellingly
as possible. The number of books available about how to create compelling
AdWords campaigns is evidence of the fact that developing a small AdWord is an
art form.
Display URL (up to 35 characters including spaces). This tells the user which
website he or she will arrive at if the link is clicked.
Destination URL (up to 1024 characters). This is the actual page where users
land when they click your ad. The destination URL doesnt appear in the ad. Many
advertisers link their ads to particular destination pages within their website, but
use the simpler URL of their homepage as the display URL.
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When you first use Google AdWords, you will be introduced to some terminology you
may not be familiar with. Here are a few of the most commonly used AdWords terms.
Cost-per-click (CPC): As a Google advertiser, AdWords charges you for each click your
ads receive. You are not charged if your ad is displayed and users dont click.
Quality Score: Googles Quality Score is determined by your keywords click-through rate
(CTR), the relevance of your ad text, historical keyword performance, and other relevancy
factors. The higher your Quality Score, the lower the price youll pay per click.
Clickthrough Rate (CTR): The click-through rate (CTR) helps you measure how well
your ads are performing. The more relevant your ads, the more often users will click on
them, resulting in a higher CTR.
Becoming a Google AdWords advertiser. Once you have set up your Google account
(which you may have already done for Google AdSense), you can participate in the
Google AdWords program. The Google Network is divided into the Google search
network and the Google content network. You can choose to show your ads on either or
both of these networks.
Google search network: This includes Google search pages and search sites as well
as websites that display search results pages, such as Froogle and Earthlink.
Your Google advertising can also appear beside or above search results, as part of a
results page, or on other relevant search pages.
Google content network: This includes news pages, topic specific websites, blogs,
and other websites like The New York Times. AdWords ads will appear on web pages
where Google considers the content and the URL to be relevant to your ad.
You can further enhance your advertising dollars by targeting your ads to only appear in a
particular language or in a particular geographical location.
How To Set Up Your Google AdWords Account? The beauty of Google AdWords is that
you can start with a couple of well-chosen keywords, and AdWords will do the homework
for you!
Almost 200,000 website owners and advertisers currently use Google AdWords to drive
highly-targeted traffic right to their door.
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Instructions:
1) Log in to your Google account and give your Campaign a name.
2) You can choose to target your customers by language and/or location. Choose
the appropriate target boxes then move on to the next page.
3) AdWords next asks you to write your ad.
Your title and description is the heart and soul of your AdWords campaign.
You have 25 characters to create a phrase thats compelling, sales-drive, and entices
your customer to click on your ad.
In addition, you have 2 lines of 35 characters each to aptly describe your product
or service. Both the title and description should use your chosen keywords and
keyword phrases.
Using the list of power words, condense them into a title sentence and
description. Dont worry about the length at this stage just the use of the major
words. Count how many characters you have (Microsoft Word will do this for you),
then use a process of elimination to refine and further refine your AdWords text.
This exercise takes time and practice.
Continue to refine your text until you have an ad you believe visitors will WANT to
click on!
4) Create your ad groups using your selected keywords. AdWords has a very effective
Keywords Tool youll find in the Tools section.
Most AdWords experts suggest you create two or three ads at most for each Ad
Group.
Once your ads are active, Google AdWords will supply statistics on the number of
impressions (the number of times your ad appears), the click-through rate, the cost
per click etc.
Using these statistics, it will soon become clear which ad is performing better. Use
that ad as your focus ad and modify the non-performing ad. Continue to monitor
your statistics, and make changes where it is clear one of your ads isnt performing
as well as the other.
5) Decide on your daily budget. Your daily spend will be determined by the number
of targeted keywords you use and the cost per click.
At the outset, you should limit your budget to what is affordable. AdWords will recalculate the possible number of clicks you will receive based on your daily spend.
6) Placement of ads. Once youve input your keywords and your daily limit,
AdWords will calculate the cost per click and the expected placement of the ad, ie.
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Will it be 1st or 4th or 14th in the list of similar ads for that keyword?
A common misconception is that your ad should appear 1st in the listings. This is
not so.
While it is true that the top spot will always attract the most visitors, it is also the
most expensive spot to retain and you may end up paying way more than it is worth
for the privilege of being in No#1 position.
In addition, people searching for goods and services online will generally shop
around. So the first AdWords ad is their first point of call. You can usually assume
they will then look at the second, third and fourth ads for price comparison etc.
Hence, the ideal position is either 3rd, if not 4th. Our research has proven it is
where you will get the most value for your AdWords dollar.
Creating a series of AdWords ads is NOT a set and forget process.
To make your ads successful and bring in loads of directed traffic that will ultimately turn
to sales, you need to constantly tweak your ads for the best performance.
Google rewards the best performing ads with better placement and a lower cost per
click, so its in your best interests to create the best ads you possibly can.
This means not only modifying your ad text, but also modifying your total daily spend and
the cost per click you are paying. Youll see the pay-off when you discover how to tweak
your ads and turn them into targeted traffic!
Press Coverage
Getting mentioned in local, national and online media can bring a lot of traffic to your site
without directly paying for placement.
Press Release
Like any business, a well-written press release is a very effective way of letting the world
know you are online. Although there are a vast number of very good Internet press release
websites, the most authoritative and professional are:
PRWeb
PR Newswire
Market Wire
E-Releases
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While the sites mentioned above all charge a fee for using their fully-integrated press
release service, it can be worth it if your information gets to the right channels.
Those listed above, plus a number of other highly professional press release services, not
only publish your press release on their websites (giving you a valuable back link to
your site), they feed your media release to the majority of newswire services within your
category.
DONT waste your time or money on free press release services. They are simply not
worth it.
If you dont consider writing a press release within your skill-set, there are thousands
of websites that will give you free advice on how to correctly structure your release for
the most impact. Or, you could contract an accomplished journalist to write your press
release for you. However, be aware it will cost you. Services like eLance can connect you to
thousands of willing authors.
Local Media
Call on your local media to see if they will do a special interest story on your website.
Write the copy for a brief article yourself. Include any human interest or business angle,
particularly if it will positively impact on the local community.
Be sure to bullet point the important facts to help the journalists save time.
Check out the trade journals relevant to your particular industry and see if they would be
willing to write a story on your new website.
Often this may require you place an advertisement with them, but advertising in trade
journals is usually inexpensive and you are getting your advertising out there to possibly
hundreds of targeted individuals.
Remember, generating curiosity and interest in your website is what will get you noticed.
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Staying Motivated
Until Money Rolls In
Getting started must be something you have done out of peer pressure, motivation online
or simply because you wanted to make the most of the free time you have. However,
reports show that it is only a handful who are able to stay motivated to go and on and
make a mark for themselves. Patience is the key. It is going to take time for the money to
start rolling in. Thus, it becomes very important to hang on there and march ahead inspite
of the challenges, only then will success be YOURS!
Here are a few tips on managing time, planning and staying motivated in your chosen
online business
Plan Your Schedule

One of the most enticing factors for most people who want to work from home is the
freedom to work how and when they want.
Sure, its certainly a treat to be able to take your kids to the park or to not face the grind of
the twice-daily commute, but working from home requires the same organizational skills
you require in a structured office environment. Because if you dont schedule that time to
take the kids to the park, its likely it wont happen!
Working from home offers you the best from both worlds. Its simply a matter of finding
the right balance. You need to balance the home and work front perfectly to be both
successful and happy. If any one of them gets neglected the results are going to show up
immediately and this certainly is not going to be good for you or your work.
If you dont already have a diary, go out and buy one now. Alternatively, Microsoft Outlook
is a favorite online tool to help you plan your business tasks.
Every day you need to schedule the following:
A set start work time. Get into a routine of starting work at the same time every
day.
A scheduled 10-15 minute morning break, time out for lunch and a similar short
break in the afternoon.
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If you are going to be glued to the computer screen for hours at a time, take a 10
minute break every hour or two. Get up, do a couple of stretching exercises and refocus your eyes by staring into the distance. A window with a lovely view is a great
way to give your eyes the exercise they need.
At the end of each day, review your plans for the next day and write down any tasks you
didnt complete. Start your work day by reviewing your list and prioritizing the most
important jobs.
Ease yourself into the day by completing a couple of no-brainers first up. This gives you a
sense of achievement and encourages creativity and motivation.
Break large projects into small steps, and then congratulate yourself on each completed
step. Focus on the projects that are going to make money as the highest priority.
Set a time each day for reading and following up on emails. Dont open emails as soon as
they arrive they can become a major distraction.
If you receive a lot of emails, especially from customers, schedule maybe two email
sessions during the day.
Action all emails that can be handled immediately. Flag emails that require follow-up
action and get them out of the way as soon as practicable. Ignore personal emails during
work hours. Instead, answer all your personal mail during one of your scheduled breaks or
out of work hours.
Phone calls can also be a major distraction. Depending on the type of Web business you
operate, consider using an answering machine to screen calls. You can then return calls
during scheduled telephone times, according to their importance.
Yes, the floor probably needs to be vacuumed and theres a pile of washing to be done, but
dont allow it to distract you from the task at hand.
If you were stuck in a cubicle in an office complex, you wouldnt be able to wash up the
breakfast dishes and put a load of washing on, would you? Take your work from home
business seriously and save household chores and errands for your scheduled work breaks
or after work hours.
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Keep the TV turned off. If you like background noise, put your favourite CD in the player
nobody is going to complain!
Creating a routine is one of the most powerful home business practices you can establish,
so at the outset, keep your focus on setting up good work practices.
Reward Your Achievements

When there is nobody in the office to congratulate you on a job well done, you have to
learn to do it yourself! It is important to congratulate yourself on your achievements so
that you stay motivated throughout. Acknowledge every achievement, no matter how
small.
Perhaps you have undertaken a huge project that youve broken down into smaller,
doable steps and you finally complete the first stage. Congratulate and reward yourself!
Make yourself a refreshing iced tea and go outside into the garden for a well-deserved 15
minute break.
Nothing motivates like success, so the more success you achieve, the more motivated you
will feel. And dont forget success includes the little steps towards a larger end goal.
Set Goals
You cant work successfully if youre not working towards a goal.
Goals are what motivate us to succeed; and the achievement of a particular goal is the
ultimate motivation.
Write your goals down and place them where you can see them. We all love imagery, so
if your goal is to take the family on vacation to Hawaii, then cut out a picture of tropical
palms or a beautiful sandy beach and paste that on your goals page.
Goals require a timeline, so include an expected completion date. Make sure the deadline
youve given yourself is achievable; otherwise youll find yourself losing motivation fast.
Discuss your goals with your husband or a friend. In that way, you can develop a cheer
squad to encourage you along the way.
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Limit Social Activities

Sure, in your dreams of working from home you envisaged yourself lunching with your
friends every day and living it up.
But the reality of working from home is that it requires work real work.
That certainly doesnt mean you have to stay chained to your computer from morning
until night either.
Once again, routine is the primary factor.
If lunching with the girls at least once a week is a priority, schedule a time in your diary
and attempt to stay within the time limits youve set yourself.
The more you party during the working day, the less inclined you feel to work and the less
motivated you become.
Dress For Success

Dont work in your pajamas! As enticing as it may sound, its difficult to get into work
mode if youre still dressed in your night attire.
Adopting a professional mindset involves not only how you think but how you look.
Dress like you would if you were going to the office. Of course, you can do away with
the pearls, high heels and briefcase, but dress so that if somebody came to your door
unannounced, you wouldnt feel embarrassed.
Adopt a Support Group

Working from home alone day after day can become very isolating.
Many people who work from home mention the lack of support from colleagues to
bounce ideas around with, brainstorm ideas, or as one of my friends often says, To simply
ask, which color do you think? The blue or the green? But knowing youre going to pick
the blue anyway!
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One suggestion is to gather an electronic group of new colleagues! Search out the forums
where you share an interest (and there are thousands of work from home forums online),
or look at establishing an online social network using a social network site like Facebook.
If you want face-to-face contact, use a Webcam to interact with others.
However, an important point is to always stay positive. If you intend posting on a forum
out of sheer loneliness, dont write Oh, Im so lonely, please will somebody talk to me?
That sort of activity is a recipe for disaster as you are reinforcing your own feelings of
isolation.
Focus on all the perks you get from working at home. Write something really positive so
that you engage equally positive people in return.
Take Time Out

Just as its important to schedule your days working at home so you create a good work
routine, its equally important to schedule your finish time accordingly.
Give yourself a break when you need it. And that includes giving yourself a Mental Health
Day when necessary.
Dont work through the weekend just because you can. Avoid sitting at your computer late
at night after the family are in bed because theres still work to be completed.
Follow your established routine and when it comes time to leave the office, either
physically or mentally close the door for the day. Youll awake next morning more
refreshed and ready to tackle the paperwork that was left over from yesterday.
And dont forget that public holidays apply to you too!
Be a Good Boss
Take care of yourself. Eat well, remember to breathe, exercise regularly particularly if
youve been sitting at your computer all day and find time to relax.
Dont neglect the hobbies you enjoy. If you used to play tennis once a week, then schedule
that into your weekly routine.
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Home based workers tend to be the hardest taskmasters, often running themselves into
the ground before they stop. Thats not the way to run a successful, sustainable business.
Finding the right balance takes time and practice, so learn to be your own best friend and
listen to your inner voice.
If you take good care of yourself, focus on the positive aspects of your work from home life
and establish a comfortable, workable routine, youll find it easy to stay motivated.
106
Glossary
Like many types of businesses, the Internet business has developed its own peculiar
jargon. To help you decipher some of the terms you may find online, weve provided a
Glossary of the most popular jargon used on the Internet.
Above the Fold

Above the fold refers to the section of a website visible in the browser window before
scrolling. Ads and links in this section are more likely to be clicked.
AdSense
AdSense refers to Googles very popular and successful advertising program. AdSense is
free to join. Once you have joined, AdSense displays content relevant ads on your website.
If a visitor clicks on a link, you get paid.
Adware
Also called malware or spyware. Adware is a program usually hidden in downloadable
software that transmits user information to advertisers.
AdWords
AdWords is Googles successful pay-per-click advertising program. Advertisers can place
their ads on the Google network and thousands of relevant websites. Advertisers pay every
time someone clicks on their ad.
Affiliate
An affiliate is a website owner who promotes a merchants goods or services and earns a
commission for referring clicks, leads or sales.
107
Affiliate program
An affiliate program is also known as associate, partner, referral and revenue sharing
programs. It is a formal arrangement between an affiliate merchant and a website owner
which results in the website owner earning commission for referring clicks, leads or sales.
Alt tag
The ALT tag is the text that appears when you place the cursor over an image. It is used for
vision impaired Web browsers as well as improving search engine optimization techniques
by using appropriate keywords in the text.
Anchor text
Anchor text is also referred to as link text. Anchor text is the words contained inside a
link which tell your visitor and the search engines what the link is about. To improve your
search engine ranking, use keyword rich text in your anchor links.
Applet
A small piece of Java code embedded in a web page.
Autoresponder
An autoresponder is a software program that sends an automatic email response when
mail is sent to a particular email address. Autoresponders can be programmed to send a
series of emails at pre-determined intervals.
Backlink
A backlink or back link can also be referred to as an inbound link or incoming link.
Backlinks are links from another website to your site and can be very beneficial for your
page rank.
108
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is how many bits-per-second are transmitted through a connection.
Banner ads
A banner ad is advertising displayed in the form of a graphic image.
Blog
Blog is short for web log and refers to an online journal where you can post articles,
commentary, news or opinion. Generally blogs are updated frequently to keep the content
fresh.
Blog roll
A blog roll is a list of links to other blogs or websites the blog owner generally
recommends.
BPS
BPS stands for bits per second and is a measurement of how fast data is transferred.
Browser
A browser is a program that enables you to access and view websites, blogs and other
programs on the Internet.
Chargeback
A chargeback is an incomplete or invalid sales transaction that results in an affiliate having
commission deducted.
109
Click through
A click through occurs when a user clicks on a link that directs them to a website.
Cloaking
Cloaking is the deliberate hiding of web content to attempt to fool the search engines.
Co-branding
Co-branding is the ability for a website owner to include their own logo and colors on a
merchants website.
Commission
Commission is the income paid by an affiliate merchant or advertiser to a website owner
for generating clicks, leads or sales.
Contextual advertising
Contextual advertising is the use of text ads that relate to the content of a particular web
page or website. Google AdSense is an example of contextual advertising because its
robots determine the contents of a page and serve up appropriate text ads.
Conversion rate
The conversion rate is the number of website visitors divided by the number who take
some type of action, such as buying a product or subscribing to a newsletter. The goal is to
have as high a conversion rate as possible.
110
Cookie
Cookies are a small piece of code placed on your computer by a website youve visited
so that when you return, that website will recognize you. Cookies are not harmful or
malicious.
CPC
CPC refers to cost per click and is used by advertisers to determine how much they will
pay each time someone clicks on their ad.
CSS
CSS is short for Cascading Style Sheets. CSS is used by web designers to plan the overall
look of a website, including colors, fonts, sizes etc. A simple change to a Cascading Style
Sheet can affect the way an entire website behaves.
CTR
CTR stands for click through rate and is the number of visitors who click on a link in a
website or newsletter.
Cyberspace
Cyberspace is a term created by William Gibson in his book, Neuromancer. It describes
the entire range of data available through computer networks.
Demographics
Demographics describe the characteristics of a population such as age, sex, marital status,
occupation and geographical location.
111
Disclaimer
A disclaimer states the terms and conditions for the use of a website, software program or
any downloadable material.
DMOZ
www.dmoz.org is the largest human-edited directory on the Net. It is staffed by volunteers
who approve or deny new websites. Having your site listed in dmoz.org is a plus for
search engine rankings.
Domain name
A domain name is the unique name that identifies a website. It generally consists of three
parts separated by dots: the prefix www, the name of the website, and a suffix such as
.com or .net.
Download
A download is transferring information from another computer to your own.
DSL
DSL stands for digital subscriber line and is an ultra-fast method to transfer information
over telephone lines.
Duplicate content filter
Duplicate content filters are used by the search engines to detect identical or duplicate
content on different sites.
112
EPC
EPC stands for earnings per click and is used by affiliates to determine which of their
affiliate links are performing. It also shows you which affiliate links arent performing so
you can make improvements.
Ezine
Ezine is Web-speak for electronic magazine and usually refers to regular newsletters sent
out by email from your website.
FAQ
FAQ stands for frequently asked questions and is a list of questions and answers to
common questions on a particular subject.
Firewall
A firewall is hardware or software designed to prevent malicious files from accessing your
computer system.
Flame
A flame is a derogatory comment made online.
FTP
FTP stands for file transfer protocol and is software that enables a web owner to upload
files directly to the web host so they appear on the Internet.
113
Hit
A hit occurs every time a visitor comes to your website. Hit can be a misleading term
because if you have 4 blocks of text and 4 images, the server will record 8 hits. A less
misleading term is unique visitors.
HTML
HTML stands for hypertext markup language and is the primary code used to create
websites and blogs.
Hypertext
A hypertext document contains hyperlinks to other documents or websites. By clicking on
one of the links, you will be transferred to a different document or website.
Impression
The term impressions is generally used for online advertising and refers to the number of
times your ad appears on the Internet.
Intranet
Intranet is a company or organizations private network that operates n the same way as the
Internet but is for internal use.
IP Address
An IP address is a unique set of numbers that is individual to each computer.
114
Javascript
Javascript is a programming code designed to create special effects on websites like
animations, calculators and other features. Javascript can be safely downloaded without
the risk of viruses.
JV
JV stands for joint venture and refers to a partnership generally formed to undertake a
particular transaction or project to benefit all of the parties concerned.
Keyword
A keyword or keywords are the search terms a user enters at a search engine to find
information or services related to that particular word or phrase.
Keyword density
Keyword density is the ratio between the number of times a particular keyword is used
and the total number of words in an article. It is usually expressed as a percentage.
Lead
Lead refers to a visitor who could likely become a customer. As an example, if a visitor
signs up for your newsletter, he or she becomes a new lead.
Link popularity
Link popularity refers to the number of quality websites that link to your site.
LSI
LSI stands for latent semantic indexing and refers to the search engines ability to
recognize synonyms and related words or phrases when you are performing a search.
115
Meta tags
Meta tags contain information on a website that is relevant to the search engines but is not
visible to site visitors.
MLM
MLM stands for multi level marketing and is also known as network marketing. MLM
generally refers to a group of people who can purchase products wholesale and sell retail,
and who then sponsor others to do the same.
Newbie
A newbie is someone who is new to the Internet.
Page Rank
Page rank is a system used by Google to determine the relevance and importance of a
website. Visible page rank is a number between 1 and 10 which is displayed in the Google
toolbar. Visible page rank is updated every 3-4 months.
PDF
PDF stands for portable document format and is a document format that allows
information to be easily transferred between various types of computers and systems.
Plug-in
A plug-in is a small piece of software that adds features to a larger software program.
Portal
A portal describes a website that is used as the primary entry point to the Web.
116
Post
A post or posting is a message added to a newsgroup, blog or forum.
PPC
PPC stands for pay per click and refers to online advertising. Google AdWords is an
example of a PPC program because you pay every time someone clicks on your link.
PLR
PLR stands for private label rights and refers to articles you can purchase at PLR sites to
add relevant, fresh content to your website. Generally PLR articles are made available to a
number of buyers before the file is closed.
PM
PM is an abbreviation of private message or private messaging and is found on forums.
A forum member can send a private message to another forum member and avoid having
the post appear in the forum content.
PR
On the Internet, youll generally find that PR refers to page rank. This is a system used by
Google to determine the relevance and value of a website and is a score between 1 and 10.
Privacy Policy
The privacy policy on a website determines how a company collects and uses personal
information about a customers accounts and transactions.
117
Protocol
Protocol is a method or language of communication on the Internet.
Referral program
A referral program is an alternate name for affiliate program. Affiliate programs are
arrangements made by affiliate merchants to pay a website commission when a visitor
from that site takes a particular action on the merchant website. An action includes signing
up for a newsletter or purchasing a product or service.
Robots
Robots, or bots or spiders are software programs used by search engines to follow links
and access web pages to ascertain the content of websites.
ROI
ROI stands for return on investment and measures the success of an advertising
campaign. ROI is a calculation of the total cost of the campaign divided by the profit and
expressed as a percentage.
ROS
ROS stands for run of site and is used by advertisers who want to run ads on various
pages or all pages of a website, rather than specific pages.
RSS
RSS stands for really simple syndication or occasionally rich site summary. RSS is
a system used by websites and blogs to broadcast new posts, news summaries or other
topical information via RSS feeds to subscribers.
118
Secure server
A secure server allows a connection between itself and another secure service to protect
privacy, ensure the integrity of information being transferred and to authenticate
transactions.
SEM
SEM stands for search engine marketing and is used by Internet marketers to market
websites via the search engines.
SEO
SEO is a term that is frequently used and stands for search engine optimization. SEO
involves the strategies and tactics used by website owners to maximize the value of their
websites for the search engines to rank them highly.
Sequential autoresponder
A sequential autoresponder is a software program that automates the delivery of a series
of emails when a message is sent to a particular email address. The best example of a
sequential autoresponder is regular newsletters or an email tutorial course.
SERP
SERP stands for search engine results page/s and are the pages displayed when a search
query is typed into a search engine.
Server
A server is computer hardware that stores your website and sends and receives information
from the Internet.
119
Sig file
Sig file stands for signature file or signature line and refers to the signature you use at
the end of a forum or blog post or an email. It generally consists of your name, website
address, contact information and perhaps a marketing slogan or other phrase.
Spam
Spam is Internet slang for unsolicited or junk emails. Unsolicited email is email you did
not request and is usually an advertisement for a product or service.
SQL
SQL stands for structured query language and is computer code used to send queries to
a database.
TOC
TOC stands for table of contents and generally applies to the index of an ebook or book.
TOS
TOS stands for terms of service and is a list of the terms and conditions that apply if you
sign up for a program or service.
Tracking URL
Tracking URL is the link given to you by an affiliate merchant for use on your website so
they can identify and track referred sales, leads or clicks.
Unique visitor
A unique visitor to your website is a user who has not previously visited your site. It is the
best indicator of your sites traffic volume.
120
Upload
An upload is transferring information from your computer to another computer.
URL
URL stands for uniform resource locator and refers to the unique address of a website
on the Internet. It is in the form of: http://www.mysite.com.
VA
VA stands for virtual assistant and applies to someone who works for an Internet
business from a different location than the main office.
Viral marketing
Viral marketing describes any marketing strategy that encourages users to pass on a
message to others, with the potential for explosive growth in the messages influence
and exposure. Like a virus, viral marketing takes advantage of the compounding effect of
multiplication to deliver the message to thousands of people. However, viral marketing is
not generally malicious or damaging.
Virus
A virus is defined as a set of commands, created intentionally, to create some level of
damage to a computer. A computer virus is always attached to a host, which can be a text
file, image, email, or video clip.
WAH
WAH stands for work at home and generally applies to someone who works in a Webbased business.
121
WAHM
WAHM stands for work at home moms and generally applies to a woman with children
who works in an Internet-based business.
WOM
WOM stands for word of mouth or occasionally word of mouse.
WWW
WWW stands for world wide web and refers to the section of the Internet which
contains information, text, graphics, photos, videos and audios. To access the world wide
web, you need a web browser like Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox.
122
Resources
The Internet is an amazing source for information, downloadable programs and files,
online tutorials and other Web-based resources that can virtually supply you with
everything you could possibly need to know.
Weve provided you with a comprehensive list of our favourite resources.
Affiliate Directories
www.cj.com
www.clickbank.com
www.clixgalore.com
www.linkconnector.com
www.linkshare.com
www.pepperjamnetwork.com
www.shareasale.com
Commission Junction
Clickbank (Ebooks)
Clix Galore
Link Connector
Link Share
PepperJam
Share a Sale
Affiliate Program Software

www.affiliateshop.com
www.myaffiliateprogram.com
www.refersoft.com
Affiliate Shop
My Affiliate Program
Refer Soft
Anti-Virus Software
www.mcafee.com
www.symantec.com/index.jsp
www.trendmicro.com
McAfee Antivirus software

Norton Antivirus software
Trend Micro
Article Directories
www.articlecity.com
www.articledashboard.com
www.ezinearticles.com
www.goarticles.com
Article City
Article Dashboard
Ezine Articles
Go Articles
123
Auction websites
www.ebay.com
www.ebid.net
www.loot.com
www.overstock.com
eBay
eBid
Loot
Overstock
Autoresponders
www.aweber.com
www.autoresponseplus.com
www.getresponse.com
www.icontact.com
aWeber
Auto Response Plus
Get Response
iContact
Blogging Software
www.blogger.com
www.movabletype.org
www.typepad.com
www.wordpress.com
Blogger
Movable Type
Type Pad
WordPress
Domain Registration
www.dotster.com
www.godaddy.com
www.mydomain.com
www.namecheap.com
Dotster
Go Daddy
My Domain
Name Cheap
EBook Software
www.adobe.com
www.desktopauthor.com
www.ebook.generatorsoftware.com
Adobe Acrobat
Desktop Author
EBook Generator
124
Ecommerce Software
www.3dcart.com
www.networksolutions.com
smallbusiness.yahoo.com
3D Cart
Network Solutions
Yahoo! Business Solutions
FTP Software
www.cuteftp.com
www.filezilla-project.org
www.smartftp.com
www.winscp.net/eng/index.php
Cute FTP
FileZilla
Smart FTP
Win SCP
HTML Editors
www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver
www.kompozer.net
www.microsoft.com/expression
www.netobjects.com/html/fusion_11.html
www.seamonkey-project.org
Adobe Dreamweaver
KompoZer
Microsoft Expression Web
NetObjects Fusion
Sea Monkey
Keyword Tools
www.adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Google AdWords Keyword Tool
www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
Keyword Discovery
www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion
DigitalPoint Keyword Research
www.wordtracker.com
Wordtracker
RSS Feed Readers

www.bloglines.com
www.feedbot.org
www.reader.google.com
www.mywireservice.com
BlogLines
FeedBot
Google Reader
My Wire Service
125
Search Directories
www.altavista.com
www.ask.com
www.britannica.com
www.dmoz.org
www.excite.com
www.go.com
www.goto.com
www.hotbot.com
www.infoseek.com
www.jayde.com
www.looksmart.com
www.search.com
www.theyellowpages.com
Alta Vista
Ask Jeeves
Britannica
DMOZ Open Directory Program
Excite
Go
Go To
Hot Bot
Info Seek
Jayde Online Directory
Look Smart
Search
Yellow Pages
Search Engines
www.aol.com
www.google.com
www.live.com
www.msn.com
www.teoma.com
www.yahoo.com
America OnLine
Google
Microsoft Live
MSN
Teoma
Yahoo!
Shopping Malls
www.amazon.com
www.overstock.com
Amazon
Overstock
Social Networking
www.facebook.com
www.friendster.com
www.hi5.com
www.myspace.com
www.orkut.com
Facebook
Friendster
Hi 5
MySpace
Google Orkut
126
Small Business Help

www.sba.gov
www.business.gov
Small Business Administration

The official business link to the US government
Software Resources
www.download.com
www.freewarefiles.com
www.thefreesite.com
Download
Freeware Files
The Free Site
Web Information
www.alexa.com
www.about.com
www.lii.org
www.wikipedia.org
Alexa
About
Librarians Index to the Internet
Wikipedia Encyclopedia
Webmaster Tools
Spell checker/translator
www.babelfish.yahoo.com
www.spellcheck.net
Babelfish - Translator
Spellcheck
HTML/CSS validator
www.jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator
www.validator.w3.org
www.htmlhelp.org/tools/validator
W3C CSS Validator

W3C HTML Validator
Web Design Group HTML Validator
Browser Compatability
www.anybrowser.com/siteviewer.html Browser Compatability Checker
127
Web Statistics/Hit Counter

www.statcounter.com
StatCounter
Logos/Clip Art
www.cooltext.com
Cool Text Logos
www.crecon.com/newbanners.html
Creative Collection Banners/Logos/ Templates
www.bestclipart.com
Best Clip Art
www.clip-art.com
Clip-Art
www.office.microsoft.com/en-us/clipart/default.aspx

Microsoft Clip Art
Fonts
www.yourfonts.com
Your Fonts
Images
www.dreamstime.com
www.jupiterimages.com
www.shutterstock.com
www.sxc.hu
Dreamstime
Jupiter Images
Shutter Stock Images
Stock.xchng (free)
Image Editing Software

www.gimp.org
www.picnik.com
GIMP
Online editing software
Misc
www.google.com/calendar
www.skype.com
earth.google.com
widgets.yahoo.com
Google Calendar
Skype VOIP
Google Earth
Yahoo! Widgets
128
Website Hosting
www.hostgator.com
www.lunarpages.com
www.hostmonster.com
www.ixwebhosting.com
Hostgator
Lunar Pages
Host Monster
IX Web Hosting

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THE BEGINNERS GUIDE

What do you need to be successful?........................................................................... 9

What can I do from Home?.......................................................................................12

THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE

Maintaining and Growing Your Membership Site..................................................... 33

Which Web Business Is Right For You?.......................................................................39

Building a Website, the Basics.................................................................................44

Building a Web Business..........................................................................................52

Traffic Traffic Traffic.................................................................................................73

THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE

Staying Motivated ...............................................................................................100

THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE

Why Work from Home?

THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE

Easy to get started

What do you need to be successful?

Time & Dedication

THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE

Willingness to Explore & Learn

THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE

What can I do from Home?

THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE

How The Internet Makes Money For You

Step #1: Setting Affiliate Goals

Step #2: Find Your Affiliate Niche

THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE

Step #3: Research Affiliate Merchants

Step #4: Add Affiliate Links and Driving Sales

THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE

Step #5: Measure and Improve your Affiliate Merchant Income.

What Is Google AdSense?

THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE

Figure 1.1. An example of AdSense ads

How Does Google AdSense Work?

Advertisers pay Google on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis or a cost-per-1000-impressions

Getting Started with Google AdSense

Different Types of AdSense Ads

THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE

AdSense for Feeds

AdSense for Content

Light background behind ads

Dark background behind ads

THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE

AdSense for Search

THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE

AdSense for Feeds

AdSense YouTube links

AdSense for Mobile Content

Google AdSense Tips and Tricks

THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE

Ensure each page of your website or blog is focused and content-rich.

Maximizing your AdSense ads

THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE

What Is A Membership Site?

Types of Fee-Based Membership Sites

THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE

How To Make Money With A Membership Site

Maintaining and Growing Your Membership Site

THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE

Writing Your Ebook

THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE

Marketing Your EBook.