Ways to make money on the web

So you want to make money on the internet, huh? Below are some of the most common ways. 

Why do I bother sharing a list like this? Because a key reason most people fail is they fail to consider their options before starting.

My highlights are not strictly accurate, because there are good approaches to each of these things. I'm going to elaborate on this over time and link to information as I go:

The best combination of profit and simplicity for web newbies.

The things people tend to try most frequently.
The best profit for people who are willing to work steadily without quitting

A. Sell information:

1. Create information and sell it;
2. Sell someone else's information as if it were your own;
3. Promote someone else selling information.

B. Create content, and then place around what you write:

1. Ads that pay when someone acts on them (clicks an ad, for example);
2. Ads that pay based on how many people see them;
   
3. Information for sale that you receive a commission on;
4. Products for sale that you receive a commission on;
5. Links to other sites where you earn money.
   

C. Help people with existing businesses:

1. Sell their services;
   
2. Sell their products;
3. Set up or enhance a web presence.

D. Sell products:

1. Drop-ship (you sell something that someone else ships for you);
2. Buy products and ship them yourself;
3. Via multi-level marketing.
   

Start a product or service business of your own and use the web to promote

B2 is essentially a strategy to get a lot of traffic to a focused niche. It's a little misleading, because basically you can't even get these kinds of ads unless you get a lot of traffic to your content. So B2 represents a strategy to get a lot of traffic and the longer you work it, the better it works. Realize that once you have a lot of traffic, you can do other things with it as well.

Read more!

Be a good neighbor, and make your site more popular.

Here's a simple tip for making your website more interesting to search engines and other site owners to get more traffic to your site. (This a simplified explanation, instead of using a lot of SEO gobbeldygook.)



Link to your own pages, especially when you're also linking to outside pages. Why is that so simple, and important?



Every page on your website or blog has a value. That value counts like a vote when you have a link to another page. Say a page on your site is worth a fictional value of 100, and you have five outbound links on that page. Each one of those links will give a vote of 100/5 = 20. If you had 100 outbound links on that page, each link would be worth a vote of 1 for the page it linked to.



Links make your site more valuable in several ways



Search engines use these votes to determine what pages on the internet are more important than others. Let's break links into two kinds: linking to other pages on your own site, and linking to pages on other sites.



The first thing to know is that by linking to other sites search engines learn more about what you are about, so they can send more traffic your way for whatever topic your pages are most expert on. They also can send you more traffic if they determine that you link to other pages that might be useful. This means they might consider your site a good reference if you link to other sites.



Linking to other sites makes the owners of those sites more likely to visit and leave a comment, and even to link back to you from their site. This brings traffic from people who click the link and helps search engines learn more about your site, so they can send more of the right kind of traffic.



But each link to an outside site takes some of the value of your page and spreads it to to other sites. By contrast, if you only linked to your own pages, that value/those "votes" would all keep their highest value within your own website.



What to link to



What to do? Make sure that all the content on your site contains plenty of links to other pages on your OWN site, as well as some links where appropriate to other sites. That way you're not giving away too much of the value of your page to other sites, but you still make your site more valuable by linking to them.



Make sure the links are from words (known as the link's "anchor text") that are descriptive of the page they take you to. That way most of the value of the links is kept within your own site, but you also help the search engines learn more of value about your site (so they can send you more traffic) and you help other website owners learn about and take an interest in your site.



How to get links and find out who links to you



You can see who has links to your site by checking your statistics/analytics for referring sites, to see who has come to your site by clicking a link on another site. Another way is to sign up for Yahoo! SiteExplorer. Yahoo! will give you a list of the other sites that link to you. Don't try this on Google - they won't show you ALL the links.



And don't forget to comment on other people's blogs - it produces a link back to your site, and is a friendly way of introducing yourself to other site owners and getting traffic (some search engines sometimes treat comments as a different class of link.) Also get involved on social sites like Twitter, Digg and MySpace and create links to your website on those sites. (Those sites are becoming more powerful all the time.)



Also try these advanced methods of getting links. Don't have time for any of this? Watch less TV and you'll have time. Here's a good overview of most of what you should be thinking about when promoting your website.

Read more!

Domains Under $2? Simple! $1.99 Through Yahoo

Some people have heard of this deal, but don't know how to get it to come up. Other people think the deal has ended. Not if you go through the steps properly! Here's how:

How to get the offer to come up

Yahoo keeps threatening to make this go away, and sometimes it's inaccessible for periods. If you have a Yahoo! account, sign out first, then search Yahoo! for "1.99 domains yahoo" and click the relevant ad links. (Don't do this from anywhere but Yahoo!, so Yahoo! doesn't have to pay anyone for the ad!) It will step you through buying a domain. Confirm that the 1.99 price is showing on each screen.

Watch out for the tricks

To get to the domain search screen, look carefully at your choices. You don't want to click a link for hosting, for example, just for domains. And once you have entered your choice of domain, and Yahoo! comes back and tells you your domain is available to buy (see below for how to find a good name) if you look carefully at the screen, you'll see there are two buttons you can click to continue. Last I checked, they both said "Sign up." However, one will take you to a screen with an inflated domain price. If that happens, go back one screen and click the other button.

I suggest buying with Paypal to prevent the domain auto-renewing at a much higher price once the first year has ended. Or, if you are POSITIVE you will to keep the domain for more than one year, transfer it to GoDaddy right away for about $7.95. That way it will be yours for two years, and GoDaddy is unlikely to start auto-renewing at exorbitant prices (due to their business model).

Create a new account

You'll need to create a new Yahoo! account. Look for the confirmation email in the new account and click the relevant link and the account will go through faster (so you can set your DNS, etc.) Takes some minutes before the account is approved.

I switch from Yahoo! for later years sometimes. 1 & 1 hosting had a good deal for renewals recently.

How to find a good domain

Bust a name is really the best, IMHO. Builds domain names for you, finds synonyms, lots of tools for extending the name or creating special combinations, saving your searches, instant search, etc. MakeWords is good for a quick check with some common prefixes/suffixes. And Nameboy and Dot-o-mator have some nice options as well. (Sometimes it's easiest to start with Thesaurus.com or Wordsmyth though.)

Oh, and the Web 2.0 name generator is always good for a laugh -- or for ideas. (But it's results ARE real, available domains.)

Read more!

What motivates people? Harry Beckwith knows: The Beckwith 40

When I wrote about prof. Clay Shirky and giving people the chance to achieve higher needs, I was thinking about some of Harry Beckwith's genius.

We're not talking brainwashing here, this is common-sense human nature from a brilliant observer of it. One of my favorites from Harry is: The ultimate test of a communication: Does it make people stop what they are doing? That gem of advice is #40 on the list he calls the Beckwith 40.

So, for an introduction to Harry, here's a baker's dozen from the Beckwith 40: (The subheads are my addition. For the full list, Rajesh Setty has published it with Harry's permission.)

First, Understand How They Think

1. Your biggest competitor is not a competitor; it’s your prospect’s indifference.
2. Your second-biggest competitor is not a competitor; it’s your prospect’s distrust.
3. Your biggest obstacle is whatever stereotype your prospect has formed about you and your industry.
4. Prospects decide in the first five seconds.
5. Prospects don’t try to make the best choice. They try to make the most comfortable choice.
6. At heart, every prospect is risk-averse, and risks are always more vivid than rewards.

Second, Understand How You Need To Think

7. Beware of what you think you know or have experienced; memories fail people constantly.
8. For the same reason, beware of what others say they know or have experienced.
9. Certainty is a trick your mind plays on you; keep yours open.
10. If everyone likes your idea, it’s not an idea. Good ideas always make enemies.
11. Don’t create something that everyone likes; create something that many people love.
12. Research never shows anything; it only suggests.

Value, Communication, Action, Understanding

13. Never take seriously what people say they think, because people are never sure. Trust only action.
14.-40. Full list

Read more!

Large Garage/Yard Sales: Doing It Right

This is also relevant for small garage/yard sales, but includes tips and advice mainly for multi-family, neighborhood, and church sales.

Double sales with signs done right

Would you like to double the early, most profitable sales? (Late sales are often heavily discounted.) I managed a sales location at one of this country's larger outdoor festivals. Every single visitor had to walk past it when they exited. The perfect location, right? Everyone saw it, everyone could see what was for sale there. No way to bring sales up by much there, you would think. Improved signage doubled sales at that location! This was a six-figure increase in net sales. (And it didn't cannibalize sales elsewhere, since people were exiting.)

Here's how to make it work for your garage sale:

1. Use the same neon color (green, yellow, etc.) for all signs. People searching for your sale will follow the color. Put up signs at all major intersections nearby, and then at each intersection they will have to turn from. Yes, this will mean a lot of signs! Color means people who have to drive several blocks to the next turn will see the color ahead and not give up.
2. Put up signs days ahead of time, with a tear off bottom portion that says "Starts Thursday!" or whenever. Go around with a box cutter and remove that portion the night before or the night of the first sale day.
3. Put colorful streamers on top of the post(s) holding in the signs.
4. Consider using metal rebar for the signposts, especially for church sales where it can be reused. It goes in fast and easy and doesn't break or give splinters.

What should it say on the signs? Read on:

The biggest sales booster

You can't skip this one. I once backed up traffic throughout a huge neighborhood with this one change. The neighbor had done a sale, but didn't get a lot of visitors or sales though weather was good. The next weekend, we did our sale, and made just one change vs. what they had done: We offered junk (mostly stuff you would never try to sell) for free, and said so on the signs.

Have an area for junk (you can bag misc tiny stuff and call it a mystery grab bag if you wish) labeled "FREE STUFF." Have someone watch over it. It doesn't need to be visible--make it easy on yourself: put it in an out-of-the-way area, where you wouldn't want to put things people might want to buy. It's okay if it's not visible right away, it helps get people looking at what you have.

Your signs should at least say (and can say no more than)

FREE STUFF
HUGE MULTI-FAMILY SALE
(plus the tear off bottom portion STARTS THURSDAY or whenever)

Don't kid yourself that you'll lose money this way. You'll make more than you could imagine, if you've got good stuff to sell. Amazingly, people don't bother much with the free stuff, even if that's what brought them over. And it brings traffic in droves.

Get the goods, get people involved, and thank Santa Claus!

When you're recruiting families or church members for a sale, be prepared to do some web sales ( eBay, Amazon, Craigslist, etc.) Second, get in touch via your regular mailing, or a postcard or phone tree before Christmas with potential donors! The discards after Christmas are when you get the really profitable stuff, and you may be able to sell it via the web before needing to deal with delivery and storage.

Ask people donating items to put a large description tag on the item. Have a standard form on the web they can print out and use. (below). This kind of merchandising vastly increases the sales of higher priced items. And they are the only ones that know the true working condition to provide a description.

For higher-priced items, ask people to consider:

1. Taking a photograph of the item so you can advertise it via the web
2. Shipping the item for you if you sell it over the web (via eBay, for example)
3. Showing the item for you (and collecting payment), if you sell it via a local ad.

Lastly, divide up tasks, make teams for each task, over-recruit for volunteers, and set a schedule that starts in September of the this year for next year's sale. Collect ideas and feedback on what went right and wrong.

For the donors to describe their items, pre-print some standard fields (description of item; checkboxes for condition; space for price--you fill that in, not the donor; notes) on a piece of paper roughly shaped as shown at left above. It should be at least 5-8" in length, preferably on colored paper (choose a light color). You can fit three on a standard sheet of letter paper.

So much stuff you could start a business

Get people to contact you before they throw stuff out, because an amazing source of stuff for a garage sale is stuff people throw out--that would otherwise go to the dumpster. I've learned there are businesses all over the U.S. that get 60-80% of the goods they sell from castoff goods. But instead of "dumpster diving," use the Cole Directory at your library to find luxury townhome/condominium areas in your area and can send those addresses that are convenient a postcard offering to haul stuff away for charity, if your sale is for a charity.

(We actually sold stuff OUT of a dumpster at one sale that was very crowded. It was an accident! The dumpster was full and neighbors moving had piled stuff next to it. People started making offers on the stuff by the dumpster! Some old carpet cuttings and broken chairs. Amazing. )

Read more!

Freedom: Work for yourself, or work for others?

I think you'll find this contrary compared to most of what is written, but that's because most of what you'll find is either a sales pitch or written by the top 1% of entrepreneurs. (Just by being successful as an entrepreneur you are in the minority.)

Most entrepreneurs are definitely very unsmart about what it takes to succeed. Self-defeating habits and ignorance take them down. Which means when writing about how worthwhile being entrepreneurial is, you have to explain problem-solving better than most articles do.

Lack of stability is a huge impediment to freedom. Sure, working for someone else has its frustrations, but for most people, there is more freedom in working for someone else. Stability, health care, etc. Be careful selling "freedom: as the reason for entrepreneurship.

Another sales pitch for entrepreneurship is the fear of your stability being in someone else's hands if you work for someone else. But losing your job and looking for another job is basically the experience of entrepreneurship. Tons of startups fail. Having a job in this sense is neither better nor worse than entrepreneurship.

If you're really, really good at finding another job, you have demonstrated entrepreneurial skills. (Possibly by using this great list of Resume Action Verbs.) But why not keep putting them to use giving yourself the greater freedom of working for someone else?

Quick test before going into business for yourself: are you running away from something, or running toward something? Very, very few people make changes for something better. Most make changes to get away from something they don't like, and end up throwing out the baby with the bath water. If you are setting out on a major life change and don't have gratitude for what you have now, you'll likely be ignorant of both what you're losing, and what challenges you'll be facing.

If you're facing major changes (unintentionally or intentionally), a great resource is How to Master Change in Your Life: 67 Ways to Handle Life's Toughest Moments by Mary Carroll Moore. Joan Borysenko reviewed it as "Real-life help for everything from spiritual crisis to changing careers - all given in a humorous, down-to-earth manner."

Read more!

What is LinkedIn REALLY about?

Disclaimer: Other than being a user of LinkedIn's free services, I have no connection to LinkedIn. Update: The New York Times has a good article on the benefits of using networking sites.

Short answer: It's an online contact management address book, people finder and expert advice site designed to help you network to find work, clients or assistance. It's the biggest of its kind—over 18 million people use it. It’s very useful in the free version (which I use), but a large percentage of users also pay to extend the features from time to time.

Common Uses

LinkedIn is sometimes perceived as insurance against future job changes. It’s an aid to getting a new job quickly, or finding a new one while still at your present job. Stats show getting connected on LinkedIn (at least 21 connections) makes you over thirty-four times more likely to be approached with a job opportunity (than people with four or less LinkedIn connections). So a list of uses might include:

• Asking questions of experts (one of the best sites anywhere for this);
• Find old friends;
• Find jobs/give yourself insurance against future job changes;
• Get recommendations about you and your work;
• Get new clients;
• Check references, find people to hire or help out your contacts by recommending them.

There are many fun “small world” things that happen. For example, I forgot about a guy who highly recommended my work years ago. I found him again because his wife was one of my wife's dance students!

More places to learn about how to use LinkedIn:

• I'm on LinkedIn: Now what?
  
• Guy Kawasaki's 10 13 reasons to use LinkedIn.
• 20 Ways to Use LinkedIn Productively for Web Workers
  
• How to get most out of LinkedIn
  
• LinkedIn Intelligence
  

Protecting Your Privacy

LinkedIn gives you a lot of control. You can hide information about yourself, or only publish information you want friends of your friends to see. People who don’t know you through either a past job or a friend are prohibited from seeing your details unless they have searched for you specifically, and you have made your details publicly available. You can also choose whether to let Google show your LinkedIn page or not. And even if you make your profile more visible, you can always hide parts of it.

Even if someone wants to contact you, they would have to find you, request permission (from me or anyone you connect to), and in some cases pay a substantial fee (too high in the past to make sense for spammers) if they were outside your immediate network. You can let LinkedIn contact you with occasional reminders, or you can opt-out.

Even if you leave yourself logged into LinkedIn on a public computer somewhere, no one can access features that involve private information, because you have to login each time you access those features. (I wish other sites where that way!) Of course, on my home computer I let the browser automatically fill in my info to speed things up.

Ways to Take LinkedIn Further

• Join the LinkedIn Power Forum at Yahoo groups;
• Read and contribute at LinkedIn Answers;
• Stay up to date on strategies at LinkedIn Intelligence;
• Add the LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar (for users of Microsoft versions Outlook/Windows XP/2002 or higher);
• Read this LinkedIn article for tips.
  

Sample Advice for a NonProfit Seeking Funding

Someone asked how to use LinkedIn if you are a not-for-profit seeking funding.
There were tons of people who had contributed to topics in the Charity and Non-Profit section of LinkedIn answers. I learned, for example:

Osocio.org has with a good track record providing information and resources on promoting your non-profit on the web. A great boost to a giving campaign.

Givestream provides free online fundraising and community-building tools that help nonprofits create their own branded easy giving center. Calculate how much they can help you raise.

Doing some brief research on LinkedIn answers turned up some of the following tips:

• View the list of helpful LinkedIn Experts in this category;
  
• List people you are working with currently, and all email addresses you have for them. Search LinkedIn for them, and ask them to join your LinkedIn network using the links provided on their LinkedIn profile page.
• List people you would like to reach, search LinkedIn for them, and ask your connections to introduce you to them.
• Write up a question for your project and post it to LinkedIn
• Search for people who's current job description includes the word "Fundraising" and ask them for advice on using LinkedIn in your effort
• Create a membership dues program;
• Contact corporations about a matching donations program before seeking donations from individuals;
• Create teams of people to go out and visit your major donors and ask for multiple-year pledges;
• For whatever someone gives by mail, multiply by ten and that's the gift they're capable of, as a rough estimate, if you visit them. A $500 donor can give $5,000, $1,000 can give $10,000. You'll have to teach yourselves how to ask for larger gifts: I recommend a video from Board Source called, "Speaking of Money" as a way to start your training.

While this advice might not be specific to what you wish to use LinkedIn for, this should give you some idea. There were literally hundreds of answers that I didn't even look at relevant to this topic. LinkedIn is a terrific resource!

Read more!

Make your business site rock in 20 minutes or less

Have a site, not sure what to do next? Here's a quick and easy starting point for any site (read to the end for more advanced stuff):

1. Get into Yahoo!'s and Google's local directories. This means people searching for businesses like yours in your area WILL find you.
2. Create an email signature with a link to the site. This is so all your emails will have a link to your site for people to click (kind of like a P.S.).
3. Whenever you send one of those fun or useful emails to multiple people, also bcc: it to your blog. Whatever stuff you're already sending out, whether it's tips, news, jokes, pics .. whatever. (Get a free blog in just minutes, and if you use blogger, here's how to email your posts.)

Now every time you send an email that gets added to your blog, it will also add a link to your website. And those emails adding onto your blog will start showing up in search engines results. And people who get your emails will click to your site, and forward your emails to other people who click over to your site, and so forth. Get your free blog from Blogger and Google will index it, and find your business site from there.

Interested in the advanced stuff? Here's the beginner's guide, plus a great resource for more articles, and then there's my favorite: a great guide to ranking factors for your site. Worth doing if you are able to edit your HTML is to find the

</head>

on the html of your home page. Then paste this just in front of it:

<meta name="description" content="This sentence describes my business.">

Change "This sentence describes my business." to something reader friendly.

Of course, every business should collect whatever customer information it can and market to their existing customer base

Read more!

Google ad results first for site search?

I extensively use Google's search within site feature---which can be added manually to any search (though I use a Firefox toolbar button) by adding "site:domain.com" to any search, replacing "domain" with the name of the domain to be searched.

In response to a recent comment on Google's nofollow I tried this type of search at Pegeen flower girl dresses. Never seen results like this before: a whole PAGE of ads preceded the organic SERPs! Also showed ads in this format.

Anyone have any idea why this might be? Marg from Pegeen notes some problems with the site showing in the SERPs just recently. I've put a thumb of the problem below. Any thoughts?

Read more!

Protecting reputations, changing perceptions in the face of negative publicity on the web

I've provided a brief overview in four strategic areas at the TweetSmarter blog.

Read more!

Quality information on understanding PPC

I am extremely impressed by the quality of information I've found on optimizing your internet advertising over at the RedFly PPC Marketing blog.

Warning! Dave Davis, managing director at RedFly, doesn' t shrink from digging into the technical nitty gritty of what works and how to do it in a PPC Campaign. But check it out: He explains things exceptionally clearly.

Dave also seems to have a helpful response to virtually every post comment. Really one of the most amazingly helpful places for PPC on the internet. Dave started posting about PPC around nine months ago, so this blog hasn't had time to become as popular as it deserves too (and will!)

Incidentally, never met the man. Just read the blog today. It's just such a pleasure to come across something so helpful and share it with others!

Read more!

High-gain SEO Marketing anyone can do

This logo design blogger is running an excellent example of a contest that anyone can copy and create their own variation of to promote their website. Northern Ireland logo designer David Airey is offering more than $4,000 in prizes in his version of this contest. Contest details here. (Addendum: here's a variation that is also an incredibly effective contest for getting traffic and subscribers.)

He's offering a wide variety of prizes, and giving you entries for linking and/or subscribing (feed) to his website. (I believe if you did this in the U.S., you would have to provide a way for entries to be had without requiring anything of entrants other than providing contact information of some kind.) You get extra entries for linking to prize providers.

In case you don't see how this works, by making the site and contest entry page highly visible, and offering a reward for linking to prize providers, it becomes worth it for many to be a prize provider.

Read more!