Who couldn't use a little extra income each month in these difficult economic times? You've probably heard that you can work at home and make money blogging, in fact you have probably been bombarded by email offers shouting out how to make thousands overnight simply by blogging. Fortunately you can tell a scam when you see one and you haven't fallen into that marketers' trap of buying program after program looking for the one that actually works.
The real shame of it all is that you can make money blogging and thousands are already doing it. You're certainly not going to make it overnight but you can build up a nice stream of revenue to help out with the household expenses if you're willing to put a little effort into it. In fact you can make thousands (not overnight) if you invest the time and energy. You actually could blog your way out of your daytime gig.
But to make any money at all you have to understand the basics of the blogging business.
Pick A Niche
Obviously you are going to need a subject to write about and picking the correct one is the difference between success and failure. The ultimate objective is to get traffic to your site, develop a relationship with the visitor, and then offer something for sale. Selecting the right, low competition niche is critical in achieving that objective.
So how do you do that?
Well there are some general rules to keep in mind. An old direct marketing saying says that a marketer (and that's what you are going to become) needs to find a starving crowd, find out what they are starving for, and then feed it to them.
Another qualifier is to find a crowd whose need is on their mind at least once a day and that they are emotionally invested in. For example if a person has hypertension they probably think about it everyday as they take their daily pills. They are emotionally invested because this disease could potentially kill them. What they are starving for is a way to cure the condition or at least end the side effects of the medication.
Niches that address health, relationships or wealth are loaded with these kinds of crowds.
Finding a crowd is easy. Finding a crowd that is starving for something takes a bit more work.
One way to find out what that crowd is hungry for is to take a look at what they are buying. You can do this online by going to Amazon and looking at the best selling items in a particular category. Or you can piggyback on the thousands of dollars that others have spent in market research and see what they are selling. For example a trip to the website for "Dummies" books will give you a list of titles that they offer. If those titles weren't selling they wouldn't be offered.
Once you've picked a niche, try to make it as focused as possible. For example if you pick trading stocks then start refining it down like day trading to day trading futures. Focusing on day trading futures eliminates a great deal of competition and speaks to an audience who has a specific interest. By the way, the keyword phrase "day trading futures" has about 9000 searches a month.
Pick A Product
Once you've selected a niche then you need something to sell and that's the easy part. Almost every manufacturer sells through affiliates and that includes big names like Wal Mart, Macy's and literally thousands of others. Using the above example you could do a Google search for day trading related products by entering "day trading affiliate". You'll get some junk but you'll also get some gems. Select three or four and sign up.
Own Your Blog
There are obviously free blogging platforms like Blogspot.com, Weebley.com and a host of 2.0 networks like HubSpot, Squidoo and hundreds of others. However, if you want to blog for money buy your own domain name and host it your self.
There are two major reasons to make this modest investment. First of all it is your site and you are not subject to anybody's terms and conditions. If you are on a free site, and they decide that your niche as a group is spamming, they can close your blog. With your own domain you can do as you like and don't have to worry about being slapped down by anybody.
Secondly the domain name itself is key to good search engine optimization. Using the day trading example you would try to get daytradingfutures.com or.org or.net.
Content Is King
You can have the hottest niche and the most popular product but if your content doesn't have value you'll fail. Don't put up fluff just to put something up. The content has to be grammatically correct and inform or entertain the reader. If you have a difficult time writing then contract it out. There are numerous freelance sites that have qualified writers at reasonable cost.
Take Action
Once you have this blog up you have to keep adding quality content and that's one of the beauties of using the free blog platform Wordpress for your blog. If you take a weekend and write 15 or 20 entries, you can load them into Wordpress and schedule them to publish over a specified amount of time. This then gives the impression of "natural" growth which Google loves and also gives you a break from writing for nearly three weeks.
Do something to promote your blog every day even if it's just bookmarking the newest article.
By: Z. MacKinnon
If you wonder how to learn WordPress step by step, simply click on the link and watch this free 95 min video tutorial. It's free but truly amazing. Check this site now! http://www.thewpjunkie.com/
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Work at Home Moms - Balance Life and Business
Balancing your time with your kids, work, and the house can be a stressful task at times. It often seems there are not enough hours in the day to attend to everything we that needs attention every single day. In this article, I will share with you a simple technique that has greatly helped me balance my life and business.
At the turn of the 20th century, an Italian economist, named Vilfredo Pareto, noticed that 80% of the wealth and land in his country was owned by 20% of the people. Later, a scientist, named Joseph Juran, noticed the same distribution pattern in the production of peas. Juran called the effect the Pareto Principle, but now it is most often referred to as the 80/20 rule.
Since the discoveries of Pareto and Juran, the concept that a majority of results come from a few causes has shown to be relevant in many areas of life and business. For example, most often 80% of sales occur from 20% of customers. I've found that following this concept is highly effective when running a business from home and balancing my time with my kids and household tasks.
Let's start with managing the house. When I focus on the few things each day that make the biggest difference in the daily chores, my stress level of trying to get everything single thing done is lowered drastically. I try to get the kids involved as well, which increased our results and provides quality time. I've found that some of our best time spent together is spent doing dishes.
You can also take this concept and use it when you work at home each day. Write down what you want to achieve each day or each week and look at the all the activities you do. What tasks do you do make the biggest difference toward your business?
Is this writing articles, calling prospects, connecting with others on Facebook? Everyone has different strengths, so your results will be different from mine. Figure out what few things make the biggest difference and then focus on those things each day. Don't worry about the rest unless you happen to have some extra time.
When you focus and work only on the few things that make the biggest results, you'll find that your time opens up for more time with your family.
If you would like more information on generating 30+ leads per day for your home-based business, visit: Marketing Magic School. http://marketingmagicschool.info/
By: Summer Killebrew
Summer Killebrew is a stay at home mom and entrepreneur who focuses on helping others who want to work from home achieve their dreams. Learn more about Summer at http:diapersandbusiness.com.
At the turn of the 20th century, an Italian economist, named Vilfredo Pareto, noticed that 80% of the wealth and land in his country was owned by 20% of the people. Later, a scientist, named Joseph Juran, noticed the same distribution pattern in the production of peas. Juran called the effect the Pareto Principle, but now it is most often referred to as the 80/20 rule.
Since the discoveries of Pareto and Juran, the concept that a majority of results come from a few causes has shown to be relevant in many areas of life and business. For example, most often 80% of sales occur from 20% of customers. I've found that following this concept is highly effective when running a business from home and balancing my time with my kids and household tasks.
Let's start with managing the house. When I focus on the few things each day that make the biggest difference in the daily chores, my stress level of trying to get everything single thing done is lowered drastically. I try to get the kids involved as well, which increased our results and provides quality time. I've found that some of our best time spent together is spent doing dishes.
You can also take this concept and use it when you work at home each day. Write down what you want to achieve each day or each week and look at the all the activities you do. What tasks do you do make the biggest difference toward your business?
Is this writing articles, calling prospects, connecting with others on Facebook? Everyone has different strengths, so your results will be different from mine. Figure out what few things make the biggest difference and then focus on those things each day. Don't worry about the rest unless you happen to have some extra time.
When you focus and work only on the few things that make the biggest results, you'll find that your time opens up for more time with your family.
If you would like more information on generating 30+ leads per day for your home-based business, visit: Marketing Magic School. http://marketingmagicschool.info/
By: Summer Killebrew
Summer Killebrew is a stay at home mom and entrepreneur who focuses on helping others who want to work from home achieve their dreams. Learn more about Summer at http:diapersandbusiness.com.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Work At Home 101
Tired of commuting on the way to the office - not to mention all those strife during the rush hour? Tired of being bossed around? Want to have more time for yourself or to your family and friends? Want to earn money without experiencing these things? If you answered YES to any or to all of these questions, no doubt - work from home jobs should be the ones for you.
In this technological generation, a lot of things which were thought to be impossible were made possible - thanks to the power of the worldwide web. Nowadays, people could connect to the Internet to see distant loved ones, communicate with them for almost free, gain friends from foreign lands - and now to make money by doing work from home. Sounds too good to be true?
Well, it isn't. It is now possible and a significant number of individuals have already attested that doing work at home made them feel that sense of satisfaction.
Most of the home based workers comprises of stay-at-home wives, and university students wanting to earn at their own pace and time. There are also a significant number of home-based workers from the corporate arena, who works part-time online to make the ends meet. Want to be one of them? Read on and know the basics in doing work at home.
Why Work At Home?
People nowadays want freedom over their time without compromising financial stability. Both of these areas could be fulfilled if and only if that person is doing work at home - at his own pace and time. Plus, it's less stressful - away from the hustle and bustles of the city roads and those people who are ordering you around. It makes a person enjoy life at its fullest as well because most work at home jobs pay are good.
What You Can Do To Earn At Home
- Do network marketing. Sell products online and earn commission. - Be a virtual assistant. Do things for your boss such as answering callers for him, etc. - Be a content writer. Showcase all those writing skills to persons who need it - big time bloggers, website makers needing more articles and etc. and get paid for it. - Be hired in a Call Center and work from home. Several companies also have home-based call center agents - customer representatives, telemarketers, and technical support. - Be a translator/interpreter. This is for language translators/interpreters who work in several industries.
There are thousands of available jobs online and there are also work at home sites, which have a rich database of work at home jobs. Feel free to look for them on the search engines. However, there are sites which could be scams. Most of them ask for private details such as credit card number. Unless confirmed legitimate, do not give any confidential information.
Another hint: Most of the legitimate work at home sites would not ask for a payment to gain access to their lists. To check whether sites are into scam or not, go to a search engine, type the name of the company with the word scam after it (e.g. nameofthewebsite.com scam). There are also several forums dedicated to inform Internet users about such scammers, so please check them out.
By: Leval Ainah
Leval Ainah helps people succeed online. Did you find this article helpful? If you did, then take a look at the step-by-step free video tutorials here. http://www.MavericMoneyMakersYearly.com
In this technological generation, a lot of things which were thought to be impossible were made possible - thanks to the power of the worldwide web. Nowadays, people could connect to the Internet to see distant loved ones, communicate with them for almost free, gain friends from foreign lands - and now to make money by doing work from home. Sounds too good to be true?
Well, it isn't. It is now possible and a significant number of individuals have already attested that doing work at home made them feel that sense of satisfaction.
Most of the home based workers comprises of stay-at-home wives, and university students wanting to earn at their own pace and time. There are also a significant number of home-based workers from the corporate arena, who works part-time online to make the ends meet. Want to be one of them? Read on and know the basics in doing work at home.
Why Work At Home?
People nowadays want freedom over their time without compromising financial stability. Both of these areas could be fulfilled if and only if that person is doing work at home - at his own pace and time. Plus, it's less stressful - away from the hustle and bustles of the city roads and those people who are ordering you around. It makes a person enjoy life at its fullest as well because most work at home jobs pay are good.
What You Can Do To Earn At Home
- Do network marketing. Sell products online and earn commission. - Be a virtual assistant. Do things for your boss such as answering callers for him, etc. - Be a content writer. Showcase all those writing skills to persons who need it - big time bloggers, website makers needing more articles and etc. and get paid for it. - Be hired in a Call Center and work from home. Several companies also have home-based call center agents - customer representatives, telemarketers, and technical support. - Be a translator/interpreter. This is for language translators/interpreters who work in several industries.
There are thousands of available jobs online and there are also work at home sites, which have a rich database of work at home jobs. Feel free to look for them on the search engines. However, there are sites which could be scams. Most of them ask for private details such as credit card number. Unless confirmed legitimate, do not give any confidential information.
Another hint: Most of the legitimate work at home sites would not ask for a payment to gain access to their lists. To check whether sites are into scam or not, go to a search engine, type the name of the company with the word scam after it (e.g. nameofthewebsite.com scam). There are also several forums dedicated to inform Internet users about such scammers, so please check them out.
By: Leval Ainah
Leval Ainah helps people succeed online. Did you find this article helpful? If you did, then take a look at the step-by-step free video tutorials here. http://www.MavericMoneyMakersYearly.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
