How to Make Money Online During the Recession

Although we are presently confronted with what is generally thought to be the worst recession since the 1930s, the world of e-commerce continues to grow, showing few sign of peaking anytime soon. In an effort to get the most bang for the buck, savvy businesses and marketers are moving traditional ad spend dollars online in ever-increasing numbers.

This growth has not come without a price. Newspapers and periodicals across the country and around the world continue to fail at an alarming rate as readers (followed by representative ad dollars) continue to move to the Net.

Web 2.0 technologies present new opportunities and hazards

In an effort to make the most of this trend, thousands of astute Web surfers are actively learning to leverage Web 2.0 technologies in order to make money online during the economic downturn.

Just as surely as there are many eager to learn this nascent trade, so too is it certain that unscrupulous businesses and marketers will look to take advantage of these “e-newbies” with promises of riches from programs that “do all the work, while you need only sit back and count the cash.” As we have heard too many times before, “if it sounds too good to be true…”

Most online marketers fail

The simple truth is that most surfers with little-to-no marketing experience who turn to e-commerce as an income source fail. However, it is important to note that failure is no less certain for those who try to make it on their own, than those that fall victim to scammers.

I will elaborate.

There is no better place to start a business than the Web

Despite the fact that most online business ventures fail, the potential for earning vast sums of money quickly is far greater online than off. The Web provides heretofore unforeseen opportunities to anyone with access to a pc and an internet connection. To boil it down to a single factor-the Internet provides potential access to a virtually unlimited consumer base for a tiny fraction of the cost required to reach those same consumers via traditional marketing methods. Those that understand this concept and implement an effective plan to take advantage of it become wealthy.

Brilliant Internet concepts and the riches that follow are not necessarily the fruits of experience

One favorite example of high concept is “The Million Dollar Homepage.” This stroke of genius plan was hatched in August, 2005 by a young Englishman, Alex Tew, who needed a way to pay for university. In short, he decided that he would put up a Web page and sell space by the pixel (at $1.00 per pixel) to advertisers. He earned his million without spending a dime on advertising as Web surfers from around the world visited “The Million Dollar Homepage” just to see for themselves if it actually existed and what such a page would look like.

Of course, such high-concept sites are the exception and not the norm. People have made fortunes small and large with far more mundane ideas.

How much is one “dumb” idea worth?

In 1999 a shopper in San Francisco went in search of a certain type of shoe in a specific size and color. He left the mall tired, frustrated, and empty-handed. Back at home he decided that the task could be better handled online. His only problem was that there was no major online shoe retailer to buy from. That day, Nick Swinmurn founded Zappos.com. “Who would be dumb enough to buy shoes online-without even trying them on?” people asked. Hundreds of thousands of customers and millions of dollars later, Nick had his answer-almost everyone. Despite the recessionary woes faced by most retailers, Zappos did more than $1 billion dollars in sales last year.

Alex Tew’s and Nick Swinmurn’s dreams really only had one thing in common, the fact that they would not have been possible without the Internet and its low-cost access to millions of consumers worldwide.

OK, OK, I get it. But what’s in it for me?

We’re glad you asked, and the answer is, almost anything you want-if you are willing to learn the skills required.

While the internet continues to have many success stories, it has many more failure stories, and those remain mostly unheard. There are thousands of budding entrepreneurs who may have had a good idea, but didn’t know how to effectively market it. Or, perhaps they were top-notch marketers, but had no idea on how to deliver the product cost-effectively. Or perhaps they just lacked the fortitude or the dollars to stick it out.

Please, no more stories; just get to the point. I have things to do.

While the Editors at Top 5 Online Jobs rarely agree about much, we are virtually unanimous in the opinion that most budding online entrepreneurs fail because they are generally undercapitalized and too easily discouraged by the almost inevitable initial failures. Far too often they quit just before reaching the “tipping point”-that magical moment when the idea begins to realize a profit.

From the mouths of hucksters…

If you are old enough to remember get-rich-quick king of “tiny classified ads” infomercials, Don Lapre, you might recall this pitch:

“If you can create and test one tiny classified ad in the newspaper that makes just $30-$40 profit in a week, it could make you a fortune, because the secret is learning how to take that one tiny classified ad that just made $30-$40 profit in a week and to realize that you can now take that same exact ad and place it in up to 3,000 other newspapers around the country…”

You can almost smell the hair gel.

Despite Don’s reportedly questionable business practices which made him subject of many a Better Business Bureau complaint, his thesis was correct. If nothing else, Don understood that the concept of scaling could be used in marketing to multiply a campaign that shows a small but consistent profit into a small (or even large) fortune.

Today’s Web is a Don Lapre dream come true-potential access to a virtually unlimited number of eager consumers-if you can figure out how to reach them cost effectively. And while the ROI on successful Internet campaigns is difficult to match in the offline world, the Web is also a place rife with costly and frustrating hazards that chew up and spit out budding online entrepreneurs with clock-like regularity.

How shall I begin?

The very first thing is to decide what type of an entrepreneur you are or would like to be:

1. The Fiercely Independent Entrepreneur
This person is a strong-willed, highly motivated, self-starter. This sometimes egotistical entrepreneur would rather succeed or fail on their own terms rather than follow in someone else’s footsteps. This is a high-risk, high reward approach and not for someone who is easily dissuaded by initial failures. This entrepreneur’s Achilles’ heel is the tendency to enjoy the hunt more than the feast. However, this entrepreneurial type is far more likely to launch the next Million Dollar Homepage, Zappos or Twitter.

2. The Template Entrepreneur
While also a highly motivated, self-starter, the template entrepreneur allows others to blaze the trail and follows only when they feel confident that the successes of the trailblazer can be achieved without suffering through the same mistakes. To this person the bottom line is the destination, not the journey. They generally prefer fast nickels to slow dimes, are willing to utilize the advice of experts, and are less likely to lose interest in a project once they have achieved success. It is of course far easier to navigate a path that has already been cleared, but the downside to this approach is that if they wait too long, it may be difficult to emulate the pioneer’s results due to the inevitable increase in competition. And while this entrepreneur is less likely to launch the next Facebook, they are also more likely to turn a profit.

What do I sell online?

Here’s where you have to make another big decision – should you begin by marketing your own product/service and keep 100% of the profits, or marketing someone else’s product/service and keep a percentage of the profits?

For persons new to the world of e-commerce, we would suggest that you begin by selling someone else’s product or service. Consider selling your own only after you have demonstrated a thorough understanding of Internet marketing techniques and achieved a satisfactory level of online success.

Affiliate Marketing

Many Internet marketers begin with affiliate marketing-the practice of advertising someone else’s product or service in exchange for a commission for each sale referred.

The methods utilized most often by affiliate marketers include PPC (pay-per-click) marketing, posting links on your own search-engine-optimized, content-related website or blog, banner advertising, and e-mail/e-newsletter marketing. There are of course, other “outside-of-the-box” methods used by savvy “super-affiliates,” but these are rarely revealed freely, as the key to successful affiliate marketing is referring traffic to the seller at the lowest possible cost.

For example, if you were to purchase 1000 clicks from Google by using their AdWords program and you paid $0.50 for each click, and 1% of the clicks resulted in sales, and each sale yielded a $10.00 commission; you would produce 10 sales and lose $400.00. Ouch.

Commission ($100) minus Cost ($500) equals Profit/Loss (-$400)

However, if you paid $0.05 for each click, assuming the same 1% conversion rate, you would profit $5.00 for each sale-a very healthy ROI (return on investment) of 100%.

Commission ($100) minus Cost ($50) equals Profit/Loss ($50)

Scaling Marketing Campaigns (the “Don Lapre Method”) to Maximize Profits

Using the same parameters, an investment of $500 in AdWords clicks would return your $500 investment plus an additional $500 profit.

Commission ($1000) minus Cost ($500) equals Profit/Loss ($500)

Rather than be satisfied with a $500 profit on a $500 investment, once convinced that the results could be repeated with a reasonable degree of consistency, a savvy internet marketer would reinvest profits in increasingly greater amounts. If successful, the marketer would become wealthy in short order.

A Little Online Marketing Perspective

While you don’t run into campaigns with 100% ROI on a daily basis, they certainly exist, and they have and will continue to make Internet millionaires of many. If we were to think of such a campaign as a machine into which you could put a single dollar and have it spit out two dollars a few days later, what that machine be worth? What would you be willing to pay for the plans to build such a machine?

But you don’t need 100% ROI to make a very good living as an affiliate marketer working only a few hours per day from home. A fairly consistent ROI of 50% would be enough to allow you to quit your day job in relatively short order. All you really need are the plans to create your own ROI machine.

Building Plans for Sale

While some “super-affiliates” will take their methods to the grave, there are others that are willing to part with them-for a price. The trick is of course, to get the best possible “plans” at the lowest possible cost. All plans are not created equal.

It is our recommendation that persons new to Internet marketing seek out the mentoring of someone who has already become wealthy by creating high ROI affiliate campaigns (not by selling online courses). Contact this person and offer to work as an apprentice for an hour or two per day to learn the methods used to create and implement high ROI affiliate campaigns. Or simply ask them what they would charge for weekly phone consultation. Or if they give seminars or webinars, begin by attending one. Or if they offer a class, take it. Or if they offer an online course, buy it. Keep in mind that doing so will likely save you the time and cost of many of the initial failures encountered by most if not all Internet marketers.

If you find the right mentor and truly heed their advice, it would probably be difficult not to at least approach their level of success.

Finally: A Word about Work from Home/Online Job Scams

While there are certainly more than enough online scams to go around, it is amusing to hear programs created by some of today’s top online marketers referred to as scams. To keep a bit of perspective it might be helpful to note that a college education generally costs tens of thousands of dollars. Somehow graduates who find themselves amongst the unemployed rarely refer to their degrees as scams. Yet, when someone takes an online course and fails to produce a profit within 30 days, the word “scam” is thrown around freely. We would suggest that students of online courses also examine their own efforts before referring to anything that has been proven to work for others as a scam. The price of a book is never a guarantee of the knowledge within.

How to Make Money Online During the Recession Although we are presently confronted with what is generally thought to be the worst recession since the 1930s, the world of e-commerce continues to grow, showing few sign of peaking anytime soon. In an effort to get the most bang for the buck, savvy businesses and marketers are moving traditional ad [Continue]

How To Make the Most of a Free Internet Marketing Tool

Are you looking for the best free internet marketing tool? The bad news is that it is probably hard to determine the best one, since it depends on your business, your target audience, the marketplace, and other issues. But the good news is that there are many that you can take advantage of to build your image/brand and obtain leads and sales.

One of the most popular free tools today is Twitter. Its popularity increases exponentially every month and many new free “Twitter-enhancing” products have also come out that can allow you to automate your Twitter account and save time. Twitter is extremely easy to use. Sign up for an account, upload your picture, write a brief description of what you want to say, and include whatever url you would like to promote, such as your website or an affiliate link. Next, you “tweet” something out to the world. Try to keep it conversational and social. Avoid too much promotion. If someone likes what you have to say, they will check out your profile and your link. Then, you will look for people to follow–people who could be interested in what you are offering. You can search by keyword to target the audience that you would like to follow. When you follow someone, they will generally follow you back, and then you can let them know more about yourself and what you have to offer, and they will do the same.

Another very fundamental-to-your-online-business free internet marketing tool is the Google Keyword Research Tool. No matter what kind of marketing you do online, you will need to tap into the keywords that are relevant to your business. You will use these keywords in your blog, website, PPC ads, articles, videos, and any other type of marketing that you do. And the free Google tool allows you to find the exact keywords to target in your promotions–for free. Simply type in a word or phrase that relates to your business, and the tool will provide you with a list of all related keywords that people are typing in, how many people are typing each term, and how competitive the terms are (how many other marketers are using them in their marketing efforts).

Videos are another very powerful, and free, way to market your business. All you need is a web-cam or a digital camera, and one to ten minutes of time to make a video. Simply upload it to YouTube or any of the other video sites, write a description of what you are speaking about in your video (make sure to include the right keywords), and include your link, and you’ve got a magnet for people who are searching for whatever it is that you are speaking about or demonstrating on your video.

As you can see, there is more than just one free internet marketing tool that you can use to promote your business or affiliate products.

How To Make the Most of a Free Internet Marketing Tool Are you looking for the best free internet marketing tool? The bad news is that it is probably hard to determine the best one, since it depends on your business, your target audience, the marketplace, and other issues. But the good news is that there are many that you can take advantage of to [Continue]

Link building is one of the many tasks you need to allot time to when you’re marketing online. And what business isn’t marketing online nowadays? Link building refers to both incoming links and your internal linking structure. This article will provide you with some of the link building tips to get you started in the right direction.

First of all, before you even put your link building strategy into place, you want to make sure you are offering top-notch quality and information on your site. This is the foundation that holds it all together. Interesting and informative content will bring more links to your blog naturally, without you having to go out searching for them.

Make use of blog directories. There are quite a few blog directories where you can pick up a link to your blog. Just to mention a few. . .BlogHer is more geared towards women and BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog also include a social aspect to them. These can give you many ways to increase the number of incoming links to your blog just by registering.

Once you have a good amount of compelling content published on your blog, approach other bloggers with equal or more authority than your blog (you’ll have to find this out by using various tools) and suggest a blogrooll reciprocal link. It’s better to do this (1) when your blogs are relevant to each other and (2) when you have already been in contact with your potential link partner.

This is one of the best link building tips: Write an Article on another site that allows guests. Just make sure that you add content to blogs that are higher ranked than yours.

Holding blog contests is a very effective way to drive traffic to your blog and increase your quantity of incoming links. How do you do this? You can actually promote your blog contest on a variety of blog contest promotion sites. You can even “bribe” contestants with extra entries if they write an article on their blog which links back to your article about the contest.

Create other content that links to your blog or even create another blog that links to your blog. And the key to making the most of this other content is to comment on other people’s content. When you comment, make sure that you include the link back to your blog. It’s important to remember that your comments should be informative and interesting, not simply spamming others with your link.

Joining forums is a great way to start building relationships with people and getting your blog noticed. Just make sure you include your blog url in your profile and signature.

Similarly, participating in social networking sites like Facebook allows you more opportunities to
make your blog more visible. You will most likely include the link to your blog in the profile areas.

Hopefully these link building tips will be useful for you and your business.

Link building is one of the many tasks you need to allot time to when you're marketing online. And what business isn't marketing online nowadays? Link building refers to both incoming links and your internal linking structure. This article will provide you with some of the link building tips to get you started in the right direction. First of [Continue]

Wordpress marketing is one of the most popular blogging tools available on the internet today. What a lot of people do not realize though is that it is also a powerful Content Management System that is able to be used for more than just blogging. When you use wordpress you have the ability to either a blog or a website which ever you choose.

Wordpress was originally designed as a blogging tool but you no longer have to use it just for blogging anymore. With just a few updates here and there you can also use it for your website and you can either in conjunction with a blog or no blog at all. Just the fact that Wordpress was once originally designed for a blogging platform gives Wordpress some compelling advantages. It is designed for easy publishing and changing your content whenever it is needed. There are also other advantages that are great for small business owners as well.

1. First of all Wordpress is SEO optimized. There are a few adjustments that you will need to make but overall there are several SEO benefits that Wordpress provides to your for free. This saves you considerable amount of time and effort that is usually needed when you are creating your site to be SEO optimized.

2. Another great advantage of Wordpress for online small business owners is that the content is easily updated and you will not even have to know any HTML to get it done either. You can easily create new pages or edit your existing pages using a simple rich text editor. This is another great way for you to save money when you are first creating your site.

3. There are also thousands of people in the internet world that create extensions of the Wordpress program. Just think how many free themes and ratings, among hundreds of other options, are available to you for free. You will not have to pay the hefty price you would normally have to for a web designer because these extensions will allow you to do it for yourself.

4. If you happen to run into a problem or wish to add on custom features, it is very easy for you to find support as there are thousands of Wordpress developers available on the net. All you need to do is type in Wordpress support in your favorite search engine and you will be amazed at the results that you will get.

5. The finale benefit for small business owners is that Wordpress is easy to install. There are many companies that also offer help with your quick install to get your site up and running in no time.

As you can see there are several different reasons why Wordpress would benefit your small business.

Wordpress marketing is one of the most popular blogging tools available on the internet today. What a lot of people do not realize though is that it is also a powerful Content Management System that is able to be used for more than just blogging. When you use wordpress you have the ability to either a blog or a website which ever you [Continue]

All businesses are now a days struggling to get their websites on the first page of search engines. Therefore, they are trying to learn how to make best use of search engine optimization techniques. As a search engine optimization consultant, SysComm has put together 10 best techniques to include in your search engine marketing strategy to improve your site s optimization.

On-page optimization refers to the techniques used by a search engine optimization consultants to maximise the performance of a website in the search engines for targeted keywords related to the on-page content. Keyword efforts require doing research to choose your keywords and strategically place them throughout a website.

Just as on-page optimization, the purpose of off-page optimization is to increase the performance of a website in the search engines for targeted keywords related to the on-page content. However, the tactics used by off-page optimization refer to including your keywords in off-page direct-links. Briefly, it refers getting backlinks to your sites that will help your site get high rankings in the search engines.

On-Page Search Engine Optimization

1. Create unique, accurate Meta Tags specially page title –

The page title is one of the most important on-page aspects of search engine optimization! Every page of your site should have its very own unique title that includes main keywords for that page. Keeping mind the search engine guidelines we suggest you to keep the title description under 70 words. Make sure you description tag has its unique content and concise description is below 140 characters. Search engines might use the description meta tag as part of your page in the search.

2. Make use of H1 H3 tags Keywords:

For achieving good search engine optimization results, these are of great importance for on-page SEO. It is advisable to place your keywords in the headings of your content in a priority fashion. H1 gets higher priority than H2. So make sure you write keyword rich headings in the order of priority in H1, H2 and H3 title tags. They are used by many crawlers to differentiate important content.

3. Improve the structure of your URLs:

For good search engine optimization of your site, having search engine friendly URLs is highly recommended. According to Google guidelines, these bring better crawling. Try to include your targeted keywords in the URLs. Also, remember that all of your important pages should be short and static URLs.

4. Keyword Density should not exceed 2-5%

Although using keywords in the content of your site is very important, try not to repeat keywords just for search engine robots. Keep the keyword density between 2-5% percent, instead of repeating a keyword try to simply use alternative terms that describe the same concept. Exceeding keyword density might lead to your site being banned from search engines. Try not to focus on the keywords, rather work on the quality content!

5. Use Alt Text for Image Optimization:

Since Images are very important from a search engine optimization perspective, they need to be optimized properly as well. If you want to know more tips on improving your images, read here.

Off- page Search Engine Optimization

1. Article Distribution:

Submitting articles to dedicated websites can be a great technique for off-page search engine optimization! It can bring a huge traffic from new and unique visitors to your website. This tactic is both inexpensive and effective from a search engine marketing perspective. It promotes your website and builds one-way links of great quality.

2. Social Networking and Bookmarking :

In today s scenario as part of your search engine marketing strategy it is important to create your presence on important social networks by creating twitter profile, Facebook Fan page, Youtube channel, Linkedin profile and others. Strong presence on social networks can bring you the benefit of more exposure, new opportunities and increased sales. Adding your website content to social bookmarking sites will help people find it easily and bring the backlinks to the site. The most commonly used social bookmarking sites are: Delicious, Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit. Furthermore, from a purely internet marketing perspective, it can drive traffic significantly!

3. Submissions and Link Building

Submitting your site in important directories will help in getting ranks on search engines. Submissions on regional and product specific directories and search engines will boost quality traffic to the site. As part of creating your offline search engine optimization strategy, it is very important to make a good plan for your Link building campaign. These can all build you great keyword rich backlinks to your website. Ethical link building campaign can generate lots of quality traffic to website and is considered one the most important online marketing strategy for offline search engine optimization.

4. Blog Commenting:

Participating in conversations on industry specific blogs and interesting online discussions not only helps in creating your presence on internet and managing your reputation online but it also brings quality links back to your site. Try to identify popular blogs relevant to your site and engage in the conversation. Leaving a comment on a blog can result in a relevant link to the website. Read more about the importance of blog commenting here.

5. Create a themed blog

Launch your own blog, its easy and free if you use Wordpress.com or Blogger.com It s a great way to keep content fresh and engage your loyal customers. Use widgets on your blog to show your social presence, it will help in making your loyal site visitor to become your Fan on Facebook and they can follow you on Twitter and other networks. Blog can bring loads of keyword rich links back to your site

All businesses are now a days struggling to get their websites on the first page of search engines. Therefore, they are trying to learn how to make best use of search engine optimization techniques. As a search engine optimization consultant, SysComm has put together 10 best techniques to include in your search engine marketing strategy to [Continue]