Can Anyone Make Money Online Working From Home?
Of course. Many thousands of people do. You might have friends or family members who make a living with a home-based Internet business already. The problem is that not everyone WILL make money online, because making money on the internet takes a long time to learn, and most people give up because it can be extremely frustrating.
With over 300,000 “Internet Home Business” related searches on the internet every month, it’s safe to say that there is a lot of demand for information on how to make money on the internet. Sadly, this also means that there are a lot of shady characters preying on this group of people.
I knew someone who fell for one of these scams once – they taught him how to make money online, and then all he did was sell seminars – on how to make money online. The fact that he had never actually made any money online was beside the point… I guess. Not surprisingly, I’m not a big supporter of his business.
When Can You Quit Your Day Job to Work Online From Home?
Perhaps the most important piece of advice for starting an internet home business is this: Don’t expect to replace your day job’s income for 365 days (or so!). Although I will add that service-based businesses tend to bring in revenue faster, I would still allow for a full year to replace your outside-the-home salary.
The Good News About the Home Based Business Industry
As long as you are willing to put in the hours (days… weeks…. months….. ) to learn the ropes, you can bootstrap your business with extremely little money, generally speaking. Remember that some businesses take more to start than others. I’ve probably directly invested less than $3000 getting this blog up and running, and now revenue is increasing at about a 125-140% pace every month after being in business for 16 months. So, where do you start from here? Here are some general rules of thumb.
Internet-Based Business: Startup Rules
1. Pre-packaged programs only work as much as you can customize it and make it unique and your own. Even then, techniques that work for one niche won’t work in all niches.
2. Be wary of any “system” that promises instant results (especially anything that sounds like a get-rich-quick scheme!)
3. Knowing the basics of html, SEO (search engine optimization), social media marketing , website marketing and traditional marketing and sales are a must.
4. Every business is made stronger by specializing in a tight niche. Know your audience and stick to it.
Unless you have a brilliant tech idea that makes venture capitalists drool (which means you don’t need this list), you need to determine where your strengths are and which business model you plan on following. I have run three home-based businesses in my life, all of which leveraged my current skill set as the foundation for building the business. Look over the following list and single out the ones in which you have at least some experience. You probably won’t have all of the skills necessary, so don’t let that stop you! All you have to do is work hard and be willing to learn.
1. Internet Business Idea #1: Affiliate Marketing
What is it?
Promote other company’s products and services on your website. When a sale is made, you get a commission.
Most important skills needed
PPC (Pay Per Click marketing), sales copywriting, web marketing
Best learning resources
Affiliate Classroom, ShoeMoney, Rosalind Gardner
Recommended Book
Make a Fortune Promoting Other People’s Stuff Online by Rosalind Gardner
2. Internet Home Business Idea #2: Blogging
What is it?
A chronologically based website filled with articles, reviews, or journal-style writing. You can sell advertising or incorporate affiliate marketing on a blog to earn money.
Most important skills needed
Copywriting, social networking, affiliate marketing, web marketing
Best learning resources
ProBlogger, Blogging for Dollars, Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind Program (highly recommended & he has a free report to download)
Recommended Book
ProBlogger, Secrets to Blogging Your Way to a Six Figure Income by Darren Rowse & Chris Garrett
3. Web-Based Business Idea #3: eBay & Auction Selling
What is it?
Selling or reselling products via an online marketplace like Ebay, Amazon Auctions, or Craigslist. You can sell used goods, buy goods wholesale, or use a drop-shipping service.
Most important skills needed
Merchandising, sales copywriting, customer service
Best learning resources
Ebay Learning Center, SaleHoo Training Center, JennyHow
Recommended Book
eBay 101: Selling on eBay For Part-time or Full-time Income, Beginner to PowerSeller in 90 Days by Steve Weber
4. Idea #4 for Internet Home Based Businesses: E-Commerce
What is it?
Selling products or a technology-based service on your own website.
Most important skills needed
All of the above, below and then some!
Best learning resources
Entrepreneur.com’s Online Business Startup Guide
Recommended Book
The Complete E-Commerce Book: Design, Build and Maintain a Successful Web-Based Business by Janice Reynolds
5. Internet Home Business Idea #5: Arts & Crafts
What is it?
Creating and manufacturing your own product lines and selling them online.
Most important skills needed
Creativity, sales, e-commerce
Best learning resources
Sparkplugging’s CraftBoom, About.com Craft Business 101 Series, Barbara Brabec
Recommended Book
The Crafts Business Answer Book: Starting, Managing, and Marketing a Homebased Arts, Crafts, or Design Business by Barbara Brabec
6. Home Business Idea for Web Workers #6: Internet Research Business
What is it?
Doing internet research for corporations, law firms and other small businesses.
Most important skills needed
Librarian-style research skills, customer service
7. Idea #7 for Working From Home on the Web: Freelance Services
What is it?
Providing professional services such as copywriting, design, photography, illustration, and programming usually billed on an hourly rate.
Most important skills needed
Sales, customer service, trade-specific knowledge
Best learning resources
Our Freelance Parent channel, FreelanceSwitch
Recommended Book
The Business Side of Creativity: The Complete Guide to Running a Small Graphic Design or Communications Business by Cameron S. Foote
8. Work At Home Web Business Idea #8: Recruiting
What is it?
Recruiting candidates for companies who pay a fee when a hire is made.
Most important skills needed
Sales, relationship building, networking
Best learning resources
RecruitersNetwork, HireAbility
Recommended Book
Start Your Own Executive Recruiting Business (Entrepreneur Magazine’s Start Up) by Entrepreneur Press
9. Internet Business Idea #9: Consulting
What is it?
Providing your specialized industry knowledge to corporations, entrepreneurs, investors or other businesses.
Most important skills needed
Trade-specific knowledge, sales, customer service
Best learning resources
Entrepreneur.com’s Consulting Business Startup Guide
Recommended Book
The Business of Consulting: The Basics and Beyond (CD-ROM Included) by Elaine Biech
10. Web Business Idea #10: VA (Virtual Assistant)
What is it?
Providing administrative and business support to other business owners and small businesses.
Most important skills needed
Customer service, organization
Best learning resources
VirtualAssistantStartups, Entrepreneur.com’s Business Support Startup Guide, VirtualPABusiness
Wednesday, 9 February 2011
popular current trend
As the Internet progressively moves towards real-time information, the need to know what’s popular right now is becoming increasingly important. Here are the best ways to track trends of all types, so you’ll always be in the know about what’s hot on the Internet.
1. How to track popular Internet video trends
Mag.ma is the definitive source when it comes to tracking what’s hot for Internet videos. It aggregates all the hot videos from sites like YouTube, Vimeo and Daily Motion, takes into account social media buzz, links, positive reviews, how fast views are growing, then and shows you a selection of videos which are up and coming.
Because it tracks chatter from around the web and links to the video as well, using Mag.ma, you’ll usually be able to watch viral videos very early on rather than waiting for it to hit the masses.
2. How to track hot Twitter trends
Trendistic is one of the most visual ways to track Twitter trends out there. What I really like about it is that it helps you understand popular trends, and the tweets that were happening at that particular point in time when the topic became hot. Many other services just show you what’s hot and the current tweets about that topic (you can also get that here), so there is little retrospective understanding about what actually happened when the topic was trending and became viral.
It also offers up some great tools like hourly/weekly/monthly charts, and the ability to embed these charts into your own website.
3. How to track popular search trends
Google Trends Hot List shows you the hottest searches on the web right now. Close to real time, this is probably the single greatest indicator as to what people are searching for now. Google trends of course also allows you to track buzz of any given keyword across time.
Trendy Bing uses Google Trends hot list, but the results are published in Bing instead of Google. The result is a slightly richer experience with videos and photos to complement the search results.
4. How to track popular image trends
Digg Images is my favorite location when I want to find out what images are taking the Internet by storm. While Digg showcases all the most popular content of every genre be it videos/news/tech, the image section is particularly unique as there are few sources online which really capture what images/photos are really popular now.
5. How to track popular news trends
Newsmap is a fantastic visualization tool when it comes to determining what news is hot right now. It aggregates Google News and makes the more popular (the more written about) stories larger and more prominent, so in one glance, you’ll be able to see what’s hot. You can also customize it by topic and location to give you an even more focused look.
6. How to track popular feed subscription trends
Website subscription can be considered the ultimate gauge of
7. How to track your email trends
No, there isn’t a service which allows you to track what people are saying on email :) There is however, one called ‘Mail Trends’ which allows you to track what you are saying on Gmail. It allows you to get more insight on key email stats for example:
(c)2011
1. How to track popular Internet video trends
Mag.ma is the definitive source when it comes to tracking what’s hot for Internet videos. It aggregates all the hot videos from sites like YouTube, Vimeo and Daily Motion, takes into account social media buzz, links, positive reviews, how fast views are growing, then and shows you a selection of videos which are up and coming.
Because it tracks chatter from around the web and links to the video as well, using Mag.ma, you’ll usually be able to watch viral videos very early on rather than waiting for it to hit the masses.
2. How to track hot Twitter trends
Trendistic is one of the most visual ways to track Twitter trends out there. What I really like about it is that it helps you understand popular trends, and the tweets that were happening at that particular point in time when the topic became hot. Many other services just show you what’s hot and the current tweets about that topic (you can also get that here), so there is little retrospective understanding about what actually happened when the topic was trending and became viral.
It also offers up some great tools like hourly/weekly/monthly charts, and the ability to embed these charts into your own website.
3. How to track popular search trends
Google Trends Hot List shows you the hottest searches on the web right now. Close to real time, this is probably the single greatest indicator as to what people are searching for now. Google trends of course also allows you to track buzz of any given keyword across time.
Trendy Bing uses Google Trends hot list, but the results are published in Bing instead of Google. The result is a slightly richer experience with videos and photos to complement the search results.
4. How to track popular image trends
Digg Images is my favorite location when I want to find out what images are taking the Internet by storm. While Digg showcases all the most popular content of every genre be it videos/news/tech, the image section is particularly unique as there are few sources online which really capture what images/photos are really popular now.
5. How to track popular news trends
Newsmap is a fantastic visualization tool when it comes to determining what news is hot right now. It aggregates Google News and makes the more popular (the more written about) stories larger and more prominent, so in one glance, you’ll be able to see what’s hot. You can also customize it by topic and location to give you an even more focused look.
6. How to track popular feed subscription trends
Website subscription can be considered the ultimate gauge of
7. How to track your email trends
No, there isn’t a service which allows you to track what people are saying on email :) There is however, one called ‘Mail Trends’ which allows you to track what you are saying on Gmail. It allows you to get more insight on key email stats for example:
(c)2011
Thursday, 3 February 2011
strategies to boost your online business
Big Idea #1: you can’t achieve new goals or make desired changes without allocating time to do so. Check out page 63 of my NO B.S. TIME MANAGEMENT FOR ENTREPRENEURS BOOK* for ‘time-blocking’ strategy instructions. A big reason that resolutions never become reality is no room made for them in the daily schedule! If your days are already full, and you resolve to get in a 1/2 hour a day on the treadmill or on your laptop, writing that book, that 1/2 hour has to come from somewhere. Something’s gotta give! You have to find something or things currently consuming time you can cut 5 or 10 or 15 minutes from.
Big Idea #2: priorities should govern schedule, schedule shouldn’t govern priorities. On pages 69-74 and 103-111 of the same book, I talk about the mistake made by the vast majority of business owners and entrepreneurs – they operate like workers instead of bosses and leaders. They report to a workplace, then they let people and events ad interruptions come at them all day, take control of their day. You have to wrest control away from others’ priorities and govern by your priorities. President Bush cited Social Security reform and tax reform as top priorities of his second term, presumably accompanied by resolution of the mess in Iraq. Then along came the tsunami. Still, he organized his tax reform panel. It’s hard to judge from outside looking in, but my belief about W. is that he’s determined to govern by his priorities. Are you?
Big Idea #3: resolutions aren’t resolutions without resolve. Only you can decide what really matters to you. You shouldn’t bother with ‘lip service’ faux resolutions, made to appease or satisfy others. Honesty with self is a pre-requisite for success.
Big Idea #4: resolutions require resources. Almost anything you decide to do, any change you decide to make, any goal you set out to achieve requires new or different resources. That might be a piece of home exercise equipment or different food in the cupboard, a private work environment outside the office, information, people. You aren’t really serious about a resolution unless you invest in and gather the required resources.
Sometimes investment motivates follow-through, too.
Big Idea #5: daily progress. Take the objective and break it all the way down to a timeline and to-do list for each day, from now to fruition. In talking about how he built ‘The Sharper Image’ from a college kid’s coffee table start-up to nearly a billion dollar business, Richard Thalleimer references the Bill Murray movie, ‘What About Bob?, with the psychologist who advocates “Baby Steps.” Thallheimer says he still approaches every new project that way today. Good enough for a guy running a billion dollar company, good enough for you. Nothing gets done in occasional big leaps. I wrote four books last year, one hour a day, a handful of pages each day. Here’s the goal and discipline that is guaranteed certain to move you closer to any goal each and every day: refuse to end any day without doing some thing, no matter how small, that moves you toward the goal! “The One Thing Behavioral Rule” makes a huge difference.
Big Idea #6: who motivates the motivator? Paul Meyer, founder of Success Motivation Institute, posed this provocative question. As an entrepreneur, as the leader, you may be doing a lot of motivating of others, but who motivates you? For the most part, you need to create self-motivation with structure, like Big Idea#5. But you can also get into a coaching group, tele-coaching program, hire a one-on-one coach, or just pair up with a like-minded buddy, so there’s somebody to hold you accountable, to report progress to, to get an atta-boy! from. Any professional sports coach will tell you: measurement automatically improves performance, and measurement monitored by someone else further improves performance.
Big Idea #7: Build up to change. I’ve neglected the treadmill for six months, now I’m going back to it. Began January 1st. I’m writing this on the 8th and I’m still 100%. The goal is 30 minutes a day, but if I try doing that out of the starting gate, I’m a goner. So I’ve started with a measly 5 minutes a day first half of January, 10 minutes a day for next 15 days, 15 minutes a day for all of February – and I’ll miss 10 days while traveling, then 20 minutes a day in March, up to 30 minutes by April. This addresses the tricky balancing act, a desirable and motivating goal but also an achievable goal. So, say you resolve to get up an hour earlier every morning to work on some project. You could start with 15 minutes for two weeks, then 20 minutes for two weeks, then 30 for a month, then 45 for two weeks.
Big Idea #8: It’s not too late to re-group! You may already have let your resolutions slip away. Doesn’t matter. Today, tonight, tomorrow morning at the latest, block out a couple hours, bolt the door, unplug phone, and re-group. Review the resolutions. Pick one or two or three that mean the most, and apply the above seven ideas.
Big Idea #9: Make better use of your time. Resolve weakens under pressure, under stress, when you feel your time is out of your control. That’s the set of circumstances that allows procrastination to gain a foothold. If you want to be more resolute about keeping your resolutions, you must become unwaveringly resolute about controlling your time. A lot of what’s in my NO B.S. TIME MANAGEMENT FOR ENTREPRENEURS BOOK has to do with training or re-training all the people in your world to respect your time, to co-operate and facilitate your peak productivity.
Big Idea #2: priorities should govern schedule, schedule shouldn’t govern priorities. On pages 69-74 and 103-111 of the same book, I talk about the mistake made by the vast majority of business owners and entrepreneurs – they operate like workers instead of bosses and leaders. They report to a workplace, then they let people and events ad interruptions come at them all day, take control of their day. You have to wrest control away from others’ priorities and govern by your priorities. President Bush cited Social Security reform and tax reform as top priorities of his second term, presumably accompanied by resolution of the mess in Iraq. Then along came the tsunami. Still, he organized his tax reform panel. It’s hard to judge from outside looking in, but my belief about W. is that he’s determined to govern by his priorities. Are you?
Big Idea #3: resolutions aren’t resolutions without resolve. Only you can decide what really matters to you. You shouldn’t bother with ‘lip service’ faux resolutions, made to appease or satisfy others. Honesty with self is a pre-requisite for success.
Big Idea #4: resolutions require resources. Almost anything you decide to do, any change you decide to make, any goal you set out to achieve requires new or different resources. That might be a piece of home exercise equipment or different food in the cupboard, a private work environment outside the office, information, people. You aren’t really serious about a resolution unless you invest in and gather the required resources.
Sometimes investment motivates follow-through, too.
Big Idea #5: daily progress. Take the objective and break it all the way down to a timeline and to-do list for each day, from now to fruition. In talking about how he built ‘The Sharper Image’ from a college kid’s coffee table start-up to nearly a billion dollar business, Richard Thalleimer references the Bill Murray movie, ‘What About Bob?, with the psychologist who advocates “Baby Steps.” Thallheimer says he still approaches every new project that way today. Good enough for a guy running a billion dollar company, good enough for you. Nothing gets done in occasional big leaps. I wrote four books last year, one hour a day, a handful of pages each day. Here’s the goal and discipline that is guaranteed certain to move you closer to any goal each and every day: refuse to end any day without doing some thing, no matter how small, that moves you toward the goal! “The One Thing Behavioral Rule” makes a huge difference.
Big Idea #6: who motivates the motivator? Paul Meyer, founder of Success Motivation Institute, posed this provocative question. As an entrepreneur, as the leader, you may be doing a lot of motivating of others, but who motivates you? For the most part, you need to create self-motivation with structure, like Big Idea#5. But you can also get into a coaching group, tele-coaching program, hire a one-on-one coach, or just pair up with a like-minded buddy, so there’s somebody to hold you accountable, to report progress to, to get an atta-boy! from. Any professional sports coach will tell you: measurement automatically improves performance, and measurement monitored by someone else further improves performance.
Big Idea #7: Build up to change. I’ve neglected the treadmill for six months, now I’m going back to it. Began January 1st. I’m writing this on the 8th and I’m still 100%. The goal is 30 minutes a day, but if I try doing that out of the starting gate, I’m a goner. So I’ve started with a measly 5 minutes a day first half of January, 10 minutes a day for next 15 days, 15 minutes a day for all of February – and I’ll miss 10 days while traveling, then 20 minutes a day in March, up to 30 minutes by April. This addresses the tricky balancing act, a desirable and motivating goal but also an achievable goal. So, say you resolve to get up an hour earlier every morning to work on some project. You could start with 15 minutes for two weeks, then 20 minutes for two weeks, then 30 for a month, then 45 for two weeks.
Big Idea #8: It’s not too late to re-group! You may already have let your resolutions slip away. Doesn’t matter. Today, tonight, tomorrow morning at the latest, block out a couple hours, bolt the door, unplug phone, and re-group. Review the resolutions. Pick one or two or three that mean the most, and apply the above seven ideas.
Big Idea #9: Make better use of your time. Resolve weakens under pressure, under stress, when you feel your time is out of your control. That’s the set of circumstances that allows procrastination to gain a foothold. If you want to be more resolute about keeping your resolutions, you must become unwaveringly resolute about controlling your time. A lot of what’s in my NO B.S. TIME MANAGEMENT FOR ENTREPRENEURS BOOK has to do with training or re-training all the people in your world to respect your time, to co-operate and facilitate your peak productivity.
find a product to sell online before your competitors do!
Success secret to establishing website in profitable niche markets is finding hot and latest niche products that is proven to make you money, most especially if you are a affiliate marketer. In this article, I’m going to share with you how to find a hot niche products that is already making people money, but still new.
Clickbank.com marketplace is one of the best place to find great hot paying products. It is easy for a merchant that lists their products on clickbank.com to pay as much as 75% commission to affiliates because the products are digital products.
Picking product on clickbank to promote is easy, most especially if you have idea of the category (market) you want to explore in mind. However, a lot of people may be promoting such product already.
It is good to be part of people that discover product when it first start showing sign of success. There is a website that can give you information about latest product that’s already showing sign of success. They provide data that clickbank.com didn’t really consider giving to users. The website is cbengine.com
They provide data that clickbank.com didn’t really consider giving to users. The website is cbengine.com
Cbengine.com will help you in finding clickbank marketplace products that is new, hot and it’s already success proven.
Click on ‘new products’.
It will open a page where you can find list of new product. When the page open, pay attention to the ‘grav’ column. The grav. stands for gravity which gives idea of how successful a product is based on affiliates that are promoting the product already.
If you more niche marketing example, let me give you one that I discover today. It is ‘limb remodelling’ a product on getting taller.
If you click on the name of the product you will get more details about it.
As you can see on the image above, according to cbengine.com, they first discover the product on clickbank on 31st of January. The product obviously, is completely new and it’s already successful. This is type of product I love promoting as affiliate marketer.
Now that you know how to discover products that is new and already making other people money, jump to cbengine.com and start discovering hot products. Wish you success.
Clickbank.com marketplace is one of the best place to find great hot paying products. It is easy for a merchant that lists their products on clickbank.com to pay as much as 75% commission to affiliates because the products are digital products.
Picking product on clickbank to promote is easy, most especially if you have idea of the category (market) you want to explore in mind. However, a lot of people may be promoting such product already.
It is good to be part of people that discover product when it first start showing sign of success. There is a website that can give you information about latest product that’s already showing sign of success. They provide data that clickbank.com didn’t really consider giving to users. The website is cbengine.com
They provide data that clickbank.com didn’t really consider giving to users. The website is cbengine.com
Cbengine.com will help you in finding clickbank marketplace products that is new, hot and it’s already success proven.
Click on ‘new products’.
It will open a page where you can find list of new product. When the page open, pay attention to the ‘grav’ column. The grav. stands for gravity which gives idea of how successful a product is based on affiliates that are promoting the product already.
If you more niche marketing example, let me give you one that I discover today. It is ‘limb remodelling’ a product on getting taller.
If you click on the name of the product you will get more details about it.
As you can see on the image above, according to cbengine.com, they first discover the product on clickbank on 31st of January. The product obviously, is completely new and it’s already successful. This is type of product I love promoting as affiliate marketer.
Now that you know how to discover products that is new and already making other people money, jump to cbengine.com and start discovering hot products. Wish you success.
Wednesday, 29 September 2010
Product Ideas to Sell Online
Product Ideas to Sell Online
By George N Root III, eHow Contributor
I want to do this! What's This?
Television and Internet advertising can sometimes create the image that an online retail business is a quick and easy way to start your own company. The truth is that unless you can find products that people want to buy, your online retail business will not last very long. Use your imagination to find the products that you believe will help you launch your online retail business.
Services
1. One of the easier start-up products for an online retailer is services, because the costs are relatively low. If you have an expertise in a popular topic, then attempt to start a newsletter and offer monthly subscriptions to your newsletter.
Another popular service is training. Set up a website that offers courses in various popular subjects such as Internet usage, language tutoring or computer repair. It will be necessary to recruit experts in these fields, but the way to compensate these experts is a percentage of the pay from each student. This will also get the experts involved in recruiting students. Follow the format established by other online training companies and modify their format to fit your ideas.
Products
2. One way to get started selling products as an online retailer is to become a supplier to a specific industry or activity. For example, you could base your business on the idea of selling art students the supplies they need for their studies. When you focus on a specific industry, it allows you to determine where the needs are in that industry and see if you can become a supplier of those needs. It is easier to find the less saturated business segments when you break an industry down into its parts and then examine the supply and demand model for each of those parts.
The market for personalized gifts is a large and growing market, and if you can find some unique products to personalize then you could find a buying audience. This means avoiding the personalized T-shirt and coffee mug businesses because there are many of those already out there. One idea for a product to personalize is to put someone's name as the character in a popular novel. This would require getting the reproduction rights to the author's work, but this is the sort of personalization you could offer with your online retail business.
Things to Avoid
3. Research to determine the products that are saturated with online retailers. Many people offer DVDs, CDs, and books online. The chances that you will find success by offering products that are being offered by too many retailers is slim.
Some people start an online retail business to try and turn their hobby or passion into a career. When it comes to business, it is always a good idea to follow the sales projection figures as opposed to following your heart. While it would be easier to establish an online retail business with products that you have a passion for, it only makes sense to do it if you have done your research and determined that there is a market for your hobby. Determine what will sell, and use that to find success as an online retailer.
By George N Root III, eHow Contributor
I want to do this! What's This?
Television and Internet advertising can sometimes create the image that an online retail business is a quick and easy way to start your own company. The truth is that unless you can find products that people want to buy, your online retail business will not last very long. Use your imagination to find the products that you believe will help you launch your online retail business.
Services
1. One of the easier start-up products for an online retailer is services, because the costs are relatively low. If you have an expertise in a popular topic, then attempt to start a newsletter and offer monthly subscriptions to your newsletter.
Another popular service is training. Set up a website that offers courses in various popular subjects such as Internet usage, language tutoring or computer repair. It will be necessary to recruit experts in these fields, but the way to compensate these experts is a percentage of the pay from each student. This will also get the experts involved in recruiting students. Follow the format established by other online training companies and modify their format to fit your ideas.
Products
2. One way to get started selling products as an online retailer is to become a supplier to a specific industry or activity. For example, you could base your business on the idea of selling art students the supplies they need for their studies. When you focus on a specific industry, it allows you to determine where the needs are in that industry and see if you can become a supplier of those needs. It is easier to find the less saturated business segments when you break an industry down into its parts and then examine the supply and demand model for each of those parts.
The market for personalized gifts is a large and growing market, and if you can find some unique products to personalize then you could find a buying audience. This means avoiding the personalized T-shirt and coffee mug businesses because there are many of those already out there. One idea for a product to personalize is to put someone's name as the character in a popular novel. This would require getting the reproduction rights to the author's work, but this is the sort of personalization you could offer with your online retail business.
Things to Avoid
3. Research to determine the products that are saturated with online retailers. Many people offer DVDs, CDs, and books online. The chances that you will find success by offering products that are being offered by too many retailers is slim.
Some people start an online retail business to try and turn their hobby or passion into a career. When it comes to business, it is always a good idea to follow the sales projection figures as opposed to following your heart. While it would be easier to establish an online retail business with products that you have a passion for, it only makes sense to do it if you have done your research and determined that there is a market for your hobby. Determine what will sell, and use that to find success as an online retailer.
Saturday, 31 July 2010
free articles and public domain content
I was surfing online trying to do some research on a new blog post, I came across a caption that caught my attention. On the screen before me was the caption “public Domain Content” being curious I clicked and was able to find out what it meant; public domain content are contents you find online that are not copy righted. What this means is you can take the content or written work of another person repackage it to whatever form without taking permission from the owner of the work or the owner has simply given you express permission to use their work without recourse or attrition to them. I sort of clicked back to what I was doing before which was trying to research on my new blog post; along the line I was struck with an idea! Here I was trying to do a research for my new blog post when I was already presented with a verifiable link. I clicked back and studied it to develop my idea further.
I learnt that public domain content or creative commons CC0 is a new creative commons license to help content creators distribute their work on the internet copy right-free. They can publish presentations, WebPages, videos, songs, pictures or any other form of content in the public domain via CC0. CC0 mean creative commons zero or “no rights reserved” license to your work, what this means is that “you as the creator of a work of art, article or whatever you create, you are trying to say I wrote this work or article but since I am circulating it under the creative commons zero please feel free to copy this article or use it for any other purpose without asking for permission or attrition.”
As the law stand, almost all countries have laws on copy right law prohibitions, I can rightly tell you that they have one thing in common and that is “copy right law prohibits in full or in part the use or reuse without explicit permission for creative works from the copy right owner.”
All copy right works will enter the public domain 70 years after the death of the author or 120years after the publication date if the death of the author is unknown.
Now back to the issue of the idea I said came to me while I was trying to do a research on my new blog post. The idea that came to me was if there was a lot of content out there lying unused why not write about it and bring it to the attention of my fellow bloggers and most especially newbie’s who may have been encouraged one way or the other for starting a blog through this blog and is finding it hard to come up anything to write about on their blog because for you to have traffic to your blog, you must have quality contents on your blog and must post to your blog at reasonable interval. And you must avoid copying copy righted documents online just to post to your blog it is against the rules of blogger and Google AdSense. I was going through my blogger dashboard and popped in to check my blog buzz, I came across an update that blogger is seriously working on deleting accounts that copy and paste copy righted items to their blogs.
The aim of this post is to put you on alerts on how to look for contents that are not copy righted, that is if you must use somebody’s else’s article on your blog, then it must be from “Public Domain Content”, you can download and re-modify it to your taste, even convert to PDF and sell it but most domain content have limitations as to what you can do with it but they are all free to use most of the time, simply do a “due diligence” before you use any of it.
Public domain content can be a useful resource center for online materials and ideas when you are looking for something to work on before posting to your blog so that you can avoid copying copy righted work and plagiarism. For you to use copy righted work you must first need to take permission by contacting them through their website or blogs online, but make sure that if you are given permission store the permission somewhere you can easily reach for it later.
Now a lot of you would have been asking yourselves; how do I search for public domain contents? You can do a search on public domain content on Google by simply typing the words “public domain contents” and click your way to whatever it is you are looking for.
It occurred to me to do another search for software’s that can duplicate articles, and you can imagine the result that came out. There are a lot of software’s that can duplicate your articles into 10 or more different articles with just a click from you and you can post on your blog. But if you must use this kind of software just make sure you write a unique article yourself and duplicate it to different articles. You can even register for Revenue sharing sites and use this software to earn from your Google AdSense account. I am currently working on this issue to expose or simplify it for you to take advantage of. Just make sure that you leave a comment on my blog on anything for us to improve and serve you better. You can download this kind of software’s for free. Simply do a search on Google with the keywords article duplicating software. Software Alliance roils some with aggressive stance: fines have reached into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.(fines for unauthorized software duplication): ... An article from: San Diego Business Journal
In conclusion however, the aim of this blog is to promote original ideas; where you can sit down and come up with your own idea on any niche but also at the same time point to you useful ideas that are relevant and emerging so that you don’t lack behind in this rapidly changing information technology world of ours.
I learnt that public domain content or creative commons CC0 is a new creative commons license to help content creators distribute their work on the internet copy right-free. They can publish presentations, WebPages, videos, songs, pictures or any other form of content in the public domain via CC0. CC0 mean creative commons zero or “no rights reserved” license to your work, what this means is that “you as the creator of a work of art, article or whatever you create, you are trying to say I wrote this work or article but since I am circulating it under the creative commons zero please feel free to copy this article or use it for any other purpose without asking for permission or attrition.”
As the law stand, almost all countries have laws on copy right law prohibitions, I can rightly tell you that they have one thing in common and that is “copy right law prohibits in full or in part the use or reuse without explicit permission for creative works from the copy right owner.”
All copy right works will enter the public domain 70 years after the death of the author or 120years after the publication date if the death of the author is unknown.
Now back to the issue of the idea I said came to me while I was trying to do a research on my new blog post. The idea that came to me was if there was a lot of content out there lying unused why not write about it and bring it to the attention of my fellow bloggers and most especially newbie’s who may have been encouraged one way or the other for starting a blog through this blog and is finding it hard to come up anything to write about on their blog because for you to have traffic to your blog, you must have quality contents on your blog and must post to your blog at reasonable interval. And you must avoid copying copy righted documents online just to post to your blog it is against the rules of blogger and Google AdSense. I was going through my blogger dashboard and popped in to check my blog buzz, I came across an update that blogger is seriously working on deleting accounts that copy and paste copy righted items to their blogs.
The aim of this post is to put you on alerts on how to look for contents that are not copy righted, that is if you must use somebody’s else’s article on your blog, then it must be from “Public Domain Content”, you can download and re-modify it to your taste, even convert to PDF and sell it but most domain content have limitations as to what you can do with it but they are all free to use most of the time, simply do a “due diligence” before you use any of it.
Public domain content can be a useful resource center for online materials and ideas when you are looking for something to work on before posting to your blog so that you can avoid copying copy righted work and plagiarism. For you to use copy righted work you must first need to take permission by contacting them through their website or blogs online, but make sure that if you are given permission store the permission somewhere you can easily reach for it later.
Now a lot of you would have been asking yourselves; how do I search for public domain contents? You can do a search on public domain content on Google by simply typing the words “public domain contents” and click your way to whatever it is you are looking for.
It occurred to me to do another search for software’s that can duplicate articles, and you can imagine the result that came out. There are a lot of software’s that can duplicate your articles into 10 or more different articles with just a click from you and you can post on your blog. But if you must use this kind of software just make sure you write a unique article yourself and duplicate it to different articles. You can even register for Revenue sharing sites and use this software to earn from your Google AdSense account. I am currently working on this issue to expose or simplify it for you to take advantage of. Just make sure that you leave a comment on my blog on anything for us to improve and serve you better. You can download this kind of software’s for free. Simply do a search on Google with the keywords article duplicating software. Software Alliance roils some with aggressive stance: fines have reached into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.(fines for unauthorized software duplication): ... An article from: San Diego Business Journal
In conclusion however, the aim of this blog is to promote original ideas; where you can sit down and come up with your own idea on any niche but also at the same time point to you useful ideas that are relevant and emerging so that you don’t lack behind in this rapidly changing information technology world of ours.
Tuesday, 27 July 2010
Why Blogs Fail
Millions of blogs are being added to blogosphere every month and many of them fail and eventually die within the first few months of their launch. Why? Basically, there could be thousands of reasons for this. And in this article I’ll try to cover few of them.
Here are 24 deadly signs that your blog may be dying:
1. When Money becomes your top priority and you found yourself spending most of your time in doing research about latest affiliate programs rather than thinking about creating high quality content.
2. When you update your blog very rarely.
3. When you lose your motivation and start ignoring your blog or start taking it as granted.
4. When you create high quality content, hit the publish button and then go to sleep without making any efforts to promote it.
5. When you start writing long posts in small fonts and don’t even have time to break your text into short paragraphs.
6. When it becomes very difficult for search engine crawlers to crawl your content (may be due to weird themes or some complex blogging platform).
7. When you don’t do any kind of SEO or link building for your blog.
8. When you don’t have any knowledge of the niche you are going to blog about (unless you are newbie who want to share his personal learning experience with the community)
9. When your readers have to wait for more than 30 seconds to get your blog loaded.
10. When you’ve filled every white space of your blog with advertisements.
11. When you don’t have time to reply to the comments/ questions of your readers.
12. When the contact form of your blog is not working and your readers don’t have any other option to contact you.
13. When you are using the default WordPress setting for your blog like default about page, default URL structure, etc.
14. When you start believing that blogging is only about taking and earning and not about sharing.
15. When you start giving preference to the quantity over quality of content.
16. When you think that networking with other bloggers of your niche is not at all important.
17. When you start fooling your readers by recommending them to crappy affiliate products.
18. When you start selling links to poker and casino websites from your Blogroll.
19. When you start blogging about everything minus the information useful for your readers.
20. When your readers have to fill complex captchas or to register on your website to write comments.
21. When you claim that you earn $9,999 from your blog every month but still use a free WordPress theme.
22. When you start scraping content for your blog from the other blogs of your niche.
23. When you start expecting overnight results and dream of becoming a millionaire in first two months of blogging.
24. When you start spending your hard earned cash in buying $9.99 products entitled “How to become a successful blogger”.
So, these are 24 reasons that I can think of as the tell-tale signs of when a blog starts dying. If more than a couple of these signs apply to you, it means that its time for a major overhaul in your blogging strategy or your way of thinking.
Here are 24 deadly signs that your blog may be dying:
1. When Money becomes your top priority and you found yourself spending most of your time in doing research about latest affiliate programs rather than thinking about creating high quality content.
2. When you update your blog very rarely.
3. When you lose your motivation and start ignoring your blog or start taking it as granted.
4. When you create high quality content, hit the publish button and then go to sleep without making any efforts to promote it.
5. When you start writing long posts in small fonts and don’t even have time to break your text into short paragraphs.
6. When it becomes very difficult for search engine crawlers to crawl your content (may be due to weird themes or some complex blogging platform).
7. When you don’t do any kind of SEO or link building for your blog.
8. When you don’t have any knowledge of the niche you are going to blog about (unless you are newbie who want to share his personal learning experience with the community)
9. When your readers have to wait for more than 30 seconds to get your blog loaded.
10. When you’ve filled every white space of your blog with advertisements.
11. When you don’t have time to reply to the comments/ questions of your readers.
12. When the contact form of your blog is not working and your readers don’t have any other option to contact you.
13. When you are using the default WordPress setting for your blog like default about page, default URL structure, etc.
14. When you start believing that blogging is only about taking and earning and not about sharing.
15. When you start giving preference to the quantity over quality of content.
16. When you think that networking with other bloggers of your niche is not at all important.
17. When you start fooling your readers by recommending them to crappy affiliate products.
18. When you start selling links to poker and casino websites from your Blogroll.
19. When you start blogging about everything minus the information useful for your readers.
20. When your readers have to fill complex captchas or to register on your website to write comments.
21. When you claim that you earn $9,999 from your blog every month but still use a free WordPress theme.
22. When you start scraping content for your blog from the other blogs of your niche.
23. When you start expecting overnight results and dream of becoming a millionaire in first two months of blogging.
24. When you start spending your hard earned cash in buying $9.99 products entitled “How to become a successful blogger”.
So, these are 24 reasons that I can think of as the tell-tale signs of when a blog starts dying. If more than a couple of these signs apply to you, it means that its time for a major overhaul in your blogging strategy or your way of thinking.
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