Making Money From Home – A Shift to an At-Home Income

With the improvements in communication technology and the sharp increase in energy costs, including the dramatic rise of gasoline in the United States, many people are ditching the typical nine to five office job and in favor of making money from home. The benefits are numerous, including being able to spend more time with family, working a personalized and flexible schedule, being your own boss, and being able to work more efficiently, thus generating a higher income. While the benefits are numerous, current technology has made opportunities for working from home increasing more diverse and exciting. These opportunities include opening your own at-home internet business, selling hand crafted merchandise, running an at-home office, medical transcription, data entry positions, telephone marketing, and any number of internet writing options to name only a few.
In the past at home options for generating income was limited by technology and communication systems. An individual can only do so much with a typewriter and rotary telephone. However, with today’s technology of personal computers and high speed internet the options for making money from home are almost a limitless as your imagination. All that is needed for most options is a telephone capable of making long distance calls and personal computer with internet access. Common word processing programs, database sheets, and financing applications can greater ease the transition from a typical nine to five job to an at home working situation. These programs are relatively cheap (many computers even come pre-loaded with the software) and can greatly improve the efficiency of your at home business.
Options for working from home can as typical as data entry, telephone marketing, or medical transcription. These are fairly traditional means of earning an at home income that can be as boring as they can be profitable. There are any numerous websites that offer complete listings of available opportunities in these fields. If you are more creative than dutiful, then there are many creative ways to make money from the comfort of your home. Freelance writing opportunities abound with dozens of internet sites listing job offerings. Freelance writing jobs can vary from web content production to short article writing to editorial blogs to web editing. The proliferation of emails and web pages has made freelancing writing more common than ever.
One of the best and most common methods to generate an in-house income is to create and maintain an at-home business. While this use to involve complicated tax forms, legal proceedings, and sometimes even zoning redistricting. However, the internet again has changed all of this. Now the entire store can be located on web pages creating a virtual storefront. From these pages it is possible to sell advertising space, access to specialized information, and/or products. This eliminates costly leasing fees of a real storefront, extensive taxes, and also eliminates the need for additional labor. This makes personal internet sales one of the fastest growing segments of the United States’ economy.
Due to an increase in internet traffic, the ease of making a web page, cheap and efficient editing and financial software, and improved communication systems, working from home has become more popular than ever.

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Writing Profitable Classified Ads

Everybody wants to make more money. In fact, most people would like to hit upon something that makes them fabulously rich! And seemingly, one of the easiest roads to the fulfilment of these dreams of wealth is mail order or within the professional circles of the business, direct mail selling.

The only thing is, hardly anyone gives much real thought to the basic ingredient of selling by mail – the writing of profitable classified ads. If your mail order business is to succeed, then you must acquire the expertise of writing classified ads that sell your product or services!

Many advertisers think that writing classified ads is completely different than writing longer print ads, which contain a headline, body text and possibly a picture or two. However, to write a successful classified ad, all the time-honoured elements of successful advertising must be present.

Large print ads include a headline to gather attention, introductory body copy to inform and generate added interest, additional body copy to create enthusiasm and desire to make a purchase and a call to action that incites the reader to take the steps necessary to start the purchasing process.

In advertising circles, these four features are often designated by the acronym “A.I.D.A.,” which stands for:

Attention (headline) Interest (body text) Desire (added body text) Action (call to action). So what makes a classified ad good or bad? First of all, it must appeal to the reader, and as such, it must say exactly what you want it to say. Secondly, it has to say what it says in the least possible number of words in order to keep your operating costs within your budget. And thirdly, it has to produce the desired results whether inquiries or sales.

Grabbing the reader’s attention is your first objective. You must assume the reader is “scanning” the page on which your ad appears in the company of two or three hundred classified ads.

Therefore, there has to be something about your ad that causes him to stop scanning and look at yours! So, the first two or three words of your ad are of the utmost importance and deserve your careful consideration. Most surveys show that words or phrases that quickly involve the reader, tend to be the best attention-grabbers. Such words as: FREE… WIN… MAKE BIG MONEY…

Whatever words you use as attention-grabbers, to start your ads, you should bear in mind that they’ll be competing with similar attention-grabbers of the other ads on the same page. Therefore, in addition to your lead words, your ad must quickly go on to promise or state further benefits to the reader. In other words, your ad might read something like this: MAKE BIG MONEY! Easy & Simple. We show you how!

In the language of professional copywriters, you’ve grabbed the attention of your prospect, and interested him with something that even he can do.

The next rule of good classified copywriting has to do with the arousal of the reader’s desire to get in on your offer. In a great many instances, this rule is by-passed, and it appears, this is the real reason that an ad doesn’t pull according to the expectations of the advertiser.

Think about it – you’ve got your reader’s attention; you’ve told him it’s easy and simple; and you’re about to ask him to do something. Unless you take the time to further “want your offer,” your ad is going to only half turn him on. He’ll compare your ad with the others that have grabbed his attention and finally decide upon the one that interests him the most.

What is being said is that here is the place for you to insert that magic word “guaranteed” or some other such word or phrase. So now, we’ve got an ad that reads: MAKE BIG MONEY! Easy & Simple. Guaranteed!

Now the reader is turned on, and in his mind, he can’t lose. You’re ready to ask for his money. This is the “demand for action” part of your ad. This is the part where you want to use such words as: Limited time offer! Act now! Call today!

Example: Make $1,000 a week! Easy to do! No selling! Risk FREE! Limited offer. Call…

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These are the ingredients of any good classified ad – Attention – Interest – Desire – Action… Without these four ingredients skilfully integrated into your ad, chances are your ad will just “lie there” and not do anything but cost you money. What we’ve just shown you is a basic classified ad.

Although such an ad could be placed in any leading publication and would pull a good response, it’s known as a “blind ad” and would pull inquiries and responses from a whole spectrum of people reading the publication in which it appeared. In other words, from as many “time-wasters” as from bona fide buyers.

So let’s try to give you an example of the kind of classified ad you might want to use, say to sell a report such as this one… Using all the rules of basic advertising copywriting, and stating exactly what our product is, our ad reads thusly:

MONEY-MAKER’S SECRETS! How To Write winning classified

ads. Simple & easy to learn -should double or triple your

responses. Rush $1 to BC Sales, 10 Main Any-town, TX 75001.

The point we’re making is that: l) You’ve got to grab the reader’s attention… 2) You’ve got to “interest him” with something that appeals to him… 3) You’ve got to “further stimulate” him with something (catch-phrase) that makes him “desire” the product or service. 4) Demand that he act immediately…

There’s no point in being tricky or clever. Just adhere to the basics and your profits will increase accordingly. One of the best ways of learning to write good classified ads is to study the classifieds – try to figure out exactly what they’re attempting to sell – and then practice rewriting them according to the rules we’ve just given you. Whenever you sit down to write a classified, always write it all out – write down everything you want to say – and then go back over it, crossing out words, and refining your phraseology.

The final ingredient of your classified ad is of course, your name, address to which the reader is to respond – where he’s to send his money or how to get for further information.

Generally speaking, readers respond more often to ads that include a name than to those showing just initials or an address only. However, because advertising costs are based upon the number of words, or the amount of space your ad uses, the use of some names in classified ads could become quite expensive.

If we were to ask our ad respondents to write to or send their money to The Research Writers & Publishers Association, or to Book Business Mart, or even to Money Maker’s Opportunity Digest, our advertising costs would be prohibitive. Thus we shorten our name Researchers or Money-Makers. The point here is to think relative to the placement costs of your ad, and to shorten excessively long names.

The essentials of a successful classified ad are no different. The shortness of most classified ads simply means that these essentials are broken down into basics.

All classified ads contain either a headline, which may be separate from the actual body copy, or a bolded first line or introductory words.

This has to grab a reader immediately, most classified ads, whether in newspapers, magazines or on Web site classified sections, are bunched in with dozens of other classified ads. The readers attention will be caught only by a word or phrase that is of immediate, powerful interest.

Because of this, experienced ad writers suggest using proven key words in your headlines that attract the interest of readers. These key words and phrases include free, easy, simple, guaranteed, proven, new and money.

After grabbing the readers attention, you have to create interest and desire through copy that informs, stimulates, excites and shows how the product or service will benefit the reader. Sound easy? It’s not. Especially when writing classified ads that are often limited to one or two lines. Veteran ad writers often claim that writing a successful classified ad is a tremendous challenge. Words have to be juggled.

Sentences have to be pared down, then pared down again, then pared down even more to the briefest essence, while still informing and arousing interest. And, of course, the final aspect of A.I.D.A., the call to action, must be written briefly yet with enough force to entice a reader to proceed.

How to achieve all this in your own classified ads? The best way is to first study other successful ads, in light of the A.I.D.A formula shown above. When studying classified ads to see how the essentials of A.I.D.A. have been accomplished, you can begin to see how the experts achieve success–and you can begin to bring this expertise into your own writing.

How can you know when someone else’s ad has been successful? When an ad appears over and over for months or even years, you can be assured that it’s working.

No one keeps running an unsuccessful ad. Find the successful ads that advertise products or services that are similar to yours, study them and then begin incorporating them into your own classified advertising.

The same holds true when listing your post office box number. Shorten it to just plain Box 40, or in the case of a rural delivery, shorten it to just RRl.

The important thing is to know the rules of profitable classified ad writing, and to follow them. Hold your costs in line.

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Your Own Web Based Home Business

Your own web based home business, do you even like the internet? The answer to that is YES the internet is the cheapest way to start a business as there is very little for upfront cost and less to lose if it fail. Tired of working the nine-to-five job? Tired of your boss? Tired of working to make someone else rich? Want to work at home so you can be with your family more?

Some of those questions are the titles to spam emails you get. They offer get rich schemes, just fill out surveys and get paid, get paid just to surf the web, get paid to shop, etc. etc.

But what is the real scoop about starting my own Internet Business from home? In this article we will help you learn some of the facts about owning your own home business based on the web. We will tell you how to avoid the hype and tell you the straight facts about how to start and maintain your own Internet Business. Are you ready?

You have all probably read many stories about how people with nothing have become millionaires on the web. You have no doubt received tons of spam email promising you that the same thing can happen to you, all you have to do is buy this ebook, this software, sign up as a member, etc. etc.

Multi-Level-Marketing or MLM programs were around before the Internet was in everyone’s home, but since then they have boomed. There are many programs that offer to get you in on the ground floor. All you have to do is sign up and those who sign up after you will make you rich.

Most of these are actually pyramid schemes. If the primary goal is to recruit new members and not to sell products, then it is likely a scam, so beware of those.

The first thing you should know about starting any business is that it is hard work. You think your boss was bad? Wait until you are your boss.

For some reason many people think that while starting an offline business is hard work, starting one on the web is easy. I really don’t understand that philosophy, except for the fact we get so many emails promising to make you rich with little or no work at all.

Let me tell you this. When you start any business, whether it’s a store, a gas station, or whatever, you know you will have to go in everyday, put in long hours and be smart if you are going to become successful. It is no different when starting an online or home business. If you are not prepared to put in the hours and the work, you will not be any more successful online than you would be offline.

There are no shortcuts, no magic pills, no marketing plans that can make you rich online without hard work. If you are not prepared to put in the time and the work necessary to any successful business, don’t quit your day job and just continue to be a consumer surfing the web instead of trying to find a way to get rich without work.

That may sound harsh to you, but the web is full of people trying to get something for nothing and we don’t need any more of those. However, if you are a person who is willing to put in the time and effort, the web can be a great place to make your living.

How do you get started? Well, first of all, what are your interests? If you choose a business you don’t have a lot of interest in, you will find it very difficult to stay motivated. Look at things that interest you when deciding what type of online business you want to have.

Not all online businesses require having a website, but most do, so we are going to start there. Lets say you have chosen what you are going to sell, whether it is products, services, or promoting affiliate programs.

You will need a domain name. The first thing people think is that they should have a catchy name that equals the name of their business and that it should be their domain name. Not true. Generic domain names that contain keywords that describe your products or services are best. Your company name will be on the front page of your website, but the domain name is what people will remember and what will help people find you through the search engines.

Where do I register my domain name? There are many cheap registrars out there for registering domain names, but don’t go with the cheap ones. You get what you pay for. Go with the ones that provide you the most service. Do you really think saving $20 per YEAR on your domain name is going to make or break your business? If so, stop now, do not pass go, go back to your day job.

Now you have a domain name, now what? You will need hosting for the new website you are going to build or have built. Again, look for the hosting that provides you the most service. You want 24-hour tech support. You want a lot of space, but most of all you want a lot of bandwidth. You want easy access to your files and a control panel, not just ftp access.

You also want a host who provides a lot of extras like instant install of gallery managers, content managers, calendar programs, and other scripts for forums, blogs, and more. The more they offer, the better, because you don’t know where your business might lead you. A cheap host is just that, a cheap host.

Now you will need a website to put up on the host. You can buy a website on Ebay or from others that are already built and ready to go or you can have one built to your specifications. You can also learn to build your own website and save money, but make sure you research how to do this very well before you choose that option.

Building a website that is not optimized for the search engines or one that does not function or navigate easily will hurt your business, so if you are not ready to build one you are sure will work, have the work done or buy one.

Also, people have the perception that their website must be beautiful in order to be successful. They think they must have flashy introductions, databases, dynamic content, great graphics, etc. etc.

None of those things I just mentioned will help you become successful on the web. They are great to have, but do not put undue importance on the dressing. Promoting your website will be the key to it’s success along with the content that is in your website.

Those are the things you will focus on if you wish to have a successful online business.

On building your website or buying one, make sure that it has a lot of text content rich with keywords that apply to the products or services you will be selling. You want it to have a professional look and feel, but you don’t need it to be too flashy.

There are a lot of freelance websites out there where you can post the job you want done and people will bid on doing the job for you. That is a good way to find a web designer that wants to do a good job for a competitive price.

Now you have your domain name, your hosting, and your new website. What now? Well, it’s not like in the movie Field of Dreams, where If you build it, they will come. That doesn’t apply to websites unfortunately.

You will need to promote your website. This is where the work starts. This is what will demand the most of your time, because if you do not promote your website, the customers will never come buy anything. They won’t be able to find you out of the millions of websites that are out there.

You have to be better than the next guy. You have to be willing to promote your website for more hours than the next guy. And you have to beat the next guy to the latest and greatest methods of website promotion.

There are several things you will be doing with your new website. First and foremost, you will be writing articles like this one about the products and services you sell and topics related to them. You will also spend time submitting these articles to websites that offer free content to webmasters.

A lot of website owners are hungry for good original content.

They go to these content providers and pull articles related to their products and services and put those articles into their websites. Since your article, like the one I am writing here, has an author bio section at the bottom with links to your website, every website owner that inserts your article into their website is now another website that links to you.

That increases your link popularity, which in turn helps you get better listings in search engine results for your keywords. Writing at least one article everyday will move you up in the search engine rankings before you know it. This is my fourth article for the day, just to give you an idea of how much Im willing to promote my website.

You can also post a lot on blogs and forums that are related to your products or services. In the signature line you put a link to your website. In this subtle way you not only create another website that has a link to your website, but by participating in the forum or blog you may just have users there want to see your website and might want to buy your product or services.

You also want to put your link in your email, on your business cards, on your letterhead, and anywhere else you can. Having your own business, whether online or offline is a way of life, not a nine to five job. So be sure you are ready to do whatever it takes to be successful.

Because if you are not ready to work harder than you ever have before, having your own business is not for you for more idea about a home based business take a look at this http://24hourbusiness.org.uk

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Make Money with HubPages

The whole idea of HubPages is becoming more popular today. It has risen in the same manner in which the popularity of several other free websites has. Many individuals are taking advantage of the popularity of HubPages.com and they are carting off huge amounts of money on a daily basis.

You too can give it a trial and you will be able to earn as much as you desire within a rather short period of time. Through this write up, your eyes will be opened to several of the opportunities that are abounding in HubPages and how you can make money with HubPages.

What is HubPages?

HubPages is a free website. You must have heard of BlogSpot and some other free websites like that. HubPages is one of them and gives you a great opportunity to make money without even paying a dime for web hosting. The websites are also already designed and this means that you will never need to spend a huge amount on website designing at all.

How to make money with HubPages?

There are several ways by which you can successfully make money with HubPages. Some of them will be discussed in this write up.

• Affiliate marketing: Affiliate marketing is one of the most common and successful ways to make money on HubPages. All you need to do is register as an affiliate of several products. Once you have registered, you will be given private codes. Through the private code, you will be able to make sales or advertise free products.
  Anytime you make a sale or someone clicks on the link you are provided with, your account will be credited through the special code embedded in the links.
  You can decide where to place the link you are given by the sites you are affiliated with on your HubPage. If anyone visits your HubPage and clicks on the link, you will be paid.
  In case the person makes some purchases through the said link, you will end up making more money.
  You can make quite a lot of money from your HubPage by joining Amazon, eBay or ClickBank as an affiliate. All you need to do is to advertise products from any of the three sites on your HubPage.
  Once people visit the sites through the affiliate link and purchase the products you have written about on your HubPage, your account will be credited by Amazon, ClickBank or eBay.
• AdSense: Adverts can also be placed on your HubPage by AdSense. You will need to register for AdSense adverts before you are allowed to place such adverts on your HubPage.
  Once you are approved by Google, chosen ads depending on the content of the Hub will be placed on your HubPage. Any clicking action on the ads placed by Google will get your account credited. This has proved to be a reliable way to make money on HubPages.
• Write for the site: You can also make money in HubPages by writing for the site. If you have a flair for writing, one of the best places where you can turn your gift to real cool money is HubPages. You are paid for the writings you submit on the site.

Advantages of HubPages

The site is free. You will never have to pay a dime to get the free website. You will never have to pay for web hosting or website design. You will also be able to place adverts on the HubPage free of charges.

HubPage is also easy to set up. This is one of the factors that make it very easy to make money with HubPages. You will not have to go through long and boring registration process before you are able to get registered.

Disadvantages of HubPages

While HubPage can be said to be a haven of sort, it had also been discovered to have its own measure of disadvantages.

HubPages does not give you one hundred percent of the profit you make; you are only allowed access to sixty percent of your total income.

HubPages keeps the remaining forty percent. By the time you compare this to building your website by yourself and pay for your own web hosting, the later may be more profitable.

Those who use HubPages may also not be able to dictate the tone on how they want their websites to look. You have only limited access to the design on the webpage. You can only make use of HubPage templates and nothing more.

No one can really say if HubPages will disappear in the same manner in which other such sites have disappeared in the past. If this happens, any one with a site on HubPages will be in deep trouble.

The writer’s earnings may also disappear along with HubPage. The same thing goes for articles, links and other info on the HubPage.

When you try to make money with HubPages, you will come across various limitations on the number of methods through which you can make money.

There are only four available options. This is a considerable limitation that will not allow you to maximize your potentials on HubPages.

HubPage does not give access to some affiliate sites. This means that you will not be able to place ads from the restricted affiliate sites on your HubPage. Any possibility of making money from such money spinning sites will then be cut off.

Over expectation is dangerous. It is never in your best interest to expect too much from HubPages. If you do, you may end up being disappointed.

Be careful about the kind of stories you read about people making millions on HubPage. They may not actually be making as much as they claim. This is one of the primary reasons why online income earners always focus on the need to create multiple sources of income.

While creating multiple income sources undoubtedly requires time, it is worth the effort and trouble.

Conclusion

The info above should be able to guide you on how to make money with HubPages. It should also be able to guide you on how to succeed in your effort.

Consider the disadvantages and advantages carefully before you register on HubPages so that you will be fully aware of what you are venturing into. It will surely get you fully prepared for any eventuality that may ensue as you make an inroad into HubPages.

As a last tip, search HubPages or Google with the keyword ‘highest earners of HubPages’; the results will help you to accurately measure your expectations from HubPages.

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Can You Earn Money Through Forum Discussions?

Forums are open platforms where users can sign up free of cost, start new ‘threads’ (discussion topics) and communicate with fellow forum participants through posted messages.

Some people confuse forums with chat rooms. Chat rooms are entirely different. In forums, you can hold both public and private communication and turn those discussions into a money earning source.

You can earn a few dollars to hundreds of dollars from forum discussions if you know how to make use of them…So, let’s get started.

Are forums free to join?

Yes, they are. There are no memberships fees asked later in any of the forums you will find online.

Can you have more than one account?

No, you cannot. If you have more than one account, all of them will be banned. The forums register your IP address and the area you log in from. If you are using more than one email id to access forums, you can easily be caught.

How do basic forums work?

Forums always pay for starting discussion threads and for receiving responses on your threads. One of the most popular discussion forums online today is MyLot.com. This forum pays its forum posters on the basis of quality responses, images uploaded and other website usage. At the moment, they have 234,800+ members, a huge number for any forum.

You also get to earn for referring friends. Not only this, a forum will pay you a share when your referrals actively participate in the discussions.

The payout…?

Every forum has its own payout threshold. It can be $5 or $50. You can also select your own payment threshold. The preferred mode of payment is PayPal. Most of the payouts are on monthly basis.

This is important…

You have to keep in mind that not all forums pay its members for discussions. Some forums are used in two ways – for discussions and for Internet marketing.

You can earn lots if you use online forums for the purpose of Internet marketing, including selling products, eBooks and creating back links. In fact, forums are a treasure trove for online marketers.

Read on to know how you should go about making money from forums

[1] Find the RIGHT marketing forum network. You have to research and select the forum you would want to join. Look for niche-specific forums where you can gain expert status and build a rapport with other Internet marketers. Also, forums are an excellent way to gain traffic to your website/blog.

[2] Don’t begin product marketing at the outset. Most of the forum moderators will ban the account if the account user begins to promote products and services immediately after joining. You will be considered as a spammer.

First, you create the account and spend around 3-4 weeks getting to know your fellow marketers and then you can start with your promotions. Assuming that you would have created a favorable and trustworthy impression on other marketers, you will have greater success with forum earnings.

[3] Use forum signatures. While you are waiting to promote your products and services, you can begin indirectly by placing your website and/or blog link/s in your forum post signature space. However, be sure to read the forum’s TOS because some forums do not allow you to post affiliate links in the signature line while others allow only those links that go directly to the users’ website/blog.

Take the signature thing seriously because it is also a chance to show up on Google search engine results, especially when you are posting on popular forums.

Google spiders crawl and index forum posts as well, which means if you have interesting and popular posts to your credit, it will automatically rank on Google, along with the website/blog URL.

In fact, if you are a clever writer, you can use targeted keywords in your discussions and post them on forums. Make sure the keyword insertions do not look forced or spam and the keywords itself should not be out of context or unrelated to the discussion topic.

[4] Be serious about posting. Don’t think that forum discussions are a quick way to build a client base online. You have to be diligent and serious about forum participation. Most of the Internet marketers registered on forums fail to succeed because they just post a few times and disappear. Instead… acclimatize yourself with the forum and create interesting discussion topics.

[5] Build relationships. Forums are a good way to build trusted relationships and to become a valued member of the community. Involve your time in forum networking.

[6] Give review copies. For forum marketers promoting their product or service online for the first time, it works when you create a promotion thread on the forum and invite others to review it.

By review, one means that you send the product or lend the service free of cost the first time and ask other forum users to read, use or apply it. Ideally, those forum users who have a good feedback score/rating and experience should be welcomed.

You can give away, let’s say, 10 review copies, and when you receive positive feedback, you open the product/service for sale, using the feedback received as recommendations.

[7] Use your feedback. Of course, the feedback you received on the forum will help you to make money but don’t forget to use those feedback to promote the products and services at other sites. In fact, you can link the forum to your website in the testimonials section as a proof for people who can expect value for their money in buying from you.

Or, you can send the forum feedback link to new clients that you contact outside the forum as proof of your authenticity and credibility.

To conclude, forum discussions are one of the best ways to earn money online. You can earn through discussions and promoting products or services, or both. It is a quick and effective way to create your business presence online.

And to answer the question asked in the blog title, you can earn a great deal of cash through forum discussions.

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Using the Traffic Exchange Method to Make Money Online

Getting traffic is a sore spot for Internet marketers. After all, what all can marketers do to gain traffic? Most importantly, how to sustain that traffic to create repeat business?

Over the years, Internet marketing competition has tripled…all of us are looking for easy and affordable ways to get traffic. We all know about paid traffic, but let’s tell you about another way to get traffic online you may not know too much about – Traffic Exchanges.

In the Traffic Exchange method, you sign up with websites that facilitates exchange of traffic. You are asked to visit other websites and in return, the facilitating website gives you credits. When you have earned substantial credits, the facilitating website will send YOU traffic equal to the credits earned. In short…

YOU visit websites

YOU earn credits

YOU get traffic

Again, as a traffic exchange user:

• You do not buy anything
• You have less attention span
• You are interested in traffic only
• You get to earn money

Advantage:

Internet marketers who are just starting out with their blog or website can use the traffic exchange method to get initial traffic flow or traction.

Disadvantage:

The process is time consuming.

How To Make Money with Traffic Exchanges?

Quite simply, you can earn money from the traffic exchange method by selling the accumulated credits.

It is not mandatory to use your credits to get traffic. Almost all traffic exchange facilitators allow you to SELL those credits to other marketers who are searching for ways to get traffic.

Should you sell all the credits you have earned? Definitely, NO!

Suppose you have 10,000 credits. You can use 5,000 credits to get traffic to your own website or blog, and you can sell off the rest.

The credit buyers are usually those people who do not have much time to visit other websites and earn traffic.

You won’t become a millionaire earning money from traffic credit sales but you can easily earn a few hundred dollars to fund your other Internet marketing components.

Other ways to make money with traffic exchanges:

• Cash for Surfing Websites
• Cash for Referrals
• Referral Contests
• Surfing Contests for Cash
• Paid to Click Ads
• Commission for Referral Purchase

Out of these, a marketer can focus on creating a downline (referrals) and earn money for referring them to join and commission whenever the downline makes a purchase.

Traffic Exchanges are not specific…

Another problem with traffic exchanges are that they’re not targeted towards any particular market. What we mean is that if you are promoting your “beauty” website, it is not possible to browse other “beauty-related” websites on traffic exchanges.

The traffic exchange websites are free to join and all kinds of websites are registered here. The administration or rather the software does not identify the websites in specific categories. You get to visit all and you earn credits.

Not All Websites have Value…

If you are a shrewd business person, you will use this to your advantage. When you browse other websites on traffic exchange links, you will not only come across possible competitive websites (if any) but you get to promote your business fiercely when you see that the pages you are being sent have no or very little value.

As long as a majority of people are promoting the wrong page and in the wrong way, use it to further your benefit.

What to Promote?

Even if the traffic exchange method is a good way to earn money, you don’t want to waste the opportunity by promoting the wrong products or pages.

It is NOT a good idea to directly promote a page that is trying to sell something to the surfer. A surfer does not have any intention to purchase at that time but only interested to earn credits.

Since the traffic exchanges are controlled by a time limit, a marketer can, let’s say, offer a freebie, some tips or ‘how to’ information, or ask the surfer to leave their email info. The time a marketer gets to impress the surfer is a maximum of 30 seconds or sometimes less.

How many hours per day to surf?

Some people surf 5 hours a day, some 1 hour per day and yet others surf when they feel like it. As a new online marketer, you can surf an hour daily to get some traffic to the site.

The BIGGEST Advantage of the Traffic Exchange Method…

You can use the traffic exchange method to build email lists and generate leads. In the long run, you can use the traffic exchange method to promote your own Internet marketing product rather than just an affiliate product.

The email list created through this method will go a long way. Create a goal of sending out 100 emails within a span of 3 months. With this list in hand, the marketer can promote his/her products.

Traffic Exchange Etiquette

Don’t be under the wrong impression that you can open multiple website pages, view them randomly and close the tabs. One could adapt this method 8-9 years back but not any more.

The traffic exchange facilitators have made their system cheat-proof, which means one has to remain on the web page for 30 seconds for the credit to show in the account. And, if you swap tabs, the timer will pause and only resume when you return to the webpage. This is the standard operational criteria adopted these days.

Since the same procedure works the other way round, make sure that your splash page is interesting and useful for the surfers to leave their email info.

With traffic exchanges, you get to earn money and receive website visitors to your online promotional activities at the same time.

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How to Set Up An Online Writing Business

Online writing is one of the most flourishing businesses of today. If you have basic technical knowledge, good grammar skills, ability to write for the masses and adhere to deadlines, you could become an online writer. Unlike other businesses that can have a saturation point in terms of market demand, a writing business will not go out of vogue.

As a writer, you will work for individual clients and businesses to develop  multiple varieties of content.

Now as much as this sounds to be fun, setting up an online writing business is not easy, primarily not because of the costs involved but because it takes time to create and maintain a steady source of clients.

Two types of online writing businesses:

1. An online writing business where you are the writer and handle projects solely

2. An online writing business where you get writing projects and outsource them to others

Both of the varieties above have its hurdles to deal with. We’ll  try to explain each aspect as clearly as possible. (If you think we missed any, kindly mention in the comments section or write to us.)

Online Writing Business Where You Are the Writer and Handle Projects Solely

In this first category, you work as a freelance writer from home and your task is to market your skills, contact potential clients, take assignments, complete them on a deadline and take payments. Sound easy?

Well, don’t jump to conclusions yet! Before jumping the hurdles you might experience, let’s see the advantages of such a work-from-home situation:

Advantages:

• There is no time barrier, that is, you work according to your own schedule. In a full time job, you have to work certain hours to justify your salary but with an online writing business, you take only those projects you prefer and can finish according to your own schedule. There is no pressure of deadlines even if you work a few hours daily.

• If you can prove your writing skills, there is no limit to the amount of money you can earn. In a full time job, your earning is restricted to your fixed salary. As a work-from-home freelance writer, there are no such limitations. With good writing skills and marketing attitude, you can easily make more than $3000 per month.

Now the flip side…

Disadvantages or Hurdles:

(This category includes technical and non – technical hurdles of online writing – explained with possible solutions)

1.Writer’s Block – This is when your mind draws a complete blank, not knowing what to write. Believe me; even great writers like Charles Dickens and Shakespeare had writer’s block.

Writer’s block can happen due to stress, overwork and inactive imagination. This can pose a serious problem as compared to other hurdles of an online writing business because when you cannot write, how can you earn even a penny?

Therefore, the best solution is to give your mind sufficient rest. Restrict your work to only 5 days a week and take weekends off to refresh your mind. Also, just because you are working from home doesn’t mean you have to burn the midnight oil and ridiculously tire yourself out. Okay, you are a workaholic! Don’t work 8 hours… but 10 or 12 hours daily but that’s it!

2.Experience – It doesn’t matter if you have written beautiful essays and poems during school or you could write a play for college cultural function; these do not count as experiences when you are trying to set up an online writing business.

It can help you to polish your writing skills, but does it meet your client’s requirement on writing content for web pages or articles about a certain product or service?

As a work-from-home freelance writer, you can come across work proposals for various kinds of writings such as – articles, blogs, product reviews, resume writing, personal statements, academic essays, thesis writing, technical writing, tutorial production and lots more.

While it is obvious that you cannot have experience in all fields of writing, it will be beneficial if you choose the fields where you do have expertise.

Moreover, since this is your first time as a professional writer, your lack of experience may not win you high paying writing projects at the start but that is something you have to deal with until you do.

This takes time  – patience and understanding…but don’t give up as difficult as it may seem.

There are clients who hire new writers but with much less pay. For the first few months, you have to settle for less payment and work hard to gain experience. If experience is not on your side, it will be really difficult to get your online writing business going.

3.Getting Clients – Even after you get fairly comfortable beating writer’s block and start to gain some experience, getting new clients is hell of a job!

You want to keep in mind there are thousands of other writers like you who are at par with your writing skills or maybe even better, so you have to work hard and be persuasive to win clients. Getting clients is a big hurdle if you don’t know the correct way to approach them. In the online world, it works in two ways –

In the first way, you have several online platforms where you contact potential clients on a one-to-one basis. You apply with a resume, cover letter and writing samples.

This is similar to applying for a conventional job. The employer evaluates your resume and reverts back to you if you suit their company’s needs and negotiate payments. This choice is comparatively easier than the second one.

In the second way, you have several online writing platforms where employers post their projects and requirements publicly and writers are invited to bid on them. The winning bidder is decided on three factors – writing skills, payment expected and turnaround time.

Many times employers sway in favor of those writers who charge less even when they realize that you are more suitable. Nevertheless, in a bidding kind of writing assignment, never take rejection seriously, it is all part of the process.

Payments – This hurdle ties up with the “Experience” and “Getting Clients” aspects explained above. There are two hurdles you need to cross if you want to remain in an online writing business for the long haul:

1. You need enough experience to get high paying projects. For instance, writers with 10 years experience can easily charge $300 for a 300-400 word press release but with no or little experience, you are not given more than $5 for the same press release. See the difference between the payments? Similarly, if an experienced writer charges $1 per word, a newbie writer is given $1 for 400-500 word articles in certain countries.
2. You need to stay away from biased clients. There are clients who can reject your writing just because you are not a Native English writer or pay you even less although you have outstanding writing skills. The same client can pay exorbitant if you are a Native English writer even if your quality of writing is very average. Stay away from this mentality – no matter whether you are a Native or Non – Native English writer. You should get paid for the quality of work you provide and not for your ethnic background. Unfortunately, it is really prevalent in the online writing business world.

Techie Savvy – An online writing business involves working with both technical and non-technical writing. Many writers prefer to remain in the non-technical writing domain because of a lack of knowledge in technical subjects like mobile technology and computer equipments.

However, as a writer, you have to acquaint yourself with the slightly ‘technical’ side of ‘non-technical’ writing. There are clients who not only expect you to write but also upload the content online.

You need to have sufficient knowledge of WordPress blogs, text hyper links, image insertion and SEO. SEO is another important aspect to know as an online writer. We will discuss this in detail in the next post.

Online Writing Business Where You Get Projects and Outsource Them to Others

In this business category, you essentially act as the ‘outsourcer’ or the ‘middleman’ where you get projects from clients, send them to a team of writers and earn your profit in between. Here, you are not essentially working as ‘writer’ (you can if you want to) but you won’t get any time because outsourcing and project management will take your whole day. A typical day is spent in marketing your services on various platforms, negotiating deals and collaborating with writers to get the project done on time. In short, see the diagram below:

Client —————— Outsourcing Agent —————— Team of Writers

The advantages of this working system are pretty much the same as in the first category – you have flexibility and no limit to earning profits. Let’s see what the disadvantages or hurdles are.

Disadvantages or Hurdles:

(This category explains the hurdles in setting up a client interface module and managing a team of writers with possible solutions)

Client Interface – Ideally, it will be helpful if you create an online writing service website where you can take orders from clients, complete and submit them.

Take for instance websites like kpwriting.com and asiawriters.com – these websites serve as a point of contact for clients and writers as well. Interested writers can sign up on your website, post their resume and writing samples and clients can become paid members and hire your writing services.

The hurdle here is the cost of setting up a website and managing it. As a starter in this business, you have to hire a web designer to get the site ‘live’ and functioning. Before that, you have to see what kind of writing you want to offer – web content development or academic paper writing.

You not only have to justify the cost of setting up website but also invest much in advertising the website. You have to provide favorable rates to clients and writers alike, and also make your profit in between.

Along with advertisement comes the hurdle of optimizing your website. This is all the technical aspect of web development; therefore, you need a professional web developer unless you are willing to take the time and have access to the resources needed to set it up yourself.

Here your primary hurdle is investment. Think twice before jumping into this kind of online writing service provider business. If you want, you can work along the lines of the first category of an online writing business for a year or two, learn the ins and outs of the writing market, develop client contacts, save for the investment and then go for it.

Team Management – Freelancer.com, Elance.com, Guru.com, Craigslist.com, ifreelance.com and yahoo network of writers are some websites where you have to search for new writers to join your team.

You are the ‘employer’ now and you have to exercise your judgment in hiring them. If you are a writer yourself, there is no problem in assessing writers’ applications but, if you are not a writer, perhaps an editor will help you.

Therefore, to begin with, you need to search for an editor and build a basic team, minimum of 2-3 writers. You can expand the team when work pressure increases.

Now, the main hurdle with managing a team of writers is to collaborate with them, getting the work done on time and dealing with unprofessional attitudes of writers.

When working with writers online, you have to consider the time difference. If you have projects with longer deadlines, this is not a problem but in projects due within a 24 hour deadline, checking the time difference is a must.

So when you take care of time and prepare deadlines accordingly with correct project instructions, you can safely get the work done on time for clients.

Many times in your online writing business, you will come across writers with an unprofessional attitude. Such writers will have no importance of deadlines, try to sell you copyrighted content or resell sold content, will constantly be after you for payment ahead of time, will not communicate with you, will not provide quality content, will be averse to revision and editing and will vanish one day suddenly leaving you holding the bag.

Now it is difficult to predict how every writer is going to turn out, so do your homework. It’s ultimately your reputation that is on the line.

If you want the best writers, you need to pay the best and simply weed out unprofessional writers. You are not under any obligation to keep them hired.

Summing Up – As a writer or an outsourcer, an online writing business is profitable. Setting up an online writing business needs patience, both as an author and outsourcer.

The core of this business is “writing”; evidently, either you have to be an excellent writer to handle projects singularly or hire a team of excellent writers. Either way, both writing businesses are extremely profitable.

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