Looking For Online Business Ideas That Do Work?

Due to the high unemployment rate and economic turmoil around the world the internet has provided many people with a way to make money.

There are many online business ideas to choose from and here we will discuss three that definitely do work, but bear in mind it is up to you to put in the work in order to achieve success with them. Treat your online business like a real business and you will reap the rewards of your hard work.

1. Consider ready-made internet business websites. There are many advantages to this if you have little experience with working online. These are sometimes referred to as a business-in-a-box and that is literally what you get, i.e. everything is provided. All the research into the products will have been done for you and you are provided with everything you need, including an auto-responder with a pre-written newsletter.

Most importantly the site will be set up on your own domain. This means you will have full control of your online business and your website, so you can make any changes that you want to. You can add more programs, remove those you no longer wish to promote, add your photo and your own personality to the website to make it unique.

2. Multi-Level Marketing or network marketing is another good option. The internet makes it much easier to build this type of business now. You do not need to go out and attend meetings or host them yourself to sponsor distributors. In fact you do not even have to deal with people on the phone if you don't want to. All the sponsoring and training can now be done online. The products are shipped by the company and payments collected by them too.

3. Start your own online writing business. If you have a good command of the English language and a flair for writing you will find this is a very lucrative option to generate online income. Many website owners do not have time to write their own content for their websites and blogs. You could offer a service of writing and distributing articles and well as providing blog posts to other internet marketers.

A good way to market your online writing business is to set up your own blog. Include samples of your articles and blog posts for the various niches you are prepared to write for. Set up an order page with a link to PayPal so you can receive payment before you write the articles. Join forums related to the niches you are prepared to write about, participate and contribute to the posts and include a link to your blog in your forum signature.

By Cynthia Minnaar

7 Hopelessly Simple Blogging Tips to Improve Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Between rabid Internet marketers and clueless small business owners, everyone’s jumping on the social media bandwagon. While every other self-styled consultant and guru espouses the power of content marketing via the social media, not too many of them teach their readers in a simple, actual and actionable way.

I hope to change this with this guest post. I have neither the expertise nor the following to merit being called another B-List blogger. For the rest of this post, think of me as just another face in the crowd. And this is what I’ve done to improve my blog’s social media engagement. Now, without further ado, let’s have the 7 hopelessly simple blogging tips to improve your social media marketing strategy.

1. Use Pinterest.

This is probably one of the most important bits of advice anybody can give you to become a better blogger. The site is simple and the layout is a really refreshing change of pace, away from all the noise and clutter of Facebook (grandma’s hangout), Twitter (the world’s news channel) and Google+ (the SEO’s hood). Pinterest gives each blogger a PageRank 8 link, straight to their homepage. To do this, go to Account > Settings > and then hit verify your website. You’ll then be asked to upload a tiny file to your FTP client. The link isn’t tagged no-follow. But I could be way off my rocker here. Please feel free to correct me if this link isn’t do-follow.

2. Get two computer monitors.

Small businesses typically operate on a really tight budget but I’m sure you can get a very, very inexpensive computer monitor to hook up on your current rig. Hand in heart, you’ll get more work done this way. Use your second monitor to keep your spreadsheets and or the rest of your Google Docs open. Use it for another browser or to keep an eye on your keyword research tools or competitive analysis. On my end, I use a second monitor to hold all my news and timeline feeds. I have a very tiny window where all of my Google+ notifications pop up. I also have another for HootSuite, where I can keep up with the latest trending topics in my niche.

3. Optimize your images for the web.

One of the biggest burdens of having a massive following is the need to stay on top of your hosting needs. If your site is too slow, you won’t get new readers nor keep the old ones happy. Before shelling out good money for a perfectly reliable virtual private server hosting, consider optimizing your images for the web. If I’m honest, the best social media marketing strategies are anchored on quality, shareable images. Facilitate the sharing by keeping your files sizes small. There are plenty of tools to do this. I hear GIMP and Pixlr are awesome for this task. Personally, I’m hooked on Adobe. To optimize your images, hit, CTRL+SHIFT+S and take the slider down to six or seven and then click save. This setting allows me to keep the image quality high without breaking my cheap-o shared hosting server’s back.

4. Don’t put music on your site.

This is something most hipster bloggers forget. Just because there’s a WordPress plugin for nearly everything, doesn’t give you the right to add blaring tunes to your blog. If your bounce rate’s unbelievably high, consider taking out the music on your blog. If you have to have music, let your users click on the player widget.

We’ve probably never heard of the music you play but us searchers and prowlers generally don’t browse the web in awkward silence.We play music too. And you probably have never heard of them either.

5. Read the Terms of Service.

We from the social media marketing and blogging persuasion have a penchant for signing up to new and untested social networks, bookmarking sites or perhaps some new and high paying affiliate marketing campaigns. Read the terms of service of each and everything you install or use. Even if you’re just looking to try that service; the horror stories that you’ve read or heard before are probably true. Save yourself the trouble, the heartaches and the absurd lawyer’s fees from a potential lawsuit. Should you end up with a banned account on some network nobody’s heard off, don’t vent on forums. Come back here and I’ll be glad to tell you: I told you so.

6. Get a responsive WordPress theme.

One of the most brilliant Internet Marketers in the post-penguin and post-panda era once wrote, “Anyone who starts a blog today that isn’t responsive is an idiot.” I’m with him on that one. When you review your traffic data in the last 18 months, you’ll be surprised at the number of mobile device users. If your site isn’t responsive, there’s an equally good chance that you’re missing out on potential subscribers. There are a ton of free themes you can use that can help serve your readers who take in the Internet using feisty, little screens that are as thin as crisps. This is absolutely essential for your blog’s social media marketing strategy.

7. Cut your videos to about 90 seconds.

YouTube is now the planet’s second largest search engine, next to Google. Although Facebook’s Open Graph system is slowly jockeying for that position, you can’t really go wrong with some videos to drive traffic to your brand or your blog. The trick here is to keep your videos about a minute and a half or less. This’ll give you the best possible chance of going viral. If you absolutely have to exceed that running time, invest on some quality audio recording equipment. I hear there are perfectly good wired lavalier microphones on Amazon. For $20 bucks a pop, you’ll get pro-quality sound engineering. Great content is almost always predicated on great audio. If you can do this at a consistent level, there’s hardly any reason why your social media marketing via YouTube can fail.

by Adam Thompson

How to Monetize Your Blog

Deciding to monetize your blog is something you need to think long and hard about. What sort of avenues will you use to generate income? Will you use traditional advertising or make use of affiliate advertising or Google AdSense?

There are hundreds of options for you to choose from and this can sometimes become confusing and intimidating. I find it is best to monetize your blog from your reader’s perspective. There is no use advertising an Amazon Shoe ad if your blog is a technology based one. Similarly why promote something your readers would not want to purchase or click on? Your advertising space is precious so you should only be adding things of value! I went through the stage of adding everything and anything but this can work to your detriment. Your readers may get annoyed by the ads popping up that are of little relevance to their interests and will not return to your blog. Sometimes as a blogger you have to learn this the hard way, but I hope this post helps you avoid that pitfall.

Google AdSense

Google AdSense is a great way to start advertising and is great for beginners who are new to monetizing their blogs. Google displays ads on your website that are suited to your audience’s interests, and you can earn money from valid clicks or impressions.

You can choose sizes and where you want the ad positioned on your blog by adding the html code to that section of the blog. This type of advertising is great to start on but I personally found it didn’t bring much revenue.

Traditional Advertising

You may just choose to use traditional advertising, meaning paid ads in your sidebar or wherever you ad space is on your blog. These can be in a variety of sizes and shapes and may include things like featured posts for the largest ad for example. This always entices people to go for the largest advertising spot if they think they can get something else out of it rather than just ad space.

There are now websites that even look after this for you so you don’t need to go through the hassle of updating ads on a daily basis. Passionfruit Ads are great to use as advertisers can immediately pay for a spot on your blog without even having to email you. Of course you decide if you want the ad to appear on your blog or not and always have complete control.

 Affiliate Links

Affiliate links are a fantastic way to monetize your blog and I find they are the most profitable. You can display products you love in a post and link back to the product using an affiliate link meaning you earn commission when someone purchases the product. You can also do reviews and link back to products or websites the possibilities are endless.

by Ilana Morgan

Link Building – How is it different for affiliates?

I want to address the perceived difference between the strategies used by affiliate marketers and merchants. In researching this post, I read a number of other blog posts and a number of presentations around the topic of how affiliates can get links. It struck me that the tools and techniques being talked about would fit in fine with pretty much any type of link building campaign, whether it was for an affiliate or not.

To illustrate the point, these websites are affiliates:

• MoneySupermarket
• VoucherCodes.co.uk
• Asiarooms

At first glance, you wouldn’t put them in the affiliates category, but they are. You can call them super-affiliates because there are huge businesses behind them, but the business model is the same. Should these guys approach link building differently to their competitors in the same space?

The truth is that there isn’t really a lot of difference in the techniques that affiliates can use compared to other websites. This isn’t to say there are no differences at all, the one that I do feel does exist, and what I’ll cover shortly is the differences in resources and setup of affiliates.

However there is a difference in a few on-page areas for affiliates compared to other websites:

• No USP on the product you’re selling – it is probably available to anyone else who wants to be an affiliate too
• You get the same boilerplate content that every other affiliate gets and it can be hard to scale making it all unique

These are just a couple of problems that affiliates have to compete with that relate to content. Before you invest heavily in link building, I’d strongly advise you to invest in your website – try to get out of the mindset of it being an affiliate website and try to not make it look like an affiliate website. Here are a few things that make affiliate sites stand out and look bad:

• Lots of product pages but very little depth of content on them
• Lots of external links but no content to give me the context of those links
• Not much engagement on social including a blog, Q&A, videos etc

It is clear that Google doesn’t want to see thin affiliate websites dominating it’s search results, so don’t act like one.

 Unfortunately, the days of being able to throw up a quick template with a bunch of affiliate links and little content and getting them to rank very easily (I used to do this) are coming to an end. Yes this is still possible, but the time it takes Google to catch up with you is becoming shorter and shorter all the time. There was even recent talk from Branded3 who observed Google making more consistent, rolling link updates as opposed to periodical ones that we’re used to. This means that, whilst they’re far from perfect right now, they are getting better and if you’re not building websites for the long-term, you’re going to be constantly rolling out new sites to keep your income levels high.

As mentioned above, I used to build websites that were very much churn and burn, not really thinking about the long-term. But every time I logged into Twitter and saw that another Google update had happened, I wondered if this was the one where Google finally caught up with whatever tactic I was using. I got a bit fed up of this!

Key takeaway: Before you think about link building, invest in making your website as good as it can be – this will make your link building much easier and more efficient.

The real difference for affiliates: resources

While I talked about a few super-affiliates above, I’m guessing that the majority of us are not at the same level. Most of us are a one-person team with limited time, limited budget and lots of projects to work on.

Most affiliates do not have a team of link builders, designers, developers and writers behind them ready to be deployed to make your site famous. This is the real difference with affiliates compared to other websites.

I appreciate that whilst some affiliates may be happy to invest money into their websites, it can be somewhat riskier because it is your own money. If it goes wrong, you can’t just write it off like a big company would. Worst-case scenario, you can’t afford to pay a bill. This is the reality that many affiliates must deal with.

How to reduce the risk: freelancers

To reduce the risk, you could spend your time finding excellent freelancers who can do the work for you.

There are a few benefits to this approach:

• You can hire (and fire) quickly – you don’t need to worry too much about the details
• You hire in line with your budget so you don’t over stretch yourself
• You can hire for exactly the skill you require
• Your exposure to risk is very limited if it doesn’t work out
• If you find someone who is very good, you can increase your spend or even hire them full-time if they’re worth it

Use working with them to do three things:

• Spend time doing what matters – links, content, PR
• See if they’d be a good fit to work for you full-time if they proved their worth
• Define the process of the work they do and refine it – even if they do not work out, you have started to build a process that you can use over and over again

It is hard at first, but this approach is far better in the short-term than hiring full-time staff or a large agency. It is also incredibly scalable which means once you’ve defined the process and are happy with how it is working, you can scale up the size of your team and start to compete with the larger websites and super-affiliates.

Instead if having your own in-house team, you have your own team working remotely.

Find link builders on oDesk

Despite the risk being lower in comparison to hiring an agency or a full-time member of staff, there is a downside to outsourcing your link building to someone: bad links are easy to build.

You need the right processes and checks in place so that the links built for you are as good as they can be. This means that in the early days, you’re going to put a lot of hard work into defining the process, identifying the problem areas and improving them. But this hard work is worth it because once you have the process right, you can take a step back.

One route you can take is to spend time finding the right people on oDesk. There is a wealth of opportunity there and lots of very good workers, but they can be a bit hard to find so you need to invest a bit of time finding them.

Here are a few tips for finding link builders on oDesk:

• Be very clear with what you’re looking for and ask applicants to rewrite the brief to show their English is good and that they understand the task
• Only hire people with excellent feedback on previous work – 4.5 stars and above
• Look for experience in previous roles, particularly researching websites and collecting contact details
• When hiring, hire on a trial period and if they do well, extend it into a bigger contract

You should definitely start people off in a research role before you get them doing outreach. Sending outreach emails isn’t that hard but it can go wrong very easily and the last thing you want is to jeopardize your websites reputation.

Invest in content

There is no getting around this – sorry! Content matters, not only from a link building point of view but also from a user experience point of view. Many obvious affiliate websites are not very “sticky”. They don’t give the user a reason to spend time looking around the website or come back later. In fact, many affiliate sites like to get rid of users as quickly as possible via their external affiliate links!

However, if you want to compete in the long term, you need to become more than an affiliate. You need to become a brand and a website that users trust. Investing in exceptional content that helps build a community and helps make your website sticky is one of the best long-term tactics you can employ.

This may sound silly, but think of it this way – the one thing that Google can’t take away from you with all their updates is a loyal community of users. Even if you get penalized for something, your users will still come back to you, they will still take part in discussions, forums and Q&A.

Building a community suddenly feels a lot more beneficial when you think of it like that!

How affiliates can build out high quality content

Freelancers are your friends again here. The world is crammed with excellent writers, many of whom are looking for work and looking to build a name for themselves online. They’re not that hard to find either, even for niche websites. For example, I was recently looking for a good writer who could write a bunch of high level photography content for me. A friend pointed out that a good place to look would be the community on Expert Photography, where there are indeed lots of people who I could contact.

There are loads of types of content that you can create around products that can give you a USP and make your pages unique to all your competitors:

• Q&A content, works very well in particular for technical products
• Step-by-step buying codes
• Beginners guides
• Short video reviews of products
• Expert opinions on technical products, their pros and cos

Good freelancers can work on all of these and are not overly expensive to produce. Even videos can be produced at reduced costs, something explained in this post on video SEO.

Conclusion

It is more than possible for good affiliates who do not have huge resources to compete with bigger websites. The core principles are:

• Don’t look like an affiliate – try to get your website right before building links
• Hire good freelancers to help you with link building and scale up if it works well
• Invest in good content for your product pages to help make your website unique
• Try to make your website sticky and valuable for users – Google can’t take this away

By Paddy Moogan   SEO consultant at Distilled and author of The Link Building Book. 

Network like a pro on social media

Advancing your career with LinkedIn
Whether you want to find a new job, make connections or expand your business opportunities, LinkedIn offers an unparalleled opportunity to advance your career.

Boasting more than nine million users in the UK (and more than 175 million globally), LinkedIn is the biggest professional networking site in the world. Thousands of companies advertise vacancies via the site and while the 'recommendations' feature is admittedly biased, it remains a useful tool for recruiters. If you're new to the site, the first step is to create a profile.

'Pages that are 100 per cent complete show up in more searches, so it's worth entering everything requested.

'Expect to write a summary of your skills and experience, give details of your education and employment history, upload a photo and obtain at least three recommendations.'

Profile complete, consider uploading extra files and presentations - for example, you might embed your blog, upload a SlideShare presentation or integrate your Twitter account.

'LinkedIn pages rank highly in search engines, so your profile may be the first thing that comes up in Google,' says Lees. 'Treat it like an online CV and make it as good as you can - who knows when a headhunter might see it.'

To look for jobs you can either 'follow' companies you are interested in or search by keyword, like job title, industry or location.

Making valuable new connections
LinkedIn shows who your contacts are connected to and allows you to request an 'introduction' to them. You can also search for people by job title or company or make contacts by joining a group.

'The groups feature is a great way to make introductions and raise your profile in the industry,' says Lees. 'Once signed up, you can contact other members directly, take part in debates and see vacancies that might not be advertised elsewhere.'

To contact people outside of your network you can send a friend request and hope for the best or contact them using 'InMail' - which will require you to pay for an account upgrade.

Networking opportunities on Facebook
While Facebook presents a minefield of over-sharing dangers (and thanks to timeline that embarrassing photo could bite you on the proverbial bum years later), it also offers networking opportunities.

'Facebook is constantly expanding and is increasingly being used as a serious business tool,' says Richard Maun, career coach and author of Bouncing Back: How To Get Going Again After a Career Set-Back.

'Facebook Business Pages allow you to stream blog content, links and comments to people who 'like' them, while targeted advertising opportunities may work well for your business.'

So what about those embarrassing pictures? 'You can run separate lists for family, friends and work colleagues,' says Maun. 'Though I simply make sure anything I post is something that I don't mind everyone knowing about.'

Building your personal brand with Twitter
Quick and simple to use (with messages limited to 140 characters), Twitter can help you make connections, find vacancies and build a personal brand that will raise your profile.

'Through Twitter, I've made new business friends whom I've networked with,' says Maun. 'These people have given me ideas for business, introduced me to new clients and been a useful source of advice and encouragement.'

Your bio should describe your career achievements and link to your LinkedIn profile or online CV, such as VisualCV. While a few personal tweets are fine, keep it professional.

'You want to establish yourself as an industry expert,' suggests Maun. 'Tweet about industry topics, share links and answer others' questions. You don't have to produce all the content - you just need to be seen as someone "in the know" who is worth following.'

Twitter is also a powerful tool for measuring hot topics in real time and by using relevant hashtags (#) you can keep up to date with breaking industry news and trending topics.

Networking is for lifeLike anything, the more you put into networking the more you'll get out of it. And if you invest time now, you won't have to work so hard when you do want a new job - and could even find yourself being headhunted.

'You have to be proactive to get the most out of sites like LinkedIn,' says Lees. 'Update your profile with new skills and experience as you gain them, be an active member of groups and be proactive in requesting and giving recommendations.

'Sites are always developing so it's worth reading the company's blog to keep up to with new features, tools and advancements too.'

With a little time and regular effort you'll be networking like a pro - without even noticing it. 

by Rachel Burge

How to Break Through Fear and Self-Doubt

Fear and self-doubt plague all of us. To the degree you can overcome your insecurities, you will experience freedom to be yourself and reach your full potential as an entrepreneur. The most important thing to understand is that everyone experiences these scary emotions to some degree, regardless of how confident and self-assured people may seem.

After I made a recent presentation at Google's New York office, an audience member asked me, "How do you become so self-assured and confident?" I responded: "How do you know I am self-confident? The truth is you don't know what I am experiencing inside, only I know that. You have the impression that I am self-assured and confident, but you don't know that for sure."

We continued to talk about the importance of confidence versus fear, and I left the presentation alarmed over how big this issue is. Because I have witnessed so many individuals who stop themselves from ever getting started because of that tormenting self-doubt, I decided to write down the things I do to handle it. Follow these five tips when fear and insecurity strike:

1. Don't forget that it's normal. When you are fearful or insecure, remind yourself that you're simply feeling what most other people experience. You are probably doing something that is new for you or that you are excited about. Fear is a normal feeling, and I would be more concerned if you didn't experience it.

2. Fill your calendar. The busier I stay, the more confident I am. Never allow too much white space on your calendar and you will not experience fear. I tell people, "If you want to meet the devil, just have too much free time on your hands." Doubt loves the person with lots of time for thinking about himself and stirring up negative feelings.

3. Embrace fear. For me, fear has become the indicator of the things I actually need to and must do--and that have had the greatest payoff. Do what you are scared to do and watch your confidence grow. I am not suggesting you need to take physical risks, but that you should make the call you are most scared of. Regardless of the results, you will walk away inspired that you did it rather than thinking less of yourself for not taking action.

4. Go beyond your comfort zones. Very successful people don't seek comfort; they seek success and are willing to do what is most uncomfortable. But most of the world is seeking comfort and familiarity, which are traps that cause you to settle for the mediocre. If you want to get to the next level of your business, you've got to be comfortable being uncomfortable.

5. Take '10X' Actions. Albert Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge, but I will take massive action over either. I am not the smartest guy or the most creative, but I assure you that if I operate at activity levels 10 times my competition, I will dominate. I never use the word "action" in the singular because I have never found one action to be effective enough that it didn't require a follow up. Multiply whatever you think is required by 10 and become a machine of action. If you do that, I assure you that your fear will subside.

By Grant Cardone

Online Home Business: Tips To Achieve Success

If you are thinking of starting an online home business of your own here are a few tips to help you build a successful and profitable one from someone who has achieved that.

Firstly, despite the fact that it is so easy to start a business online it still requires hard work and commitment to make it successful, so from the outset treat it like a real business and not a hobby. You need to enjoy what you do so choose a niche that you have an interest in or have a lot of knowledge about.

Do not expect immediate gratification. In other words do not expect to start earning immediately. If this is your first online business you will have a sharp learning curve to go through initially and then you need to allow time to build the business. Depending on how much time you put in you need to expect to go a few months before things really start to happen.

You need to make the time to work at building your business every day. Even if it is only a couple of hours a day, every little bit helps. Do not think you can build a successful business by putting in a few hours only at the weekend.

You need to be prepared to learn, learn and learn. You will need to keep abreast with the latest developments and online marketing strategies. What worked 3 years ago will not necessarily work today.

Work consistently at building your business and be prepared to make sacrifices in order to do this. If you have a full-time job, this could mean giving up some TV viewing time or going to bed later and getting up earlier.

Set yourself goals. Ideally, you need short, medium and long-term goals for your business. These will keep you on track and motivated.

by Cynthia Minnaar