Types Of Legitimate Online Businesses (7) - Make Money Blogging

Blogging started out years ago as a way for people to connect to others and share pictures, stories and experiences. 

It was considered to be a great personal journal type tool that one could use to leave their mark on the internet through their encounters.

Blogs then evolved to become excellent Marketing Tools as well as a medium to make money off of. There are a few different ways to earn income from blogging. Here are a few:

Adsense ads- The popular search engines offer a way to earn a little extra money with any blog or website. 

The idea is to place these ads on your site and when a visitor clicks on an ad from your site, you earn a pre-determined amount of money. 

The more clicks you can get from your site visitors, the more you can make. 

There are some rules, so if you choose to go this route, be sure to learn what not to do before signing up for their programs.

Product Reviews- There are some websites that you can sign up with that can help you connect with other companies who need people to review their products and get them some exposure on your blogs. 

Usually the main requirement for this is to have a blog that’s been around for awhile and has a fair amount of visitors. 

Those companies would pay you a specified amount to review their product on your blog.

Contextual Links- Some business or website owners will pay a blogger to post one of their links within their blog posts. 

It may be the owners themselves contacting the blog author or a company that acts as the middleman. 

Those businesses will find blogs that relate to their companies sites, so the links provided on the blogs will be search engine friendly. 

This is a great way to earn some extra traffic for a site.

Sell products- Blogs are another way you can sell your own products from. 

Those who have businesses selling home décor items or food container items use blogs a lot to help sell their products and make more money online.

What skills would be helpful?
There isn’t much skill involved in this type of business except the ability to market your blog. 

You would want to research blogging as much as possible to learn some of the tricks of the trade to get your blog popular.

What Tools would be needed?
Your main tool, besides a computer with an internet connection, would be a blog. There are many blogging programs out there to choose from. 

Some are free to set up with, while others require a monthly or annual fee to get started with.

The paid versions of blogging programs can help you connect with other blogs and increase your blog’s traffic. 

The free versions are extremely easy to set up and most are extremely popular amongst bloggers, so finding people to connect with wouldn’t be too hard to do.

How to get started
Sign up with a blogging program and start posting entries to it. Make sure you’re blogging on a regular basis, which would be about 2 times a week. 

Blogs that aren’t updated regularly tend to get lost in cyberspace.

Market your blog as much as possible. Get listed on blog directories, get on other people’s blog rolls and comment on other blog author’s posts to get some exposure to your blog. 

The more traffic you can drive to your blog, the higher your chance of making blogging a lucrative way to make money.

Most of the blogging programs will have a sign up for adsense ads already included in their set up feature, so getting started with that will be easy. 

If you want to provide product reviews and contextual links, you will want to be blogging for awhile and have a fair amount of traffic coming to it.

When your blog is ready, find the companies that will help you connect with businesses that want to pay to have their products reviewed or have their links embedded with your blog post entries. 

Once that’s set up, you can start earning some extra income with your blog.

Blogging is an easy way to earn some extra cash if you plan to work hard at marketing it. 

The ones successful at blogging for money use every route possible to get their blog well known in the internet communities. 

The ones that don’t, tend to earn only a few cents a week.

Become one of the more successful bloggers and make your blog your business and not just a hobby to partake in once in awhile. Your pocketbook will thank you for it.

Types Of Legitimate Online Businesses (6) - Make Money From Selling Informational Type Products

The internet is a great place to sell your knowledge. There are many people who will pay almost anything to get information they’re desperately looking for. If you have the knowledge that they want, you could earn a substantial income.

Informational products come in many forms. It could be one of the following:

1. E-Books

2. E-Courses

3. Tutorials

4. Guides

5. Podcasts

These are popular informational products that are well sought after by internet users all over. If you have something to say, this could be the business for you.

What skills are helpful?

You should have knowledge of the topic that you’re going to present to your consumers. It won’t be necessary to have a doctorate degree or of any kind to do this, but having a good amount of knowledge in the field would be helpful.

The ability to market your materials will also be helpful. The more people you reach with your products, the more people who may want to buy from you.

What Tools will be needed?

The tools you need will depend on what you plan to provide. E-Books and Guides could be written on word processing software and then converted to a PDF document, which is the most popular type of document people want.

Autoresponder programs will be needed for creating successful e-courses. Podcasts would need audio recording and editing software. Tutorials could be done a couple of different ways. You could use a power point presentation to present you material or you could use video tutorial software. 

Video tutorials are great for showing users how to use a specific program step by step. Websites and blogs will be necessary to promote your informational products from as well.

How to get started?

You will need to decide on a topic for your product. What do you have the most knowledge about that you could provide your potential consumers? When you know what you want to provide, then research that topic to see if you can find a new and unique angle to present it in.

Since there are lots of E-Books, tutorials etc. on the internet for sale, you will need to find something new to give to your customers. They won’t be as willing to hand over their money if they don’t think you have something new to give them.

Write out or record your informational product and then edit them to your satisfaction. Once you have it the way you want it, then you can start selling it. Create a blog or website to sell it from and make sure the site’s web copy content grabs internet user’s attention so they can purchase what you’re offering.

Hire a copywriter if you can afford one to write the copy to promote those materials. They can write content in a way that makes your product so desirable that anyone would want to purchase it.

Creating informational products won’t cost you much, but you can sell them for a nice profit. This is an excellent way to earn income online while maintaining a flexible schedule which allows you to spend more time with your family.

Types Of Legitimate Online Businesses (5) - Making Money The PLR Way

PLR stands for Paid Label Rights. Its written content that can be sold to others to use for whatever they want to use it for. Website owners search these out to get content for their sites for a smaller fee.

It doesn’t sound like a money making opportunity when put that way. The thing is, the same package of written content can be sold numerous times to other people. Here’s how it works.

For example, let’s say you are selling a package of 10 articles - all about a certain topic like pet care. Typically, these packages are sold at about $1 an article. 

Someone who has a website about pet care needs articles to place on their site, so they buy a package from you. You just made $10. Now, that same package of 10 articles can be sold again and again and again. 

In the end, you can sell the same 10 articles 50 times bringing you the grand total of $500 just for that one

package. You can sell more than one package of PLR articles at the same time increasing your profit potential.

Everyone charges something different and offers different types of PLR content as well as different article topics. You can sell E-book material and special reports as well as articles. People can take these articles, change them to their needs and use them wherever they want.

What skills are helpful?

Writing skills would be necessary. You would need to write good quality articles even though the people that buy them will change them anyway. 

You could hire a ghostwriter to write them for, but keep in mind; you would have to pay them for their time, so this is a good option if you don’t mind losing some of the profit.

Marketing your PLR content would also be necessary. In order to make good money in this business, you will need to get people to find your content, so pull out all the stops when starting this business.

What tools will I need?

If you’re going to write the article content yourself, you would need a computer with word processing software installed. A website will also be needed to sell your PLR content from.

If you choose to hire someone to write the content for you, then you will need to find a ghostwriter that fits your budget and provides good quality content.

How do you get started?

The first place to start will be in getting the articles written. You will want to make sure that the package of articles that you will sell together relate to a certain topic. Topics could include gardening, pet care, nutrition, exercise etc.

Decide how much you will sell the articles for and get a website set up to sell them from. You can certainly use a website that provides the service of selling them for you, but you’re better off selling them off your own site and marketing them yourself.

There is good money in PLR if you choose to get into this kind of business, as there are millions of websites out there that need content. With good marketing techniques, you can make a good living for you and your family quite easily.

Types Of Legitimate Online Businesses (4) - Making Money From Membership Sites

Some online business owners make money from selling memberships to their websites. 

People purchase memberships to gain access to content that the website owner provides them on a regular basis.

For example, you may offer memberships to internet users who are need of articles for their websites. 

The memberships would need to be renewed every few months or so depending on how long your memberships are good for. 

Every time someone renews their membership, you make more money.The profit potential for this kind of business is pretty high. 

It won’t cost much to provide your members with informational items, but you could charge them a nice amount to access them, giving you a profit that keeps on giving.

What skills are helpful?

Marketing skills will be the most helpful. Getting those internet users to your site to purchase your memberships is what will make you the money. 

Having some knowledge of running a website could be useful as well to keep your site running smoothly for your members.

You may want to have some knowledge of the products you’re offering. 

For example, if you’re offering articles to your members, you should know what makes a good article and how they work for the different purposes.

What tools are needed?

You will need a high quality website to handle the demands that membership site will bring. There should provide excellent service should something go wrong with the site. 

There are some membership site management software programs that can help you get one set up and

running for less than $100.

Content for the site is another tool you will need. You need to provide your paying members with fresh content to use regularly. 

It could be in the form of written articles, software programs or even online games, depending on what you plan to give your members.

How do you get started?

You will need to plan your membership site beforehand. What do you plan to offer your members? Will it be content, software etc? 

When you have made your decision, then come up with a new and different angle to provide your consumers.

You could provide content in a specific niche, like nutrition or you could offer a certain kind of written content-whatever it takes to get provide internet users with a fresh angle. 

This helps you stand out from the crowd of competitors out there.

Next, get your membership site created with a shopping cart feature to handle the payments for the memberships. 

The membership management software programs should come with all you need to accomplish your business. All you would then need is the content to give to your members.

The most important step will be to market your membership site to get people to find you. Marketing techniques will be discussed later on in this report. 

Membership sites can offer you a means of earning residual type income. 

If people are satisfied with what you give them, they will have no problems handing you their money to keep renewing their access to your site’s content.

Types Of Legitimate Online Businesses (3) - Selling On E-Bay

This is another popular online business that a lot of people usually start out with. E-Bay is a popular online auction website that millions of people use every day to find good deals on items they are looking for.

You can sell anything you have at home as well as selling items using a drop ship method. If you do a search on the e-bay site, you will see a whole variety of items that people are selling. They could be used items or brand new items that come from wholesalers. 

Either way, people will pay good money if you provide them with what they’re looking for. Some people go so far as to buy items from flea markets and garage sales for the sole purpose of reselling them on e-bay for a profit.

What skills are helpful?

There aren’t a lot of skills you would need to sell items on e-bay. The ability to market your items will be the most important one to have. 

People can do a search on the site for the items you’re selling, but if you want to make money in this type of business, you will want to market those items elsewhere to get people to find them. 

If you’re selling items from your home, you should be able to take a good photo of the item so people can see what shape the item is in.

What tools are needed?

Really, the only tools you should need to start this type of business is an account with e-bay to sell your items. If you plan to use a drop ship method, you would have to find a wholesaler that will ship the items direct to the customers.

An access to a computer with a reliable internet access will be necessary to keep track of your sales. You will also need an online account like PayPal to receive money from your customers.

How do you get started?

Sign up for an account with E-Bay that allows you to sell from them. Plan to purchase items from the site as well to help build your user ratings, so people will have a little more confidence in buying from you.

Place photos, if possible, of the items that you want to sell. Items that have a photo of items sell much faster than those that don’t. People like to see what it is they’re buying, so provide them with the best quality photo possible.

Review all informational materials as well as the rules on the E-Bay website, to get tips on making more sales and how the process of selling on the site works . Selling on E-Bay is an excellent way to start your own online business. 

This gives you your first taste of an online business without having to have a lot of equipment to get you started. Plus, you get the benefit of getting rid of items that are cluttering up your home while you make a

little money on the side.

Types Of Legitimate Online Businesses (2) - Affiliate Marketing

This is an online business where you use your selling and marketing expertise to get consumers to buy other people’s products and earn income from the sale you made. 

Typically, you would earn a pre-determined amount of money based on the sales you make of those products, but in some cases, you could make money from the clicks from your site that get the consumers to the affiliate websites.

Sometimes you can earn money by getting customers to sign up for things on the affiliate sites, such as newsletters etc. 

Each affiliate program will discuss this further on how they work, so when you sign up for their program, be sure to check out how their process works. This will be kept track of through an affiliate link that you’re provided with to place on your site.

What skills are helpful?
You don’t have to be a salesman or a marketer to be an affiliate marketer. Knowledge on how to do these things will be important though. 

Learn everything you can about how online marketing works and learn how to be a successful affiliate marketer from other top marketers.

It will take hard work and much dedication to get your affiliate marketing business to be a successful one. If you don’t have the time nor the gumption to work hard, don’t consider this to be your online business.

What tools are needed?
The tools needed will be minimal. Besides the usual computer with reliable internet access, you will need a website to sell the affiliate products from. You won’t have to stock up on the products, just to sell them.

Your website will need fresh content on a regular basis, so be prepared to either write some articles yourself or hire someone to do them for you. A blog to link to your site will be helpful as well to make the search engines happy with you.

How do you get started?
You will need to determine what niche you have for your affiliate marketing website. This helps you to stand out from your competitors. For example, you could use nutrition as your niche. Then create a website based on the niche you chose for your business.

Then find affiliate products to sell from that site. Make sure that the products you decide to sell for your business are related in some way to the niche you have chosen for your affiliate marketing business.

So, if your niche is in the nutritional field, you will want to offer affiliate products that are related in some way to nutrition. 

If you don’t offer related products in your business, you run the risk of appearing as unprofessional and the search engines won’t be too pleased with you as well.

There are many people who make quite a bit of money running this type of business. It’s important to remember that the most work you will have in this type of business will be marketing your website to get consumers to find you.

When they find you, your site should be able to get them interested in your products to the point where they will buy using your links.

Types Of Legitimate Online Businesses (1) - Service Based Businesses

A service based business is one where you offer some type of service to potential clients. Some of these include:

1. Writing

2. Web Design

3. Accounting/Bookkeeping

4. Virtual Assistant

Other small business owners have a tough time getting all of their business tasks done by themsleves, so they outsource those projects to someone else. They look for people who offer the services they need done for them.

If you have experience in some of these areas, you could offer it as a service by starting your own business selling yourself. For example, if you have some writing experience and can write well, you can offer that as a service to others who need writing done for their sites.

What skills are needed?

Depending on the type of service you choose to provide your potential clients, you should have some amount of skill under your belt. 

It’s not necessary to have educational degrees to perform these services, but clients like to see that you have some kind of experience to complete the tasks they need done.

Working online doesn’t provide the face to face contact that brick and mortar companies have when they hire employees. Trust comes a little harder online, so people do like to know the person they’re hiring has skills and knowledge in a particular field.

While it’s not necessary to have 10+ years experience performing a service, the fact that you have done it before and have some testimonials to back that claim up helps tremendously.

What tools are needed?
The tools you need will depend on the type of services you plan to provide. The more common ones that most service based businesses should have are:

1. Computer

2. Reliable Internet access

3. Phone

4. E-mail program

5. Website

There will probably be some software programs to obtain as well. Each service uses some different ones, but most need a word processing program, excel program, and some use a web designing program.

You should consider an Instant Messaging program for those clients who like to be able to contact you instantly without having to use the phone to call or wait for an e-mail response.

How do you get started?

First thing you want to do is decide on the type of service you plan to offer your clients. Jot down everything you can think of that shows you have some experience or knowledge in that particular field.

Next, get your website created. Showcase your skills or experience on your site and provide clients with testimonials from other people who have used your skills and were pleased with the results. Place your rates and any other information about how you run your business.

Market your site on various places on the internet to get your online business out there for potential clients to find and check out. 

When clients contact you to hire you for whatever service they need, reiterate to them how things will go. For example, let them know how they be invoiced for the work done and how much it will cost etc.

It will take awhile to build a list of regular clients, so don’t expect to be making tons of money right away. Give it time and keep marketing your service based business until you get to the point where you’re practically turning away clients because you’re too busy.

Running a service based business is a perfect option for those who already are performing that service at another job. In most cases, you could make more money offering those services online than you can by working a brick and mortar position.

Serving Different Ads to Different Levels of Visitor

You don’t have to display every ad to every person who visits your forums. You can show different ads to guests who are not logged in and to visitors who come from search engines than you show to members who are logged in.

For example, you may want to serve more advertisements to guests who are not logged in than you do once a person has signed in. This can create a better experience for your registered members and can provide an incentive to register and login.

It is generally accepted that visitors coming from search engines are more likely to click ads than direct visitors. 

Because of this, even if you display ads to everyone, the lion’s share of your revenue may still be coming from visitors who are not logged in. Some will argue that your regular visitors may develop blindness to your ads. 

For some, that may be true. For others, it won’t be. This point also ignores the fact that some ads are CPM based and you will be paid for views – not for clicks.

That said, selective ad display can be a great strategy for some communities and can help you maintain the balance between wanting to grow your revenue and also needing to maintain a good user experience for your loyal members.

Understanding Revenue Models

There are four basic revenue models that you will encounter in dealing with ad networks and advertisers. To firmly grasp their potential, you need to understand the differences between them and how they work.

You should not confine yourself to just one model. Instead, you should consider what will work best with your community and blend the different strategies to achieve optimal results. This may require some experimentation.

Sponsorship

The sponsorship model can also be referred to as “tenancy” and it works best on forums that have a niche audience. For example, let’s say you have a forum about blue widgets. 

It would be natural for an advertiser who sells blue widgets to place an ad directly on your forum since they already know that your audience is who they are trying to reach.

In this model, you are selling an ad for a fixed time period to the advertiser for a flat rate. 

Let’s say you have an ad zone on your forum that is 125 pixels in width by 125 pixels in height (normally written as “125x125”). You might sell that space to an advertiser for $100 per 30 days. 

It doesn’t matter how many impressions the ad receives (how many times it is served to visitors), because you are selling time in that ad space, not impressions.

Sponsorships are typically sold on a guaranteed basis, meaning that you are guaranteeing exposure for the advertiser and they will not be outbid or replaced by a higher paying advertiser.

CPM

CPM stands for cost per thousand impressions (or, more technically, “cost per mille,” with “per mille” being Latin and meaning “by a thousand”). An impression occurs each time a visitor loads an ad on your forum.

To use some simple math, let’s assume an advertiser is paying you a $1 CPM. This means,

for every 1,000 ad impressions you serve to them, they will pay you $1. 

So, if you serve 100,000 ad impressions, you will receive $100 (100,000, divided by 1,000, multiplied by $1).

CPA

This is cost per action or cost per acquisition and refers to the act of a user clicking an ad on your forum and then completing a very specific goal for the advertiser. 

An example of this would be the user buying a product from the advertiser or filling out a lead form – otherwise known as a conversion event. 

CPA can also be referred to as cost per lead, cost per sale, cost per engagement and cost per conversion. All of those terms mean pretty much the same thing.

CPC

Finally, CPC is the abbreviation for cost per click and, quite simply, it means that you are paid each time a visitor clicks on an advertisement.

7 Basic Considerations Before Getting Online Business Started

The fear of the getting started process tends to make people procrastinate in starting a business of their own. That fear usually boils down to the fact that they just don’t know how to do it, or where to even start. 

This report will help you with this process, so you can lay your fears to rest and move through the getting started phase with ease. Let’s start with some commonly asked questions that most newbies have in the getting started process. 

“Do I have to have special skills or degrees to start my own business?

”You will need to have some knowledge in the field you’re going to embark in, but it’s not necessary to have any business or college degrees to accomplish starting your own business. 

Of course, it will depend on the type of business you want to start. Simple research in the field you’re potential business will be in, will be sufficient enough to give you what you need in most cases. 

If you’re planning to offer a service like web designing, etc; you should have some skills in that area before trying to start your business. 

College degrees and experience are always helpful in gaining expertise in a field, but you usually don’t have to have any degrees to have your own online business. 

Knowledge has more power online, so reading everything you can get your hands on that deals with your field will more important. 

Will it Cost a lot of money?”

Starting your own online business doesn’t generally cost much money. The money you put into it is mostly for a computer, internet access and a website. 

Any other costs will be based on the type of business you want to get into. Businesses where you will sell items you’ve created, will take some money to stock the inventory items, but there are great deals on the internet to be found for this purpose. 

If you plan to sell a service, like web designing, software programs will need to be added to your list of tools to purchase. For the most part, you won’t have to run to your local bank and beg them to offer you a loan. 

Find the best deals on the items you need for the business you choose and you won’t have to worry about the interest rates a loan would add to your budget. 

“Will I still be able to start my own business online, even if I’ve never run my own business before?”

Absolutely. Hundreds of Internet Marketers have started their own businesses and made a success of it without having any previous business experience. Again, it all adds up to how much time and effort you put into your research.

The internet, itself, holds a plethora of information at your fingertips to help you learn every aspect of the business you want to start. 

You can find tips, tricks and all sorts of information from people who’ve been there and done it, so utilize this resource to gain the power that knowledge will bring you. 

“How much money can I make from an online business?”
This will vary on a lot of factors. What business you start, how much time and effort you put into it and the return of investment on what you’re offering; all play a part in what you will essentially make. 

Some internet marketers make a six figure income, while others make the same amount a full time fast food worker generally makes. 

No matter how much your business brings in, you will still be ahead of those who commute to their jobs. The money they spend on gas, clothes for work and meals etc; is money that goes into your pocket and not someone else’s. 

“Do I really need a website?”

A website will be needed to conduct your business from. You will need to sell your products or show potential clients what services you have to offer. 

It serves as your ‘office’ or ‘store’ would, only you won’t need to rent out expensive space in a building to use for your online business. 

Websites are pretty easy to create if you use one of the many website design software programs or website building services. 

If you choose to, you can also hire a web designer to create a killer site for your business, so don’t let your lack of web designing skills hold you back. 

“Do I need special business licenses to run an online business?”

You will want to check with your local government agencies to determine what you will need in your area. Each area is different, so it’s best to check and see what you need before starting your business.

“I’m nervous about taking money from customers. What if I mess up the payment processing system?”

If you’re selling items, you will want to use an online payment system like PayPal or Clickbank. These programs will take of the whole payment process for you including refunds. 

Shopping cart software a lot of times will come with a web building program, so take advantage of that option.