This is a follow-up post to my recent make money writing product reviews post. If you recall, an excellent way to make money online is to write product reviews and include your affiliate links within the review. This not only informs your readers and allows them to make an informed decision, but it helps you to gain trust and earn extra income.

Taking a different approach to this method is getting paid to write review posts. While the first method involves making money when someone clicks on your affiliate link and buys the product, this method allows you to get paid directly from writing the review.

Here’s what I mean…

Instead of relying on affiliate commissions to make money from your review posts, this way you’ll get paid either before or directly after you write the review. There are people and companies who pay bloggers to write reviews about websites and products.

Another difference is that you’ll only get paid one time, whereas the first method can provide a passive income if you keep building traffic to the posts. Is this good or bad? Well, it depends… mainly on how bad you need the money.

If you want some quick cash, then getting paid to write review posts is pretty easy to do. There are a number of sites that you can sign up with for free that will connect advertisers and bloggers.

Here are a few of them:

SponsoredReviews.com

ReviewMe.com

PayPerPost.com

PayU2Blog.com

Don’t expect to make a huge amount of income with this. If you need a few extra bucks for this or that, then this is certainly a viable option. But, don’t plan on making this your only source of income from blogging or from the internet in general.

From what I’ve seen, if you hope to make a large amount of money from each review post that you write, then you’ll first need to build up your blog’s authority to a pretty high level. Most advertisers aren’t going to pay a whole lot for just a small-time blogger.

There are also certain guidelines that will have to be met when writing the review. Pay close attention to these when you get accepted for the review as you’ll want to follow them carefully.

Also, don’t forget about the big bad FTC and their new “guidelines” as well. You’ll want to state within the review, either beginning or end, that your post IS a review and that you were compensated for it. No need in getting in trouble (with a hefty fine) over a simple oversight while trying to make an honest living.

One last thing…

Be honest in your review. Just like the previous method, it’s always better to be honest, upfront and unbiased about the website/product you’re reviewing. If you’re not, people will see right through it, and you’ll ruin any sense of trust your readers had in you.

This method can be a bit controversial as there are some bloggers that feel you’re “selling out” if you get paid to write review posts.

What do you think?

Would you write a review post on your blog if you were paid for it? Why or why not?

When I first came online, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing or even know where to start. All I knew was that I wanted to make money online. A passion that has stuck with me even till today.

Once I was introduced to affiliate marketing, it started to make sense to me. Of course, everyone made it sound so easy. You know, the pie in the sky, hyped up promises… and so on and so forth.

I can assure you it’s not quite that easy, but that didn’t stop me from pursuing my passion and finally getting my own little slice of pie.

At the time I didn’t know anything about niches and why I should target a small niche rather than diving into a huge niche, such as the “work from home” niche. As it turns out, that’s why it’s been a struggle for me. Had I started over and did my research first, I would’ve gotten into a smaller niche where I could get my slice of the pie more quickly and maybe even get more than one slice.

But, while the “work from home” niche has its struggles, the rewards can be huge once you do gain momentum and become an authority site. Afterall, it’s one of the biggest niches on the entire internet.

I’m not going to tell you what niche you should or should not get into, but rather explain why affiliate marketing should be your choice for making money online. I believe it’s the way to go for most people… at least in the beginning.

Here’s 3 reasons why you should choose affiliate marketing:

1. You don’t need your own product – Unless you already have a solid plan in your mind from the start, a product is the furthest thing from people’s minds when they’re just looking for some extra income. This is why affiliate marketing is lucrative because it allows people to capitalize on other people’s products.
2. No special training required – One of the best things, I think, about affiliate marketing is that you can jump right into it head first without having a clue what you’re doing. That sounds like a bad thing, but when you think about it, there’s no better way to learn something than to just do it. And, affiliate marketing allows for this. You can learn while you go, and if you somehow manage to really mess up, there’s usually plenty of leeway for this and can easily be fixed.
3. Zero cost is required – Seriously, you can start making money with affiliate marketing for absolutely no money out of your pocket. Of course, there will come a time when you’ll want to setup your own website/blog, but the cost is less than $100 a year. But, that’s not necessary in the beginning, although I highly recommend it as it will help you further along from the start.

Now, rather than going for the big bucks at the beginning and picking a very competative niche, I recommend finding a smaller niche to start with. Besides, you can make a lot of money even with smaller niches, believe it or not.

What are you passionate about? Do you have a hobby?

Answering these questions will help you determine what niche you may want to get started in. It helps to like what you’re doing, not to mention being knowledgeable in that area will help tremendously.

Stay tuned as my upcoming post will detail how you can determine if the niche you want to get into will be profitable or not. You don’t want to waste your time if there’s not a big enough market in your niche. Weeding out the profitable niches from the duds will aide you in your decision.

In the meantime, here’s some homework for you. Write down all the hobbies and interests you have on a piece of paper. You could have 1 or 15… It doesn’t matter. Jot them down and save them for my next post as you’ll be using this list to narrow down your interests and hobbies to just one that you’ll target for your affiliate marketing venture.

However, if you want to skip this and go right for the big bucks and target the “work from home” niche (the most money online is spent in this niche) just as I am, I recommend reading this post.

See you soon.

In my previous post, I briefly mentioned about the importance of having a mentor or group of mentors that can guide you on the path to online business success. One of my loyal blog readers, Dennis Edell, pointed out that all successful people (especially the top 1%) have a mentor. Well, I don’t know that I’d consider myself successful (financial wise), nor am I in the top 1%, but I do have a group of mentors that have helped me out tremendously in learning affiliate marketing.

The reason for this post is to introduce you to the group of mentors I’ve had the privilege of working with. What’s unique, I believe, is that they’ve been open to helping ANYONE who is either new to affiliate marketing, struggling to make money, or looking to take their online businesses to the next level. There’s not too many successful internet marketers that are willing to work one-on-one with people, as pointed out by Meka, a recent reader of this blog.

Of course, they can’t literally work one-on-one with every single person, but I think they got a pretty good setup in place. They have a membership site designed specifically for people who want to get into affiliate marketing by setting up niche blogs. This is certainly the starting point in which anyone who is serious should take in order to start earning some extra income online.

The membership site provides an outline and step-by-step action plan to follow, from planning, getting your website set up, marketing/advertising, optimizing and bringing in a residual and passive income month after month. The mentors who started this membership site all are regular people just like you and me who had a desire to be their own boss and work from home. They saw an opportunity and did everything they could to see their dreams become a reality. They call themselves the Affiliate Power Group.

The mentors have been successfully working from home with affiliate marketing full-time for a number of years and are now sharing their experience and knowledge with the rest of us. That’s my main goal and purpose of this Work From Home Blog. I just love helping people and giving back, and it’s obvious that they’re very willing to do the same.

The great thing about Affiliate Power Group is that they have a built-in forum (just updated) where you can ask questions and get direct answers from the mentors as well as other members. This is where the one-on-one attention is created because you have direct access to each mentor at anytime. You can also email or message any of the members directly for specific questions if you prefer.

As mentioned in my previous post, being able to have direct communication with those who are successful in your field will give you the edge you need to become successful yourself. It helps you grow mentally and provides personal development needed to turn that “hobby” of a website into a real online business. I’m not saying you have to go spend a $1,000 to form an LLC, but you have to realize that creating a successful online business takes a lot of hard work and persistence. If you treat it like a real business, it’ll reward you as such. That’s something that took me a long time to realize, which is why I’m still not where I want to be yet (my monthly income reports are proof of that).

Affiliate Power Group is able to help anyone just starting out, struggling to make money, or trying to take their affiliate marketing business to the next level.  You can give their affiliate marketing training a try for just $1. $1 will give you access to the entire membership site plus all the bonuses. This is a huge deal, and I know once you see the value you’ll receive, you’ll want to continue your membership.

The total cost of the membership is very undervalued. Although, I like to look at it as the mentors over-delivering, which is really what they do. Seriously, learn the business or take yours to the next level for just $1 today. You won’t be disappointed.

With the all the talk about the global financial crisis daily, it might seem difficult to make money during the financial crisis. It’s not difficult to feel anxious about your financial future. While traditional brick and mortar businesses are struggling to get customers through the doors and spend their money, Internet and Affiliate Marketers are asking, what crisis?

Here’s a funny, yet realistic video of how the U.S. got into a financial crisis in the first place…

While making money on the internet falls short of the hyped up claims of making zero to five and six figure incomes after a month, starting your online career has never been easier. If you are concerned about the direction of your financial future as well as the stability of your job, making money online can help take some of that stress away by providing a little extra income in your pocket each week as another income stream. This will allow you to make money during the financial crisis without turning your life upside down. You DO NOT need to become a fully fledged marketer, quit your day job and take the financial risk to both you and your family. What you can do is provide some nice passive income at your own pace.

With all the doom and gloom, it’s important to note that even during times of crisis there are those that will prosper and make money during the financial crisis. We have the tools at our disposal to make the most of the tough time we are in. If you have a computer, an internet connection, which you do as you are reading this, then all you require is to take the next step and decide on your approach. The most popular and lucrative method online is Affiliate Marketing. Affiliate marketing allows you to promote some of the biggest names and products in the world. The beautiful thing about Affiliate marketing is that you do not need to hold stock, place orders, worry about employees or even work set hours; your approach is completely up to you. By simply referring potential customers with products you are paid a commission by some of the biggest companies in the world. Whether you have a blog, love to write articles, post on Facebook and Myspace, your time online can start making you money today.

DO NOT believe the hyped up products that seem to be too good to be true! Is it true that there are thousands of people making an absurd amount of money? Absolutely, but as with any business it takes time to grow. Being your own boss will allow you to dictate how many hours you want to put into growing your business. The flexibility of Internet and Affiliate Marketing makes it such an attractive proposition for most of us that spend countless hours on the Internet, writing blogs, posting on forums and surfing. If this rings home, then it’s time for you to consider to monetize the time you spend online and make money during the financial crisis for you and your family.

Visit The Wealthy Affiliate Review for more information to learn how to make money during the financial crisis and visit Internet Marketing Made Easy

Grab helpful ideas for free traffic – your individual knowledge pack.

If there’s one thing you need in order to succeed with MLM/Network Marketing, it’s leads. Without leads, you’ll never make much money regardless of your company, the pay plan, your upline or anything else. You’re also going to need a lot of prospects since there’s no way you’ll sign everyone to be an agent. How many you’ll need depends on several factors such as your skill and your business. Not to mention, if you have a lot of leads, you won’t have to feel like you have to sign everyone.

It’s a lot easier to say no to having someone that doesn’t match what you’re looking for if you have 20-30 people waiting on your call. There are other factors involved in succeeding, but if you have leads and use them, that’s a big hurdle passed. Call everyone you know and ask for referrals. Tell them about the great business you have and how they can benefit from either being a customer or agent. If you’ve chosen wisely and believe in your company, you won’t see a problem with this. If you aren’t sure you have a great business, maybe you should keep looking.

A great way to decide if you have a good company is to ask yourself if you’d sign up your best friend or valued member of your family. Or, ask yourself if you’d use the product if there was no pay plan involved. If the answer is No, maybe you should keep looking. Build lead capture pages and get them listed high on search engines. This will generate leads that are interested in your company. However, anyone who has worked at getting a site listed high will tell you this is time consuming and far from easy, and it’s not an overnight job either.

You could spend a lot of time working on your site and never break the top 100. You can advertise your lead capture page on Pay Per Click (PPC) search engines. The largest sites are Google and Yahoo. These are the ads that show up at the top or on the right when you search. This is the quickest way and depending on the key words you’re bidding on could be cheap or very expensive (some keywords cost over 100 bucks) and there’s no guarantee you’ll get a single lead. It only guarantees that someone will see your page.

If you’re going to go this route, do yourself a favor and either get trained on how to do it or start slow or both. You can easily blow hundreds or thousands of dollars before you know it. You can print flyers and post them on bulletin boards around town and put them on doors and cars. If you figure a 1-2% success rate, you’ll get 1-2 leads per hundred flyers and then depending on your closing rate, you can figure out how many flyers you’ll need to hand out consistently to reach your goals.

Also figure in printing costs. Even if you’re printing these at home, you’ll have to pay for ink/toner and the wear and tear on your printer, not to mention the time and gas it takes to drive around and post the flyers. You should also get permission from property managers if you’re going to put them on doors or cars since some people will throw them on the ground. One other thing to be wary about is car alarms.

You can spam the world with one of those “e-mail 16 million people for 29.95″ spam messages you get every day. Do us both a favor and forget about that. The best you can hope for is to not get blacklisted or in trouble with the feds. The odds are that you’ll be visited by the feds and/or have your ISP shut you down. The way these are collected is by sending a little robot spider to crawl the web and collect e-mail addresses from forums, news groups, blogs, web sites and anywhere else they can find them.

These are just bad news and may get you kicked out of your company since they could be black listed because you didn’t follow this advice. An easy way to tell if they are real leads or harvested is the price. If they’re unbelievably cheap or don’t include i.p. address, they are probably harvested.

Cold Calling – This is just as it sounds. You pick up the phone book and start calling. This is the cheapest way to generate leads and if you have a thick skin may work for you. The thing to remember is that those people may be on the Do Not Call List and it may get you in trouble. The best thing to do is research the legal requirements before attempting this.

You can buy leads from a company that generates leads for you. But even these aren’t created equal. Some companies sell the same lead to 5, 10 or more people; even people in the same company as you and sell them for weeks, months or longer. You could end up with a lead that is 5 months old and been called by 10 or more people and is just plain tired of talking to people or has already joined a company and is quite happy with it.

Some are also overpriced and use shady tactics to get people to sign up such as contest sites. Or you could join a lead Co-Op that only sells the lead to you and generates it after you order meaning they are about 1-3 days old and only sold once. You want to make sure the company is reputable, been around for awhile and truly cares about their customers/members. They should offer multiple lead packages, training on how to effectively contact those leads, multiple autoresponders to make contacting them for follow-up (the fortune is in the follow-up) and training them easier and a presentation to explain what network marketing/MLM actually is in case the person has never heard of the concept or your company doesn’t offer a recruiting site.

It would also help if the company has a pay plan so that as you refer your new downline to the great leads you use, you can create an extra income stream (or at least get them for free) and so can your downline.

The thing to remember is that regardless of how the prospect was generated these people asked for information on starting a home based business and you should make it your responsibility to get them the information as soon as possible. Unless you didn’t take my advice and used a spam CD; then you’re on your own. Another thing to think about when choosing a method is will it be duplicatable to your downline and get consistent results? But that’s a subject covered in a previous article.

Read more about leads on line for free and free ways to generate leads to increase your income.

Access realistic information about website traffic – welcome to your own guide.

If you’ve been online for any amount of time, you’re probably aware of the online auction site eBay. Making money on eBay isn’t all that complicated, unless you want it to be. You can use the auction site for simply selling unwanted stuff around the house, or you can start your own work from home business selling a high volume of products every day on eBay.

If you want to start making money from this online auction giant, then I recommend first starting small and getting rid of unwanted stuff around the house. This will get you familiar with the whole process of how eBay works and what to expect. There’s many features of eBay that you’ll want to be familiar with if you want to take your selling to the next level and work from home full-time making money on eBay.

First, you’ll need an eBay account. You can sign up for free HERE.

Here’s some things you’ll want to get yourself familiar with:

• Buying/Bidding
• Buyer/Seller Feedback
• Payment Options
• Shipping Options

The best thing to do is go to eBay’s Help Center that will provide links with everything you need to know to get started selling and making money on eBay.

Buying and selling on eBay can be very fun. I say this from my own experience. Bidding can be a rush! Of course, selling is a lot of fun as well. You’d be surprised what kind of money you can make selling some old junk around the house.

If you want, check me out on eBay… workfromhomeopportunities.

I used to have a semi-business on eBay, but now I just sell stuff I no longer want. Check out my user page and see what all is available to you. You’ll also get a glance at the feedback system they have.

Now, if you want to get serious about making money on eBay, the best route to take would be to find a dropshipper that will provide you with a list of items to sell at wholesale prices, and then when you make a sale through eBay, the dropshipper will ship the item to the buyer for you.

This eliminates the need of you having to stock any inventory, which is a huge plus. This is the best way to sell a high volume amount of products on eBay. No inventory; no shipping. Just list the items, get paid and notify the dropshipper. That’s it.

The hardest part is finding reliable dropshippers with reasonable wholesale prices. That’s where The SaleHoo Wholesale Directory of eBay Product Suppliers comes in handy. The SaleHoo Directory is the #1 Directory for finding wholesale suppliers and dropshippers specifically for eBay products. They offer a one-time lifetime membership fee plus a free trial to check them out.

This is definitely the way to go if you want to earn extra income or work full-time from home making money on eBay. At this point you’ll be listing a large amount of items per day which can get pretty tedious and time consuming. There are some free tools available to make this process easier for you.

eBay provides a free listing tool called Turbo Lister. Turbo Lister is an application you install onto your computer. You make your listing within the application going through every single option available to you. Once you have your listing setup with the options that you want, you can upload your listings directly to eBay from within Turbo Lister. It’s very comprehensive yet very easy to use. I personally use it for all of my eBay selling that I do.

Another free tool and one I highly recommend is Auctiva. Auctiva is a third party software client that is web-based, which means you don’t have to download and install any software. Auctiva is provided specifically for eBay sellers, but it’s not provided by eBay themselves. Auctiva actually provides many more beneftis and perks that you wouldn’t get otherwise from Turbo Lister or eBay. For instance, no image fees, no scheduling fees and over 1500 templates to choose from for free.

If you’re planning on selling a lot and making money on eBay, I would recommend using one of these two listing tools to simplify the selling process and making your life A LOT easier.

I hope this helps you learn more about eBay and the possibilities that are available to you.

Many work from home business owners will try to create as much revenue from their website as possible. That’s just plain common sense. Like myself, they put a lot of time and effort into building their site or blog and would like to be rewarded in some way.

Creating income streams for your business is essential. Some of the ways you can do this is by offering affiliate products on your site, providing a free newsletter and building your list, and also by placing ads on your site.

The types of ads you place can be varied. The important thing to remember is if you’re going to place ads on your site you want them to be relevant to the content.

Google Adsense has this down to a science. You place a piece of code on your site which generates advertiser’s ads. When someone clicks on one of those ads, you get paid. The cost varies and will depend on the bid price of the advertiser.

Adsense revenue is an easy way to generate some extra income for your work from home business. Just don’t expect to get rich from it.

You may notice that I have Adsense ads on this blog. Take a look at them and see how they’re formatted. You can customize the appearance of the ads to blend into your site. This you want to do, and you’ll learn why in just a second.

Once you get your ads up you’ll want to do some testing so that you get a good conversion rate. Over at InfectedByBugs.com, Shannon provides some really great tips on how to do this. Check out his Adsense Tips and learn 5 ways to increase your Adsense revenue.

Another factor that determines your Adsense revenue is your ad position. Here’s a video that provides some more great tips on how to boost your Adsense revenue including the best location for your ads… Enjoy!

By now you should have a good understanding of what Google Adsense is and also how to increase your Adsense revenue. When working from home, it’s important to test every aspect of your business. Conversions are key, so it makes perfect sense to always be testing and keeping an eye out on your ads so that you generate the most Adsense revenue as you possibly can.

Keep in mind, though, that you must be getting traffic to your site in order to see any kind of results. To learn how to do this check out my posts on building your work from home business:

• Web Page Optimization
• Article Marketing
• Forum Marketing
• Link Directories
• Social Bookmarking
• Blogging

Follow these steps and you will be well on your way to building your work from home business and generating decent Google Adsense revenue.

Blogging can be a great way to build your online business. Don’t know what blogging is or what a blog looks like? Well, if you’re reading this, you’re on one right now. A blog is basically an online journal where you can share your thoughts and ideas with others, or in this case, expertise.

Blogs can be setup as a website, meaning the blog is the website, or if you already have a website, you can install a blog on your site making your site even more powerful. There are several advantages to having a blog on your website.

Advantage One: Google

Google loves content. Google ranks content very high. Provide relevant and fresh content on a regular basis. Post to your blog at least two or three times a week, if not more. The point here is to keep it updated on an on-going basis.

Advantage Two: Branding

Blogging allows you to brand yourself as an expert in your field. Keep your posts on-topic and relevant to the subject of your blog. Build credibility with your readers and give them a reason to come back.

Advantage Three: Connecting

A blog allows you to connect with your readers on a more personal level. With the use of commenting you can interact with others. Blogging is a more personal approach to online business practices and is sometimes a better way to market and promote what you have to offer. Make sure to create an “About Me” page that includes information about yourself. Remember to add a personal touch to your blog. Build trust with your readers.

Advantage Four: Promoting

Blogging is a great way to promote products and services. You can sign up for affiliate programs and post banners on your blog. This is just one way to monetize the traffic that your blog receives, assuming it’s getting traffic. A blog can allow you to promote anything you want. I would recommend promoting products or services related to the topic of your blog. Get a Google Adsense account and place Adsense ads on your blog for extra income as well.

Here are some blogging essentials:

1. Make sure to use an RSS feed that your readers can easily subscribe to. I recommend FeedBurner.com.
2. Make your blog a “DoFollow” blog so that your readers will want to leave comments on your posts.
3. Use Wordpress as your blogging platform to take advantage of the SEO benefits.
4. Install social bookmarking plugins for your Wordpress blog.
5. Install CommentLuv and KeywordLuv for your Wordpress blog.
6. Actively promote your blog!

Be sure to check out my Blogging Resources for more links and information on blogging.

P.S. Since I’ve started this Wordpress blog, my posts are getting idexed almost instantly by Google! That’s the true power of Wordpress in action.