The following is a guest post by Sam Bakker. If you would like to guest post on this blog, please contact me.

It’s no secret that Facebook is an excellent source to make money online. With over 400 million members, the money is there for the taking. Many online marketers have come out and said that Facebook fan pages are currently the best free way to make money on the site. This is because of their viral nature. In this article, I am going to discuss an effective technique for increasing fans on your page with the intention of taking it viral.

The first time I discovered Facebook’s viral nature, I was looking at my news feed. A friend of mine had joined a pretty funny group. I clicked into the page out of casual curiosity and found out that the page had only been running for the past 24 hours, but had managed to have over 100,000 people “Like” it. I refreshed the page to see how fast its rate growth was, each time I did, at least 100 new people had joined. Over the next week, more than 1.5 million people joined that page as fans gave the owner exposure to all of their news feeds when they placed a message on the fan page.

So how do we create this incredible viral effect? The first way is to gather enough members in a short space of time. The rule I like to use is that if you can get a fan page to 20,000 people within four days then the page will go viral.

The best way to get these first 20,000 friends is to use a method which I like to call the “Rapid Movement Method”. It consists of utilizing the fans of other pages in order to help build your fan page. Look for fan pages which have similar subjects to yours and about 100,000 fans already (we want these pages so that we can tap into their growth while it’s still happening). Some fan pages will have the contact details of the admin. But if they don’t, you will need to ask them to contact you using the “Discussion tab”. This option which the majority of Facebook fan pages have gives you the opportunity to get in touch with the owner by placing a quick comment asking the administrator to contact you. When they do, you have the chance to negotiate a price for the post. If you have got it right and your topic is one which could potentially go viral, then you can expect your page to grow to a stage where you can use it to make money online.

Sam Bakker has been making money online for the past 7 years. If you would like to get a free copy of Sam’s new Facebook marketing report visit his Internet business website now.

The following is a guest post by Sam Bakker…

I recall when I first started trying to use blogging to make money online. I had arrived at the entrance of a cyber metropolis armed with an idea and a daft look on my face. It was a multifaceted space teeming with online users, all I had to do was establish myself and I’d be crowded with customers in no time. I had bought a product that would teach me how to build a home-based business. It told me I should start a blog and begin sharing with the rest of the internet world how to be successful making money through a home-based business.

I opened an account with Blogger.com and put my hands to the keyboard. For two months I typed away, completing a design and posting content up on a daily basis. For all this effort, I had one member and no sign of traffic. My blog was floating around in an alleyway when I wanted it to be across the street from Facebook. I wasn’t making money and my website wasn’t going anywhere.

It wasn’t until a year later that I found out (and corrected) what I had done wrong. In this article today, I am going to discuss what mistakes I made in my first attempt to make money blogging online and how you can avoid them. By dodging these classic mistakes, your journey to success will help you obtain an internet marketing lifestyle that is greatly to your advantage.

Firstly, it must be said that before anything else, you must plan out what your blog’s central focus will be. As is the general nature of entrepreneurs, we get an idea and jump in head-first without planting a base for ourselves. Planning is essential especially when it comes to blogging; you not only need to identify your audience and the value you can offer them, but you also need to find effective keywords.

Keywords are the driving force behind a blog’s organic search engine traffic. You need to find the most effective ones using a tool such as “Google Adwords Keywords” to research. This will show you where you can get your search engine traffic from and what terms will be most profitable when it comes to making money. If you launch your blog without keywords in mind, often Google will struggle to place you in the index. Much of the time this means that your blog’s potential is capped very early on and your chance of getting decent traffic flow from Google is reduced. Be sure that you conduct the appropriate keyword research for your website before buying your domain name.

When you first launch your blog online, it feels great. However, now the challenge is in getting it seen. In order for search engines to rank your website based on targeted key terms, you will need to generate some external links back to your website. Use websites such as Ezine Articles, Squidoo and write for other websites in your niche to get your blog rising in the search engines and producing traffic.

Use these tips to ensure that your blog doesn’t end up like my first one, gathering dust along some forgotten nook in cyberspace. Instead, implement the techniques I have discussed with you here to get your blog off to an excellent start.

Sam Bakker has been making money online for the past 7 years. If you would like to find out more about Sam Bakker or internet marketing you can view Sam’s website at SamBakker.com

March is gone, and April is here. It came fast! I’m sure loving the beautiful weather we’ve been having. Definitely can’t complain about that. Seems as though we completely skipped Spring and went straight to Summer, already hitting over 80 degrees! Crazy, I know.

Anyway, here are my blog posts from last month worth reading (again maybe?). If you found them helpful you’re welcome to post a comment letting me know, or if you have a question then ask away. Seriously, don’t be shy here.

Without further ado, here they are:

A Complete Step-By-Step Guide to Setup a Money Making Website

Blog Commenting Contest – Win $10 from Dennis Edell (The commenting contest has been restarted for this month, so head on over and leave a comment for Dennis. Don’t worry, he doesn’t bite ).

Why I Chose Affiliate Marketing and Why You Should Too

Finding Your Perfect and Profitable Niche on the Internet

Write Online Product Reviews to Make Money Online

Again, feel free to comment on my posts, and if you’re feeling really nice, hit that little green ReTweet button. I’d appreciate the love. And, you may want to follow me on Twitter so you don’t miss any updates.

Stay cool, and have a Happy Easter tomorrow.

How many of you prefer to read online product reviews of products you’re interested in buying… before you actually buy?

My guess is that the majority of you would probably answer “yes.”

I admit, I’m a nut when it comes to reading product reviews. I must have spent hours sifting through review after review from customers who bought GPS systems, before I finally decided which one I should get. I went with a Garmin nüvi 255W – the 4.3 inch Widescreen model.

The point is that many people prefer to read online reviews before they actually go ahead and buy something. It’s no surprise that there’s many product review sites for just about every product imaginable, for both physical and downloadable products.

What IS surprising is that not many people take advantage of writing online product reviews on their blogs. This is not only a great way to inform your readers, but it’s also a great way for you to earn additional income.

Have you bought any products recently? Maybe you downloaded an ebook that you found really helpful. Why not write a review about it? Chances are there may be someone looking for information regarding the ebook you just read. Maybe they’re not even aware of such an ebook even exists. This could be your chance to introduce your readers to it so that maybe it can help them too.

Let’s take this idea a step further. Writing well thought-out and unbiased reviews can be quite time-consuming, and I would know. So, it only makes sense if you’re compensated for your efforts, right?

Going back to the remarkable ebook you just read – is there an affiliate program for it? If so, include your affiliate link in your review. If you provide valuable and factual information about the ebook and focus on both the pros and cons, chances are your readers will click the link to learn more about it. If they feel it’s worth buying, you just earned a commission.

Almost every ebook or downloadable product you find nowadays will have an affiliate program of some kind.

A word of caution here: Don’t just write reviews for any ‘ole product just so you can make money. The point of writing online product reviews is to provide your own personal experience – meaning you’ve actually used the product and find it helpful, and you think others might too.

This same method can be applied to physical products as well. A majority of products can be found on Amazon or eBay. Both sites have affiliate programs, and if you refer people to products on either site, you’ll get paid a percentage of the selling price.

A great example of writing a review for a physical product can be found at this post: The Official Alibaba.com Success Guide. I wrote this post based on a book I read about entrepreneurship and finding success selling products online. The book is an excellent read and thought you (my readers) would find it interesting. As of right now, four of you felt that it was worth buying. That’s cool! Great to know at least some of you read what I say.

Granted the amount of money you can make with Amazon is mere cents, but something is better than nothing. I usually prefer to write reviews for digital products because the commission you can earn is a lot more. Of course, I’ll only write a review if I feel the product is worthy enough to promote.

Here are some other online product reviews I’ve written on this blog:

• Flip Switch Profits Review – A Free Way To Make Money Online?
• Project Payday – Earn Extra Income Online?
• Review of SFI

Hopefully you’ll have an idea of how to write product reviews. But since I’m not the best writer (by far), here’s an article on How To Write Product Reviews that Convert.

Still not convinced you should be writing online product reviews? Read Gyutae Park’s 10 Reasons Why You Should Write Product Reviews On Your Blog.

What do you think? Is writing product reviews a good idea? Do you incorporate product reviews into your blog – 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.

Learn how to build a website and make money by monetizing and marketing it. This no-cost, step-by-step guide will show you from start to finish how to build a money making website.

From preparation, finding affiliate programs, getting a domain name and hosting, building your website, adding content and marketing your website, this guide will help you every step of the way.

At only 13 pages long, it provides simple and easy to understand instructions that you can put into practice immediately.

Experienced webmasters and marketers won’t find anything new here. Complete beginners who are looking to start their own website and start making money online will find this guide very useful.

There are two main components to building a website: A domain name and web hosting. This guide will explain the process of registering a domain name and getting web hosting. From there, you’ll learn about affiliate marketing and how to earn commissions promoting other people’s products and services.

The key ingredient to making a website profitable is building traffic to your website. This guide will explain some proven techniques to market your website and generate targeted traffic to your site.

Again, this guide is mainly to help complete beginners. So, if that’s you, I highly recommend you grab your FREE copy now. You’ll be well on your way to building a money making website within a week or less.

There is absolutely zero cost. You don’t even have to give up your e-mail address. Free meaning really free.

Download Now!

You can simply right-click on the link and choose “Save Target” to download directly to your computer.

If you read this post where I stated I’ll pay you $10 for signing up for a new website and hosting, that offer still stands if you build a website through my links in this guide. I’ll also be available to answer any questions you have about building and marketing your new website.

I’m in the business of helping people, and this one way I can do just that. Let me help you make money online starting today.

Today I have the opportunity to answer a couple of questions from a struggling marketer who came to me and is losing patience trying to make money online.

I’m going to keep the person anonymous, but I’ll provide the questions below along with my answers to those questions. I like these kind of posts as it gives you (my readers) a real example of people finding this whole internet marketing thing difficult, which is maybe where you’re at today. If so, I hope you find this post encouraging as well as helpful. This may turn into a two or three part series depending on how in-depth I get here.

So let’s begin. The questions are pretty specific, but I think there’s a lot of general information about each I can provide. The nice thing here is that I’ve already blogged about these topics in the past, so if you happened to miss them or weren’t sure how they related to the questions below, you’ll now be able to put them both together, and things will finally make sense (hopefully).

Here are the questions:

How do i drive traffic to my site that can generate sales?

Is there another cool way of making money online from __________ (Wherever you are in the world)?

From talking with this person I know he has about 6 months of time invested into his online business and has been working very rigorously at it.

Maybe you have less time, or maybe more time spent trying to build up your business. Perhaps you haven’t yet started but come here for the first time thinking about maybe giving an online business a chance, but you’re not sure if the time you spend will pay off in the end.

Well first of all, I just have to say that any type of internet business is just like any offline business. It takes a lot of time, dedication and focus. This isn’t something new that I’m saying for the first time, but a lot of people just don’t get it or haven’t completely grasped that concept. So, whether you’re only a month in or 6 months in, I can say with assurance that it hasn’t been long enough for you to see any substantial return on your time. Earning a comfortable amount of money online will take much longer, most likely a lot longer than you would like.

Every person is unique and has unique abilities and talents, and what might work for one person may not work for another. So, just because you know someone that may have “made it big” in only a few short months, doesn’t mean you’ll do the same. However, the good news is that as long as you stick with it and not give up, you’re time will come. You just have to be patient and keep pushing forward.

Trust me, I know from personal experience. I’ve been at this for a while, and I’m still not close to where I want to be. But, I believe everything happens for a reason, and there’s a reason that my time hasn’t come yet. I have faith that it will, but only if I keep pushing forward and don’t give up.

During my time online I’ve seen a fair number of people that have thrown in the towel and decided it’s not for them. Maybe that’s how you feel right now. But, let me ask you these questions:

Why did you try? (Or, why do you want to try?)

Why did you give up? (Or, why do you want to give up?)

If you could have did/do something differently, what would it be?

In my experience, it has appeared to me that everyone needs to know someone that has “been there, done that” and can learn from their experiences and know what IS working and can then apply it to their own business. Consider reaching out and saying “I need help!” Believe me, you won’t look like a desperate fool if you do. Unless of course you act like one and expect nothing but hand-outs.

A lot of people just need guidance and are looking for somewhere to turn and someone that can help them. I urge you if you’re at the point of failure, it’s time for you to reach out. Hope is not all lost.

Aside from reaching out, evaluate what you’re doing and why you’re not making money. Maybe the first step in getting help is realizing that you’re not putting in enough effort. It takes REAL work, and A LOT of it.

Okay, so right now I’ve just basically been lecturing a bit, but please stay with me here. Everything I said is important, so I hope that you’ll take it in. You seriously need to stop, think and evaluate where you are with your business. If you’re not making money, find out why. Find out what you need to do in order to start making money online.

If you’re not quite sure, then stay tuned for my next post as I’ll be answering the first question, which is “How do i drive traffic to my site that can generate sales?”

I’ve written many posts on this topic, but I’ll be combining everything I know into one jam-packed post, full of useful information you can apply to your own online business.

Hope to see you there.

We all know that generating traffic to your website is essential if you want to make money online. Not only this, but targeted traffic that is interested in what you have to say or sell is what really counts.

In this day and age, there are so many ways to get free website traffic it’s almost not even funny. However, most people don’t know about all the various ways in which to go about getting it for free. I even fall into this category as some methods are either new or just totally unique from what most people are teaching.

Anyway, I’m always looking to increase the traffic to my site, mainly using free methods. Let’s face it, we all like free stuff.

Not only that, but free search engine traffic is one of the best in quality when it comes to converting that traffic into money. So, when I’m marketing my site I do a lot of backlink building to ensure my website increases its ranking in the search engine. Not to mention the marketing I do is, of course, completely free.

Hey, there’s that “free” word again, and speaking of, I have a free gift for you.

I just got my hands on a new ebook titled: “30 Ways To Get Free Website Traffic in 30 Minutes or Less.” The book is actually written by my affiliate marketing mentors and provides some traffic resources I haven’t yet tried or heard of.

Instead of diving into the details about what’s in the ebook, I figured you’re intelligent enough to find out for yourself.

I’m offering this ebook free of charge to you, my readers. If you’d like to get free traffic to your website, then I encourage you to grab yourself a copy and apply the techniques that they share.

To download your free copy, simply Click Here.

There’s no opt-in or any of that stuff. Clicking the link above will take you straight to the ebook from where you can then download it to your computer, which I recommend.

Or, simply right-click the link and choose to “Save Link As” or “Save As”, depending on your browser, to save the ebook directly to your computer.

After downloading and reading through the ebook, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it, so be sure to come back and share them below…

Wow, I can’t believe we’re a whole month into 2010 already. January felt like it went so fast. Almost too fast, actually.

But alas, a new month is here, and we gotta keep pushing forward. It’s the beginning of February, so that means another edition of blog post roundup.

If you happened to miss any of my posts in January, you can find them below. Hope you enjoyed them.

Work From Home Cartoon Humor

What Do You Plan To Accomplish In 2010?

Are You Finding It Difficult To Make Money From Work From Home Opportunities?

Affiliate Power Group – Online Business Coaching – Affiliate Marketing Training

6 Tips To Help You Reach Online Success

5 Tips To Market Yourself On The Internet

3 Reasons You Will Never Make Money Online

5 Things You MUST Do To Make Money Online

Going off from what I wrote yesterday about why you will never make money online, I thought I’d provide some advice on what you can do to ensure that you DO make money online. This may have something to do with a reader unsubscribing from my RSS feed. I don’t know. Perhaps I struck a chord or was too harsh. Either way, the truth is the truth, and there’s no point in sugar-coating it.

So anyway, I want to give you some tips that will help you make money online, especially if you fall into any of the 3 areas that I posted about yesterday.

1. Learn the Skills – No this isn’t high school or college all over again, although it can feel like it at times (I didn’t go to college, BTW). There are skills that you will have to learn and obtain. This can be done through reading blogs or visiting forums. Find a few people that you trust and who are providing valuable information that you can apply to your online business. Yes, this will take time and actual work. Consider it homework, if you will. If you have to, get a mentor to ensure you’re going in the right direction.

2. Make Time! – This is one of my biggest pet peeves. Too many people complain about not having enough time to do things. Well that can be true to a degree, but there’s always ways in which you can better manage your time in order to make time for the things you say you don’t have time for. You’ll need all the time you can get building and marketing your online business, so you better learn to manage your time wisely.

3. Set Goals – I used to have a problem of not setting goals for my business. Now that I set goals, it encourages me to do what I have to do in order to reach those goals. Learn to set goals for yourself. They don’t have to be big ones, but set little baby goals that will act as stepping stones towards your big, ultimate goal.

4. Re-invest Your Money – Thanks to the internet you no longer need a lot of money to start your own business. In fact, depending on what you decide to do, you can get started for free. However, at some point, you’re going to want to re-invest the money you’re making back into your business. Use it to start a website, do some marketing, buy advertising, etc. Hire freelancers to do most of the leg work if you want. In simple terms, use your money to grow your business, otherwise it may stay stagnant.

5. Choose your programs carefully – I believe this is where most people fail. With so many programs and opportunities out there, choosing which one to go with can be very difficult. It’s important that you do your research before rushing into a decision. Once you do pick the program, believe in it with all your heart. If you don’t have faith in the program you’re promoting, no one else will either.

Got anything to add? Leave your thoughts in the comments below…