A while back I wrote about how to pick the right niche for your blog. The same process can be used to pick the right niche for your online business. Here is a quick outline of the steps you need to take (you can read all the details here):

1. Make A List Of Your Passions

2. Make A List Of Things You Do Well

3. Merge The First Two Lists

4. Choose Your Favorite 3-5 Niches

5. Determine The Traffic Potential

6. Determine The Money Making Potential

7. Make Sure You Have Time For The Niche

The Most Important Things To Remember When Choosing The Right Niche For Your Online Business

You should choose a niche in a target market that you CAN and WANT to spend a LONG time serving. While you can have online success by going from one niche to another and you can have online success by creating products in niches that you are not passionate about it is much easier to build a business by sticking with one niche market that you LOVE and catering to that target market. I am going to say that again , because it is SO important:

It is much easier to build a business by sticking with one niche market that you LOVE and catering to that target market.

To help target the right niche, you need to decide who your ideal customer is. You can do this by answering the following question:

Who will I enjoy serving?

Target your online business for a niche you would LOVE to serve (click here to read a previous post I wrote about the importance of choosing your customer first).

You want your online business to be enjoyable and easy. One of the best ways to do that is stick with a niche you are passionate about.

If you REALLY want to make big money online AND enjoy it, then do what you LOVE.

Posted in Labels: Make Money Online 0 comments Posted by Rohit Shah

There are several mistakes that most of the people make when they just begin to build their internet marketing business to make money online. You just need to remember that you can make them one time, then learn from them and never make the same mistake again. Below are a few of the common mistakes that you will more than likely make when you start building your online business.

Not Spending Time To Educate Yourself
This is one the biggest mistakes that so many people make. When you first launch your online business, most probably you are in the dark about how to get it to generate income for you. Some people spend a hard time doing trial and error to figure out how to get their business to make money without any help. That is ok if that is what you want to do but it will take you a long time to achieve success.

There are plenty of resources and places on the Internet that you can start your education and learn what you need to know. You can go to a resource site to sign up online business courses or get an internet marketing guide, e-book; visit forums, read articles posted on articles directories, blog entries or anything else that related to online business and internet marketing. One of the effective methods to learn is to look for a online forum that has a lot people who have experience and already achieved success in Internet marketing. One great forum for this is:

http://www.warriorforum.com

However you need to be aware that, all forums can become time traps. Stay focused, get in, search for the right info and get out. A quick an easy way to search the information needed for your business in this particular forum is here:

http://www.robertplank.com/warriors/search.php

Warrior Forum is a large and popular forum that has a lot of internet marketing experts participate in various discussions relevant to Internet marketing and e-businesses. They are friendly and willing to help you with any aspects that you have problem in. You can start new threads to ask them questions, ask their advice on where you can learn what you need to, or find out what resources they would suggest to help you along the way. You need to take the time to educate yourself on every area of internet marketing in order to succeed in your online business. There is no if, ands or buts about it. This is a must if you want to be a successful Internet entrepreneur that make a living from the Internet.

Those who have achieved online success have done what you are intending to do now, so they are the best ones to get help and advice from. You will find that most of these successful online marketers are willing to help you get to where they are. You just have to ask for their help and advice. They will inform you that education on all areas of internet marketing is a must for everyone trying to start and grow their online business. Too many people become impatient and think that they can do it all by themselves without any help. They are usually the ones that end up quitting. Don’t make the same mistake that they do. Learn what you need to.

As you read above, asking for help is very important for business of any kind to succeed, not just online marketing businesses. You need to be able to tell people know that you are lost and don’t know how to proceed next.

There are many Internet marketers would love to give you helps.


Buying Tools And Products That Didn’t Help
When you just get into the Internet marketing world, You will find yourself bombarded by people who claim that they know exactly how to make your business a success, and they will charge you for price of $XX.XX.

They only Interested earn your money. They might know something but probably the information and resources the sell to you can be found free elsewhere on the Internet. So be cautious on what you purchase and how you spend your money for your business growth. Otherwise, you will find yourself in serious debt problem that is hard to get out of it. This has happened to a lot people. If you are not careful on your online business spending, this can easily happen to you. So don’t just buy anything and everything. Take the time to do research and visit forums to find out whether a product is really helpful and useful before spending your money to buy it.

Once you have as much information as you can about something, then you can make a wise decision on whether it is worth your time and money.

If You Rush It, You May Wreck It
When you start an internet marketing business you have to know immediately that it will take time for your business to begin seeing any kind of results. There will be a learning curve you need to go through When you first start your e-business.

This is just a fact that you need to accept and deal with. You don’t want to just barrel your way through anything until you know how to do it, especially on the internet. This is very important because if you try and do things too fast and you don’t see the results that you want, it is very easy to become discouraged and start feeling like nothing you do is ever going to work for you to achieve success.

This is not true but there are too many people who never take the time to slow down and do things one step at a time. Building your business is just like learning to walk, you have to do it one step at a time or you will end up falling down and failing every time you try. So remember that it will take time and lots of patience to get to where you want your business to be. The faster you realize that, the faster you can move on and start doing the little steps one at a time to make your business successful.

Focus Focus Focus!
When you are trying to build a business it is very important that you keep yourself focused. There are so many things on the internet that will keep you distracted for a whole day if you let them.

You have to ignore everything and do whatever needs to be done that day. When you can’t stay focused you will never be able to achieve success of any kind. You may have to train yourself on how to do this but it can be done.

Don’t check your email except in the morning before you start working and again at night when everything is done.

Don’t start reading emails or looking at product sales letters that people want you to buy. You have to do the work that needs to be done for that day before you start letting yourself do things that won’t help build your business.

This is something that a lot of people have a hard time with because it is so easy to let yourself become distracted. You need to learn to resist this and keep yourself focused on what you are doing. These are all common mistakes that too many people make when they start an internet marketing business.

Posted in Labels: Make Money Online 0 comments Posted by Rohit Shah

Freelancing refers to the process of offering your services for someone else on a per project basis. The best way to explain this is through an example.

Supposing you possess excellent writing skills. There are tons of webmasters and internet marketers out there who are in need of fresh content and new products on a daily basis. Their demand for digitally written works is so great that even if they are blessed with just as much writing prowess, they won’t have the time to come up with everything that they need. Hence, they resort to outsourcing.

And this is where you enter the picture.

As a freelancer offering your writing services for a fee, you could take in some projects they will give you. You will be paid per delivery, and once that’s done, you could take in more clients for consistent earnings.

But freelancing is not only limited to writing, or ghostwriting as it is technically known. There are other services that you could offer, depending on the area of proficiency you possess. Here are more examples:

* graphic creation and design
* web creation and design
* software development
* data encoding
* translation to specific languages
* marketing consultancy
* strategic placement consultancy
* Admin and Accounting

If you want to dabble in freelancing, here are some splendid places where you could advertise your services and solicit some clients:

www.elance.com
www.scriptlance.com
www.guru.com

Posted in Labels: Make Money Online 0 comments Posted by Rohit Shah

1) Cost-Per-Click (CPC) Advertising Programs
CPC advertising programs are the best money making programs for most of the bloggers. They are suitable to all kind of blogs with family-friendly content regardless of their traffic level and age. CPC programs work well on blog because they display contextual ads that are highly relevant to blogs content and bloggers will earn anywhere between 10 cents to 50 cents for each contextual ads click by their visitors. With proper CPC ads optimization and consistent amount of traffic, a blogger can earn a steady amount of money displaying CPC ads on his/her blog. Google AdSense is no doubt, the undisputed king of CPC advertising programs and Yahoo Publisher Network is the closest alternative of AdSense.

2) Cost-Per-Action (CPA) Advertising Programs
CPA programs is quite similar to CPC programs except CPA programs don't pay bloggers for each click on the CPA ads hosted by bloggers. The blogger only makes money when the visitor takes an action on the CPA advertiser website. The action can be a sign up, making a purchase, generating a lead, downloading a product and more. CPA networks pay a lot more than CPC programs, for a visitor sent by the blogger from his/her blog to a CPA advertiser website and the visitor taken an action on the advertiser site, the blogger can earn few dollar to fifty dollar depend on the niche. But CPA ads tend to work well on large traffic blogs only. AzoogleAds.com, Commission Junction and Advertising.com are some of the largest CPA networks.

3) Promote Affiliate Programs
Marketing affiliate programs is very common nowadays. You sign up with affiliate program of an online company, then decide whether to use the company's text link or banner ads on your blog to promote the company's products or services and earn affiliate commission when a visitor make a purchase through your affiliate link. Affiliate programs can be promoted without a website and blog too.

4) Pay Per Post Programs
Pay per post programs started last year. The programs pay bloggers to write a blog post about a sponsor's website. The paid blog post can be a review or an introduction on the advertiser's website, products or services. The blogger will be paid a least $5 for each sponsor post. Blogs that have massive traffic, high Google PR and large number of subscribers can charge a few hundred dollar for just writing one sponsor post. Here's are the two most popular Pay per post networks that offer this type of earning opportunities:

www.reviewme.com
www.payperpost.com

The downside of pay per post is that writing too many sponsor posts that are not relevant to your blog content can seriously affect your traffic.

5) Sell Text Link Ads
Selling text links on your blog can be a great source of additional online revenue. It is not difficult to get started, just go to Text-link-ads.com to sign up an account, then decide which part of your pages you want to display paid text links, set your price and you are ready to take order. Text-link-ads.com will handle all the promotional works. Another company that offers the similar services as Text-link-ads.com is Reverselinks.com

6) Hosting Web Poll
Vizu Answer offers a pretty new way to monetize your blog's and website's traffic. The pays the publishers on a cost-per-thousand impression (CPM) basis for hosting targeted web poll. The money a blogger can earn from hosting poll is depending on the page views. The more page views, the higher the earning.

Posted in Labels: Make Money Online 0 comments Posted by Rohit Shah

The AdSense AdVantage was actually a report written by Matt Callen from Hypervre.com last year. It is a case study report on how a person went from zero to $15,691 AdSense revenue by building AdSense sites and promoting them using paid advertising. It outlined everything in step-by-step format where you can follow to start profiting online with AdSense

Few days ago, Matt re-released The AdSense AdVantage with latest updates included in this new edition.

The AdSense Advantage - New Edition

You may have read the original report in 2007, but I think you would be interested to read this new one because there are new strategies, revised 'older methods' that used to work but a year later needed to be changed, Do's and Don'ts, and even a new article series at the end of the report.

Posted in Labels: Make Money Online 0 comments Posted by Rohit Shah

The first thing you need to do prior to starting an online business is to choose a money making idea or a profitable online business opportunity. When selecting an online business idea, there are a number things to think about, including:

1. Passions - Most of the business opportunities on the Internet are just like any small business startup, they take time and effort to become profitable. So when choosing an online business, you should first think about what types of online businesses you have an interest in and what area of business work your are passionate about. Doing what you like and interested will keep you working consistently and avoid getting bored easily when profit is low on the initial stage.

2. Skills and abilities - It is very difficult to work on something that beyond your abilities. Before starting an online business, you need to make sure that the online business opportunity you have chosen fits well within your abilities and constraints. You may evaluate your abilities, skills and knowledge as an business owner, and ask yourself whether you can handle the record-keeping tasks, online marketing work, and other administrative tasks required of each business opportunity. If you cannot do it all yourself, outsourcing will be a good solution.

3. Market demand and competition - Before going into any opportunity, it is vital to conduct an online market research to identify the market demand for your product, service, or information you will be offering. You would definitely want to start an online business that has high market demand or at least has a reasonable amount of market demand. If the size of your target market is too small, consider looking for another business opportunity. Also think about looking at a narrower market within each business opportunity to find a need that hasn't been filled.

On the other hand, competition analysis is also needed, you don't want jump into a niche that is crowed with tons of competitors.

4. Operating expenses - Do some calculations to get a general sense of an online business startup budget before deciding a business to pursue. Weed out those business opportunities and ideas that will exceed your predetermined budget.

When you find an online business opportunity that:

• Interests you.
• Is manageable using your skill and knowledge
• has a profitable market with reasonable competition,
• and falls under your budget

You have found an online business opportunity that is potentially workable.

Below are several common online business opportunities that you can choose to make money on the net:

1. Content-based Websites - Websites that are in content-based typically offer some kind of useful content to their targeted audience in the form of articles, e-courses, audio or videos. The targeted content will then be monetized in some ways (usually through contextual advertising programs such Google AdSense, YPN, Kontera ads link and many more) to generate revenue. Community websites like online forums and social media sites that have fresh content posted every moment can be also monetized in a similar fashion.

2. Online Services - There are plenty of online services you can offer on the Internet through your website. Some examples of services are web design, SEO, Internet marketing, web programming, Java script, web copy and content writing, data entry, account and administrative services, or even Web services such as domain registrations or Web hosting.

3. Online Products – You can virtually sell anything on the Internet. There are plenty of choices of selling products on the Internet, including creating custom products, promoting affiliate products, reselling others’ products, or developing your own digital products such as e-books, reports, DVD courses, audio and video tutorial, etc to sell online.

Use these basic example of online business opportunities together with the above tips for choosing the most appropriate business idea for your online startup, to aid in creating a manageable and in-demand online business.

Posted in Labels: Make Money Online 1 comments Posted by Rohit Shah

The idea of making money online is attractive to many, primarily because of the benefits it offers. Two main incentives are motivational factors here: The lucrative potential of the internet as well as the personal freedom that comes with working without a fixed schedule or geographic location.

One doesn’t need to suffer through monotonous day jobs which offer poor returns for the time invested.

Indeed, why make $7 an hour selling coffee behind a counter when you can easily earn the same amount by spending 10 minutes to write an article on your blog?

Even if you’re not looking to work full-time at home, the internet offers a viable source of money which can help to supplement your regular income.

Cataloging the Different Ways to Make Money Online

A basic search on Google will reveal many ways to make money online and most of the websites listed in the search results pages all seem to focus on the same methods of making money.

I thought it’ll be a good idea to categorize and compile a list of the online money making methods available so that future visitors to Dosh Dosh will have a reference point which provides them with all information they need.

This list uses a rather broad categorization, which I believe covers most of the ways to make money online. More methods and examples of how to make money online will be added to this list, which can be considered a work in progress.

1. Set up a Blog or Website for Profit

One of the best ways to make money online is to create a website or blog which allows you to earn money from the display of advertisements or the sale of products and services.

There are many different types of money making blogs which will help you to make money and you’ll need to pick a model that suits your interests, schedule and skill levels. A simple no frills blog will allow you to easily pull in at least several hundred dollars in a month through the use of paid blogging websites alone.

For more information, check out Dosh Dosh’s archive of articles on how to make money blogging. Apart from blogs, other websites can easily help you to generate passive income as well. These can range from e-commerce websites, social communities and information portals to basic landing pages for affiliate programs.

2. Learn about Affiliate Marketing and The Art of Selling

This involves promoting a specific product or service and earning commissions whenever the referred user makes a purchase based on your recommendations.

Affiliate marketing is a big and profitable industry that covers a wide spectrum of topics and fields. If you’ve got an interest in fitness, you can make money promoting fitness videos or courses. In terms of fashion wear, you can earn commissions by recommending friends to clothing or t-shirt companies with affiliate programs.

The amount of money you make depends on what you are selling. Done correctly, affiliate marketing is one of the most powerful ways to make money from the web. Amazon, Commission Junction and ClickBank are three of the biggest affiliate marketplaces you can use if you’re branching out into affiliate marketing.

3. Start an Online Business

Starting your own online business or company allows you to make money off the provision of specific services or products you may have. Some examples of popular online trades include web design, copywriting and internet marketing.

It isn’t difficult to start a business. It’s all about hiring the right people or having enough knowledge and connections within a specific industry. You should do some in depth research before you decide to settle on a specific niche for your business. Entrepreneur.com has a good collection of tips on how to start an online business.

4. Try Out Domaining and the Online Real Estate Trade

This is the business of buying, selling, developing and making money from domain names. A domainer purchases many domain names and sells them to interested buyers. This is similar to real estate investing offline and domainers also make money by developing websites and reselling it to a buyer.

This practice is known as site flipping and can make you a tidy sum of money if you know how to build an attractive and profitable website. For a rough estimate of how much money you can earn from site flipping, check out the SitePoint Marketplace to browse through the collection of websites for sale.

5. Participate in Get-Paid-to Websites

There are hundreds of websites out there which you pay you to read emails, do surveys, sign up for trial subscriptions and surf the web. Websites that pay you to complete offers are worth examining because they usually include affiliate programs with recurring commissions to be earned.

The benefit of get paid to websites is that you don’t need to have your own website or any personal skills at all. The downside is that there are a lot of get-paid-to scams around and finding websites that are legitimate can be fairly difficult. Scam.com is a forum you should visit to learn if the get-paid-to website you’re interested in actually pays its members.

There are also several Web 2.0 or social media websites out there that will pay you to participate in their community. This collection of social media websites usually operate via a revenue-sharing system, which allows you to earn a share of the overall ad revenue. How much you earn depends on how much your submitted article, video or image is viewed.

6. Find a Virtual Job or Make Use of Your Expertise

Not only limited to data entry jobs, online jobs in the new economy include virtual assistants, gold farmers, online life coaching and support for open source software. Mini consultation networks like Bitwine and Ether allow you to easily set up shop and offer advice on specific topics through the web.

Most of these virtual jobs involve direct communication through electronic mediums like internet telephony, instant messengers and emails. Which means that all you need to get started is a home computer with an steady internet connection.

If you are an expert in a specific topic, you can offer consultation via websites like Jyve or Just Answers. Other skill or knowledge based vocations also include participation in online competitions in areas such as photography, writing, designing and even gaming.

7. Freelance and Work on a Contract Basis Online

If you have a skill such as web design, programming or copywriting you can offer your services online in exchange for money. Traditional freelancing jobs include transcription, proofreading, translation services on top of the ones already mentioned above.

Online marketplaces that you can use to offer your services include Guru.com and Elance. One of the best ways to find freelance jobs is to visit webmaster forums because webmasters usually require a variety of web-based services, which range from programming and content writing to design work.

If you’re focusing on writing if don’t own your own blog, you can still make some money by registering for websites which will pay for your content. Another alternative is get paid to write for other blogs either as a staff or guest writer.

8. Create Your Own Product and Sell it

Products you can create include website templates, sound clips or even your own ebook. Websites like Lulu allow you to easily develop and sell your own collection of electronic products like calenders, brochures, artwork, images and ebooks.

If your specialty is images and photography, citizen journalism websites like Spymedia and Citizen Image will pay for your images. Other stock photography websites to consider include Shutterstock and Fotolia.

This also ties in with the concept of creating your online business, which will allow you to sell the products you create or own without resorting to a third party website which will usually take a commission of the sale.

9. Get Involved in the Online Retail Trade

Ebay and Craigslist are the two of the most popular websites you can use if you are planning to get into the online retail trade. You can purchase products from either website to sell to the other.

Alternatively, you can specialize use site-specific methods of participating in the online retail trade. For example, Ebay dropshipping and arbitrage is a method whereby you’ll with offline retailers or exporters in other countries, or buy from one seller and sell to another.

Posted in Labels: Make Money Online 0 comments Posted by Rohit Shah

Making money from a blog is an interesting topic for me and among my favorite money making bloggers, I find John Chow as one of the most interesting money makers in the blogosphere, particularly because he posts his revenue details that he makes from his blog - John Chow Dot Com.

John has been posting his revenue details ever since he first monetized his blog back in September 2006 and every month I find him beating his own record. Starting with just Google AdSense, John Chow dot Com made $352.94 in its first month as a monetized blog.

John kept adding more revenue sources and on October his revenue jumped to $1,361.64! Even after that John’s earnings continued to grow - $2,139.93 in November, $2,790.05 in December, and $3,440.66 in January.

And even though February is the shortest month of the year, it did not stop John Chow’s revenue from increasing. Guess what, he earned $7,011.05 on February !

John continues to impress me with his earnings, some may say he is boasting, but I disagree. By reading John’s making money from a blog series, it helped me find more revenue sources for my blog.

Following John Chow, I found two bloggers disclosing their revenue details on their blog - Everton and Thilak.

I have listed out these three blogger’s February revenue details in the order of their earnings

• AdSense - $2,775.5 (Everton), $977.60 (John Chow), $493.32 (Thilak)
• Text Link Ads - $1,162.50 (John Chow), $319.37 (Everton), $109.9 (Thilak)
• FeedBurner Ads - $373.62 (Thilak), $240.77 (Everton), $99.80 (John Chow)
• Direct Ad Sales - $400.00 (John Chow), $150.00 (Everton), $75 (Thilak)
• ReviewMe - $2,250.00 (John Chow), $200 (Thilak), $125.00 (Everton)
• IntelliTXT - 728.24$ (Thilak), $516.98 (John Chow), $75.82 (Everton)
• Blogads - $200 (Thilak), $100.42 (Everton)
• Vizu Answers - $118.96 (Everton), $48.10 (Thilak)
• Affiliate Sales - $1,005.00 (John Chow)
• AdVolcano - $375.00 (John Chow)
• TTZ Media - $224.17 (John Chow)
• Adbrite - $1.83 (Everton)
• TribalFusion – $420.68 (Thilak)
• Chitika – $77.46 (Thilak)
• Grand Total - $7011.05 (John Chow), $3,907.67 (Everton), $2524.74 (Thilak)

Blog Traffic and Page Views

• Everton: 220K visits and 452K page views
• John Chow: 127,614 visits and 266,641 page views
• Thilak: 232,120 page views

As you can see, Everton has done very well in Adsense when compared to John Chow and Thilak, but when you compare the overall earnings, John Chow earns a lot more.

John has been successful with Text Link Ads, Direct Sales and Affiliate sales and had got a lot of ReviewMe orders last month which helped him to beat his old record of $3,440.66.

Thilak somehow manages to earn more in Feedburner Ads even though John Chow and Everton has more traffic and RSS readers than him. He has also done well with Intellitxt. Good going !

The reason Everton earned so low with IntelliTXT is that he has been trying it for only 1 week. Perhaps by next month IntelliTXT will be his biggest money maker.

Congrats all of you, and I hope you continue disclosing your monthly earnings. It helps us find more revenue sources worth trying out. Now if only Darren Rowse could disclose his earnings like this

These are the revenue sources I currently depend on - AdSense, Tribal Fusion, Text Link Ads, Blog Ads, Chitika eMiniMalls, ReviewMe, Feedburner Ads and Vizu Answers. What I wish to try out next is IntelliTXT. A few days back, I even tried out AGLOCO.

I hope this post makes bloggers realize that they should not depend on just Google AdSense. May be in the beginning stage of a blog AdSense will do enough, but as your blog grows you should keep adding more revenue sources if you really want to earn from your blog. But also keep in mind that overloading your blog with Ads can make you lose readers.

Posted in Labels: Make Money Online 1 comments Posted by Rohit Shah

How to become successful in your Work from home business? Are you searching for success in your online business? Always wanted to be your own boss? Need to make money at home while you stay with the kids?

Nowadays this type of business ideas and opportunities have great scope on internet. It is difficult to find out which sites are helpful. This small article will give you some outlines how to start. Here are some business ideas and opportunities to become successful in online business.

First idea is to take Online Surveys. There are lots of companies which need your response to pull on their businesses. They will pay huge amount to the people who take their online surveys. It is so simple to earn livelihood by taking online surveys. But once you start putting your effort then it will become easy and enjoyable.

You can go for online auction or public sale. There are many mega-auction companies. E-bay is one of the biggest of all such companies which will show you unquestionable success because you can figure out how to make money online from home by selling your item on auction sites.

Get ready to invest a small, probably make a lot, and have loads of enjoyment in the progression.

Are you an excellent, terse writer? You can go for freelance writing. You can advertise your talent online by printing internet periodicals, bulletins and anthologies.

Data entry work and job has now happened to be more popular nowadays. See how it works? Usually you will be given a set of data in paper and you will have to enter it data in to computer. It’s very simple for you if you only know computer a basic.

Are you an inventive kind of person? If you are planning to advertise online then you need to invest a little but you don’t require any inventory. Excellent ideas which truly work are precious commodities, and it can be moved digitally at no cost!

You can also think about affiliate programs and marketing. This has a great importance in online success. The associates who put their effort in affiliate marketing make great use of the Internet to earn a small amount of money from lots of people.

The person who is engaged in affiliate marketing can become successful by being rewarded for issuing links to other sites on internet. The business partner can become successful by means of advertising associate to spread his business across the whole world.

It is obvious that before you decide anything, you need to think and study a lot deeper than examining this short explanation, Take your own time to make inquiries and to do research. Your decision should be from your brain and not from the heart.

An intention and practical approach will take you to the way of success. Remember that with devotion and imagination, you can achieve your goal.

Posted in Labels: Make Money Online 0 comments Posted by Rohit Shah