Who is MySurvey
MySurvey.com is actually a part of one of the most famous worldwide conductors of market research studies, Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) which operates in over 70 different countries. MySurvey.com is one of the leading market research panels that has been conducting market research studies and gathering opinions of U.S. consumers since 1946. However, for most of this time, MySurvey was known as National Family Opinion or NFO for short.

Until the year 2001, MySurvey only conducted market research studies via the postal service. In the last few years leading to 2001, they also introduced phone surveys. But in 2001, they started doing online surveys and that is how thee name changed from NFO to MySurvey.com.

The latest change to MySurvey is its merging with LightSpeed Research panel, which is another great legitimate paid survey company that has been conducting paid surveys for many years. So, I do believe this marriage is going to make an even stronger and better market research company.

MySurvey Scam = No, Legit= Yes!

Earning cash for taking paid surveys
Membership to MySurvey is 100% free. You earn points for each and every online survey that you qualify for and complete. You can then redeem your points for cash or prizes.

In addition to earning points for participating in MySurvey Surveys, you will also be entered into their $10,000 sweepstakes giveaway every day that you login to your MySurvey account. They also have other daily giveaways and a few really fun ways of earning additional points.

Redeeming Points
When you have earned 1100 points which is equivalent to $10 USD, you can request a cash out. You can either get paid via PayPal which takes less than a week to be processed or you can redeem for E-Certificates which may take a few days to arrive in your inbox or you can decide to redeem for on of the many hundreds of merchandise they have, and that will take about three to eight weeks to arrive.

If you have been a reader of BlogStash for a while, you know that I started making money online with paid surveys and MySurvey was one of those first legitimate paid surveys sites that I was introduced to and I started making quite a bit of money taking their online surveys.

Though, these days, I really have not much free time to take part in paid surveys, I still maintain my account with MySurvey and once in a while I do take a paid survey for the fun of it. If you are looking for a legitimate paid surveys company that you can use to get paid for taking surveys, I highly recommend MySurvey.

Posted on Feb 4, 2012 in Affiliate Marketing, Article Marketing, Blog Marketing, Home Business, How To…, Internet Marketing, Lead Generation, Small Business, Tips, Website Traffic, Work At Home | 0 comments

The success of a blog lives and dies by its traffic. If your blog has traffic, your chances of getting more traffic, more revenues and more exposure are very high. On the other hand, with low traffic, it really won’t matter even if you do everything else right.

Here are a few smart ways of increasing your traffic instantly.

Article Marketing

The key to article marketing is to create a schedule and stick to it. Article marketing is a numbers game. Don’t assume you can publish one article and be done with it.

The best article marketers publish at least a dozen articles a month. Some aim to publish as many as one or two per day.

The goal of article marketing is to target many low-competition low-traffic keywords. If you can get your articles ranked for many of those keywords, you can easily start to get hundreds of visitors a day.

It’s a lot of work, but it can work very quickly.

Guest Posting

Another method of using content to generate traffic is through guest posting.

Create a list of twenty other blogs you respect and relate to. Email them and ask if they’d be interested in having some free content, in exchange for a link back to your website.

Here’s the most important part: you need to have a well-designed website with good content. If someone visits your site and doesn’t see good content, they’re automatically going to assume that anything you write for them isn’t going to be good either.

On the other hand, if they’re impressed by what they see, they’ll want to do business with you.

Using YouTube Traffic

YouTube can bring in massive amounts of traffic to blogs.

Start by creating a YouTube channel and posting to it regularly. Create a schedule, such as once a day, three times a week or once a week. People will come to expect new videos from your channel often.

Try to pick specific keywords you want your videos to rank for. Don’t try too hard to SEO optimize your videos, but every once in a while sprinkle some keywords in the titles.

Use the videos on your blog. Embedding the video on your site gives you easy video loads, which increases your view count.

Your blog will funnel your YouTube traffic, which will funnel your blog traffic, and so on.

Blog Commenting

Download an RSS feed reader. Subscribe to ten or twenty blogs in your industry. Set the reader to alert you whenever a new post arrives.

This will help you stay on top of every new post as it comes. Whenever a new post is added, try to be the first one to comment.

Post intelligent comments that add value, then link back to your site using the “name” field.

These are a few different ways you can get immediate traffic to your blog. Each requires consistent action and persistence. If you pick a method, formulate a plan and execute it, the traffic will come. It might trickle in at first, but it can quickly grow to a torrent.

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Who is MySurvey
MySurvey.com is actually a part of one of the most famous worldwide conductors of market research studies, Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) which operates in over 70 different countries. MySurvey.com is one of the leading market research panels that has been conducting market research studies and gathering opinions of U.S. consumers since 1946. However, for most of this time, MySurvey was known as National Family Opinion or NFO for short.

Until the year 2001, MySurvey only conducted market research studies via the postal service. In the last few years leading to 2001, they also introduced phone surveys. But in 2001, they started doing online surveys and that is how thee name changed from NFO to MySurvey.com.

The latest change to MySurvey is its merging with LightSpeed Research panel, which is another great legitimate paid survey company that has been conducting paid surveys for many years. So, I do believe this marriage is going to make an even stronger and better market research company.

MySurvey Scam = No, Legit= Yes!

Earning cash for taking paid surveys
Membership to MySurvey is 100% free. You earn points for each and every online survey that you qualify for and complete. You can then redeem your points for cash or prizes.

In addition to earning points for participating in MySurvey Surveys, you will also be entered into their $10,000 sweepstakes giveaway every day that you login to your MySurvey account. They also have other daily giveaways and a few really fun ways of earning additional points.

Redeeming Points
When you have earned 1100 points which is equivalent to $10 USD, you can request a cash out. You can either get paid via PayPal which takes less than a week to be processed or you can redeem for E-Certificates which may take a few days to arrive in your inbox or you can decide to redeem for on of the many hundreds of merchandise they have, and that will take about three to eight weeks to arrive.

If you have been a reader of BlogStash for a while, you know that I started making money online with paid surveys and MySurvey was one of those first legitimate paid surveys sites that I was introduced to and I started making quite a bit of money taking their online surveys.

Though, these days, I really have not much free time to take part in paid surveys, I still maintain my account with MySurvey and once in a while I do take a paid survey for the fun of it. If you are looking for a legitimate paid surveys company that you can use to get paid for taking surveys, I highly recommend MySurvey.

Register for free with eHow
Obviously, to get get started and make money with eHow, you have to apply for eHow’s writer’s compensation program. Once you are approved, you can start writing “how to” based articles and you get paid based on the popularity of your articles.

Pick attractive and unique article titles
The title of your article is what will make or break it. If you want people to click on your tile and read your article, make your title attention grabbing.

Pick good keywords
If you want to make money on eHow, you need to pay attention to the keywords you use to base your articles around. Choose popular keywords for your articles so you can get more views on your articles, as the more views you get on your articles, the more money you can make using eHow.

If you can write, you can make money writing for eHow!

Keep each step short and to the point
eHow articles are based on “how to” method, which means the title must start with “how to…” and the article itself should be step by step kind of article. Make sure you keep your article short and easy to read. People tend to get board with long steps faster and leave the page.

Add images, tips and warnings to your articles
Images are great for grabbing the attention of the reader, so be sure to add related images to your articles. Also, eHow articles have a few sections under the article like “warnings” and “tips”, make sure you use those spaces to add to the quality of your articles and give more information to the readers.

Promote your article
Masking money on eHow comes down to traffic and page views. Promote the articles you wrote for eHow in any way you can. The more you promote your eHow articles and the more traffic you get to your article pages, the more money you can make on eHow. Although, one good thing about making money with eHow as a writer is that eHow articles tend to rank high in the search engines, especially Google, so they enjoy lots of free targeted traffic even without any promotion. Non the less, it always is better to promote your articles and get the most out of each one.

There are many ways to get paid to write online and many websites that do pay you to write, but of course not all are get paid to write websites are create equal. But when it comes to eHow, I truly believe learning how to make money with eHow is worth the effort.

Google Places can bring a lot of traffic to local businesses as well as lend credibility to an establishment. It can help you get people from Google Maps to your establishment, as well as help you rank highly in organic results for local searches.

Here’s how to get a high ranking in Google Places.

PageRank and Backlinks Matter

One factor that still plays a strong role in Google Places rankings are your backlinks. In standard SEO, backlinks are the backbone of any SEO campaign. In Google Places optimization, backlinks play a lesser role, but are still critically important.

According to SEOMoz’s Google Places reverse engineering study, PageRank has a very measurable impact on how well you rank.

In addition to getting links back to your site, you should also focus on getting links from local sites. For example, if you own a pizza shop in Chicago, try to get as many links as possible from other Chicago businesses and websites.

Work on Your Citations

Your citations are other web sources that cite your business.

These include websites like the Yellow Pages, Superpages, Yahoo!, Yelp, Citysearch and more.

These websites will list your address, phone number and possibly your web address as well.

Google uses these citations to verify that you are who you say you are. They want to make sure your business actually exists before putting it live on Google Places.

The number and quality of your citations affects your rankings. If any of your citations are inaccurate, make sure you contact the website to change them. If you’re not listed on any major offline business directory, make sure you submit your business.

Get Reviews

Reviews play another big role in ranking. The more reviews you have and the better the reviews, the higher your rankings.

Try to get as many people to review your business as possible. You can ask personal friends, family members and employees to leave honest reviews. You can also incentivize customers to do reviews.

Do whatever you can to get as many reviews as possible. However, never fake a review and never review your own business.

Listing Tips

There are a few important things to pay attention to in your listing.

First, categories are extremely important. They help Google figure out exactly what kind of business you run, because keywords aren’t always a good gauge when it comes to business names.

Make sure you’re in the right category. Do a search for your business type, see what category your competitors are using and do the same.

Make sure you verify your ownership of the business. Doing so will also give you a measurable bump.

Finally, make sure you fill out the information as accurately and completely as possible don’t be lazy and take short cuts it will cost you business in the long run. Use your real phone number and not a call tracking number. Use your main website and not a website designed specifically for Google Pages.

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So, how can you make money with blogger?… Thankfully, it is so easy and simple (at least the process of getting a blog up and running with blogger) that almost anyone can make money using blogger. Here is how to make money on blogger.

Find a topic you want to blog about
Before you do anything else, you need to determine the subject of your blog. For beginners, I would advice picking a subject that you are familiar with and are actually interested in. It will make it much easier for you to write about tat topic. Down the road, you can always create new blogs (after all its free) and pick other subjects.

Set up your free blog
Simply go blogger.com and use your Google account (if you don’t have one, you can get one for free) to register a blog. Make sue to pick a good related domain name. So, if your blog is going to be about making money with Forex, then pick something like MakingMoneyWithForex.Blogspot.com. Of course this domain may be taken already, but you can use other variations and find an available domain. Having your main keywords in your domain will help you with SEO (What is Search Engine Optimization?).

Create quality content
Now, stat writing articles for your new blog. Think of problems and question that people may have in regards to the subject you picked and create articles based on those questions and concerns. The more helpful your articles are, the more people will like them.

Advertise your new Blogger Blog
When it comes to learning how to make money with blogger and ultimately making money with it, you have to get this one right, you have to advertise it and drive traffic to it. But, of course since you are just starting out, it doesn’t make sense to spend money on advertising. So the best way is to use free methods to drive traffic to your site. Here is a link to a list of 61 free ways to drive traffic to your site that will surely help to increase web traffic.

Making money using Blogger also takes work!

Making money with blogger
This is where you can start making money with blogger. You have a few options. Here are a few ways in which you can monetize your blogger blog and make money using it.

1- Make money with blogger and Adsense

Head on over to your blogger dashboard and click on the “Layout” tab. From there you will be able to add Adsense code to your blog easily as it is already integrated in blogger blogs, so all you have to do is drag and drop your Adsense box wherever you want the ad to appear. If you don’t already have an Adsense account, you will have to apply for one (it’s free). Once you add the code there, Adsense will automatically show ads in that spot on every page of your blog and every time someone clicks on your ads, you get a commission.

2- Make money with blogger using Amazon Associate Program

AAP is also already integrated in blogger blogs. Click the “monetize” tab in your dashboard and basically supply the required information for your amazon associate account. (If you don’t have an account with AAP, you can register with them for free).

3- Make money with blogger using affiliate marketing

Another way to make money on blogger is to simply monetize your blog using affiliate products. Become an affiliate of a few products that are related to the subject of your blog and promote them on your blog. Every time someone buys one of those products from your blog, you get a nice commission.

Of course there are many other ways to make money on blogger as well like selling your own e-books and PDF reports and so on. But, the above methods are usually best since they are almost hands free and can be set up in a matter of minuets. And that will give you more time to focus on other aspects of running your blogger blog, like creating new posts and driving traffic to your blogger blog, which will ultimately help you earn money with your blog.

Remember, just creating a blog using Blogspot, publishing a few posts and leaving it there, hoping it will make you money, will not make you a dime. In order to make money using blogger you must apply everything you have learned about how to make money with blogger.

While there are many things you can do to ensure a successful business, there are a few things that can be labeled as the most important factors for maintaining a successful small business. Here are 3 small home business tips that can help you set the stone for a successful home based business:

It takes know how to choose the right small business!

Long term or short term?
An important question, yet one that lots of people overlook. Before you begin, you have to make clear what your goal is. Are you trying to build a small business as a long term business or are you just trying to make some quick cash to get caught up. These are two very different things and demand different strategies and planning. Knowing what your ultimate goal is, can help you plan your business with strategies and tactics that will lead to your success.

Research and learn as much as you can
There are hundred and even thousands of opportunities out there, but that doesn’t mean any of those opportunities are suited for you and your particular situation. You need to pick one that matches you, your skills, your experience and your own unique situation in general.

Even when choosing a free online business, you need to do your research. Just because it won’t cost you any money to get going, doesn’t mean you dont have to research. Why would you want to waste your time and talent starting a business that isn’t going to give you results? A through research and analysis can help you pick a solid method, determine the best market, realize what kind of products or services you can sell and who you could run your day to day business.

Educate yourself
Just like building a successful offline based small business, building and maintaining an online based small business needs an educated owner. Before you start your small business, learn everything there is to learn about your small business. Educate yourself on what works and what doesn’t, how other online small business who are successful work, the best strategies for creating and providing a winning product or service and so on.

Keep in mind, you can never learn everything! That’s why even after you start your business, you need to keep educating yourself. There is always something new to learn, especially these days with all the fast developing new technologies that impact your business on a lot of different levels. So, it pays off to keep yourself up to date with your industry.

Starting an online small business is a great way to make money. It can be a very simple and exciting event. However, taking it to the next level and making it a successful and profitable is not so easy. Building a successful small business, whether offline or online, demands lots of work. You can set the stage to building and maintaining a successful small business by using the above 3 small business tips.

Getting clients and sales in a small business is completely different than in a large business. In a large business, you’re looking at branding and sales teams. In a small business, you’re looking for the one activity that can get you profitable clients the fastest.

What are some sure-fire ways small businesses can market their services effective? What kind of marketing tactics will generate results today, rather than having to wait months to pay off?

Business Networking International

Business Networking International, also known as BNI, is one of the largest organizations of professional lead sharing in the world.

Here’s how it works.

Let’s say in one BNI group there’s a graphic designer, a lawyer, a business consultant, a dentist and a real estate agent.

If the business consultant meets a client who needs a lawyer, he refers them to his friend in BNI. If the graphic designer meets someone who needs a new website for a new business, he might refer them to the business consultant for advice.

So on and so forth. Essentially, BNI is a formal way of getting together and sharing leads. Anyone who is a professional in their field is invited, but each BNI branch can only have one person from each profession.

Get on Google Local

If you run a local business, pay attention to Google Local. Google Local will allow you to jump ahead of all the other organic search listings in Google and have your website display way at the top.

In addition to getting ranked in the organic listings, your business will also show up in Google Maps searches. For example, if someone types in “Dentist in San Francisco” in Google Maps, if you’re ranked in Google Local your result will show up.

In the age of Androids and iPhones, getting ranked in Google Maps is more important than ever. A lot of people are simply typing in search terms on their phones to find businesses near them.

Getting ranked in google Local is all about optimizing your local page. Make sure to add ample photos to your page, write detailed information about your business, its hours and location, and put a link to your website.

Get as many people to review your business as you can. The more reviews your business has, the better your chances of getting ranked.

Start a Blog

There’s no better way to build credibility in an industry than to start a blog.

A blog allows you to express your thoughts to your audience, build a relationship and demonstrate your knowledge all at the same time.

Starting a blog is slow work in the beginning. You might only have a few visitors a month.

But over time, as people get to know you and your work more, people will keep coming back. Also, as you get more and more content on your blog, search engines will send more traffic to you.

Not only will starting a blog bring you traffic from people who’ve never heard of you before, but you’ll also increase your reputation among people who know you.

Finally, blogging is a great way to build connections. It positions you as an expert, which will get you more speaking opportunities, partnership opportunities and business opportunities in general.

Continue Reading: 1 2 3 4 5

Leave a Reply

Getting clients and sales in a small business is completely different than in a large business. In a large business, you’re looking at branding and sales teams. In a small business, you’re looking for the one activity that can get you profitable clients the fastest.

What are some sure-fire ways small businesses can market their services effective? What kind of marketing tactics will generate results today, rather than having to wait months to pay off?

Business Networking International

Business Networking International, also known as BNI, is one of the largest organizations of professional lead sharing in the world.

Here’s how it works.

Let’s say in one BNI group there’s a graphic designer, a lawyer, a business consultant, a dentist and a real estate agent.

If the business consultant meets a client who needs a lawyer, he refers them to his friend in BNI. If the graphic designer meets someone who needs a new website for a new business, he might refer them to the business consultant for advice.

So on and so forth. Essentially, BNI is a formal way of getting together and sharing leads. Anyone who is a professional in their field is invited, but each BNI branch can only have one person from each profession.

Get on Google Local

If you run a local business, pay attention to Google Local. Google Local will allow you to jump ahead of all the other organic search listings in Google and have your website display way at the top.

In addition to getting ranked in the organic listings, your business will also show up in Google Maps searches. For example, if someone types in “Dentist in San Francisco” in Google Maps, if you’re ranked in Google Local your result will show up.

In the age of Androids and iPhones, getting ranked in Google Maps is more important than ever. A lot of people are simply typing in search terms on their phones to find businesses near them.

Getting ranked in google Local is all about optimizing your local page. Make sure to add ample photos to your page, write detailed information about your business, its hours and location, and put a link to your website.

Get as many people to review your business as you can. The more reviews your business has, the better your chances of getting ranked.

Start a Blog

There’s no better way to build credibility in an industry than to start a blog.

A blog allows you to express your thoughts to your audience, build a relationship and demonstrate your knowledge all at the same time.

Starting a blog is slow work in the beginning. You might only have a few visitors a month.

But over time, as people get to know you and your work more, people will keep coming back. Also, as you get more and more content on your blog, search engines will send more traffic to you.

Not only will starting a blog bring you traffic from people who’ve never heard of you before, but you’ll also increase your reputation among people who know you.

Finally, blogging is a great way to build connections. It positions you as an expert, which will get you more speaking opportunities, partnership opportunities and business opportunities in general.

Continue Reading: 1 2 3 4 5

Leave a Reply

Getting clients and sales in a small business is completely different than in a large business. In a large business, you’re looking at branding and sales teams. In a small business, you’re looking for the one activity that can get you profitable clients the fastest.

What are some sure-fire ways small businesses can market their services effective? What kind of marketing tactics will generate results today, rather than having to wait months to pay off?

Business Networking International

Business Networking International, also known as BNI, is one of the largest organizations of professional lead sharing in the world.

Here’s how it works.

Let’s say in one BNI group there’s a graphic designer, a lawyer, a business consultant, a dentist and a real estate agent.

If the business consultant meets a client who needs a lawyer, he refers them to his friend in BNI. If the graphic designer meets someone who needs a new website for a new business, he might refer them to the business consultant for advice.

So on and so forth. Essentially, BNI is a formal way of getting together and sharing leads. Anyone who is a professional in their field is invited, but each BNI branch can only have one person from each profession.

Get on Google Local

If you run a local business, pay attention to Google Local. Google Local will allow you to jump ahead of all the other organic search listings in Google and have your website display way at the top.

In addition to getting ranked in the organic listings, your business will also show up in Google Maps searches. For example, if someone types in “Dentist in San Francisco” in Google Maps, if you’re ranked in Google Local your result will show up.

In the age of Androids and iPhones, getting ranked in Google Maps is more important than ever. A lot of people are simply typing in search terms on their phones to find businesses near them.

Getting ranked in google Local is all about optimizing your local page. Make sure to add ample photos to your page, write detailed information about your business, its hours and location, and put a link to your website.

Get as many people to review your business as you can. The more reviews your business has, the better your chances of getting ranked.

Start a Blog

There’s no better way to build credibility in an industry than to start a blog.

A blog allows you to express your thoughts to your audience, build a relationship and demonstrate your knowledge all at the same time.

Starting a blog is slow work in the beginning. You might only have a few visitors a month.

But over time, as people get to know you and your work more, people will keep coming back. Also, as you get more and more content on your blog, search engines will send more traffic to you.

Not only will starting a blog bring you traffic from people who’ve never heard of you before, but you’ll also increase your reputation among people who know you.

Finally, blogging is a great way to build connections. It positions you as an expert, which will get you more speaking opportunities, partnership opportunities and business opportunities in general.

Continue Reading: 1 2 3 4 5

Leave a Reply

Getting clients and sales in a small business is completely different than in a large business. In a large business, you’re looking at branding and sales teams. In a small business, you’re looking for the one activity that can get you profitable clients the fastest.

What are some sure-fire ways small businesses can market their services effective? What kind of marketing tactics will generate results today, rather than having to wait months to pay off?

Business Networking International

Business Networking International, also known as BNI, is one of the largest organizations of professional lead sharing in the world.

Here’s how it works.

Let’s say in one BNI group there’s a graphic designer, a lawyer, a business consultant, a dentist and a real estate agent.

If the business consultant meets a client who needs a lawyer, he refers them to his friend in BNI. If the graphic designer meets someone who needs a new website for a new business, he might refer them to the business consultant for advice.

So on and so forth. Essentially, BNI is a formal way of getting together and sharing leads. Anyone who is a professional in their field is invited, but each BNI branch can only have one person from each profession.

Get on Google Local

If you run a local business, pay attention to Google Local. Google Local will allow you to jump ahead of all the other organic search listings in Google and have your website display way at the top.

In addition to getting ranked in the organic listings, your business will also show up in Google Maps searches. For example, if someone types in “Dentist in San Francisco” in Google Maps, if you’re ranked in Google Local your result will show up.

In the age of Androids and iPhones, getting ranked in Google Maps is more important than ever. A lot of people are simply typing in search terms on their phones to find businesses near them.

Getting ranked in google Local is all about optimizing your local page. Make sure to add ample photos to your page, write detailed information about your business, its hours and location, and put a link to your website.

Get as many people to review your business as you can. The more reviews your business has, the better your chances of getting ranked.

Start a Blog

There’s no better way to build credibility in an industry than to start a blog.

A blog allows you to express your thoughts to your audience, build a relationship and demonstrate your knowledge all at the same time.

Starting a blog is slow work in the beginning. You might only have a few visitors a month.

But over time, as people get to know you and your work more, people will keep coming back. Also, as you get more and more content on your blog, search engines will send more traffic to you.

Not only will starting a blog bring you traffic from people who’ve never heard of you before, but you’ll also increase your reputation among people who know you.

Finally, blogging is a great way to build connections. It positions you as an expert, which will get you more speaking opportunities, partnership opportunities and business opportunities in general.

Continue Reading: 1 2 3 4 5

Leave a Reply

Getting new customers doesn’t have to be an expensive endeavor. The old axiom of “it takes money to make money” just doesn’t have to be the case when it comes to small business marketing.

If you want to give your business an infusion of customers without having to spend big bucks, read these ideas carefully. Here are several different ways you can promote your small business – all with little to no cash investment.

Use Third Party Review Websites

If you own a guesthouse or hostel, get on Hostelworld or HostelBookers. Get as many people to review you as possible.

If you own a spa, get as many people as possible to review you on Yelp.

No matter what kind of service you’re running, chances are there’s some kind of review system out there. People want to talk about and share experiences they’ve had with service providers in your industry.

Find out what these “hubs” are and actively cultivate positive reviews. Getting ranked #1 in your category on one of these sites is all it takes to get your business completely booked up.

Offer to Write for Publications

If you’re an expert on internet marketing, why not start writing a column for your local newspaper’s business section?

Or perhaps you might want to see if you can get a writing gig in a small internet business related magazine.

Being invited to write a column isn’t as hard as you might imagine. If you have the qualifications, editors are always on the lookout for more content. Because the better the content, the better their publication.

Finally, try also approaching bloggers to do guest blog posts. Make sure you state your qualifications upfront so they know you know your stuff, and make sure to suggest a few potential post topics in your introductory email.

Speak in Public

Public speaking is one of the most powerful and least competitive marketing methods around. Why? Because almost everyone is terrified of speaking in public.

Speaking in public requires honing your presentation skills. It involves mastering your fear of looking bad. It involves quite a bit of personal and professional development.

It’s a lot of hard work to become a great speaker. However, once you do become a great speaker, marketing will likely become a non-issue for your business.

Speaking in front of groups generates so much curiosity and credibility that if you do it on a regular basis, your business is more or less set.

Promoting a small business doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. If money is your main reason for not promoting your business, let it stop you no more. Instead of using your money to promote your business, use your smarts, charm and determination to do the job.

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You may ask, why wouldn’t people just go to the public library and pick up a book for free? Well, the problem with public libraries is that most of their books are donated by individual and organizations and often times these donations don’t include current best sellers. And lets not forget the fact that going to library cost time and gas. Considering the current high gas prices, most people would rather use that gas money instead to buy a book right from the comfort of their own home and they keep the book forever.

The good thing about used books is that even in this though financial situation, people will buy them. Why?… Its simple, used books offer a cheap and enjoyable way to scape the harsh reality we all are facing in our every day lives.

Staring an online used book store is not as hard as you think. If you are thinking about a home based business that doesn’t require thousands of dollars in investment, a used book store could be your answer. Here are 7 easy to follow steps you can take to start your own online used book store for less than $100:

You can start an online used book store for under $100!

Stock up on books
The first step is to get free books for your store. There are several ways to do that. Ask your friends and family to give you any books they don’t want any more. Check out flea markets, thrift stores and good will stores. Often times you can get books for pennies on the dollar in such stores.

Pick a name for your business/website
Choose a name for your business/online used book store. Pick something that is both relevant and short and memorable. Don’t forget, the name you pick for your store, is going to be the domain name of your website. So make sure the domain name is available. Although you don’t have to have the same domain name as your store name, but having one name as your store name and website name will be much more professional and easier for your future customers to remember. A domain name will cost you less than $10 a year to register.

Before you buy your domain name and settle on your business name, make sure to check and see if anyone is already using the same name. If, so you are going to have to pick another one as you will not be able to register an already registered business name.

Register your business name
For legal reasons you will have to register your business name. Here is an easy way to see whether or not your business name is taken. Go to Google or any other search engines and type in “state business name search.” It will bring up a site run by your state where you can search. You can also use the same site to get information on who to easily register your business name, if its available.

Get a Federal Tax ID Number(free)
You have to get a Federal Tax ID Number for your business. It wont sot you any money, but it is a must if you wanna take your home based business farther. It’s basically like a social security card for individuals, but EIN (Employer Identification Number) as its called is unique 9 digit number that is assigned to your business and is used for permits, tax returns, and in any other situation where you have to identify your business.

Buy your business license
You will have to go to your city hall and pay a fee (about $25 or so) to buy a license to run your business in your state.

Find a host for your site
Find a hosting company top host your website. You can find reliable hosting companies for around $7 a month. Of course, you can also use free hosting as well. There are a few good ones with little to no restriction out there.

Open for business
You are almost there. In order to make money as soon as possible, get your site up and running as soon as you can. Of course, you don’t have to confine yourself to selling only books. Many book stores also sell DVD, video games, CD and other types of content. Every new business is going to have its ups and downs. Don’t give up! Commit yourself, work hard and push through obstacles and before you know it, you will be making good money with your own home based business of used book store.

Squidoo is a social networking site. However, it’s also more than that. Users are able to create their own lenses, which are essentially web pages. You can write your lens on any topic and use it to make money.

Squidoo lenses are said to receive a great page ranking with the search engines. However, there are also things you can do to boost your Squidoo lens rankings.

Content

Like any basic web page, the best way to boost a Squidoo lens ranking is to publish great content. Content is evaluated by a number of criteria including:

* Quality – Create top quality content. That means it is well written but also provides value and interest to a specific audience. For example, if your topic is Hot Chocolate then you want to make sure you’re providing interesting and valuable information to people who enjoy hot chocolate.

* Updates and frequency – Squidoo isn’t a “set it and forget it” type of site. You want to be vigilant about updating your page with new and interesting information. The more you update it, the better. It adds value and maintains interest in your page.

Squidoo Account Activity

Your ranking increases as the activity on your lens increases. It also increases as your own activity on the site increases. Remember, this is a social networking site.

Links

Squidoo uses the snowball effect to boost rankings too. As your lens grows in popularity, more high-ranking lenses will link to you and vice versa. You begin to generate more and more awareness and attention. You generate more activity on your lens. This results in a better ranking. It snowballs or increases in volume.

Include Images

In addition to publishing great content you can increase the interest level and value of your content by including images and even video. You can also update or add interest to your lens by creating an interesting-looking page. You can use CSS or HTML to add graphics and borders to your page.

Make Sales

Squidoo allows you to use both eBay and Amazon modules to earn commissions. Each commission you make helps boost your ranking. More sales means more money to you but it also means that your lens becomes more visible.

Votes

Readers and other Squidoo publishers can “favorite” your lens or give your lens a thumbs up. These votes of confidence help increase your ranking. How do you get votes? It all comes back to publishing great content!

Ask Questions

Finally, don’t forget to ask questions and get your readers involved. Publish a poll or survey. People enjoy being interactive and sharing their opinion. This will drive traffic to your lens, increase linking and boost your ranking.

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Are you looking for ways to maximize your business or create another stream of income? Try a membership site. It is not easy, but it can pay off in many ways for your business.

Why do people seek out your business? Well, they want what you are selling. They see it as a quality product that they can get behind. Whether you are selling content, a service or another tangible product, your brand is one that people have come to trust and find of good quality.

A membership site can multiply that hard work to increase not only your profits but also your expert status and visibility in your niche market. Be aware, however – while there are many advantages to a membership site, the first requirement is that you are ready to handle the increased workload. Research all that you need to do to get and keep it up and running. If you can meet those needs, then you are golden.

So, back to the reasons why you need one. Here are a few.

Dedicated customers
Once you convince someone to buy a membership, they will automatically renew each month as long as you provide the promised product and tools to help that customer grow their own business. The idea of a membership site is to satisfy a need but at a higher level. Even if the members one day opt out of the membership, they will more than likely still use your services in some other capacity.

Monthly income
Like we said, you are creating a new income stream. As long as your customers are satisfied, you can count on that money coming in each month.

Increase your brand
Through offering exclusive products and services to members, you are strengthening your brand. This means having the resources to provide consistent quality to your members each and every month. When that happens, these members will promote your membership site with their network which can net you more customers.

You can expand this portion of your business
Your membership site may start out with one level until you get the hang of managing it and/or you pick up more customers. Adding a multiple tier of services increases monthly profits and opportunities to attract more customers. It also helps solidify your position in your niche market.

Membership sites can be a pitfall if you are not careful. Being prepared can avoid this problem. Have your resources in place to continually provide tools and products for clients each and every month. Also, don’t forget to create a communication system where a client can reach you when they need you and get a timely response.

Membership sites can be a big boon to your business if you are prepared to take the challenge.

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Content marketing is getting more and more important every day. People today are finding more and more content through social networks and less and less through search engines. That means that creating content people want to share is becoming ever more important.

Here’s how to use content marketing to your advantage.

Build Your Personal Brand

At the end of the day, the only thing that travels with you after every job, deal or business venture is your personal brand.

A lot of people fail to consciously build their personal brands. Yet this is truly one of the most valuable assets you have.

By creating high quality, unique content for a certain market, you establish yourself as an expert. Finding jobs, getting business partners and even attracting investors for businesses gets much easier if you’re a known content publisher.

Build Trust with Your Customers

A customer would much rather trust their money with an industry leader who provides a lot of quality content than a site that’s just out there to sell a product.

There’s something about consistency that really builds trust. Anyone can put up a website to start selling a product, but if you’re producing high quality content for six months, people will instinctively trust you a lot more. They’ll think you’ll still be around to help them six months down the line.

Increase Your Viral Launching Pad

If you ever want to launch a viral campaign, you’ll have a base of users to start you off with.

Let’s say you want to launch a video contest, where users send in funny videos around a specific theme and the winner gets a prize.

If you hadn’t been publishing content, how would you find 100+ people to submit videos? It’d be very hard.

But if you’ve already been publishing content for months, you’ll already have a reader base you can launch your viral campaign from.

The “Secret” to Good Content Marketing

Great content marketing is really as simple as focusing on providing good content, consistently.

Good content should be completely original. If it’s based on your own personal experience, so much the better. People should feel like they can relate to your struggles and learn from your lessons when they read your material.

Don’t be disappointed if for the first few months your reader base takes a bit of time to build up. That’s how it works: reputations take time to become established. Fortunately, once your reputation is established, it also builds momentum and can grow very quickly.

The web is veering more and more towards creating good content. It’s not an overnight technique; so the sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll start reaping the benefits.

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The market selection process is one that shouldn’t be skimped on. It’ll affect everything else you do and can determine your success or failure before your website even exists.

Finding the perfect niche involves weighing a lot of different factors to find the perfect one. Here’s how to find the perfect niche.

The Niche Brainstorm Process

Start by brainstorming as many niches as you can think of. Get out a notepad and jot down ideas.

Once you run out of ideas to jot down from the top of your head, go to Amazon.com and browse some of the different magazine titles. If there’s a magazine for it, chances are the market’s big enough to support a website.

Jot down more ideas, then head over to eBay Pulse. Again, browse the categories and products that are selling and see if those spark any ideas.

Keep brainstorming for a few days to get all the ideas down on paper.

Evaluating Profitability

There’s generally a trade-off between ease of ranking and profitability. In other words, if there’s a lot of money to be made in a certain market, chances are it’s going to be fairly difficult to get ranked.

For most beginning to intermediate marketers, the goal is to find a niche market that has profit potential but isn’t too difficult to rank for.

Start by using the Google Keyword Tool to evaluate how many searches your keyword(s) get. Then head over to Google, type in the keywords and take a look at the top results.

Who’s ranking right now? Are they super-high authority sites or are they relatively easy to beat personal websites?

Check their PageRank and backlinks using Yahoo Site Explorer. The lower the PageRank and the fewer the backlinks, the better your chances of ranking.

Once you’ve checked out the search engine competition, evaluate how much money there is to be earned in the niche.

Do this by estimating the average customer value. How much is the average sale worth? For continuity products, how long does each customer pay a month and how long do they usually stay on for? Can additional products be sold to the same customer, and if so how many products and at what price?

After this process, you should have a few potential markets with relatively low competition that have high profit potential that you can target.

Evaluating Personal Passion

Once you have a few potential markets to get into, it’s time to look at your own personal passions.

Which market(s) hold the most interest for you, personally? Remember that you’re going to be working with this site for at least a few months to come.

Once you’ve found a site that has both profit potential and personal appeal, all that’s left is to pull the trigger!

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Advanced Link Prospecting

Of course there are all those amazing advanced searching operators that you learned about in part one. Operators that will allow you find guest posting opportunities by seeking out pages on websites that reach out to writers and guest bloggers, but there are many different ways to find these types of blogs. Here are few of them:

Using paid link directories. In the past, submitting to a link directory was a way to increase your link juice so that you could add numbers to that linking profile. Although some paid directories still pass a little bit of juice, they aren’t really a main focus of SEO’s anymore. However they are great for finding old and high quality blogs – especially blogs that most people aren’t aware of, that perhaps aren’t at the top of the SERPs for dominant keyword phrases, but pass a very high page rank. These are link gold mines

Use Google Alerts. Google has a system where they allow you to create a new alert that gets sent to your email every time a certain page that revolves around the key words you feed it is created. It is perfect for finding brand new intitle:”write for us” pages and the faster you can be to replying to one of these pages, the better chance you’ll get at being able to post on their web site.

Social media routes

. This is really about twitter. Twitter is such an amazing tool for social networking, and this includes the guest posting process. You can initiate contact with webmasters via their twitter handle or you can search the field with search queries such as “guest posting” or any other form of the phrase. The best part is that the search queries are as close to real time as it gets.

Use Technorati and Google Blogs

These are two ways to find the most amount of blogs possible in the littlest amount of time. Are they the highest quality? – Sometimes, sometimes not. Technorati lists blogs in the order of what they deem high quality which doesn’t always work out for them. That being said, there are more than a million blogs listed in that site and you can spend days manually scraping it if need be. Whether the blog is about balance transfer credit cards, or super octane energy drinks, you will be able to find it on Technorati.

Things to Work With Your Clients/ Things to keep in Mind

There are many things that come along with guest posting and link building that can make your job a lot harder when it comes to building these links. The link building process can be very tedious. So make sure that before you begin, you talk with your clients on the following topics.

Determine fair requirements in terms of metrics. In case you didn’t know, there is little (I say little but it’s not little at all) thing called page rank. It is the metric which Google uses to measure the value of a web page. Remember that the higher Page Rank requirements that your client give you for guest posting, the harder it will become to get the job done. Sites with higher metrics in things like Page Rank and Alexa Rank often don’t even accept guest posts to begin with, so you will have to spend a lot more time prospecting and ensuring your content is extra high quality. You can find out what a sites page rank and Alexa Rank is each time you visit a site by downloading the SEO Quake toolbar.

Determine what anchor text you will be using. Once again, the anchor text you will be using will affect what you will be able to accomplish in terms of turnaround time. Anchor text is a semi-big issue. E.g. If you are trying to build links with the word “reviews” in it (for example “HDTV reviews”) it might be a lot harder to fit within the article than say something like “link building.” The more natural the anchor text sounds, the easier it will be to build the links.

What niche will you be operating in? Not all niches will generate the same amount of success in terms of conversion rates. For instance it is very hard to build links in the gambling and poker niche, yet very easy to build links in the SEO, and health niche. Make sure your clients have web sites that people do not mind linking to.

Now that you have learned how to find guest posting opportunities at a higher level and know the basics of what to look for in terms of clients and setting up requirements. It is is time to start making. I wish you the best in your link building ventures!

Of course finding clients to a lot of Internet marketers out their simply means one thing: Creating a landing page that stands out on a website that gets great visibility; Easily said, a lot harder to be done. This is also because there are a lot of websites that are at the top of the SERPs that are probably going to be there for a long time – even in the SEO and SEM field. Those people are able to hold on to their clients because – well, what better selling point is there rather than: “Yea, we rank number one for this term – we can do the same for you.”?

So building a web site is definitely one option for you. This option however, is not your best option – especially if you are an absolute “newbie.” That’s because making a web site takes time. Every single online entrepreneur I know (however I don’t know too many ) created a few websites before they finally got it right with the ultimate web site. Now I am sure that there are people out there that make it all of the time with their first web site, but if you are looking to get clients I suggest one of two things when creating a website that offers your services:

1. Start a website right away – who knows it might be the one that pans out in the future. Just don’t expect any money to start coming in from them for a while. You have to pay your dues in the Internet marketing industry and you will be paying them for a while. Obviously one of the factors that goes in the search engine rankings is domain age (some hypothesize it is the age of the first link). So getting the site up with a couple links pointing to it right away is probably a good idea. Get the ball rolling
2. Don’t start a website geared towards Internet marketing – start a website in another niche that will make you money either through AdSense, private advertising, affiliate programs, or some other form of passive income (I say that but it’s not really passive). Obtain your clients via another platform

I keep saying find clients without a website already developed and high up in the SERPs… but

HOW?

There are a lot of different ways to find clients these days. One of the best ways to do so is to start getting heavily involved in specialized, SEO, SEM, and web development forums. For a list of the top forums you can visit Big-Boards.com.

Side Note #4: Obviously, it is probably going to be a while before you are able to make money on the Internet through networking in the forums. With constant work however – it shouldn’t take too long. A great place to get started would be right at here at this job forum (where you can find many people are in constant need of a link building service and a content writing service). In the meantime – work on strengthening your list of blogs that actually pay you just to guest post on them. You can make money doing these things while searching for clients.

Being the GO TO Guy for large SEO Companies is a great way to haul in long term money from clients. Another great type of client to work for would be the affiliate. Affiliates are always on the constant look out for people that specialize in link building. This is because it can sometimes be hard for affiliates to continuously generate enough content (and high quality content) to get it to rank in the search engines.

You can start contacting these people via email campaigns. Do you know what an affiliate site looks like? If you don’t go to clickbank.com and peruse around for what an amazing affiliate web site looks like. Start emailing people like this and tell them what you have to offer. Email large SEO companies that you think could highly benefit from your services. They usually have a list of clients, and depending on how good your emails are, they might just be willing to upsell all of them your services. Large SEO companies are always looking for a place to outsource a lot of their nitty-and-gritty SEO work and have a lot of room when it comes to SEO services. Guest posting is both something that takes up a lot of time, and requires an array of different skills.

Now that you can get a start on finding clients for your link building ventures, Join me for part three of the series where I will get down to business on how to scale your guest posting opportunities using different tools and techniques.

People often think of inventors as odd folks who are chasing their tail. The truth is, you need a strategy plan in order to get your dreams to fruition. Sometimes inventors are too busy thinking about their idea to actually sit down and plan something that could sell. This is just a fatal error that many inventors never get past, but hopefully you can implement the tips to get yourself out of that rut.

Planning for the market

People have unmet needs as consumers, and that is one reason people buy things. As an inventor, you also act as a marketer, and a product developer, since you need to ascertain what consumers want. You also need to predict what businesses may need. One way to do this is to familiarize yourself with the industry you hope to enter. You ought to know that the toy industry is very difficult to break into and the timeline may take months. Don’t expect to call in September and get your product to market in November.

Inventing takes time, and you should try to predict trends in the future and even a year or two ahead of the market. If your product is sufficiently advanced, and is years ahead of the marketplace, you may not be able to sell it right now as well. Your job as an inventor is to think before you start inventing, because there may not be a need for it. You can check with family and friends to see if your idea has viable interest. The best way to check for interest is to do actual product marketing research, using surveys and other methods. Pretend that you’re selling your idea to the board of a company. They will want to know why they should pick up your project, oversee its development, and try to sell it in the grocery store. Companies will usually do their own market research ahead of you, so they already know but want to hear your research anyways.

You can also try to work with other companies in the industry you’re inventing for. Sometimes people will tell you directly what you should improve on, and what companies are looking to market.

Protection of your property

Once you have created something that is tangible, you can go ahead and try to protect it with things like patents. We would not be able to give legal advice, since everyone’s situation is different. You can protect your invention in many ways. Oftentimes, however, the common theme of protecting your idea is the initial cost needed. Sometimes it can cost in the tens of thousands to patent an invention, as well as a period of years. There are better ways to go about protecting your invention, rather than rushing out to patent it right away.