20 Ideas to Make Money Online

A cash cow for the enterprising, the Internet is littered with opportunities to make a fast buck. While it rarely qualifies as a solitary source of income, the Net can easily help you supplement it. However, the amount you earn depends on the time and effort invested. Go through these 20 options and find out which ones work for you.

Blogging
If you're a passionate closet writer who wants to be published but can't find a way to do so, make each keystroke your way to wealth by penning your own blog. Starting a blog doesn't require extensive technical skills but it's important that you have expertise in the field you are writing on. This will attract visitors to your site. Building a large following will enable you to earn profit by luring advertisers, writing paid reviews or getting commissions for promoting other people's products.

Paid Writing
If maintaining a blog is difficult for you but you still want to indulge your passion for writing, you can jot down articles for other blogs or sites such as Weblogs, Helium or PayPerPost. Writing an e-book can also be a good option. E-books are investment free, with no cost for printing and shipping. If you have a strong command over languages, you can become a copy editor, where Webmasters will pay you to read articles and correct grammatical errors, sentence fragments, etc.

e-tuitions/Webinars
The demand for tutors is high and growing. So, if you like helping others learn, e-teaching could be the earning ticket for you. All you need to become an online tutor is expertise in your subject and a few spare hours per week. TutorVista, e-tutor, SmartThinking and Tutor.com are some of the sites you can enroll with. If you gain a good reputation as a coach, you could even conduct Webinars-lectures or seminars transmitted over the Net. College and university students are willing to pay to gain entry to a well-respected Webinar.

Affilliate/Reseller
For those who have the knack of selling, one of the best ways to make money online is to become an affiliate/reseller. An affiliate is a person who gets a commission for selling every product that he promotes, whether on his Website or through any other avenue such as eBay. You don't have to own the product. You only need to sign up for an affiliate program with a company and start selling its products under your referral link. Firms such as Commission Junction or Click Bank have a large pool of products.

Buying/Selling domains
Buying and selling domain names is another way to make money from home and requires very little investment or time. You can buy domains at their registration prices or even cheaper and trade them at a profit. However, always research on sites such as sedo.co.uk, afternic.com, ebay.com or other domain auction sites to get an estimate of the hottest selling names. The best way to find good ones is to use terminated domain lists, which contain several expired names that are back in the pool.

Freelancing for Professionals
Freelancing is a great option for professionals who are experts in their respective trades and know how to ensure customer satisfaction. Various freelancing and project-oriented sites allow companies that need help to describe their projects. Freelancers and small businesses offer bids, ideas or proposals, from which the buyers can choose what they find most suitable. Websites such as Elance cover everything from programming and writing to data entry and design, while RentACoder focuses on software programming.

Advertising
You can sell space on your Website or blog for advertisements and you earn when these ads are clicked by visitors to your site. The sorting and placing of ads is free. The profitability of pay-per-click advertising depends on the traffic level of the Website and, most importantly, on the clickthrough rate and cost per click. Google AdSense is the most popular option, while others are BidVertiser, Text Link Ads and Blogads. Direct banner and RSS feed are some other forms of online advertising.

GPT Programme
GPT or Get-paid-to sites are becoming increasingly popular among teens. You get paid for signing up for free Websites, newsletters, playing games and filling out online surveys. These are suitable for people who don't have a skill set but want to earn extra money. Taking online surveys is simple- register with a few legitimate, paid survey sites and answer questions. The topics range from shopping to politics. This might not help you make a living, but you can earn good pocket money. Contests2win is one of the trusted GPT Websites.

Online Marketing
Once a Website is created and optimised for search engine (SEO), the SEM or Search Engine Marketing begins. A treasure trove lies hidden here. An SEO/SEM expert, who is responsible for marketing a Website, can promote it in various ways. These include article marketing, writing press releases, forum posting, blog posting, submitting your site to directories and search engines, social bookmarking, etc. Most companies don't do this in-house and pay you to conduct the SEM for them.

Making themes
As more and more people seek an online presence, the demand for Website templates and WordPress (Blog) themes will keep increasing. If you are good at Web designing and coding, you can earn a lot from designing Web themes. In this segment, there are mainstream Websites, such as TemplateMonster and ThemeForest, which act as a marketplace where you can sell your themes. Templates are sold and priced depending on the rights and features that are bundled with them.

Selling photos
If you enjoy photography and are good with a camera, you could be sitting on a huge reserve of revenue. There are people who will be interested in your collection of images. Nowadays, it's easy to take your photos to the public, providing a convenient way to build a secondary income stream. Many stock photo agencies, such as Fotolia, Dreamstime and Shutterstock, offer incentives for people to earn from their photos.

Support & service
Providing coding or fixing other Webmasters' issues is another great way to earn extra bucks. There are simple jobs ranging from adding a script to setting up sites, but knowledge of Web coding is essential. One can offer support for Web CMS (content management systems) like Drupal or Joomla. After you are comfortable with your own installation, you can help other people to set these up and configure them.

Stock/forex trading
Joining the stock/forex market may seem a bit risky. However, you can start small and continue researching till you gain experience in this area. Once you do, it will be easy to earn from exchanging foreign currencies and/or stocks. Their rates fluctuate depending on supply and demand, and economic and political influences in the world. The aim of any trader is to spot which currency/stock is likely to rise or fall in value against another. The more time you put in, the more you will earn.

Selling your own brand
If you have a flair for designing cool images, don't bother about creating your own inventory. As long as your design can be printed on a product, you can pocket some money. You can upload designs on various Websites such as CafePress, and if somebody orders these designs, the company will print them and distribute the products. It could be designs for T-shirts, hats, bags, books, posters, calendars, greeting cards, etc. You will receive a commission for each sale. Other such sites include Lulu and Zazzle.

Virtual Assistant
Small businesses always need help in running their processes, but may not be willing to hire a full-time employee. As a virtual assistant, you are expected to perform practically any administrative task that a traditional secretary or assistant would, such as make travel reservations, handle expense reimbursements or pay bills. You can do it from the comfort of your home, interacting with clients either online or by phone. Your expertise will decide how much moolah you rake in.

Inbound call centre
Many companies, who are facing space constraints, especially those in metro cities, prefer to hire workers outside their offices or outsource certain processes. You can set up an inbound call centre at home to handle such jobs. Research different companies that are outsourcing their work as they may have opportunities for inbound call centre agents. You can work for more than one company. This can be either a part-time or fulltime engagement, depending on your need.

You Tube
If there's a dramatic performer hidden inside you who craves applause and adulation, upload yourself on YouTube. You can be a filmmaker, musician or comedian who wants a wider audience. Your earnings will come from ads displayed on your video page. This process is similar to the pay-per-click advertising program common to other Websites and blogs. Sites such as Flixya and Mediaflix can be helpful in this regard.

Researching for others
Don't be morose if you can't write, design or code. Lack of talent cannot stop you from making money online. If you're willing to work hard for a few hours a week, you can take up simple research jobs for other people who don't have the time to do it themselves. You could search for opportunities in organisations that provide funding for research and offer to assist them through online investigation.

Building Applications
With smartphones gaining popularity, the demand for their applications, or apps as they are popularly known, has also shot up. There are over 3 million apps for the iPhone and over a million apps in Google's Android market. Most of these are selling like hot cakes. Developing and selling your own smartphone app is becoming a lucrative way to make money on the Internet. Apps cost virtually nothing to develop and entail no storage or shipping costs. So they enjoy the best profit margins.

Transcription
Medical transcription involves making written copies of oral material dictated by doctors or other medical experts. These may include history and physical reports, clinical notes, consultation notes, reports, letters, psychiatric evaluation and so on. The dictated material needs to be transcribed swiftly and accurately, which is the most challenging aspect of the job. To become a medical transcriptionist, you need to have a good knowledge of medical terminology and a high typing speed along with accuracy.

http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/20-ideas-to-make-money-online/1/12603.html

How to Setup a Social Media Business Strategy

Does your business have a social media strategy?

According to research conducted by Constant Contact, over 50% of small businesses need help with social media.

While many businesses have a social media presence, many are not engaging on those platforms and thus not meeting their goals.

With planning, your small business can use social media effectively.

Here are seven steps to a social media strategy for your business.

#1: Determine Your Business Objectives for Social Media

How do you want to use social media to help your business? What goals do you want to achieve?
Make your goals as concrete, measurable and achievable as possible. For example, if you currently get five new leads a month, setting a goal to get 100 new leads in the next 12 months is more realistic than setting a goal to get 5,000 new leads.

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Define clear goals for your social media marketing. Image source: iStockPhoto.

Here are some objectives commonly identified by small businesses:

• Build your brand by getting people to recognize your name and associate it with your product.
• Attract new customers by driving traffic to your social media page or company website.
• Support sales by answering prospects’ questions and showing them how to use your products or services.
• Engage with your fans by giving customers a reason to talk about your brand and encourage others to purchase from you.

By setting specific objectives, you establish markers for your business. This helps define your social media metrics and will make effective social media marketing easier for you to do.

#2: Know Your Audience

Determine the prospects and customers with whom you want to engage on social media. This is your target audience.

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Who is your target audience on social media? Image source: iStockPhoto.

To help you understand their characteristics, create a set of marketing personas for the segments you want to reach.

• Understand your target market’s point of view and activities. Think demographics, psychographics and past purchases, as well as interests and priorities.
• Consider influencers, buyers and end users. Most purchase decisions, including consumer purchases, are made with input from more than one person.
• Know where your audience engages on social media. Not everyone is on Facebook.
• Consider your audience’s social media behavior. Does your market lurk, share or create social media content? What incentives will make them act?

The more you know your audience, the easier it will be to engage with them on social media and get the results you’re looking for.

#3: Choose Your “Hot Buttons”

These are your firm’s core topics.

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Select your audience’s hot buttons. Image source: iStockPhoto.

Target your three to five main topics. These should be categories or words you want to place for in search optimization. Create content around these topics for which you want your business to be known.

• Create an editorial calendar integrated with your promotional calendar. Plan relevant content around your main keywords and your planned promotions. Develop a framework to minimize content creation time by not needing to think about what you’re going to write before you craft content.
• Brainstorm ideas for content around these categories. Before developing your content, list topics you want to cover. For most businesses, the easiest way to accomplish this is to answer your customers’ questions before and after purchase. Link to appropriate product pages but don’t be promotional!
• Offer a variety of content formats, not just text. People take in content differently. Attract attention with images, since some social media platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram are image-based.

Actionable marketing tip: Leverage the power of blogging. It provides an owned home base for social media interactions, while supporting building a house file and encouraging social sharing.
By clearly defining the right hot topics for your company and creating content and conversations around these topics, you’ll find it easier to get the results you want from social media.

#4: Stake Your Social Media Turf

Create a presence on all major social media platforms.

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Stake your claim on social media venues. Image source: iStockPhoto.

Take ownership of your firm’s name across social media entities. Understand that this may not be possible, depending on your company name and similarly named organizations. But you’ll want to secure your name for the main social media profiles.

Branding is a shorthand that helps customers to recognize your company without thinking. After you’ve claimed your space, remember to incorporate elements of your brand into your profile.

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Here’s how Social Media Examiner presents its brand on Facebook.

Also think “findability” and post your store location, phone number and local hours. Remember to include a link to your website.

A strong social presence will help you get the most out of your social media marketing.

#5: Set Your Social Media Engagement

Be strategic with your social media time usage. It’s easy to spend more time than you need to on social media. A social media plan—together with a strategic approach—will help you find the right balance.

Use your existing communications such as email and in-store signage to encourage your customers to get onto social media and engage with you.

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A New York City green market vendor encourages social media engagement using a chalkboard.

#6: Plan Your Resource Use

For many small businesses, the concept of planning resource utilization may be new. Even if you’re a solopreneur, you must take a strategic view of your time. If you don’t, you’ll find that you’re running from one online emergency to another.

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Plan your social media engagement. Image source: iStockPhoto.

• Decide who will handle your social media engagement. For most small businesses, this is often the owner.
• Set parameters for social media use. This means defining your social media guidelines for both employees and visitors.
• Create processes where possible. Depending on your business, assess where you have opportunities to develop content that supports your goals. Think customer interactions, purchases and conferences.

Actionable marketing tip: Prepare for creating content. Have a camera, smartphone or iPad ready to capture content while you’re doing business! Don’t forget to get customers’ permission to use their images to ensure you don’t have issues later. Have a plan in place to determine how and where you’ll use the information.

#7: Measure Your Social Media Results

Don’t forget to set up everything you’ll need to measure your results. The metrics you’ll want to track will be based on the business objectives you defined.

Measure your social media progress. Image source: iStockPhoto.

You’ll want to make it easy to measure your results.

• Incorporate a social media call to action. Don’t just assume prospects will take the next action without prompting. Guide them to engage and interact with contextually relevant calls to action.
• Track indicators that help show that you’ve accomplished your objectives. For most businesses, this means more than comments and social media shares.

Actionable marketing tip: Ensure you can track your results by using a unique promotion code or targeted landing page.

Over to You

The bottom line is that your small business can successfully use social media to achieve your business objectives. To this end, plan ahead to ensure that your time spent on social media reinforces your other business messaging and engagement and yields measureable results.
What do you think? What are your special tips for making social media engagement effective at driving your business’s success? Please include your suggestions in the comments section below.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-setup-a-social-media-business-strategy/

Images from iStockPhoto.

 

 

5 Excellent Internet Marketing Strategies (On A Budget)

If you’re running a small business, you have a budget. Heck, if you’re running any kind of business, you have a budget. Available marketing dollars are often less than they should be, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t manage Internet marketing on a tight budget. Here are five unique Internet marketing strategies that you can use right now (on the cheap). 

1. Cheap Website Hosting Options. I know, along with cheap website hosting comes a whole lot of scams and traps you’d rather avoid. If you don’t know about these, I urge you to read through our blog to find out more.

 

But, every once in awhile, a host that’s on the inexpensive side — and also worthwhile – pops up. If you go with a cloud host, even better. Take advantage of cheap cloud hosting sites that offer great deals, your own domain name, and user-friendly control panels.

 

 

2. Use Social Media Sites. It’s really tough to plead the social media case. Even though sites like Facebook can actually help a company build up a marketing plan, some companies are reluctant to spend time or money on social platforms. Try it. At worst, you gain a few followers.

 

At best, you find a whole new market you weren’t even touching before. No time? Hire a social media person to help you out — just make sure that they are reputable.

 

 

3. Content Marketing. I have a love/hate relationship with content marketing. On the one hand, this form of marketing can be useful. On the other, it’s super time consuming. Content marketing consists of posting (informative and well-written!) blog posts, creating guest blog posts on other sites, and adding an article or two to free article sites.

 

I cannot stress enough the importance of great content here. You’ll need to work with someone who can write well, won’t be pulling paragraphs from other sites, and will have your company’s best interests at heart. Content marketing without a professional (and, yes, this might mean paying top-dollar for a writer!) writer is like signing up for a cheap website hosting company without reading the fine print. Don’t do it.

 

 

4. Interact! This is such an easy thing to do! Are a lot of people responding to your blog posts? Write back! Did someone post about the cheap website hosting company you are using? Respond with detail! It’s not hard to communicate online, but very few companies actually pay attention to client responses. Go! Interact! Reach out!

 

 

5. Press Releases. Stop! Before you ask someone to write a PR for you, I want you to pause for a moment and ask yourself: do I have anything news worth to write about? Now, ask yourself: will a newspaper, magazine, or new site want to run this story? If the answer is “no,” a press release is not the cure for your marketing problems.

 

On the flip side, I often see companies that should be sending out releases ignoring the amazing potential of a press release! If you have news, spread it! Did you just open an honest and amazing cheap website hosting company? Don’t be shy! Have you discovered an amazing fact? Let the world know too. Press releases can help – if you actually have news to report! Do you have additional Internet marketing suggestions? Why not post below? Let us know what you think!

http://www.ananova.com/5-excellent-internet-marketing-strategies-on-a-budget/