Make Money online....

Make Money

This page lists a few ad networks, money making options and tips to help you make money online and offline. We are recommending them because we have experimented with these products. This page will be updated whenever the earning potential or monetization strategy changes.

1. Money making options for those who have a blog....

If you have an active blog where you write about your favorite topics on a regular basis
then you have the following possibilities to make money out of it.

Standard Advertisements

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads:
Indisputably Google AdSense is the first option for PPC advertising. AdSense will work for almost for all blogs regardless of its size, age, content. Google usually approves all types of blogs for AdSense publishing, even those blogs that are hosted for free (e.g. yourblog.blogspot.com). Of late, though, they are very strict about approving rather new blogs (say less than 6 months old).

If things did not work with AdSense and/or if you want to try a different PPC network, then your next option is Chitika. In fact, you can also have both AdSense and Chitika co-existing on the same page provided you demarcate them. Chitika recently launched Chitika Premium ads that shows ads relevant to the user searches (and shown only to the search users from US/Canada) and this improves the CTR (Click-Through-Rate) and EPS (Earnings Per Click).

You can compare the features of ad networks using our money maker comparison tool DollarShower Comparator.

Pay-Per-Impression (PPM) ads:
Unfortunately smaller or beginner blogs do not get approved by majority of the premium PPM/CPM networks. By using AdSense banners, you also get paid for your impressions however it is not a proper PPM solution. You can go for premium CPM networks as and when your blog grows significantly with a few thousand page impressions per day.

However, the BuySellAds blog ad network offers you excellent flat rate banner advertisement options and they pay reasonably well as well (75% payout to publishers). You might want to check out this network once your blog starts getting traffic. Another comparable blog ad network isAdvertiseSpace.com which has 70% payout.

(You may read the post on various ad compensation methods to understand how ad networks compensation models work)

Writing paid reviews or posts

Once your blog has a reasonable number of readers (feed as well as direct readers) and decent page and traffic ranks, you may start writing paid reviews on your blog. Though there are a number of paid review services, the one that is working for us right now is SponsoredReviews. In order to get the right type of review assignments at the right prices, please make sure that you list your blog in the right category and start with a low pricing based on your blog page rank.

You can search for other Get-Paid-To review services usingDollarshower Product Finder. Please note that sometimes Google penalizes the blogs, that posts paid reviews, by reducing their page ranks (PR).

Blogroll link sales

Once your blog gets a reasonable Google page rank (Say PR3 or above), you can actually start charging a few bucks per month per link that is added to your blog. Forums are the best place to sell your blogroll or links and you may check this Digital Point forum thread for your link sales. Also check out the thread on ad sales and services.

If your page rank is reasonably good (Say PR3 or above), you can make a lot of money by selling your links via Text Link Ads or via private ads sales of your banners if traffic is good as well. If the number of RSS readers is significantly high, your feed can be monetized as well as Google Ads for feed (Please note that, while profitable, selling text links comes with the risk of potential drop in page ranks)

However, as a beginner, you may not have a great page rank for your blog. In this case, second tier link sales services such as Backlinks.com can be definitely of help. I have used their services in the past and it works for you to sell your links on homepages as well as Google indexed inner pages. Pricing per link is not as good as Text-link-ads but your blog usually gets approved faster.

Private ad sales – Sell your own ad slots

Private ad sales on your blog can be completely automated via the OIO Publisher WordPress Plugin and you can get advertisers via their marketplace. The OIO Publisher plugin will cost you $47 but that will be a great investment as you can recover it in one month or less. Check out ourOIO Publisher review post to buy your OIO Publisher copy for the least possible price (as low as $20 sometimes).

Affiliate programs and referral links

Affiliate programs can fetch you very good Pay-Per-Sale or Pay-Per-Lead based commission. You can search for top affiliate networks using DS ProdFinder. Along with affiliate links and banners you could use your ad networks’ referral links to maximize your revenue. Amazon and Yahoo Affiliate programs are among the best though Yahoo (via Commission Junction) does not approve affiliates that easily.

If you want to promote a wide range of products online (rather than specific products such as Yahoo’s), you need to sign up with a affiliate marketing agency such as Commission Junction, ShareASale or ClickBank (all of them are highly recommended)

Please note that the income generated via ads, text link sales, affiliate networks, paid reviews etc will depend on a lot of parameters such as thequality of content, content update frequency, traffic generated, various traffic & page ranks, how well your pages are optimized for search engine visibility etc. It is really possible to make online if you focus on the above aspects, especially during initial phases. Do not try too hard to achieve everything in the first two or three months – it does not work that way! Also, try to maximize your earnings via referring othersas either publishers or advertisers.

2. Making money without a blog

The following are some methods to make money online without having a blog of your own.

• Paid data entry and freelance content creation jobs
• Forum posting and blog commenting to get paid
• Paid-To click ad sites
• Get paid to do online surveys
• Online Forex trading
• Sell things on eBay

Online Content creation opportunities

You can avail content creation, freelance writing, data entry opportunities as well as forum posting/commenting assignments at this Digital Point forum thread or similar forums.

Paid to click ads

There are paid-to-click services that I used long time ago. But these are only for those who don’t mind spending time to view ads by clicking links and the earnings are not that great (but definitely they are not scams). I am not following such networks any longer, though.

Make money online via survey programs

A lot of people believe that online surveys are the easiest way to make big money online. While there are one or two legitimate survey schemes,most others are scams. Some of the legitimate survey sites are listed in my post that talks about online surveys. Another scam that has hit the web lately is the so-called affiliate rebate processor work-from-home option.

Talking about making money online via content creation, my friend ,has written a wonderful eBook titled Writing Online: 3 Tried and Tested Ways To Make Money. This 21 page FREE eBook explains three content creation methods that fetched her more than $3500 in the first year itself starting at $60 in Jan 2008 to as high as $600 per month by year end. You might want to download this eBook which also provides several resources and links on where to find content creation opportunities. I have read this eBook, verified the links that she has provided and highly recommend the same for those who are interested in making money online via writing.

Online Forex Trading

Yet another make money from home opportunity is via trading currency online. Online Forex Trading is a big time opportunity with its associated risks. You may read the my post on Online Forex Trading for beginners to learn more about the same.

Selling things on eBay

If you have any products (gifts, toys, cards, bags, clothes, electronics whatever it may be) to sell in your regular offline business, you can leverage that further by going online. By becoming an ebay seller, you can start selling your products online by sitting at the luxury of your home. You may check out the ebay website for more details on how to become an ebay seller.

3. How to receive your Income?

Most advertisers and networks use PayPal to send you your online earnings. Hence you may sign up with a FREE PayPal account now instead of waiting till the time somebody ask to provide this information. PayPal is a completely reliable and safe money transfer mechanism.

4. Create your own blog…

If you intend to set up a professional blog, this series on setting up a blogmay help you to achieve that goal thereby opening up a window of opportunities to make more money online.

If you have a question or need free consulting, please don’t hesitate to drop me a mail or comment.

Happy Money Making!