gainfully unemployed

Hubpages: Make Money with eBay

chris — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:11:15 +0000

In addition to the main revenue streams, Hubpages allows you to make money from the eBay and Amazon affiliate links you add to your pieces of writing or, “hubs.”

These additions can be quite lucrative. I read one story about a writer on Hubpages who received an eBay click-through for a Rolex Watch (his hub is an informative guide to the high quality luxury timepieces) and earned $125 from the one sale.

Obviously, this is a special circumstance, and the article is about a very high priced item, but you can see how you can earn some money with the eBay affiliate program.

There has been a change to the eBay Partner Network (the affiliate program). Publishers who send traffic to eBay will no longer be paid per action, but rather by click. eBay is calling it a move to “Quality Click Pricing.”

In other words, you will be paid a certain amount of money per click that sends traffic to eBay, and no longer will you receive a percentage of the sale price of a good sold to your traffic.

The $125 payment for a Rolex is no longer possible, but that was always a very tough sale to begin with.

Personally, I have already earned more money from eBay since this new program has been instated than I ever did before. It’s hard to get your traffic to actually buy something, so for less savvy publishers and “marketers” this move to pay per click should improve earnings.

It has for me.

SEO Can Only Help Local Newspapers

chris — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:08:44 +0000

Search Engine Journal has a very good post about how local newspapers–and in fact, the newspaper business as a whole–can only benefit from harnessing SEO for their websites.

This article has some details that will help any blog owner, in whatever industry, make their site more visible to search engines and therefore visitors, while also creating a better user experience.

It makes no sense to me why a newspaper would not want to optimize search to each and every article the company owns rights to, even if only the first few paragraphs along with an opportunity to subscribe or pay too read the article.

Why not create a free trial to encourage sign-ups?

Why not flood search engines with all the thousands of archived articles to establish more of a hold on search engine audiences?

Great PSA Placement: Energy

chris — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:35 +0000

Clever and true!

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Jobless Rate for Those Like You: NY Times Interactive Graphic

chris — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:39:35 +0000

The New York Times website has been featuring some very interesting interactive graphics about all sorts of things, but primarily regarding what is on a lot of people’s minds: employment and the economy.

Have a look at one of the most recent interactive graphics, which depicts the unemployment rate of people like you.

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4 Excellent WordPress Resources for Beginners

chris — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:13:06 +0000

I know you’ve probably heard that WordPress is easy to use, which is true. But it’s easy to use like anything is easy to use–once you’ve learned how.

Getting started with a WordPress blog (especially a self-hosted one) can be a bit intimidating, and once you start to see everything that the best blogging software known to man can do for you and your content, you may get a little overwhelmed.

One great thing about WordPress is that it is open source, which means it is a combined effort from a community of software designers and bloggers. As such, there are hundreds–actually, probably thousands–of well-informed bloggers who maintain epic WordPress websites that tackle any problem you may encounter.

Here are four websites that will help you jump any hurdle that presents itself as you build your blog.

WordPress Beginner

Everyone starts as a beginner, and this is a great place for WordPress beginners to start. Built with a focus on novice bloggers, this site will help those who know nothing about building websites prosper in the rough early days.

Why this site is good for beginners: It is easy to get bogged down by terms and insider words when trying to learn about WP; this site is an unintimidating place to get started.

Yoast

Yoast is a website run by WordPress expert and plugin designer Joost de Valk. He writes about WordPress in a clear way and supplies some very high quality plugins like this one that imports Twitter chatter about your site right into your site.

Why this site is a good resource for beginners: Learn from someone who knows a ton about WordPress, wants to share his knowledge, and does it in layman’s terms. de Valk is not only a software designer, he’s a blogger as well.

WordPress.tv

If you’re looking for WordPress tips and tutorials, why not go directly to the source? And if you are more visual and prefer video tuts to written, WordPress.tv is the place for you.

This site is a very fun resource for people interested in blogging and building websites and there is a ton of video content from people who know what they’re doing. Learn from the community.

Why this site is a good resource for beginners: Find hands-on “how-to” videos for beginners ranging from how to install plugins on your blog to how to write and publish a blog post.

Smashing Magazine

Smashing Magazine is a designer-focused website which has some very good WordPress tutorials. Since the site is designer-focused, this blog has a very accessible feel and a great layout which makes using it as a resource that much more enjoyable.

You can read posts about WP hacks and 100 Free WordPress Themes.

Freelance Resources at Freelance Switch

How to Build a Successful Amazon Store into Your Blog

chris — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:36:01 +0000

If you have a blog, you’ve probably thought about some ways to monetize your site. One way that a lot of people earn some incremental income (or really good incomes) from their sites is with affiliate relationships with either eBay, Amazon, or other online marketplaces. Some affiliate with Buy.com as well.

Amazon has some very useful ways to help you promote their products from your blog and gives you a cut of each sale you make. It’s definitely not an easy thing to do and can take some work figuring out just what kind of product will actually sell.

The truth is that not every product that seems to make sense to put in front of your specific audience will actually be a product that sells. In an article at makeuseof.com, Dean Sherwin has some valuable advice on how to integrate an Amazon store into your site (click the link to read) that will help make sales for you.

Three good points that Dean makes are the following:

People are not going to buy a $2,000 laptop through your site. Just not going to happen–even though it would seem to make sense adding a link to this kind of product in an online review of it. If people can go down the street to Best Buy or Wal-Mart to buy something, that’s probably where they’re going to go.

That being said…

Visitors to your website will buy cheaper items (say around $10) a lot of the time. They will also purchase items off your site that can generally only be found online. In other words, if it’s only available online and there isn’t a physical store nearby “competing” with you, visitors may just buy from you.
Build a separate page for your store and link to it in your navigation with the word “Store.” Makes sense right?

If you already have an Amazon store or some products linked from your website or you’re looking for a way to (pretty darn easily) add a store to your site, check out this article.

Social Media Success Case Study: Web Design Startup

chris — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:42:09 +0000

Everyone talks about how it’s possible to build an online business using social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Yeah, you’ve heard this stuff before. But before you click the “back” button and go back to Google to find something else, have a look at a well-written post at inspiredm web design blog about a company that actually used these tools to build a successful business online.

This social media case study differs from most because it actually details how the business owners used different platforms instead of just saying, “Oh it’s easy to start a business online, just get on Twitter!”

On the contrary, this piece is all about how much effort it takes to build a business using social media, which is really the key.

Read Launching a Successful Web Design Startup with Social Media.

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Double Your Page Views with Related Post Plugins

chris — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:09:09 +0000

If you own a blog or run an Internet business, you probably spend a good deal of time trying to get people to visit your site. Once you get them there, why not keep them there? One way to do this is to provide your site’s visitors with the information they are looking for.

If you can do that, then chances are people will stick around for a longer amount of time and will look at multiple pages, rather than just glancing at the page they landed on and leaving. The longer people stay on your site, the greater the chances are that they will take action, either by signing up for your RSS feed, leaving a comment, or clicking an advertisement.

One way to make sure visitors to your website get the information they’re looking for is to use a Related Posts plugin. WordPress publishers can use the “Yet Another Related Post Plugin,” which is the plugin I use on this site. This will add links to other posts that are related to the post being read. A lot of the time, site visitors will click on one of these links for more information.

Those who use blogger or other web publishing or blogging platforms can use the LinkWithin widget. Both YARPP and LinkWithin are easy to install and integrate into your website. A few keystrokes and clicks and you will have created more traffic within your website.

After I installed the related post plugin on this site, pageviews immediately increased by a third. Some days, it’s increased by 50 or 60% in relation to unique visits.

It takes a lot of effort to get visitors to your blog or online business. Why not keep them their a little bit longer. Using related posts plugins is the easiest way to create more page views, and the best part about it is that it helps your visitors navigate your site to the content they’re looking for.

You may have an older post that doesn’t get a lot of search engine love. This post may be “revived” when you write something related to it at a later date. Keeping a healthy flow of traffic throughout your website makes good things happen.

How to Attract Visitors to Your Website

Promote Yourself with Hubpages

chris — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:11:16 +0000

Hubpages, as you may have read in another one of my articles on this site, is a very good place to earn some extra income online from your writing. The way it works is you write “hubs” about a certain subject, publish them, and earn Adsense revenue.

60% of the time, you will earn from your page impressions and 40% of the time, Hubpages earns money from the impressions. But keep in mind, you only earn when someone clicks and ad on one of your pages. So if you have an Adsense account and do some writing online, Hubpages is a good place to use to augment your reach, exposure, and income.

If you have a blog, website, or web business, you should absolutely be using Hubpages. You should write “hubs” about your industry or pertaining to your work or interests. You have a profile page where you can include a short bio about yourself and as many links as you want to your own sites. You can link to your blog so people can read more of your work.

You can also link out from the Hubs you write if it makes sense to do so. Even if you don’t have a site, but you sell your writing to places like Associated Content or Constant-Content, you should still do some writing at Hubpages, as it has proven to be a solid stand-alone money-earner. That is, if you know what you’re doing.

The more time you spend there, the better you will get at creating pages and the more money you will earn over the long term. Keyword selection is also key. Stay tuned because I’m planning a long post all about how to select keywords, which is how you really start to make money online.

Freelance Resources at Freelance Switch

chris — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:14:11 +0000

Freelance Switch is a website I check out at least once a month to find up-to-date articles about how to manage the freelance lifestyle–and folks, it is a lifestyle.

There are always useful articles about things that concern freelancers and internet business owners written by people who know first-hand what they’re talking about.

Here are a few posts that have helped me and may help you.

Freelancers: Do you need a business plan? Maybe

9 Ways to Make Your Writing More Compelling. Grab onto your readers with a vice-like grip.

Marketing Your Website with Search Engine Optimization. This is as good a basic primer on SEO for your web business as I’ve seen anywhere. It is a very uncomplicated look at making your site more accesible and attractive to your visitors and the search engines.

You would do well to subscribe to Freelance Switch’s feed or email list to get up to date info about freelancing.

10 Freelance Tax Deductions