An important part of marketing is ranking high in major search engines such as Google, MSN, and Yahoo. To rank high you need to have links pointing to your website so they think your content is important and worthy of top placements. Many marketers use auto blogs to artificially create links to their important websites in hope of ranking high in the search engines.

Setting one up is easy, you have a couple of ways you can do it. One way is to use a free hosted solution offered by Wordpress or Blogger where they will setup and host your blog with your own unique URL. The other way is to download wordpress and install it on your server. From there you want to grab one of two free plugins to grab feeds from the Internet. Look for Feed Wordpress or WP o Matic plugins and install them. From there you can setup to pull RSS feeds and have you blog automatically update.

Using this method also allows you to make money online directly. You can add affiliate link and/or Google adsense to monetize the site itself. You can make a few bucks and over time cover the minimal time you spent setting up the website. Some marketers do this to the extreme and it is possible to make a few hundred dollars a month setting these things up. Basically all you have to do is multiply your efforts and have hundreds of auto blogs going. Not only can you make money online with them but also have thousands of links available to your other site to rank higher in search engines.

I’ve have taken the last little while to test out as many areas as possible setting up websites, marketing campaigns, content ideas, linking, and more. I have to admit that one of the most overlooked aspects of making money online is truly testing out things you read.

Landing Page Design

Took some time to research the best practices used and have come to the realization that landing pages are probably one of the most important factors in making money with your website. The KISS rulle applies where by you have very little time to catch the users attention and by creating a simple easy to read page for the visitors is how many of the experts roll out their money making ideas.

Getting Quality Links

Most of us rely on getting link exchanges manually by contact related websites or responding to a few of the many received via email. A few months back I was introduced to the concept of creating your own website network and then use them to promote the sites that you are trying to make money with. The concepts involve building websites from scratch and signing up for blog services like Wordpress.com or Blogger.com to use some of their domain popularity to benefit your sites. These examples are just surface level concepts but I ran a few tests and by implementing the suggestions was able to get a couple of my websites ranked higher in search engines in a matter of weeks.

Content

It’s still one of the most important parts of making money online. There are many tools you can use to try and auto generate content. By using RSS feeds for example is a commonly used way, integrate some kind of application that alters the text and your content is all of a sudden unique and ranking in search engines for many long tail keywords. This practice is considered a grey area of marketing, but is used by many leading marketers to make money online.

These are just a few areas that i’ve been researching and testing over the past few months. I will take the time in future post to get into them in more detail. Making money online is an ongoing process and the learning process is ongoing. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments to making money online.

Zip / Email Submits

There are marketing companies out there who are prepared to pay websites anywhere from $1 - $5 (sometimes more) for having a user simply provide their email address or Zip Code of where they live. They provide incentives to users by basically offering them free stuff. From Ipods to gift cards to free shopping sprees, as long as they complete the terms and conditions the user will actually get the free offer. On a side note, these offers actually work, a friend of mine pretty much had to divuldge much of his personal information and participate in offers, but actually got himself a free 42 inch plasma screen in the process. Anyways back to the money making opportunity.

How To Market Email Submits

A popular way of making money online with email submits is to be on top the current trends in the world, create a poll on a popular / new subject matter in the media, then offer the free incentive to those who participate in the poll. Marketers then use Google Adwords to buy traffic to the newly designed website hoping that users visit the site, participate in the poll, and enter their email address to receive the free offer. Now I won’t go into specifics, but it’s more than realistic to make $100 - $500 dollars a day simply by running a poll and offering email submits as an incentive for participating. As usual you can contact me for more on the how to and where to get started. This post was merely to introduce readers to a way people are making money online.

Best Christmas Offers

What is the latest trends in Christmas gifts? Have a look a the trends when it comes to childrens toys, clothing, perfumes, electronics, and more. Check out the current search engine search trends and keyword counts. Also look around for holiday gift related sites who profile the hottest items. I recently did this and found a couple of gems including a Childrens toy that currently gets close to 50,000 searches per day and has little competition. Sorry, can’t tell you what it is

How To Market It

Now that you have your list of products / services you are considering promoting, figure out how you plan to market them. Is there enough time to build out a website in hopes of getting organic search engine traffic? Probably not, but you should research the competition levels and if you see it’s not crowded in the space, go for it. You may choose to go the paid advertising route, do your research on keyword bids and the long tail keywords that are relevant to the product.

Who To Promote

You have to decide how and who you will promoting these product for. You can go the route of dealing with the majors such as Commission Junction or Linkshare in hopes of getting a many of the product to market under one system. Or you can research and find individual programs to promote. Personally I like to go direct and deal with the smaller companies who offer the products. I find they are more willing to work with you to optimize your effort by giving you better revenues per sale, more latitude in how you do the marketing, and overall communication is better.

So get to it and let’s all have a prosperous holiday season… Good Luck!

Just Do It

Sounds simple but a majority of the time many people plan, ponder, and procrastinate on getting started. The excuses are wide spread, whether they are valid or not is kind of irrelevant. If you are not actively doing something for your website, you are not going to get the results you anticipate. Although there are those dream circumstances where people get riches in an easy way, the reality is that 98% of successful people making real money online is doing so the traditional way… getting things done.

Join Communities

One of the things I learned early on is that there are loads of quality communities online who focus on trying to make money online. Most who are aware of them visit them and lurk around gathering as much information as possible to help their efforts. What I suggest is that you actively participate in the community building relationships, sharing experiences, and contributing your knowledge to others. When you do this, you’ll notice that more quality and relevant information for your business comes your way. On a basic level, this simple rules applies… you get what you give.

How To Really Make Money Online

The above are only 2 examples of the basic activities you should be doing. In doing so, you’ll open yourself up to a wealth of additional information that you’ll look back on and consider priceless. I purposely only gave 2 examples to encourage you to get going and truly become part of the community. Once you do, i’de like to hear from you and your experiences in how it has fundamentally helped your business. By then, you’ll be on your way to making real money online.