Being a professional for many years, I always thought that:

$500 now is much much better than $20 every month. I couldn’t be more wrong!

What I have learned with internet marketing is that passive income is one of the best ways to build wealth and at the same time be able to handle costs effectively.

Most of the expenses a company or an individual has are repetitive. From house bills, electricity, water, cellphone to web hosting, domains, advertising etc. are repetitive.

Getting a lot of money has its benefits like paying some bills or investing in something. At the same time and I don’t know about you, when I find my self with a good amount of money, I miraculously remember that expensive gadget that I never really needed but wanted oh-so-bad!

Passive income can provide you with the certainty you need in order for you to make an investment, for example hiring someone and being certain that you will be able to pay him/her no matter what. Let’s not forget our goal. It’s not only to build “wealth” but also to live a life with less stress and more creativity.

One of the main reasons that I was able to make that shift on my mind was because I tried it and saw how well it worked. A client of mine had a brilliant idea but wasn’t able to pay me what I needed so since I was very fond of his idea and niche, I offered him a much better price but at the same time, required a percentage of his sales. The outcome was that his product was indeed awesome and the work that we both put into it, paid up. I am certain that my job had such high standards because I saw the project as a “child” and not something that I had to do in order to get paid and therefore I paid attention to the closest detail. I am still making money from that project, every month.
The same thing applies to affiliate marketing also. There are products being sold (mostly services) that pay their affiliates a good percentage of their customers’ monthly fee to you in order for affiliate marketers to promote their products. Since their service is paid and requires a monthly fee, they have the means to do that and stay profitable.
There are many benefits to the company offering repetitive income to marketeers who promote their products, and to you also and the most important are the following:

• The company knows that you won’t just put a link pointing their product and just leave it there, they are certain that you will try to explain to them how beneficial their service is and how becoming a member will benefit them and save them time and money. And that’s a huge tool to their branding arsenal.
• You know that from a sale you just did once, you will be paid for as long as the person you referred, stays with that service. And that’s a huge motivation for you to build much better content and drive more people to the company’s website.

One amazing example of a company offering passive income to its affiliates is Aweber that pays 30% of what their customers pay. Aweber is an email management and sending service and since their pricing is tiered, the better the customers you refer to Aweber do, the more money you will make. Just imagine what an amazing revenue model this is for you and how much effort you would put in order not only to just make a sale but at the same time to educate the people that you refer to Aweber as customers.

Enough with this example though, since the goal is not to tell you about Aweber but to make you think about passive income. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. I am sure you can think other amazing ways that it can benefit you.

What say you?

On Earning Passive Income is a post from Moneytized Blog
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I am using press releases for all my in-house projects that I pay attention to. For Moneytized, I am waiting to reach a sufficient amount of posts (I am thinking about 30-40) before I create a press release. When people will enter my site, they will have some articles to read and they will decide if they want subscribe.

There are two ways to approach press releases, paid and free.

Free Press Releases

If you are on low budget or just want to see how press releases are working, I would suggest for you to start with a free press release rather than a paid one. A free press release is much less effective than a paid but it’s worth the effort.
For free press releases I am using the following sites:

• Free Press Release
• PR Leap
• i-newswire
• 24-7 PressRelease
• 1888 PressRelease
• PR
• PR Free
• ClickPress

Most of the sites above are free or require a very small fee (or up to $10) to distribute your press release to a considerable number of websites.

Paid Press Releases

If you can spend some money on your press release I would suggest to issue it from Prweb.com . It’s much better than submitting it on free press release sites. At the same time, it’s much cheaper than using a PR agency just to have a chance for your product to be featured in a magazine or a website. Prweb costs from $200-$360 depending on the press release package. The “seo” package is the cheapest that I could recommend, while the “media” package is the best. The “media” package, costs $360 and is the most effective.
One great tip is to bet some more money above $360, (there’s an option to bet more near the end of submission) so that it can be featured on the site’s main page. I usually pay 20-30 dollars more. Getting featured on the main page of the site is a great opportunity for your service or product to be published in many more auto-blogs that parse prweb’s website. Many more people will notice your ad if it’s featured in the main page.
The effectiveness of a press release depends mostly on the press release itself. If you have an attractive proposition the effect will be much higher. Pay close attention to the title because that’s the main reason for someone to open the article in the first place. Think of something intriguing that will make the person interested on what you have to offer and read it. An intriguing press release will bring more people at your site and at the same time cover the cost of the press release itself.

Link building by using Press Releases is a post from Moneytized Blog
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For quite some time, I used to think that the way to go was many in-house projects with many other people. My aim was to get involved with several teams and help each one with its project management, promotion, monetization and branding. I thought that since my tasks were limited to team management and promotion, and since my involvement actively starts near the end of each project right before its release, it’s the best to take on as many as possible and hope one of them meets success. I thought I had all bases covered.

But I was wrong!

What I found out the hard way was that, when you undertake a project (and especially an in-house project), you have to completely devote yourself to it, even if your instincts tell you otherwise. Trying to juggle too many projects at once can only go wrong.

The key to success lays in project selection, not project quantity.

Getting involved in a team project requires that you give it your full attention. Why? I can think of many reasons:

First off, it’s the decent thing to do! It helps group morale, knowing that all members are devoted to the same project and that you all work towards the same common goal.

Secondly, if you give a project your full attention, chances are your focus will be better, thus your performance and ability to come up with better ideas for implementation.

This way you also give each project less failure points and, upon completion, you’ll have no questions, doubts or last minute changes teasing your mind. Worrying about multiple problems from multiple projects all at the same time hardly makes good practice for success.

Lastly, you can be sure you did everything you could to make the project successful and, perhaps most importantly, move on to the next one with confidence.

What the image above explains is how time between projects should be divided and distributed. Undertake a project, focus on it, complete it and when the project reaches its maintenance stage, then move on to the next one.

Ps. Deciding what projects you will devote yourself to is close to an art-form. It’s very important and needs a lot of thought and attention. Read my post on the project selection process to get a better understanding of this concept.

Ps2. What can also work well is to have one team project that you focus your main efforts on, and one long term personal project (like a blog) that you can work on in your free time. This way you won’t be putting all your eggs in one basket and you’ll be building yourself some brand equity at the same time. If in the end the main project doesn’t turn out so well, at least your personal blog will have evolved by doing something you love.

I would really like to hear your thoughts on this one! What do you do? Are you involved in many projects at the same time, or do you focus only on one and why?

Juggling many projects? is a post from Moneytized Blog
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This post is part of the Link Building Strategy Series

Article Directories are very similar to normal Directories, their main difference being that in an Article Directory you can submit only articles. Apart from this obvious difference, there are also many advantages of using article directories.

In a normal Directory, we create an account (if necessary) and then submit our site’s main page to their index, in the appropriate category, and that’s pretty much it! We get a backlink and that’s all very well, but we get no additional value aside from what the search engines give us. In 95% of given directories we’ll get less than one visitor per month.

By utilizing Article Directories, we do the exact opposite. We still get a link that helps strengthen our position in the search engines while bringing many visitors back to our own site at the same time.

How it works

When we go to an Article Directory and create an account, we can add an article straight away. Most of the article directories accept articles that are about 250-500 words long. There are some that require your article be more than 550 words. We then give it a title, add some keywords and can sometimes also add a small snippet of what the whole article is about.

After we submit our article to the desired category we must wait for approval. What most article directories (at least the big ones) look for in order to approve your article is:

• How well the article is written.
• The correct category placement.
• The proper length
• To see if you over-promote a service
• If it’s unique and not a re-post of someone else’s article or even yours.

The drawback is, as mentioned above, that the article must be unique. Thinking about it you might say “why I ‘waste’ an article by submitting it to an Article Directory, why not just posting it on my blog?” There’s no simple and clear answer to that, but there are advantages of submitting articles to Article Directories:

• You can get backlinks to your main site which you would normally “loose”, therefore helping you bring more visitors to your site with the help of Search Engines.
• You create one more way for others to “discover” your main site and what you do.
• You get more traffic back to your own website. Large numbers of people visit these article directories so, given they like your articles, the chances of them visiting your own website increase.
• You get your name viewed by more people and mentioned in more sites, rather than just your won.

Where to submit your Articles

There are two main ways to utilize article directories and I would suggest both.

The first and most time consuming way is to join the best Article Directories and post your articles there. The more you have the better, so try to write one for each, one at a time. Personally, my goal would be to try and submit at least five articles to each directory.

The most important Article Directories are:

• Ezine Articles
• Articles Base
• Go Articles
• Buzzle
• Article Alley
• Amazines

One way that worked very well in the past and still works a bit up to today, is to submit the same article in many article directories at the same time. Try to pick the “not so popular” ones and submit it at them. I have tried many tools to help me do that in the past but Submit Eaze still works the best even for article directory submission.

Worth the check

Angel

Link building using Article Directory Submission is a post from Moneytized Blog
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This post is part of the Link Building Strategy Series

Let’s focus our efforts for link building, somewhere else. The offline world!
You’re doing everything possible to promote your personal or corporate website. Given the fact that you love what you’re doing, why don’t you transfer your efforts to the offline world? You can do many things including:

Wear your site’s t-shirt. It’s a great thing to do, especially in conferences and events within your niche. People who have seen your site before will identify you, while many others will be curious to find out what your site is all about after seeing your URL printed in nice fancy letter on your back or chest!

Create a new Business Card. You don’t have to go all out like I did, but even a plain and simple card containing your site’s link is enough to associate you with your website. The more eccentric your card is, the higher the possibility of someone visiting your link. This is my card for example, please use it to contact me for anything you want- but please don’t abuse it

Put an offline ad in a newspaper, magazine or on the radio. This method can be very effective, depending on how you use it. The only drawback an offline campaign has, is that you can’t keep track of your conversion rate, or how people will respond to it. One great solution I have tested very successfully in the past, is to get a new telephone number just for an offline campaign (and the next to come). This way I know that, when the telephone rings, it will be someone responding to my ad, and I can track exactly how this campaign is progressing. In the beginning, try to place ads in relevant newspapers and magazines close to your niche. Those tend to work better, because people reading them are interested in what you have to offer.
Using radio is a great example of offline promotion too. You can also do that with a twist. Use internet radio stations in your niche to promote your special offers and people will be willing to visit your page because, 99%, they’ll be on the computer while listening to the Internet Radio Station. Going to Shoutcast (http://www.shoutcast.com/) will help you identify radio stations in your niche.

Use your URL in your presentations. When you are presenting in front of audience in a niche close to your website’s content, always use your URL in the beginning and end of your presentation. If people find what you say engaging and useful, they will visit your site for more information.

There are hundreds of ways to promote your site offline and they can vary from one niche to another. You can come up with many creative ways to help engage people. Using offline methods is both efficient and at the same time cheap.

Gathering links Offline is a post from Moneytized Blog
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This post is part of the Link Building Strategy Series

Thinking about it, an effective Link Building Strategy can take a lot of time, money and effort. Especially if you’re purchasing links from other sites in order to build link value and bring more visitors to your site, it can be very expensive. Buying a whole site as it is, instead of just a banner on it for example, is a great idea for lowering costs. It might sound crazy and cost-ineffective, but stay with me and you’ll change your mind faster than you think!

When we purchase a link from another web property, especially if it’s a link without a no-follow attribute (thus transferring PageRank value back to our site) we have to keep it there for a long time and not just for a month. I could say that a six-month period is the minimal required. When we get links that disappear quickly, Google will tend to consider them as paid links, therefore passing less value to our site.

Purchasing links from web sites is also a costly way of promotion. Even the smallest web property owners will ask good money for a link on their site, because it passes value back to your site. For example, if we buy a link that costs $20 per month, for six months, it will end up costing us a total of $120. Instead, if we were to purchase the whole site, given the owner is willing to sell, it would only cost us a rough total of $300, allowing us to keep the link on the site forever. Additionally, we can start monetizing, seeing as the the site now belongs to us. We can now actively promote our main website, bring more visitors back to it, add more banners, promote affiliate products and generally handle the monetization process much better.
If you have a good understanding of SEO(Search Engine Optimization), you can modify the site’s on-page factors(meta elements, titles keywords etc.), quickly doubling it’s visitors, making your purchase much more valuable. This increased traffic will not only help pay off the cost of the initial investment, but once it clears it will actually be generating new profit.

If you’re thinking of starting a new website or blog by purchasing a pre-existing one, along with its niche-related articles, you will get many benefits from:

• The “value” it already has in the search engines
• The Age of the domain
• The number of “followers” it already has
• Backlinks the previous owner has already gathered. Everyone’s experience in linkbuilding, and internet marketing in general, is different, therefore previous promotional efforts and added points of view can only be beneficial.

Many internet Marketers use this method to strengthen their position and rank higher than their competitors.
Two very good sites you can use to find domain names in your niche, are Flippa and DigitalPoint Forums.

Be careful though, it’s crucial to check up on sellers before completing any business transaction. Check their reputation, their internet profile and whether they’ve sold sites online before.

Link Building by buying relative sites is a post from Moneytized Blog
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This post is part of the Link Building Strategy Series

There are thousands of Link Directories on the web. Their purpose is to help you promote your website. Directories typically have hundreds of categories so that we can pick the most suitable. A link from a web directory is relevant because the category that our link is placed, is strongly related to what our company or website offers. Lately, web directories tend to influence search engines’ algorithms less but still can work to our advantage. Simply put, if your competitor has used every promotional method you used too but not submitted his site to web directories, you can have a clear advantage to pass him in the S.E.R.P.s(Search engines result pages).

Directory submission is time consuming and I wouldn’t suggest submitting your site to thousands of web directories fast. Outsourcing it cheaply to companies will not work either because the companies will not pay the needed attention for the submissions to be as effective as you need them to.

If you don’t want to devote a lot of time to directory submission, make sure that you will be listed at least in Dmoz.org (Free) and Yahoo Directory (Paid).

Dmoz

Dmoz is one of the oldest and more respected directories of the web. It got penalized two years ago because it was found that some of it’s editors were accepting money for fast inclusion to the directory but I think that this is a thing of the past. It still has a lot of value and is one of the main metrics for the quality and the “worthiness” of a web site. Since Dmoz is free, your inclusion is not guaranteed and it might take four or five submissions to finally “make it” but it’s clearly worth it. Not only it will bring more visitors, but at the same time it will give you more backlinks and a better position in the search engines. Google uses Dmoz to display directory listings on their site, therefore it’s a very good link to have. Get your site ready and when it is at an acceptable stage submit it for inclusion.

Yahoo Directory

Yahoo directory is a paid directory that is very effective in many ways.
Yahoo directory will bring:

• A good amount of traffic because many people visit the directory itself.
• A great backlink to your site, and therefore better search engine results
• Credibility, because many people check the yahoo directory to see if a company has added their website at the directory.

To submit your website to Yahoo Directory, costs $299. Be careful though, because when you try to submit your site to the directory, you will have to pay for the first year, however, inclusion is not guaranteed, and the money you paid not refundable. I am not a fan of their policy but if people take a second look at their submission before they send it, they have good chances to be accepted.

Other directories

There are thousands of directories, many of which are worth mentioning. Submitting to many directories can be time consuming and might even hurt your rankings. If you want to submit in a few, then pick the Dmoz and Yahoo directories only. If you want to submit your site to more, then you will have to do it right.
Points to pay attention to:

1. Don’t submit on many directories in a short period of time. It’s bad for Google to see 100 new backlinks in a small period and then, none. Just try to submit to approximately ten directories per day.
2. Don’t create one title and one description and use the these for every directory. Search engines look at it as duplicated content and pay much less attention to your listing. Your best bet is to create 4-5 titles and descriptions and randomize them so that they can be as unique as possible.
3. Don’t submit in all the directories you find. Evaluate carefully the directories you submit to. A typical way to evaluate a directory is to check its PageRank, Alexa and latest submissions. You don’t want your site to be featured together with viagra and casino offers.

What I have been doing for quite some time now is to use Submit Eaze. I use it so much that I have two licenses, one for my desktop and one for my laptop. It solves all the three problems mentioned above by:

• Helping you keep track of what directories you have already submitted your site to
• Automatically mixing your titles and descriptions
• Auto updating the directories list so you can submit to the new directories added that are handpicked from the creator of the application.

Furthermore, the application is developed and enhanced non-stop for at least three years and every update always adds new, great features. It’s easy to use and it automatically completes almost all forms for a directory submission, helping you do it much faster than normal.
If you are planning on doing many submissions to directories, Submit Eaze is the only solution to help you do it easily and effectively. I have tested most of the available applications for directory submission and Submit Eaze is by far the best one. A notable drawback, is the unavailability for Apple Computers.

Link building with Directory Submission is a post from Moneytized Blog
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But not all links are to be treated equally.

The accumulated  value our domain receives from links we are given, depends on these basic things:

• The “power” of the page giving us the link
• The Anchor text of the link
• The page’s relativity to our page

To make a long story short, let’s assume that our domain has gathered some links from other websites. A website giving us a link from a page with a PageRank of Four, is much more valuable than a link from a page with a PageRank of Two. Simplified, a PageRank Four link is eight times more valuable than a Three. That applies to all values.

So what we are basically trying to do is get as many authoritative links as possible.

Rest assure, we’ll be analyzing many more ways to get links in posts to come. We’ll also be seeing how we can make our posts go “viral”, so stay tuned!

Promoting our website: Off-page Optimization is a post from Moneytized Blog
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I don’t want to scare you but it’s quite hard to decide on how often you will post. Your long-term goal is to gain frequent and regular visitors, therefore posting should be frequent and consistent.

While your website “ages”, people are getting used to your posting schedules and know when to visit your page to read any new article you post. Think of it as a newspaper. If you went to the mini-market to buy one and you find out that it’s not printed today, you’ll think that something strange has happened. Next time it is not be available you will get frustrated, and if it happens again, then the habit will diminish and you will loose interest in that particular newspaper.

On the contrary, when I wake up in the morning, I like to make a coffee and then visit the blogs and websites i love, to see if they have posted anything new. If they have, that’s good because it keeps me interested, it keeps me reading and it makes me want to visit them again.

I am not implying that you should publish a post a day, but as often as you can will definitely be beneficial.. It might be one post every other day, or even one per week, but you have to keep that “rule”. It’s not my intention  to make you anxious about posting. Worrying too much about punctual posting can cause bigger problems. It could turn your blog or site into “work” and your next article into an “obligation”, and this is supposed to be something you love doing, not a job. It’s better to post when you can(like I do for the moment) instead of stressing about post frequency.

You don’t have to take an oath when starting your blog. Try posting once a week or so and if you can keep that up, then you can increase your frequency according to your own schedule and capabilities. Increasing  post frequency is  good, it’s just the opposite that is bad. After all, the more posts your site has, the better  the chances of new visitors finding you

One great trick i have used on many of my blogs is auto publishing. I can’t stress enough how useful this feature is. When you have already posted an article and have one more ready, you can schedule it to be posted automatically whenever you want. You don’t even have to be online or awake to publish it! One of the benefits of the Internet Marketing Lifestyle is that you can schedule your work to be published whenever you want.

If you have any questions or something to add about posting frequency, please do add a comment or contact me via the contact form.

Remember, my goal is not to just post my views and ideas, but to help you with your Internet Marketing Journey.

Angel

How often should I post? is a post from Moneytized Blog
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Why do I need to have a blog? I am just a…

If I got asked this question four to five years ago my response would be very different. But nowadays, having a blog is a necessity no matter who you are or what’s your field.

Blogs help businesses

Up to now only large corporations had blogs, but today it seems  everyone has one or has started one recently.

Why? It’s simple.

When you create a blog for a company(also called corporate blogging) you are sharing your views and your expertise with your field. If it’s a consulting company, employees write articles, which help readers give solutions to their problems. Why? Because they gain trust and “followers”, something that is very,Very important nowadays.

Having a “static” site is not enough nowadays, because there’s only a limited amount of things you can do. Yes, you can submit it in social networks, you might also hire a consulting company to increase your website’s search engine visibility, but that’s not gonna work anymore. People need to be informed and stay up to date with the latest trends of the niche they are interested in. By having a blog, you display more information than your competition -who has a conventional site-, you gain visitor trust, -making them more inclined to buy or use your service- and overall gain exposure, value and followers.

Blogs help individuals

Blogs are not only extremely valuable for corporations but for individuals too. And since I love examples, I’ll use my self as one. A year ago I had a company. We did projects for clients, including website creation, e-shops, promotion, monetization of internet “properties”, videos, and TV spots. When I closed my company, for reasons stated here, one friend believed I had made a huge mistake. This is because, whereas beforehand we got unearned increment for our company with each project completed, as a freelancer this is no longer possible.

A month after this conversation, and after failing to convince him he was wrong, I started this blog. After the fourth or fifth post he understood what I meant. I don’t have to hide behind a name to do business. I can become that name myself.

• I write articles on Internet Marketing and help people understand it’s concepts.
• It’s a powerful tool to raise awareness about what I do and why I am good at it.
• It’s a great way to promote my own in-house projects. By having a strong presence and gaining trust from the visitors I feel confident that they will give new projects a spin. Furthermore, when I promote the blog I also promote my work and my interests.
• I am pursuing my dream of teaching other people a reality.

Needless to say, we are now creating a corporate blog for my friend.

Some might say, that by educating people within my own niche, I loose customers since I teach them how to do it all on their own. This is partially true because:

• I don’t want just customers, I need good partners that will devote as much time as I do to their project.
• I prefer working with people who have a good understanding of internet marketing.
• I need people who will trust me as professional to help them out and won’t try to do all the work themselves, see how that goes and most probably make a big mess.
• I show the world that I am an expert in my niche and encourage being contacted for bigger projects and not being used to help promote your local bakery (not that I have anything against bakeries).

Last but not least, don’t think that your niche is strange or your interests are not that “mainstream” enough to make your blog popular. If you are passionate about something, thousands of people, if not more, will be more than happy to learn more about what it is you have to offer.

Take your self as an example. Let’s say you want a new website for your company. You’re doing your research and you find Ten companies that can cover your need.

Won’t you go to the one that has a blog with past work, interesting design articles and proof that they can deliver exactly what you need?

Just Think About It.

Angel

Ps. If you want to create a blog but don’t even know where to start, please do contact me via my contact form. I’ll make sure to give you some good start-up guidelines and further reading suggestions.

Why do I need a blog? is a post from Moneytized Blog
Follow @Moneytized @ Twitter.