Make Money on the Internet

List of Recommended Web Hosting Companies

2011-08-19T23:28:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of Recommended Web hosting Companies:

midPhase Hosting
Bluehost Hosting
Hostgator Hosting
iPowerWeb Hosting
GoDaddy Hosting
Lunarpages Hosting
FatCow Hosting
iPower Hosting
PowWeb Hosting
InMotion Hosting

Most plans are $7.95/month and lower. Remember, Cheaper isn't better.

Consumers Should Use Bargain Hunting Websites to Save Money

2009-10-29T17:30:00.000-07:00

Everyone likes to save money. Whether it is finding a great price on a car or getting half-off for a pair of shoes, people like to find great deals. There are websites where you can find great deals on many type of products that are social bargain hunting services. One of these bargain hunting websites is DealShouter.com.

On websites such as this, people can look at deals that other consumers have found that have saved them money. By looking over the deals that others have saved money on you can save money as well. You can receive an unbiased opinion by looking at the deals that are posted on DealShouter.com. Many times we are bombarded with so many advertisements that tell us how much money we can save and how great of a deal it can be by buying a product. The thing is these advertisements are coming from the manufacturer of the products so, obviously, they are biased. With the deals that are posted on DealShouter.com the reviews come straight from the consumer, so you know that it is a legitimate deal.

It is important that consumers visit websites, such as DealShouter.com, before they decide to buy something. If you visit these types of websites you can find products at better prices so you will save money. The nice thing is people have been in your situation before looking to buy something and they have found it at a great deal, and pass the information onto you. It is important that you do some research into what you are buying, generally the more expensive the product the more research, so you can find the best deal possible and know exactly what you are going to purchase. DealShouter.com allows you to do just that, as you can read the information on the product, as well as being able to get a great deal on that product.

At DealShouter.com, you can look at a wide variety of products from Appliances to Toys and everything in between. Why go out and blindly buy a product when you can find a better deal on exactly what you are looking for? Bargain hunting services on the Web can help you find the best prices possible for whatever you are looking for. For example, on DealShouter.com users can vote on deals that they have saved money on. These "Popular Deals" are ones that other consumers have taken advantage of and saved money on. People vote on the deals that they have saved the most money on so all the Popular Deals on the site are ones that you know will be legitimate. You can also become a user and post deals and vote on deals you have found so you can help your fellow consumer save money.

With the Internet becoming increasingly more popular for our shopping needs there are now websites available that can help you, not only find what you need but also find the best deals possible. The more expensive the product you are looking to buy the more important it is that you find the best deal possible. You can save big bucks by looking at websites such as DealShouter.com. Take advantage of the unbiased information that other consumers have given in order for you to find exactly what you are looking for at the best possible prices. Everyone likes to save money and by looking at bargain hunting websites, like DealShouter.com, you can do just that, save money.

Shaun Hogan, Owner of Digital Point Forum, Sued by eBay for Fraud

2008-11-23T18:55:00.000-08:00

Shaun Hogan, the owner of the Digital Point Forum, one of the most popular webmaster forums, is being by eBay along with two other men for defrauding eBay in a cookie stuffing scheme.

I don't get this guy. He owns one of the most popular webmaster forums on the internet and has plenty of opportunities to earn money in legitimate ways. Unfortunately, it looks like greed got the better of him and he tried to take shortcuts to milk eBay.

You can find more about the lawsuit against Shaun Hogan at: eBay Inc. v. Digital Point Solutions, Inc. et al.

There are plenty of ex-members of Digital Point who got banned from the forum and are plenty angry at Digital Point. I guess this sounds like music to their ears now.

Below is the story from Courthouse News
eBay Sues Alleged "Cookie Stuffers"

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - Three men defrauded eBay in a "cookie stuffing" scheme that made it appear the men’s companies should be paid commissions, eBay claims in Federal Court. It sued Shawn Hogan and Digital Point Solutions, Todd Dunning and Kessler’s Flying Circus, and Brian Dunning and Thunderwood Holdings.

eBay says the men devised software programs that, "unbeknownst to the [computer] user, redirected the user’s computer to the eBay Web site without the user actually clicking on an eBay advertisement link, or even becoming aware that they had left the page they were previously viewing. As a result, the eBay site would be prompted to drop an eBay cookie on the user’s computer even though the user never clicked on an eBay advertisement or even realized that their computer had ever visited the eBay site."

The complaint continues: "once the cookie was stuffed on the user’s computer by one or more of the defendant’s any future revenue actions initiated by that user when the user later visited eBay intentionally, and not as a result of any advertisement places by defendants, appeared to be eligible for commissions payable to one of the defendants".

eBay claims the defendants also used deceptive means to prevent it from discovering the fraud, and to conceal it. eBay demands compensatory, treble and punitive damages. It is represented by David Eberhart with O’Melveny & Myers.

Using SEO for effective Internet Marketing

2008-11-23T16:47:00.000-08:00

If you are an Internet marketer and want to be successful in the field, you will find that your business will be more effective if you combine your marketing strategies with Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO as it is commonly called is a must for Internet Marketing, especially if you want to reap from advertising.

Without SEO on your website, you not only run the risk of losing advertising business but your website would not stand a chance in the high rankings on search engine websites.

There are several different ways in which SEO optimization can be achieved. Keyword density, META tags, titles, inbound links and prominence are just some of the ways in which you can generate more hits and ranks to your website.

Probably the most widely used method for SEO optimization is keyword density. This method affords the web owner to use keywords that best describes his website's business or content. This means that if a person has a silver jewelry website specializing in selling rings for instance, their keywords would contain the words “jewelry”, or “rings” and “silver jewelry” to name a few.

When someone goes to a search engine website and enters a search using these keywords, your website would be on the search results list at a high ranking. Search engines mostly reward top position on the listing to those who use keywords

If someone were to use the aforementioned keywords at the search engine websites, then your website would be among your website would be found among the search and at a high rank as well. Search engines usually give high listing preference to those who utilize keyword density.

Keyword prominence is also good tactic for generating more hits. It has to do with how close you place your keywords at the beginning of the website. The keywords are inserted in the website's title along with META tags. META tags are HTML codes that are embedded into a website's heading that is not visible to the page's visitor.

Incorporating keywords into the code as oppose to the content on your website has proven to be very effective.

Why Affiliate Marketing

2008-11-21T22:50:00.000-08:00

Affiliate marketing is big business these days. It is a mega marketing wave that most companies are riding on in order to achieve a portion or all monthly revenue.

Some may wonder why huge companies are also adding affiliate marketing to its business. Well the answer is simple. For starters, it really does not cost a company a whole lot if anything to get an affiliate marketing program going.

And then once the program commences, the company can only gain from this form of advertising. Here is a scenario about how affiliates marketing works. Company X has started an affiliate marketing program for their online store. This store carries a wide range of gift wrapping supplies.

When someone signs up, as an affiliate for Company X's website, they will in turn receive a code for a banner ad. This would be the new affiliate's personal code that they can later post at their own website or that of another website.

When the banner is clicked by a visitor to the website, they are then forwarded to the banner's address or the affiliates web store. The new affiliate would receive a set percentage of the sales that was generated from the banner promotion.

Other ways that an affiliate can gain from using a company's banner on their website is by the amount of traffic that they send to the company's web page. Even if a person arrives at the company's website and they don't make a purchase, if they sign up to be on the mailing list or complete a survey, it would still benefit the affiliate.

Some companies also utilize the pay-per-click system to reward their affiliates. Affiliates here are given a banner to place on their web page and every time the banner is clicked, the affiliate gains a percentage of money. Pay-per-click reward affiliates for the traffic they send to their website.

While pay-per-click is a good way to make money for the affiliate, it can also weaken a company that that runs an online store. What eventually happens in some cases is that more banner clicking is being done and when people are redirected to the website, they close the page without making a purchase.

So if you are a business considering affiliate marketing with pay-per-click and sales, you may want to think this through and carefully.

Finally, business owners are advised to partner with an affiliate that can generate more money for them and it would also help if your banner ads are colorful, catchy and worth a click.

Save Yourself a Headache: Here are Some Decent Web Hosting Companies

2008-01-07T22:29:00.000-08:00

One of the most important decisions when starting a website is choosing the right web hosting company to host your website. A bad web host can cause your website to go down frequently or be inaccessible for long periods of time. This will turn away your visitors and drive your traffic to die down. Choosing the right web host could be the difference between success and failure.

I can't recall the number of times I had to complain to some web hosting companies that I had signed up with, or screamed over the phone or threatened legal actions. I have tried several web hosts throughout the years and had to change web hosts several times.

The process of changing web host is painful (moving files, recreating databases, waiting for DNS records to propagate through the internet) and usually results in significant downtime for your site and loss of emails. This is without mentioning the stress and aggravation that you get.

I can't stress enough how important it is to choose the right web hosting company.

Here are a few web hosting companies that I recommend, based on my own experience and also feedback that I have received from my friends:

midPhase Hosting
Bluehost Hosting
Hostgator Hosting
iPowerWeb Hosting
GoDaddy Hosting
Lunarpages Hosting
FatCow Hosting
iPower Hosting
PowWeb Hosting

Most basic hosting plans cost $7.95/month or lower. A basic plan is what I believe most webmasters should start out with, unless you expect your website to be an instant success. As you outgrow your plan, you can choose a more expensive hosting plan or go with dedicated hosting.

Some bloggers like Shoemoney really need to take some writing classes

2007-12-27T15:59:00.000-08:00

I frequently read some blogs and I am amazed to find how some very popular blogs are full with spelling errors, grammatical mistakes and without proper punctuation. I wonder sometimes if those bloggers ever took some English classes. That's how bad some of their writings are! Yet, visitors flock to these blogs and I am not sure if they don't notice the bad writing or they simply don't care.

I have to admit that English is not my strongest point. English isn't my first language. It isn't my second language. It isn't even my third language. It's my fourth language! In college, I had take twice English 101 because I ended up with a D the first time I took it. However, I know how to use a Spell Checker. I usually type my blog entries in Microsoft Word which automatically highlights grammar and spelling mistakes. Then, I copy them back into my blog. If you know how to copy and paste, you can certainly do this too!

Don't these bloggers know how to use a Spell Checker? Don't they take the time to re-read or even proofread what they wrote? Do they take their job seriously enough to try to present something decent? I suspect they simply don't care because there are enough people out there willing to read their garbage.

If you read Shoemoney's blog posts, you will find so many spelling and grammar errors, missing punctuation that you got to wonder if he's ever taken or passed any English classes. I sometimes get lost in some of his blog posts. If he is making as much money as he claim, he has got to enroll into a community college and take some writing classes for his readers' sake. But I bet he won't. Not as long as we are willing to read anything that he puts out there!

Cool Online Deals Website to Help You Save on Your Holidays Shopping

2007-12-11T20:52:00.000-08:00

Here is a cool Best Online Deals website that works like a social bargain hunting service. Basically, users submit the shopping deals that they have found online. Other users get to rate those deals. Deals are sorted on the main page based on the community votes.

This digg-like website offers a way for bargain hunters to quickly find the best shopping deals based on the recommendation of the website members.

The website is DealShouter.com. Check it out.

Why most websites fail within the first year

2007-05-17T08:44:00.000-07:00

Did you know that most websites will eventually close or get abandoned by their owners within the first year?
In a world where more and more people get connected to the internet, you may wonder why the vast majority of websites fail to reach a significant portion of the internet audience and get abandoned before they make any serious money.
The answer will not surprise you. It’s the lack of originality and creativity. It’s the lack of commitment from the website owners, be it time, effort or financial commitment.

Lack of Originality

One of the most serious mistakes that webmasters often make is that to think that because a particular website has succeeded, they can copy the same model and get a share of its business. Take for example myspace. Since myspace has become popular, a lot of people have tried to duplicate the success of myspace by launching social networking websites similar to it. What they have basically achieved is to get a clone of myspace without adding anything more to it. Now, why would a person want to join a social networking website that is in essence identical to myspace but without the crowd that makes myspace so attractive?

You can find plenty of free or paid scripts nowadays that offer the same features of almost any well-known and successful website. You need a script that would function like digg.com, flickr.com, photobucket.com, etc…? Just search the internet and you’ll find plenty of those scripts. But don’t make the mistake thinking that you can install this script on a website and expect it to be as popular as the initial pioneers. If there is no value-add, there is no compelling reason for anyone to join up a service that is essentially a clone of an already well-established and well-known website. You can find plenty of clones of popular web services that use off-the-shelf scripts but very few to no people visit them and they are essentially dead.

Therefore, stop thinking that you want to be a myspace-like, or digg-like, or any other website-like. Be original. There is nothing wrong with copying an idea but you must add to it. Better yet, you must find a unique idea, a revolutionary idea. And you’ll be on your way to earn lots of money on the internet.

Lack of Commitment

When webmasters start a website, they often underestimate the amount of work that is needed to make the website successful. One of the most challenging tasks is promoting your website, getting people to know about your website and getting decent ranking with search engines. There are other tasks that are also very demanding such as updating your website with new features, new content or fixing bugs, managing your website such as answering emails, keeping your visitors or customers happy so they may return, fighting off spammers, preventing fraud, etc…

The most pressing task when starting a website is promoting it. This requires a huge commitment that you are not likely to see the benefit immediately and that you would need to sustain for a long time. This commitment requires a lot of time and effort and a lot of financial resources.

As an example of the work ahead, you would need to contact other webmasters to exchange or buy links with (this is called link building and is a must to get good ranking from search engines which typically judge a website popularity by how many other websites links to it). You would need to write articles or hire writers to write about your website and submit these articles to press release websites or news-sharing websites. You would need to post or talk about your website wherever you can. You would need to think about any other way to let the word out about your website.

Some of the items listed above may result in an immediate spike of traffic that would die down after a few days and would need to be repeated over and over again. Others would not have an immediate impact (such as link building or other search engine optimization – SEO – techniques) and you are not likely to see any benefits for several weeks if not months.

You also can not do it on the cheap. You would have to spend money initially on your website even though you would not be earning much in return. If you don’t want to spend any money initially, chances are, unless you are extremely lucky, you will not be able to make it. Invest your initial funds wisely. Ask your fellow webmasters about what works and what does not work and spend your money accordingly. You can join a webmaster forum such as WebmasterGround.com to get a tips from other webmasters. Also, don’t spend all your money in one shot. Any initial success may be short-lived. Instead, start slowly, budget for the long term, and spend your money in a sustained fashion. Learn from your experience and allocate your money to promotion techniques that have proven successful. Don’t get too concerned or loose your patience if you don’t get any immediate return.

Sustained commitment is undeniably what makes or breaks a website. If you don’t have the patience to work hard, spend hard and see very little benefit as you go, your website will likely fail to take off as you will quickly loose motivation.

How much time, effort and money should you invest before you know that your idea will not turn into successful website? That’s the million-dollar question. My answer is if you give it your best (do everything that you can to promote it and spend as much money as you can afford) for a full year and your website fails to take off, it may be time to ditch it.

Earn Money Online Without Spending Your Own Money

2007-04-09T15:58:00.000-07:00

A friend once asked me: "Is there a way to earn money online without spending your own money first?" My reply was "Absolutely. Can you write intelligently about any topic?"

Of course, I was referring to blogging. There is no wonder why blogging has gotten so popular these days. It allows people to write about what they like to talk about and at the same time, make money from it. And you don't have to spend any money to get started. Yes, that’s right. Not a single penny. Let me explain.

First, you don't have to an expert in any particular field. You just have to write interestingly enough to make people want to read your blog. It could be about your experience with anything, your hobbies or your personal opinions about a particular topic.

Starting a blog is easy and requires no fee. That's right. You don't have to buy a domain name or pay to host your website. You can create a free blog from many websites on the internet. The most popular ones are blogger.com, wordpress.com and livejournal.com. Just register with any of these services to create your blog. It’s free. Start making posts that are worthwhile reading. There is a huge audience out there and any topic that you could write about could be of interest to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.

After making a few posts, you would need to promote your blog to attract your reading audience. There are many ways to promote your blog without spending a single penny. Get your blog listed in web directories like dmoz.org, WebSorter.com, etc... Submit your blog entries to news sharing sites like Digg.com, Reddit.com and NowPubic.com. Publicize your blog in your myspace page and other social networking websites. Submit your blog feeds to aggregator sites like FeedBurner, Squidoo, Feedboy, Jordomedia, FeedBomb, ect...

There are many ways to make money from your blog. One of the ways is to add pay-per-click ads from services like Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network, AdBrite and many others. Typically, these pay-per-click ads are targeted to the topic of your blog. If you are blogging about student loans, the ads that will show on your blogs will most likely be about student loans. Every time a visitor on your blog clicks one of those ads, you will earn some money. How much you will earn per click will depend on the kind of ads that are displayed on your blog and how competitive and lucrative that those ads are to advertisers.

Other ways to monetize your blog would be to sell ad space directly to advertisers if your blog receives a significant viewership. To get advertisers, you can list your ad space for sale on AdBrite, AdEngage, AdSpace-Auctions Ad Marketplace, etc... If your blog has a decent Google PageRank (PageRank is an estimation from 0 to 10 of how important Google thinks your webpage is), you can also get paid by webmasters to have their links on your blog. Webmasters typically try to get as many links as possible to their websites in order to increase their website popularity in the eyes of the search engines. The higher your blog's Google PageRank is, the more valuable a link to your blog becomes, and the higher webmasters will be willing to pay for a link. To get webmasters to buy links from your blog, join webmaster forums such as Digitalpoint, Sitepoint or WebmasterGround and post in their marketplace section about your offers.

These are just a few ways to earn money from your blog. Remember, it costs nothing to start a blog. Write about something that you can make interesting enough for people to read. Promote your blog. Add ads to your blog. And you are on your way to earn money. How much money you can earn from your blog only depends on how much effort you want to put in it. The sky's the limit.

How to Achieve High Search Engine Ranking for your Keyword within 6 Months or Less

2007-04-08T12:50:00.000-07:00

First, I want to say that I am by no means an expert in the field of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I started experimenting with achieving higher search engine rankings for my websites a few months ago. The results were quite surprising. I was able to make it to page 1 of Google search for a very competitive keyword.

As much as the SEO experts would like to make people believe that achieving good ranking in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) is a very difficult task that requires a lot of skills and expertise, I found that it was not exactly the case. It just takes a lot of work and anyone who has time in his hand can do it.

I am going to share the two most important things that you can do to achieve higher rankings within a few months. This is based on my experience and applying these two things have shown to be very effective in getting my websites listed on the first page of the major search engines for my targeted keywords.

Before trying to get the desired traffic from search engines, you must identify the keywords that you are targeting. Ask yourself this question: what search phrase would I type on a search engine to find a site similar to mine? There are also tools such as the Google AdWords Keyword Tool or the Overture Keyword Selector that you can use to get an idea of how popular your targeted keywords are (by looking at their search volumes) and also to refine your keywords selection. What you have identify a keyword or a set of keywords that you would like to target, you are ready to get started with the two most important things to achieve higher rankings.

The first thing that you must do is to make sure that the first 3 words of your webpage title contain your targeted keywords. This is essential. Search engines give a lot of weight to a webpage title. Since people have been known to stuff their title with keywords, search engines typically rely heavily on the first few words of the title and ignore or give less credit to subsequent words. Therefore, it will not help you much to have an extremely long title as only the first few words would make a difference. Also, make sure that you do repeat your keywords in your webpage content in order to strenghten relevancy at the eyes of the search engines.

The second thing that you must do is to try to get as many links as possible from other websites to your website with your targeted keywords as anchor text. An anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink. The more sites that link to you with these keywords, the more the search engines will attribute these keywords to your site. Make sure that you do get links from relevant sites and/or from high authority sites. Typically, webmasters look at the Google PageRank of any website to get an idea of how important Google thinks the webpage is. Get links from webpages with high Google PageRank as these links will be given more weight by Google. Note that the more competitive your keywords are, the more backlinks you would need to get.

It is certainly a huge effort to get as many backlinks as possible. You have to approach other webmasters to ask them to link to your site. You have to buy links. You have to exchange links. You have to track those links. And all that takes a considerable amount of time and you are likely not to see any payback for several months, which can be discouraging. If you do not want to go through the time and effort that it takes, you can hire link builders to do the job for you. Typically, link builders from India are relatively cheap and can provide you with hundreds of links to your website. You can post your link building needs on a freelance marketplace like Project4Hire.com and get several bids from people who offer link building services anywhere in the World.

As a conclusion, it is not rocket science to acheive high rankings with search engines for your keyword. The two most important things that you can do is to get a carefully-chosen title for your webpage and get as many websites as possible to link to your webpage with your targeted keywords as anchor text. Remember, you would need to get a lot of backlinks for competitive keywords are. Results are guaranteed. Within 6 months or less, you will see your website listed on the first page on the major search engines for your targeted keyword search. It's definitly not rocket science!

Ways to earn money on the internet if you don't have a website

2007-04-07T21:51:00.000-07:00

I found out after visiting a few webmaster forums that they are a lot of people who do not have websites but who earn money providing services to the webmaster community.
Imagine that. These people don't have to worry about paying for web hosting, managing websites and dealing with issues related to maintaining websites. They just provide the services that webmasters need and can earn quite some money by doing this.

Here are a few ways that you can earn money if you don't have a website.

- (Manual) Directory Submissions
A lot of webmasters are looking for people to submit their links to as many web directories as possible. Typically, webmasters do not have too much time to submit their links to hundreds or thousands of web directories as they usually spend their time managing their websites.
You can provide your service to "manually" submit their links to hundreds or thousands of web directories for a small fee. Note that the word "manually" was put between quotes as most people who provide this service do not do the job by hand, one link at a time. Rather, they use tools to automatically submit the links to the web directories.
If you have the time and/or the right tool, you can easily earn around $35 per 500 directory submissions. This is the typical rate that I pay for the service.

- Link Building
This is pretty much similar to directory submissions but the difference is that the links may not necessarily go to web directories.
A webmaster may need x amount of "permanent" links from related webpages and again may not have the time or expertise needed to get these links.
This is where you can come in and earn some money. Your job would be to find webpages and ask their owners to link to your client's sites. You can do so by offering them link exchanges or somehow convincing them to add the links (good luck with that). I am not sure how the link builders do it but if you can figure out how to get a bunch of targeted webpages to link to your client's site, you can earn quite some money for each unique link.
Typically, webmasters would pay you more if you can get links from relevant websites that have a high Google PageRank (PR).

- Writing
If you can write, you will definitly find a huge number of potential web clients who are looking to add fresh content for their websites.
Webmasters are always looking for writers who can write articles, tutorials, or make blog posts related to their websites topics.
You can charge per word or you can charge for each article or blog post.
If you have expertise on a particular field (for example SEO, marketing, web design), then your services can become more valuable to a webmaster and you can charge higher fees.

- Paid forum posting and forum moderation
When a webmaster starts a new forum, he needs to populate his forum with a few threads and posts to jumpstart his online community. Visitors typically do not join and start posting on a forum unless they can see that the forum is active and has useful posts.
In order to get the threads and posts needed to show activity, webmasters hire forum posters. If you have the time, you can offer your service as a paid forum poster. The typical rate is $0.10/post but it could lower if the forum is an easy one to post or higher if the forum requires some expertise to post intelligently.
If you decide you want to be a paid poster, you should resist the temptation to copy threads from other forums and simply repost them on the new forum. It is the easier way to get the job done but if your client notices it, all your efforts will be wasted as you will probably not get paid and will tarnish your reputation.
Also, webmasters who manage large communities often do need moderators to keep their forum free of spam, to move threads to the proper sections, to keep discussions civil and to the topic, and other moderating tasks. If you are interested to become a moderator, contact the administrators of the forums of your choice. Most webmasters would be willing to compensate you for your efforts as a moderator.

These are just a few ways to earn money online that I could think of at the moment. There are many other ways to earn money online by providing services to webmasters.
You may want to visit the marketplace section of popular webmaster forums like digitalpoint.com, sitepoint.com, WebmasterGround's webmaster forum or check freelance marketplaces like project4hire.com to find work.

Make Money on the Internet

2007-01-21T19:37:00.000-08:00

Just started this new blog. I will use it to discuss various ways on making money on the internet.
I learnt quite a few tricks online and found ways to earn some income from the internet.
If you have a lot of time to spend online, don't waste it on unuseful stuff. Chances are you can use that time online to make some money.