Having your own website is surefire way to build your own solid online business. A website is an asset to the owner just as land is to an owner.

This is not to mean that you can’t make a lot of money online without your own website but a website allows more opportunity to earn on autopilot than the other models that don’t require a website. Furthermore you can liquidate or cash out on your website any time in the future and who knows maybe make triple the amount that it is worth. I hope that whets your appetite.

Getting a website online takes three fundamental steps and one equally important extra step as follows:

• Get a domain name
• Get a hosting account
• Update the Domain Name Servers
• Sign up with an autoresponder service (this step is not a must but is vital to your long term success online)

Now let’s go through each one of them in more details:

1 Register a domain

The first thing you are going to do is to register a domain name for your website. Did I hear you ask, “Kevin, what is a domain name?”

Well every website is stored under a domain name which is basically a unique address on the internet that allows web surfers to access the files stored under the website. For example internetwealthlab.com is my domain name, facebook.com is the domain name for Facebook and imageeditor.net is the domain name for the online image editor.

To register a domain name you need a domain registrar. I always use Namecheap.com. They are cheap, reliable and above all, flexible. They also have a good user interface that is easy to navigate. Registering your domain name with namecheap costs you only $9.98/year.

To choose a domain name, go to namecheap.com and search for the domain name you want to register by typing it in and then clicking on “search”. button

Tips:

• Consider having your domain name keyword-rich. For example, if your niche is “acne”, you’ll want to have the word acne in the domain name of your site.
• Consider also going for either a .com, .net or a .org extension as they are the most popular. Overall, however, .com looks more professional and is most memorable. Again, most people tend to enter .com by default when visiting a website.
• You can register your own full name or the name of your business
• Consider doing away with hyphens (-) and underscores (_)

Now, you will not always find the domain name you have in mind as some of them will already be registered. If that is the case, continue searching until you find one that you like, and then proceed to register it.

To register your domain, click on the “Add to cart” button

To continue for now, click on the Express Checkout button.

You will be prompted to create an account with namecheap if you don’t have one. Once you have created an account with namecheap and you are logged in, click Express Checkout button and then choose to pay by credit card or by funds available in your account.

Yes, the funds available in your account. Namecheap allows you the option to deposit money through PayPal into your namecheap account for faster checkout. This is particularly helpful for people that register lots of domain names such as professional domain flippers. For now, just pay by credit card and let’s move to the nest step.

NB:

Don’t take the offer for web hosting from namecheap. Just register the domain name and set up your hosting account with hostgator

2. Set up a Hosting Account

Once you have your domain name, you need to host it on a server somewhere online. While it is easy to find free web hosts that promise some quality features, they will be more than likely strict limitations to what you can do with your hosting space.

If you don’t want some third party banners on your website distracting the sale process or costing you subscribers and customers, then you must stay away from free hosting. I tried one and I promise it was one nasty experience; eventually I had to move my entire business to a new location (hostgator).

You’ve been warned. What you really need is a reliable web host with good customer support 24 hours a day. Again you don’t want to have your site going down three times a month.

If I ever have to give recommendation for a reliable web host, then it has got to be Hostgator. It is my absolute favorite (from my own personal experience) and is preferred by majority of online marketers. I host all my sites with them and here is one practical example why I like them:

“Some two months ago, I accidentally deleted my blog some minutes before midnight and within two minutes, I was chatting live with a hostgator technical assistant. About three hours later, the blog was restored 100%. That is what is in my opinion, reliability”

Although hostgator will offer to register you a domain name, don’t go for the offer. They will have control over your domain making it difficult to transfer it to a new registrar should you ever decide to do it for whatever reason. Go for their hosting package and register your domain at namecheap. I hope you remember that.

The “Baby” package ($9.95/month) allows you to host unlimited domains on the same package as your online business grows. But if you are on a tight budget, just go for the hatchling package ($8.95/month). It allows you to host only one domain but you can always upgrade when the need be.

Tip: You can knock off the monthly hosting fee to as low as $4.95 by choosing to pay on 3 years intervals.

3. Update the Domain Name Servers (DNS)

After setting your hosting account, hostgator will send you an email containing the Domain Name Servers for your hosting account. They will be similar to:

NS1.HOSTGATOR.COM
NS2.HOSTGATOR.COM

What you now need to do is to login to your namecheap account and click on “Manage Domains” from the top navigation tabs. Then click on your domain name

Next, click on “Domain Name Server Setup” from the left hand menu. An empty form will appear you asking you to change the existing Domain Name Server Information. Simply coy and paste the Domain Name Servers in the order NS1 and NS2 exactly as they appear in the email you received from hostgator as follows:

Click Save and that is it. You’ll now only need to keep checking to see whether the changes have taken place. After about 24 hours, login to your hostgator cpanel (Account Control Panel) and check it out. If your domain name has appeared, you are ready to build and upload your website files.

You now have two options:

If you want to create a wordpress blog, you can create it automatically using a feature called Fantastico Autoinstaller available from your hostgator control panel.

If you want to build a regular HTML website, you can use a free website builder called NVU. You can get a free completely illustrated NVU guide here.

4. Get an autoresponder account:

While it is very easy to overlook the importance of an autoresponder account, it’s one of the most important assets to an online business owner. It is the easiest way to drive traffic to any website on demand.

A list of subscribers is so important that many A-class marketers will swear it was the single most important factor to their huge success online. One marketer I know even claims that “if you are not building a list, you are not building a business but rather building some other peoples’ businesses

There are many autoresponder services out there but none beats Aweber in terms of deliverability and reliability. It is also the number one choice for most internet marketers. That’s all there is to getting your first website or blog up and running.

Wishing you success with your first website,
Kevin Njoroge.

Being an artist doesn’t mean you have to starve.  Forget the archetypical image of a tortured soul, emaciated and malnourished, battling inner demons in a Lower Manhattan studio apartment—in the internet age artists are everywhere, even in the most unpredictable places, and making names for themselves online.

Is it selling out?  Maybe.  But you’ll never write the next great American novel or paint the next timeless painting if you can’t make rent.  You can get paid for your art, and in more ways than you think.

The Neo- Classical Way

Why fight fierce competition in your area or (worse yet) a shortage of demand for art, when you can sell your one-of-a-kind pieces online, with the entire globe as your market?  There are hundreds of communities and sites that facilitate the buying and selling of art; all that you are required to do is produce the art.  The best part?  Interested buyers come to you.  Of course, the more you want to sell, the more you’ll have to advertise yourself in the real and online worlds, but your pieces will get views just by being online, which is more than they’d get sitting in your basement.

A few of the major online art trading communities are Etsy and Yessy, which feature hand-made art and craft items specifically, and eBay and Amazon, which aren’t limited to hand-made works (or to art, for that matter).

Many artists also choose to build their own websites to sell their work rather than creating an account with a third party site.  And with websites like Foliotwist that offer web page templates and customizable page construction, along with traffic booster tips and website reviews, you don’t even have to be an expert coder to get your art seen by potentially hundreds of thousands of people every year.

An Avant- Garde Approach

Maybe you aren’t comfortable posting your serious art for sale online, or maybe you are an artist that doesn’t take art too seriously, but still want to generate some income by being creative.  For clever and creative artists with an instinct for quality graphic design and an intuition about mass commercial appeal there are sites like Café Press, Zazzle, and Threadless which allow registered users to set up their own “stores” where they can upload their personal designs and print them on pretty much anything—t-shirts, coffee mugs, sticky notes, shot glasses, skateboards, shoes—and then sell those items to anyone who visits their store.  It may not exactly be “high art,” but it can pay the bills if users are proactive in marketing their wares.

Even Michaelangelo Sold Out

Michaelangelo was paid to paint the Sistine Chapel—he did not do it out of an altruistic love for the church, or to preserve his lofty ideals about art.  Art doesn’t have to be the thing that keeps you in poverty; rather, it should be that which transports you to higher realms of wealth and happiness (think Gatsby’s yellow Rolls Royce if you need a mental image).   Make your art make money for you!

About the Author

Alvina Lopez is a freelance writer and blog junkie, who blogs about accredited online schools. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: alvina.lopez @gmail.com.

If you enjoy working with computers, consider converting that enjoyment to a profit by starting an online home business.

One of the best things about the Internet is that it enables you to reach out to an unlimited number of clients. Since you are not restricted to focusing your efforts within one specific area, you’re limited only by your dedication to the business.

To start, you’ll need to figure out what sorts of products or services you want to provide to customers through your online home business. You’ll likely find that you can fill an existing need by either selling a product that hasn’t yet been introduced to the market, or by offering your expertise to others. You could even create an online home business that is centered around selling items that you no longer need through auction websites such as eBay.

Since the success of your online home business will be largely dependent upon a good Internet connection, make sure that yours is functioning well before you start. If you will have a website to advertises your online business, try to find a hosting service that offers great service at a price you can afford. Reliability is particularly important because if your website is down frequently or does not offer a secure connection for customers who want to buy something, they’ll look elsewhere to get what they want.

Make sure you don’t leave out the small aspects of your online home business too. For example, in addition to a trustworthy Internet connection, you’ll also need to budget for other things that help keep your business running smoothly. Although your needs will vary depending on the type of business you have, examples include a printer, ink, a separate phone line for business calls, and papers.

In closing, don’t forget that a strong marketing plan is a vital ingredient for anyone who is committed to the success of an online home business. Think about ways that you can spread the word about your business and reach your target audience quickly. If you’re able to keep up a high level of service even as your business grows, you’ll very likely benefit from favorable comments from your customers.

Here are some proven Home Business Opportunities that really work!

If you are a website or blog owner, traffic is one of the most important elements for the success of website. There are numerous ways to generate website traffic, some free, some paid. This post will focus mainly on the free ways to get or increase your website traffic.

Get Your Website to Load Faster

What do you think would happen if you had a massive traffic generation campaign but you end up referring people to a website that takes a few minutes to load? Do you think they would wait that long. Some would but I can bet most of them would not.

It is generally agreed that web surfers are a very impatient audience especially due to the great diversity of websites on the internet. So, no matter how informative your website is, you may miss the opportunity to make that first impression if your blog or website loads at snail speed. Your visitors will simply slick away and surf elsewhere. What a terrible way to lose your traffic.

While this doesn’t directly get you website traffic, it helps you to retain the visitors you have already generated.

It is also believed that Google penalizes slow loading websites or blogs. This may neutralize or diminish the impact of your search engine optimization efforts. Cutting down on the size of your graphics is one classical way to make your website load faster. It is also recommended that you specify the dimensions of your graphics to help browsers load your site faster.

If you are a blogger, then you should consider having the w3 Total Cache plugin installed. This nifty plugin will increase your blog loading speed tremendously and some bloggers have reported an increase of as much as 85%.

photo credit: Robert S. Donovan

Write great content

Great content is one of the most important magnets for attracting repeat website traffic for free. So, irrespective of any other traffic attraction techniques you use, the first important element is to focus on providing value to your website visitors.

Your website or blog should above everything else provide real value to your visitors; otherwise they will just click away within no time. As much as possible you should try to have your own unique look or approach to things while at the same time solving real problems experienced by your blog or website visitors and readers.

Get Handy Traffic Generation WordPress Plugins

If you use WordPress, then these plugins will help greatly in generating and retaining website traffic.

All in One SEO Plugin: This plugin will help you in optimizing your posts for the search engines. We have already talked about this plugin before I talked about it in a previous post called How to get more Google traffic part 2, but it is so important that it deserves yet another mention.

Google Sitemap Generator: this is a very handy sitemap plugin that submits XML sitemap of your blog posts to Google and other major search engines. Even more interesting is the fact that there is no input required on your part once you have installed this plugin. The plugin does everything automatically for you, helping your blog posts to be indexed faster by Google.

Similar Posts Plugin: This plugin is important for retaining your website visitors by providing them with more information on the topic. This plugin also refers your visitors to your older blog posts.

Add a tool or service that people need on your website

This technique is not for everyone, but it is nevertheless worth mentioning since it is a potentially explosive repeat traffic magnet.

Take the example of problogger.net; Darren Rowse has a blogging jobs board where sites looking to hire bloggers can advertise their vacancies. This is a kind of a magnet for repeat traffic. You see, people looking for blogging jobs will continually come back to this page looking for jobs. As bloggers, they are also targeted to the theme of the problogger.net blog which mostly talks about blogging.

What do you think the chances are that these job seekers will also click to the main blog? Well, you bet they are very likely. So while Darren Rowse makes money selling jobs advertisement space, he also generates repeat traffic to his blog that way.

What else would you do to generate repeat traffic to your site or blog? You can start a discussion forum and this is particularly easy to do nowadays with so many open source forum software available online today.

photo credit: senekin

Give your article marketing a unique twist

Article marketing is a classic but very effective traffic generation technique. Some people argue that article marketing is not the best way to get fast website traffic on the short term.

This is especially true for the immensely competitive niches such as “internet marketing” and “making money online”. Don’t get me wrong, article marketing is still a powerful strategy but it doesn’t guarantee immediate results unless you can submit lots of article daily to the article directories.

That not withstanding, I recommend you use your creativity to leverage on the exposure provided by the article directories and give your article marketing a unique twist. How do you do this?

The first way to leverage on the power of article marketing is to write a top ten or so list of… and publish it on your blog. Then you take some first five tips or items from the list, rewrite them into about 350-500 words and submit them to article directories. In your resource box, you should then write a blurb in the line of:

To get five other tips to lose weight naturally, visit Your site

You get the point? The idea here is to promise the article reader some more tips on the exact topic he/she just read about. This will likely increase your conversion rates and increase your traffic tremendously.

Secondly, focus on writing and submitting informative articles with a unique twist as opposed to the throwaway articles that we see all over the article directories. If you write great, informative articles that solve real problems, then you increase the chances of your articles being picked up by other site owners.

A little controversy may also be very effective and we have covered this in a previous post called How to trigger the power of viral marketing in your online business. This not only increases your backlinks but also sends you free targeted traffic from such sites.

On the flip side, this technique is very much dependent on chances and you can never tell if your articles will get picked up by site owners and that brings us to the next technique to get free website or blog traffic.

Connect with other bloggers

Like we have already mentioned, getting your articles published by other bloggers and website owners is dependent upon chance and you can only hope that your articles get picked. To get your articles published on other blogs, you may submit articles to other blogs in your niche. In deed there are many blogs that accept guest posts.

You just need to make sure that the article you submit is relevant to their blog topic, are well researched and above all are useful to their readers. You also need to spell-check them and ensure that they have no grammatical and punctuation errors and you will be surprised how many blogs are willing to accept your blog posts.

Again you don’t need to focus only on the popular blogs alone. You will find the growing blogs with some decent traffic are even more willing to accept your guest posts.

Of course some site owners will not even respond to your emails. Just don’t take it personally. If you write to twenty bloggers offering to do a guest post and only receive a response from three, go ahead and submit your guest post. Repeat the same steps and before you realize your traffic will have increased threefold. This strategy alone increased traffic to my other blog by more than 120%.

Please feel free to share the traffic generation techniques that have worked for you. Just drop a comment below.

Search engine users commonly check out only the top result list (the first page) because searching the entire list for a particular keyword would mean a waste of time. If ranking high on search engines result list is such fundamental for the exposure to a site, how can online entrepreneurs ensure that their website is findable?

Compliance to web standards is one of the proven SEO Internet marketing strategies. This means avoiding the common mistakes that web developers commit when designing websites, be it for themselves or their clients.

Here are the top the three most common mistakes that online entrepreneurs should get rid of in order to accomplish their Internet marketing plans are the following:

Cut Down On Graphics

Don’t select a graphic-driven website over a text-driven website. Search engine spiders are blind; they treat graphics as either unreadable or jumbled codes. Graphic-driven websites do improve the appearance of the website. But if it is the reason for losing the chance to be indexed by spiders, it would be a lot better to settle with a clean and simple text-driven website.

Check For Broken Links

Don’t let broken links weaken your online marketing and search engine optimization campaigns. Always check if the navigation links as well as outbound and side wide links are working properly because they have great impact on the ranking of your website.

Cut Out Those Flamboyant Flash Craps On Your Home Page

A website with a Flash home page does not comply with SEO web standards. Spiders cannot read graphics. So don’t fool yourself that it can understand interactive graphic designs like Flash.

The web standards for SEO serve as the guidelines in checking the usefulness of the websites submitted to search engines. It is therefore quite logical for standards-compliant websites to gain the favor of spiders when indexing online pages.

Pick up some great SEO tricks and tips and find out how you can improve your internet marketing.

If you are a blogger or an online publisher, then you probably offer advertising space on your blog or website. You may have heard about adsfundi.com or you are considering having them serve ads on your site. Better still, you  have probably added their ads to your site already. If that is so, then you will be interested in this review of adsfundi.com? Please read on to learn about my experience with adsfundi.com.

First things first, adsfundi.com is an advertisement program that serves targeted ads on the websites or blogs of their advertisement partners (called publishers) in return for a cut of revenue generated from clicks generated by the publisher’s website. In simple terms, adsfundi.com is very mush like the popular Google Adsense program. But unlike Google Adsense that allows a minimum payout of $100, with adsfundi.com you can withdraw from as low as $50.

Personally I never knew about adsfundi.com until I received this email from their executive.

They also seemed better than Google Adsense based on the data in that email:

1.       You get 75% per click cost from all clicks coming from our ads on your site

2.       You also get a 50% commission from all sales that come from our ads on your site.

Considering this, I thought; why not give then a shot? They also seemed very cooperative and reliable when setting up the ad blocks. Within a day, I was already displaying their ads on my two sites. The ads performance was pretty encouraging (about $0.07 per click) and within a couple weeks, the revenue was about $25.

I was very optimistic about this advertisement program and was already wondering why I hadn’t discovered adsfundi.com before.

Then reality hit me hard one day when an attempt to login to my adsfundi.com account bore no fruits. I contacted the adsfundi.com support asking them about the problem but I am yet to receive a reply. In fact I have contacted them about three times but they don’t seem to care at all.

As you may have already noticed, I hardly review any program unless I have tried it and from my experience adsfundi.com is one program that you should rather just stay away from. They are a scam.

What has been your experience with adsfundi.com? Have they ever sent you a check or PayPal payment as they promise? Please leave a comment below and let us know your experience.

Further reading on adsfundi.com

This is a Guest post from Mike of http://www.findthepaydayloan.com/

When stay at home moms get the itch to work they have few options. Sending their kids to daycare would defeat the purpose of staying home with them, so they can either find work online, or open a daycare center in their homes…many opt for online work over taking care of other people’s children all day long.

So, to go from stay at home mom to work from home mom, here are a few steps to follow to get started and eventually become a success.

Find Your Niche

Before you do anything else, you need to sit down and figure out what it is that you do that is marketable. Can you sew? Do you have training in a specific area? Do you have a degree in website design? Do you know how to write articles that are interesting, accurate, unique, and sellable? Find out what you’re good at and you’ll find your own cubby hole (niche) where you can make money.

Create a Web Presence

If you want to make money online you need to let people know you exist. ‘No name’ people rarely make it big unless they’re in the music or movie business, and even then the chances are the same as getting struck by lightning or winning the lottery. If you want to get noticed online as a (fill in the blank), you need to let people know all about you and your work.

An example recent success is that of the recently launched comparison site, http://www.findthepaydayloan.com/ in the finance niche, that successfully makes profit from affiliate marketing.

Blogging: Create and maintain a blog. Tell your friends and family about it, and include links to your blog in applications or project proposals.

Website: Creating your own website is a huge step towards having an online presence, especially if you can use your name in the URL. Your website should tell people what you do, how much you charge, and should list any current or past projects you’ve completed (portfolio).

Social Networking: Never underestimate the power of social networking!

Start Making Money

Now, you’ve arrived at the fun yet tricky part of the journey- making money. Once you’ve discovered your niche, created an online presence, and marketed yourself using your blog, website, and social networking connections, you can either sit back and wait for the work to roll in, or check out online freelancing websites and apply for tons of work daily.

Being a stay at home mom can get boring and mundane (the same thing every day will do that to a person). Stay at home moms can easily transform into work from home moms and make an income that will provide a little extra cash every month, and a sense of accomplishment.

It’s hard to figure out where to start in order to make money online.  You hear people talking about blogging, websites, affiliate marketing, auctions and everyone’s favorite doing surveys.

As you may have found out by now, it’s easy to get the run around when joining other programs to make money.  Some of the legit one’s have so many people already participating that it’s hard to get exposure should you pursue the same money making game.

The best way to make a solid income online with no money and little knowledge about how to market your efforts, is to use a program that guides you every step of the way to the finish product.  Teaching you the steps and techniques to give favorable results.  The same results, that everyone wants, targeted traffic.

The product, a website.

Now, you may say as many have asked me, “what will the website be about?”  You should write about something that you are passionate about.   Something that get’s you excited.  You want to have insight, tips and useful information that keeps the readers attention.  That is the perfect thing to write about.  Don’t dismiss anything that fits this criteria.  Some of the simplest topics could be the niche that makes you an easy extra income online.

I’ll tell you what I did.

I wanted to tell people who were interested in trucking all the information that I had learned as an over the road trucker.  I knew this was needed because in conversation with truckers I realized that most of the complaints from the trucking company they were working with to the relationships at home usually were the result of lack of insight or knowledge.

If they had more information about realities of trucking and the impact on the relationship before actually deciding to get into trucking they may have determined that trucking was not the career choice suitable for their personality or situation.

I make a website http://www.lifeasatrucker.com using SBI to get the job done.

It took a little time but it was easy because I knew what I was talking about. Not long after working on the site I began to show up in the search results of google.  If you search “trucking life” or “life as a trucker” my site is on the first page near top of the results.  SBI basically walked me through all the steps to help make this happen.

So you see you can take what ever it is that you know well and accomplish the same goals if your willing to put forth the time and effort in order to make it happen.

Blogs are also good to start.  Depending on what your topic will be, it’s may be debatable about which is best for you.  Blogger.com and wordpress.org both allow you to create blogs for free.  However, you will need to learn about how to make the blog SEO friendly and other tips about marketing and networking on your own.

If you went the same route I did with SBI, everything is there for you and you learn as you build within the software.

So how do you make money?

You will make money many ways if your website becomes popular.  You will have every possible options explained should you use SBI if you use some other program to build your website or blog, you will just have to do research on this site on another on the many ways to make money.

Two popular ways to make money would be to use Google adsense on your website or sell affiliate eBooks or goods from your website that is related to the content that your website is about.

The main thing, about making money online, is not to allow yourself to be paralyzed with options.  Take some suggestions from people who are already doing it and not selling hype.

Don’t get caught up in trying to make a million in a minute because none of this will happen overnight and without time and effort.  However, ever minute you spend is an investment in your free time and freedom in the future.  The work you do once will continue to work for you and bring in money.

I make at least $500 extra money every month with my website and it will only increase as I add more and more content to it.  Don’t forget, this is in my free time when I am not driving the truck.

You can do the same thing.  Eventually your online income could replace going to a 9 to 5 slaving at someone Else’s job.  If you are not working now, then you can see results much quicker than me because you will have more free time to work on your own money making website.

Good luck and if your interested in learning about trucking check out my website. If want to know more about trucking check out my website. http://www.lifeasatrucker.com If you want to know how I made it check out http://www.sitesell.com/exclusives.html

In order to keep up with regular posting schedule, we are now accepting guest posts.

If your guest posts are approved for submission on internetwealthlab.com, you will get the following benefits:

1. Resource box at the end of the blog post sending traffic to your own blog or website.
2. Dofollow links to help you in SEO (Maximum of two)

However, as with anything there are guidelines to follow:

• Most importantly the blog posts must be informative and unique. The article must not be submitted anywhere else on the web.
• The blog posts must be 500 words and more and in Microsoft Word
• The articles must not have formatting and grammatical errors.

We reserve the right to publish or not to publish the articles. Only informative, unique articles will be published

Please use the “contact” link to submit your articles

Today, we are going to discuss SMS billing, the new, innovative payment solution that is fast growing as a new way to pay and receive money online.

The technology works on cell phones and the user is only required to have a mobile handset that is fully enabled to send and receive text message and an account with an SMS billing service provider of their choice.

As a payment method, SMS billing has its own distinct advantages over the conventional payment and banking systems:

First, the SMS billing system is absolutely hassle free and provides instant gratification by eliminating the need to queue up in banks to deposit cash or cheques/checks.

Secondly and most importantly, SMS payment eliminates the need to use debit and credit cards. That means that you can accept cash from the customers without credit cards and PayPal accounts. This is particularly important because, with the inherent security risk associated with the use of debit and credit cards, some people are wary of using them.

SMS billing provides a much secure way to pay without providing credit card numbers and integrating SMS payment option is a guaranteed way to increase your sales and revenue.

There are many players in the mobile payment market, notable among which are Boku, Zong and SmsCoin. These all work perfectly for sending and receiving payments, but SmsCoin provides the highest coverage with presence in over 80 countries. Boku and Zong have a bit smaller coverage, with presence in 63 and 38 countries respectively.

SmsCoin is also more flexible in signing up new users and unlike Boku and Zong whose users are usually registered companies, SMS coin cuts down on the paper work involved by allowing access to individual businesses and users.

It is thus not surprising that SMS coin boasts to have completed millions of successful mobile payment transactions for more than 60,000 projects of varied scales; from small personal blogs to some of the top social networking sites the likes of facebook and Twitter.

SmsCoin was developed under the administration of Aggregator Ltd and since its inception four years ago, in the summer of 2006, the company has grown tremendously and is undoubtedly one of the biggest players in the mobile payment industry.

As a monetization tool for online publishers, app developers and other online business owners, SMS coin is easy to integrate on any website. You can also use SmsCoin to accept donations on your website. They have a huge variety of scripts (150+) that work seamlessly with the majority of Content Management Systems such as WordPress, Drupal and Joomla.

These scripts help you to set up a payment gateway so that you can allow paid access to a service or a certain section of your website. This can be a training area, a game access point, or the download area for a piece of software or game. To complete the transaction, the website visitor is required to send a short SMS message to a specified number. Once they do that, they are then charged a specific amount though their mobile service (carrier) provider.

A small portion of the revenue generated is retained by SmsCoin as processing fee, a certain amount goes to the mobile carrier, and the remaining amount goes to the online publisher (the website owner).

The percentage of the revenue that goes to the mobile carriers can be as high as 30+ percent depending on the country and you should thus consider the rate charged for each of the countries to which the SMS payment service is available and account for that in your targeted income.

My final thought

SMS payment systems, like other online payment options have a security risk involved, but the SMS billing service providers are keenly aware of these and continuously working to ensure safer and more secure online payment for their users. SmsCoin not only block any fraudulent transactions, but ban the accounts of such users as well.

Whether as a standalone payment option or an extra payment solution, SMS payment is worth exploring.

It just makes sense that the very reliable, conventional methods of payment will at some point be overtaken or complimented by newer and more innovative options and SMS payment is just one of these.

So, go ahead and give it a shot – it could just be the step you need take to boost your website conversion rates and profits.