Get paid to write websites are becoming increasingly popular as they provide an easy way for almost anyone to make money writing online. There are a few different types of paid to write websites such as paid to blog, pay per post, paid to review and more.
But, no matter which type you choose, getting paid to write articles online comes down to 3 categories; Revenue sharing- Ads are placed along side the content to generate revenue and the money earned from those ads are shared with the writers. Pay Per Post- The writer gets paid for each individual article he or she writes. Performance based- The writer earns money based on the performance of the article determined by factors like the number of page views and etc. With that said, here are 55+ paid to write sites where you can make money writing:

GetPaidToWriteWebsites




LinkFromBlog.com
Earn with your blog, write legitimate reviews, survey or opinions of advertisers products and services. You can also earn money by referring other bloggers to the site.
BlogPostsForSale.com
Get paid for blogging. You can get paid to write about web sites, products, services, and companies.
LoudLaunch.com
Earn more with your blog. They work with a lot of big companies that are willing to pay bloggers to write quality posts to use for their online advertising campaigns.
BlogToProfit.com
A great site that guarantees money for posting to your blog! They match you with advertisers that are interested in sponsoring your blog. Then all you have to do is post and get paid.
PayPerPost.com
PayPerPost is unique in a sense that it lets bloggers pick advertisers they want to work with. Pick your advertiser and start negotiating a price. They have advertisers in so many different fields. So, you can get paid to blog about almost any subject.
SocialSpark.com
You can make money in two ways; place ads on your blog or write reviews for their advertisers.
Sponzai.com
This one is little different. You don’t write the content, but the advertisers or sponsors (as they are called on sponzai) do. Sponsors write a guest post about whatever they want, you publish it on your blog and get paid.
SponsoredReviews.com
You can earn money by writing honest reviews about their advertiser’s products and services. Simple as that!
ReviewMe.com
Another paid to review site. You get paid to write reviews about different products and services. The good thing is you choose what products and services you want to write about. You can get paid $20 to up to $200 per review published on your blog.
Smorty.com
You can make money in two ways. You can get paid to publish pay-per-click advertising on your blog to generate, you can also earn money writing about different products and services. You can earn any where from $6 to up to $100 for each published post.
BlogAdvertisingStore.com
Make money writing reviews about their advertiser’s products and services.
BuyBlogReviews.com
BBR allows you to write reviews about other websites and get paid for it. You get paid per post whcih means the more you post, the more you money you make.
BloggingAds.com
Another site where you don’t have to write the post yourself. Their advertisers write the content and you just have to publish on your blog and get paid for it. However, you can also earn money by writing posts yourself.
PayU2Blog.com
A fast growing paid to blog site with lots of different advertisers. You are paid for each review you write and publish on your blog.
LinkWorth.com
Most people think of LinkWorth as an advertising network like ad sense, whcih is true. However, they also have a program where bloggers can make money writing reviews about their advertisers.
BloggerWave.com
Another fast growing network with lots of advertisers that pays you to write reviews about their products and services.
Blogitive.com
A bit hard to get your blog approved. But, once your blog is approved you can earn money blogging about their advertisers. They pay weekly through PayPal which is a plus.
Shvoong.com
With Shvoong you don’t really have to create original content. You write reviews or summaries about previously published stuff. You can write about books, websites and blogs, articles, newspapers, movies and anything that is out there already. Each post must be less than 900 words. You can also earn extra money by referring other writers to Shvoong.
451Press.com
451 Press is basically a network of blogs. they have blogs on about almost any subject you can imagine. You can write about any subject you wish and the will publish it in the appropriate blog and you get paid.
About.com
About.com is very hard to get into, but if do, you can make real good money. Plus, its a great way to build your portfolio since its a reputable site. They also cover any topics you can imagine.
BlogBurner.com
You can create a blog which will be shown on their site (like a separate page). They place ad sense ad on these pages and share the revues earned from it with you. The good thing is, you just have to write, they do all the promotions and driving traffic to it. The more you write the more money you earn.
BlogsVertise.com
They have a lot of advertisers which you can write about their product, service, website, blog, event and anything they like to promote. Once approved, publish the post on your blog and get paid for it. You get paid per post or task as they call it. Pays via PayPal.
DayTipper.com
This is a fun way to make money with your writings. they pay you $3 for posting original and helpful tips on their site. You can give tips about anything. A normal tip is only a few sentences. So if you are knowledgeable about a subject, it only takes you a few minutes to write a quick tip about it.
CreativeWeblogging.com
Founded in 2004 by Torsten Jacobi, CW has grown to be a big blog network with have over 135 blogs in 5 different languages. You can earn cash writing about any topic you like.
DigitalJournal.com
Get paid to post blogs, embed videos, upload images, discuss and debate about the news and more. Basically you earn money to report news as a Digital Journalist!
Helium.com
One of my favorite sites for making money as a writer. It is one of the fastest growing paid to write sites. You can write about whatever topic you like. There is a real potential for making a living writing on helium. The more you write and the better you write, the more money you can make.
WiseBread.com
WB is a personal finance blog whcih means you can only write about post related to personal finance. It could be anything from Savvy shopping tips, Frugal living suggestions, Financial advice, Career and money-making ideas. They earn money trough ads displayed along side the posts. The best thing is that they allow bloggers to keep 100% of the advertising revenue earned on their blog posts.
Squidoo.com
Squidoo is perhaps the most famous paid to write site. You create whats called a “lens”, whcih is basically a decorated blog post with lots of cool features and options. You have a few options to monetize your lenses like placing Google ad sense or amazon ads. You can earn money writing about any topic you like. the good thing is its much easier to drive traffic to your squidoo lens than other sites since Google really loves squidoo.
Bukisa.com
Another favorite of mine whcih I have been using for a while. You can make money writing about anything you like. You can also earn money by referring other people to write for Bukisa.
AssociatedContent.com
One of the most trusted content based sites whcih allows you to write reviews, opinion, news, guides and anything else you want to write about. The good thing is you can publish posts that you have published elsewhere (your blog or other sites) and still get paid for it. However, exclusive posts (posts that has never been published) qualify for upfront payment. Already published posts earn money based on page views, which isn’t that hard to earn a lot because AssociatedContent receives a lot of traffic. So, you don’t really have to do much to promote your content.
Xomba.com
You can write about anything but a few subjects including adult and violence. They have a Google Ad sense share revenue program, whcih means you earn money from ads displayed along side your posts. Another way you can earn money is through bookmarking. yes, they also show ad sense ads along side your bookmarks. The more intersecting sites you bookmark, the more traffic you get to it, allowing you to earn more money.
HubPages.com
Another big paid to write site like Squidoo whcih you can earn money by placing ads from Google Ad sense, ebay, Amazon and many more along side your hubs. You get paid to write reviews, share useful advice, share your opinions, write guides and more.
FortitudeMagazine.com
Fortitude is a magazine style website that accepts literary material on any topic and in any format. You can expect to get paid from $10 to up to $100 per article.
Qondio.com
Get paid to write about anything you are passionate about. You get 100% of the advertising revenue generated by your article page. Yes, 100%! If you are a blogger, there is a plus to posting content to Qondio; you get to link back to your site in the article and the link is dofollow, which helps your site rank better.
Triond.com
Triond is an online publishing service that lets you publish original content about any topic. They accept content in any format from written articles and e-books to pictures, audio and video. Their minimum requirement for cashing out is only $0.5 whcih is very low and easy to reach. they pay via pay pal.
eHow.com
eHow is one of the most popular how-to guides sites where you can earn money writing step by step instruction showing people how to do anything.
Tutorial9.net
As the name suggest T9 is a site where you can publish tutorial. However, they only accept tutorials about Photoshop, Photography and Blogging. You can expect to get paid anywhere from $50 to $300 depending on the quality of your tutorial.
InfoBarrel.com
InfoBarrel pays you to publish articles, videos, reviews and how to guides on variety of topics. You get 75% of the revenues generated by ad sense ads displayed next to your published work. Earn money by referring your friends and family.
Flixya.com
Flixya is a publishing platform where you can earn money to publish blog posts and share your favorite videos and photos. You keep 100% of the revenue generated through ads on your pages.
Epinions.com
They have a huge selection of products that you can earn money writing reviews about. Each review has to be minimum of 20 words.
DemandStudios.com
Get paid to write about any subject you are knowledgeable about. Good thong about DS is that they pay twice a week.
DeveloperShed.com
They have a huge networks of sites that allows you to publish posts related to coding, tech tips, hardware reviews, SEO how-to’s, and many other topics. Its a great way to build up your portfolio while earning decent money for your articles.
Gather.com
Get paid to write about anything you like. The more quality content you publish, the more money you earn. You can increase your earning by interacting with other members.
RateItAll.com
RateItAll is a website where you can find reviews on juts about anything. You can earn cash by writing reviews about any product you like. They share the revenue generated by Google ad sense with you.
Examiner.com
Examiner is the fastest-growing local content network in the U.S. You can earn money by writing about anything especially subject concerning your local area.
ReviewParty.com
Make money by writing reviews about any thing you like. You earn money in two ways; Google ad sense and Amazon Associates whcih are placed on your content pages.
SharedReviews.com
You can write articles and reviews in over 500 different categories. They have a huge community whcih you can use to better your experience. They pay via paypal as well.
SoftwareJudge.com
As the name suggests, its a site about softwares. You can earn cash by writing honest reviews no matter positive or negative about any kind of software. You can get paid up to $50 per review.
TheNewsRoom.com
You get paid to publish content (written and submitted by their members) which is accompanied by advertising, on your blog. You earn money based on CPM (cost per thousand impression), which means every time the content on your site gets viewed by your visitors, you earn a guaranteed CPM
BloggerParty.com
Blogger Party is a blog hosting website whcih allows you to build a blog whcih will be displayed on the front page of the site. You can blog about any topic you like. They display adsense ads on your blog, 50% of the time using their own ad sense id and 50% using your ad sense id.
Senserely.com
Make money writing articles, reviews, and stories about your knowledge and experience with any topic you wish especially about Google ad sense itself.
SoulCast.com
SC is basically a blogging platform that allows you to build free blogs whcih allows you to earn money by showing ad sense ads on it.
Meshplex.org
A tutorials based website whcih allows you to publish tutorials on any topic. You can display adsense ads on your page and the best part is you get to keep 100% of the generated revenue.
WikiNut.com
Write about anything you like. 50% of the revenue generated by ads on your article pages are shared with you. You can also earn money as a moderator reviewing other articles and also for referring other writers.
RedGage.com
You can make cash by posting quality articles. To increase your earnings, you can also submit pictures, videos, documents and links.
SheToldMe.com
SheToldMe is a Digg-like site that you can earn money by simply social bookmarking your favorite content. Yes you don’t even have to write article to earn money, you get paid for bookmarking other peoples articles, videos, and images that you find interesting. Each time you submit a bookmark, a page is created for that link whcih also displays ad sense ads. You get to keep 100% of the revenue generated from your pages.
ConstantContent.com
You can post and sell your content. You can also browse requested content to see if you can write about any of them. Lots of great opportunities to make money with your writing skills.
Suite 101
Suite101 is one of the moist popular online magazines whcih started in 1996 and that makes it one of the oldest article sites on the Internet. The pay is based on revenue-sharing, which means they share the revenue earned from the ads published on the article page with the writer.
Most of these paid to write websites and blogs pay with PayPal. So, if you want to get paid fast, I would recommend signing up with PayPal if you haven’t already done so. Its free and it makes it easy and quick to get paid. Sign up for free with these sites and start to make money writing. Some of these sites, allow you to write and publish posts on your own blog, others will ask you to publish only on their site. Either way, you get paid to write.
Continue Reading
Work at home jobs are always on demand. Most of us would love to be able to make money online working from home. However, finding legitimate work at home jobs is anything but easy. There are thousands of companies that offer legitimate work from home jobs, but finding them takes a lot of work and knowledge. Of course, all the work at home job scams out there, make spotting such opportunities even harder.
That is why there are some companies that invest money and time into finding these opportunities and making them available to people looking for home based jobs. Some of these companies offer this information as free work from home jobs opportunities and some charge a fee to cover their expenses (time they spend searching and finding these opportunities and paying their own employees to do that).
Here are a few trusted companies that offer legitimate work at home job companies that I consider to be some of the best work at home jobs:

EmailPostingJobs.com (Paid)
One of the easiest work at home job opportunities that is also one of the hardest one to find is email posting jobs. Basically you get paid for sending emails for companies to their clients. You get paid for each email you send. You can expect to get paid anywhere from $5 to up to $25 or more for each email you send.
The only thing you need to make money with this work at home job opportunity is an email address. That’s all!
Online-Data-Entry-Jobs.com (paid)
One of the hottest home based jobs is data entry jobs. And one of the most well-known and trusted companies that offer data entry jobs is the famous My Data Team Global. Its a legitimate company, that offers legitimate work from home data-entry job opportunities.
Their work from home data-entry jobs includes Traditional Data-Entry Jobs, Word Processing, General Transcription, Business Coding, Legal Transcription, Document Data Recording, Input Data Capturing and Data Research.
The good thing about this company is that they have designed their data entry jobs in a way that is so simple and easy that anyone can do it. So, you dont need any experience to make money working from home doing data entry work. With most of their jobs, you only need about 30 to 40 minutes a day to perform these data entry jobs and make money working from the comfort of your own home.
ProfitArticle.com (paid)
Another great way to make money online working form home are simple typing programs, specifically typing articles for websites and companies online. There are hunderds of thousand of websites that need new content every day. Profit articles company is a company that finds these opportunities and provides them to people like you and I.
One of the main reasons why so many people who try work at home jobs fail is because more than 90% of home based jobs deal with sales. But, writing articles doesn’t require you to sale anything. They give you all the information you need, you simply write the article and submit them to a list of websites that they give you. Simple as that! And depending on how much time and effort you are willing to put into it, you can make up to $200 or more a day writing articles.
WorkAvailableNow.org (free)
A very well-known and trusted company that finds companies that offer work at home opportunities and makes them available to members. The only requirements are having a home computer and obviously having access to internet. You can work from from home when you want it and how you want it, as long as you get the job done before its dead line.
The amount of money you can make, depends on the kind of work available and of course, your ability and willingness to work hard and the number of hours you put into it.
LocalDataEntryJobs.com (free)
As the name suggests, this company finds you local data entry jobs. They are basically a data entry job search engine. They have a huge list of companies that offer different kinds of data entry jobs. They make it easy for you to search and find data entry jobs in and around your local area.

There you have it, a list of trusted websites that offer legitimate work at home job opportunities. Remember, these opportunities are not get rich quick scams and they certainly are not your magic bullet to making money online. There is no magic bullet for earning money through internet. If there is a magic bullet, that would be your dedication and willingness to work hard and put your efforts into whatever work at home job you want to use to make money working from home.
Be sure to check back here often, as I will update this list as I find more companies that offer legitimate work at home jobs.
Continue Reading
Get paid to review is one of the most interesting and also easy ways to make money online. And the best thing is that almost anyone can get paid for reviewing websites. When it comes to purchasing a product or a services, reviews play a big role in the decision making of many consumers. That’s why, many companies spend a lot of money on research market to understand what costumers think of their products and how they would like it to be improved. Its almost like paid surveys and mystery shopping in a sense. It works in a simple way. You get paid to share your experience with others about a product or a service that you have used in the past. If you like the idea of get paid to review and perhaps want to earn some money doing reviews, here are 5 best get paid to review sites that you can use to make money reviewing products and services online:




expotv.com is a great paid to review site




Expotv.com
ExpoTv.com is a review site where reviews are not written, but rather filmed. You simply check their marketplace to find products to review and record yourself talking about the product. You can review any kind of product you like, except prescription medicine, firearms, and tobacco products.You can also earn points by taking surveys and referring friends.



get paid to write reviews



Dooyoo.co.uk
dooyoo is a website where you are paid to write reviews that can help others make decisions about buying a product. You simply write reviews on products and services you have used, sharing your experience with others who might be interested in buying the same product or services as well. Each time you write a review on any product or service, you earn what are called “dooyooMiles”. You also earn additional points every time your reviews is read by other people. They also give prizes every month to the best product reviews of the month.



get paid for reviewing websites



Shvoong.com
Shvoong is a kind of get paid to review site, where you can make money by writing reviews on written publications such as books, magazines, e-books, websites and etc. The reviews are written as brief summaries so that the readers can quickly get the information they need and move on. Shvoong earns money from the advertisement displayed through out the site, which in return for your reviews, they will share 10% of the total revenue earned from ads displayed next to your reviews. When you have $10 in your account, you can request a payment which will be paid on the 5th day of every month.



get paid to review websites



Ciao.co.uk
Ciao is one of the biggest paid survey sites, in addition to that Ciao also pays its members to write reviews on verity of subjects, from electronics and CDs to books, restaurants and anything in between. You earn money every time your review is red or rated by other members. Once you have £5 in your account, you can request a payment.



get paid for writing reviews



Reviewme.com
You need to have a blog to be able to use this site to get paid to review. Basically, their advertisers choose which specific blogs to review their product, service, website or what have you. After submitting your blog and being approved, your blog info will be available to advertisers who might want a reviews of their products on your blog. You can get paid in few different ways.You can get paid by Check with a $25 minim, Reviewme Prepaid MasterCard with a $20 minimum and pay pal with no minimum.



reviewstream.com is one of the most well-knonw review sites



Reviewstream.com
When it comes to get paid to review websites, RS is one of the most famous one. Its an international review site. You can write reviews on just about anything from electronics, hotels and restaurants to fashions, toys, books and everything else. Each review that you write, earns you $2, if it is on the hot topics requested by Review Stream. For any other reviews, members are paid %0.25 per review. On the top of that, each time a member votes for your review, you earn an additional $0.1. Once you have $50 in your account, you can request a payment, which will be paid to you via pay pal.



sharedreviews.com Pays its members for each review



Sharedreviews.com
SharedReviews is a kind of social network where you can write reviews in more than 400 categories. Shared Reviews shares 50% of its revenue generated by ads displayed along side the reviews, with the review writers. An interesting thing about SR is that every time you vote on reviews written by other members, you automatically get a share of their revenue as well. Basically, not only you get paid to review products, you can also earn money by voting for other people’s reviews.



rateitall.com- earn money reviewing verity of different products



Rateitall.com
RateItAll is one of the most popular review sites. You can write reviews about everything and I mean everything! Toys, Local bars and restaurants, games, products, people, places, books, music, movies, celebrities, dogs, poems, art, games, travel… RateItAll is very unique compere to other review sites, in a sense that reviews are written in the form of bullet pointed lists about a topic, where everyone can share their opinions about it. You get 50% of the revenue generated by ads displayed nest to your reviews.



carrotreviews.com is a fun paid to review site



Carrotreviews.com
The first time you write a review, you earn $3 for it. After that, each review earns you $1.00. Reviews are rated based on their quality. There is a quality review threshold, which if your review score reaches that point, you earn an additional $10.00 on the top of what you already earn for the your reviews. The minimum required for payout is $10.00. Carrotreviews has one set back and that is the fact that you are restricted to writing only 5 reviews a month. Although this rules changes from time to time.



epinions.com is another good paid to review website




Epinions.com
Another great sites where you get paid for writing reviews. Epinions is a shopping.com company where members can earn money by writing useful reviews about different products. there is no limit to how many reviews you can write. The more reviews you write, the more money you make. The first 10 reviews that you write, earns you $10, 20 to 30 reviews earns you $20, writing 30-39 reviews earns you $30, and so on. Every time you write a reviews you receive what are called “Eroyalties credits” which are redeemable in US dollars. When you accumulated $10 in your account, you can request to be paid, which will be paid to you by check.



softwarejudge.com- get paid to review sofatwares




Softwarejudge.com
As the name suggests, you will be writing reviews about softwares. You can expect to get paid up to $50 dollars for each software review you write. They have a list of softwares that you can write reviews on. Although you are limited to only 3 reviews a day.



usertesting.com pays you for reviewing different websites



Usertesting.com
Usertesting is another video reviews site, focused on reviewing different websites.  They give you a free software which lets you record your mouse movements while you visit the site you are reviewing along with your spoken words. You get paid $10 for each video review you create. And when you think about hundreds of websites that are available to review, you can easily see the potential in making real good money with UT.




When it comes to getting paid for reviewing websites, it is important to put honestly ahead of everything else. After all, your reviews will play a big rule in many people’s decisions in buying a product or service. Plus, most get paid to reviews sites emphasize on writing reviews based on your true experience, and if you don’t, they will eventually catch up with you, which might lead you to lose your chance to get paid to review.
Continue Reading
Facebook is one of the most popular Social Networks and quickly becoming a an interaction hub for great many people I personally know and work with. What have started as a college students network have grown into one of the most useful tools you can have for communication and for locating new people with similar to you interests.
But while standalone Facebook portal provides you with plenty options – its interactivity and usefulness factor greatly multiplied through the usage of the Apps provided by other developers. In fact as a blogger you have a superb way to promote your content on Facebook and get yourself additional audience…
More Traffic! Could You Use Some?
In this post I’ll discuss 7 Facebook Apps Every Blogger Must Have.

Application chosen for this post are based on my personal view of their usefulness and my personal usage, so be sure to experiment as nothing should be taken for granted!

Notes

Notes is a superb application and one of the absolutely MUST have if you write to a blog or two 8-) And here is the reason why:
  1. It allows you to basically subscribe to your own RSS Feed and will automatically import it to your profile each time a new post was made!
  2. Every time a new post imported as Note – all your friends will get a notification that a new status update is made on your profile – increase your branding!
See image below:
facebook_notes_application

Blog Networks

Blog Networks application allows you to claim your own blog and have it appear within the main Blog Networks interface. But how and where you will appear directly depends on your popularity!
More people subscribe to your blog – more popular it is seen and higher position you can get. Subscribing to blogs is very simple and it ads them to your profile. See image below and if you like my blog - Subscribe To My Blog!
facebook_blog_networks

Blogvote

Blogvote is a very simple application that does one thing – allows people to vote on blogs. Obviously your blog popularity will be determined by the score and probably number of votes. I can’s say for 100% because as you can see in image below – number of votes on my blog is pathetically small. So – do vote, good or bad, either way appreciated!
facebook_blogvote

Twitter

Twitter application is great in one perspective – it ties very popular micro-blog network that is currently all the rage and allows you to post status update directly from Twitter. Basically – every time you make an update in Twitter – it will be imported as your new status in Facebook and also gives you an opportunity to post directly from Facebook to the Twitter.
See images below:
facebook_twitter1
facebook_twitter2

Friend Feed

Friend Feed is a swiss army knife of the the aggregation. Once you have setup your profile under the Friend Feed service properly – you can aggregate your actions and content from multiple sources into one location. And facebook app allows you t import all of that into your Facebook Profile!
Better yet, it allows you to see all the actions of your friends! In one single location, as long as they took the time to configure their profile. This is an app that will become the future of social interaction!
Talk about visibility! See image below:
facebook_friendfeed

Ping.fm

Ping.fm application allows you to do actions such as status update from Ping.fm application. This one is a MUST for every WordPress blogger and I have already explained why and how in my post on social influence and will not be repeating myself.
All I can add here is that by not using this service you are loosing out!
facebook_pingfm

SubmbleUpon

And last but by no means least is StumbleUpon app. Every action you take via Stumble Upon bar is posted to your Facebook profile and shared with your friends! As you can see below – many of my own friends using this tool and falling behind is simply not an option.
StumbleUpon has a potential of generating to your blog massive amounts of traffic when you don’t abuse the system and Facebook app simplifies the process! Feel free to become my friend by clicking the image below:
facebook_stumbleupon

Conclusion

As I have stated in the beginning of this post – it is not mean to be an All Inclusive list of the Facebook Applications but rather those that help you as a blogger to get traffic and recognition and have proven to work for me – in one way or another.
And that reason is what makes them in my opinion 7 Facebook Apps Every Blogger Must Have
Continue Reading
Everyone and their dogs is talking about Google Buzz huh? So yeah I felt like jumping on the bandwagon too….
Jokes aside, I believe Google Buzz might actually become something. It is tough to say who will end up using it, how they are going to use it and so on, but Google managed to accomplish at least one thing: to make the tool accessible and easy to use, thanks to the integration with Gmail.
To illustrate my point: I received a Google Wave invite early on from a friend, but never actually used it, because the setup process required more than two clicks. I just figured that I would wait and if the thing went mainstream I would start using it. So far it has not.
Google Buzz is different because with one click on my Gmail account I accessed it. After that I just needed to pimp my Google Profile a bit et voilà. If you want to follow me here is the link: http://www.google.com/profiles/danielscocco.
My first impression is that Google wanted to get a piece of the microblogging/real time web action. Hence why they adopted the “following/followers” nomenclature. It reminds me of Twitter inside Gmail at times…
One drawback I see is the interruptions and emails you get while using Gmail from people using Google Buzz. If they become to much of a hassle I might need to turn the thing off.
Have you tried it? What are you thoughts so far?
Continue Reading

seo-termsIf you have a website or blog, or if you work with anything related to the Internet, you’ll certainly need to know a bit about search engine optimization (SEO). A good way to get started is to familiarize yourself with the most common terms of the trade, and below you’ll find 20 of them. (For those who already know SEO, consider this post as a refresher!).
1. SEM: Stands for Search Engine Marketing, and as the name implies it involves marketing services or products via search engines. SEM is divided into two main pillars: SEO and PPC. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is the practice of optimizing websites to make their pages appear in the organic search results. PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click, and it is the practice of purchasing clicks from search engines. The clicks come from sponsored listings in the search results.
2. Backlink: Also called inlink or simply link, it is an hyperlink on another website pointing back to your own website. Backlinks are important for SEO because they affect directly the PageRank of any web page, influencing its search rankings.
3. PageRank: PageRank is an algorithm that Google uses to estimate the relative important of pages around the web. The basic idea behind the algorithm is the fact that a link from page A to page B can be seen as a vote of trust from page A to page B. The higher the number of links (weighted to their value) to a page, therefore, the higher the probability that such page is important.
4. Linkbait: A linkbait is a piece of web content published on a website or blog with the goal of attracting as many backlinks as possible (in order to improve one’s search rankings). Usually it’s a written piece, but it can also be a video, a picture, a quiz or anything else. A classic example of linkbait are the “Top 10″ lists that tend to become popular on social bookmarking sites.
5. Link farm. A link farm is a group of websites where every website links to every other website, with the purpose of artificially increasing the PageRank of all the sites in the farm. This practice was effective in the early days of search engines, but today they are seeing as a spamming technique (and thus can get you penalized).
6. Anchor text: The anchor text of a backlink is the text that is clickable on the web page. Having keyword rich anchor texts help with SEO because Google will associate these keywords with the content of your website. If you have a weight loss blog, for instance, it would help your search rankings if some of your backlinks had “weight loss” as their anchor texts.
7. NoFollow: The nofollow is a link attribute used by website owners to signal to Google that they don’t endorse the website they are linking to. This can happen either when the link is created by the users themselves (e.g., blog comments), or when the link was paid for (e.g., sponsors and advertisers). When Google sees the nofollow attribute it will basically not count that link for the PageRank and search algorithms.
8. Link Sculpting: By using the nofollow attribute strategically webmasters were able to channel the flow of PageRank within their websites, thus increasing the search rankings of desired pages. This practice is no longer effective as Google recently change how it handles the nofollow attribute.
9. Title Tag: The title tag is literally the title of a web page, and it’s one of the most important factors inside Google’s search algorithm. Ideally your title tag should be unique and contain the main keywords of your page. You can see the title tag of any web page on top of the browser while navigating it.
10. Meta Tags: Like the title tag, meta tags are used to give search engines more information regarding the content of your pages. The meta tags are placed inside the HEAD section of your HTML code, and thus are not visible to human visitors.
11. Search Algorithm: Google’s search algorithm is used to find the most relevant web pages for any search query. The algorithm considers over 200 factors (according to Google itself), including the PageRank value, the title tag, the meta tags, the content of the website, the age of the domain and so on.
12. SERP: Stands for Search Engine Results Page. It’s basically the page you’ll get when you search for a specific keyword on Google or on other search engines. The amount of search traffic your website will receive depends on the rankings it will have inside the SERPs.
13. Sandbox: Google basically has a separate index, the sandbox, where it places all newly discovered websites. When websites are on the sandbox, they won’t appear in the search results for normal search queries. Once Google verifies that the website is legitimate, it will move it out of the sandbox and into the main index.
14. Keyword Density: To find the keyword density of any particular page you just need to divide the number of times that keyword is used by the total number of words in the page. Keyword density used to be an important SEO factor, as the early algorithms placed a heavy emphasis on it. This is not the case anymore.
15. Keyword Stuffing: Since keyword density was an important factor on the early search algorithms, webmasters started to game the system by artificially inflating the keyword density inside their websites. This is called keyword stuffing. These days this practice won’t help you, and it can also get you penalized.
16. Cloaking. This technique involves making the same web page show different content to search engines and to human visitors. The purpose is to get the page ranked for specific keywords, and then use the incoming traffic to promote unrelated products or services. This practice is considering spamming and can get you penalized (if not banned) on most search engines.
17. Web Crawler: Also called search bot or spider, it’s a computer program that browses the web on behalf of search engines, trying to discover new links and new pages. This is the first step on the indexation process.
18. Duplicate Content: Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. You should avoid having duplicate content on your website because it can get you penalized.
19. Canonical URL: Canonicalization is a process for converting data that has more than one possible representation into a “standard” canonical representation. A canonical URL, therefore, is the standard URL for accessing a specific page within your website. For instance, the canonical version of your domain might be http://www.domain.com instead of http://domain.com.
20. Robots.txt: This is nothing more than a file, placed in the root of the domain, that is used to inform search bots about the structure of the website. For instance, via the robots.txt file it’s possible to block specific search robots and to restrict the access to specific folders of section inside the website.
Continue Reading
Most bloggers love their RSS readers. Not only that, but they also love to gain new RSS readers. It is such a joy when you wake up one day and see that your Feedburner count jumped by 200 or 300, right?
ways gain rss

Those days are quite rare though, and most people seem to have a hard time gaining even a small number of new RSS subscribers consistently.
Is there anything you can do about it? Any way to efficiently attract more RSS subscribers?
Sure there is. Many people wrote about this topic in the past, but I wanted to give my take on the issue too. I wrote those 50 ideas as they were coming to my head, as briefly as possible. Enjoy.
1. Have a big RSS icon. People are lazy. You need to keep that fact always in mind. If you use a little RSS icon, visitors might have a problem finding it. Most of those will just give up after a couple of seconds, so make sure the RSS icon is big and easily recognizable.
2. Display the RSS icon above the fold. Apart from using a big RSS icon, you must make sure that you display it above the fold. That is where most blogs have one, and that is where people are used to look for when they want to subscribe, so go with the flow.
3. Display the RSS icon on every page of your blog. When I started blogging I did this mistake. Only my homepage used to have an RSS icon…. As soon as I added it to every single page on the blog, the number of subscribers jumped.
4. Use words. Depending on your audience, just using an RSS icon might not be effective. If they aren’t tech-savvy, they might not know what that little orange thing is. In those cases, you can write a small message explaining that subscribing will allow them to keep updated with your posts and so on.
5. Write a post asking for people to subscribe. Ever heard the saying “Ask and thou shalt receive”? This principle works on most areas of our lives. Blogging is no exception. If you want people to subscribe to your feed, ask them to! Write a post about it, give them some reasons and you will see how they respond.
6. Use the FeedSmith plugin. Unless you hand code a lot of redirects on your blog, readers will still be able to subscribe to different RSS feeds provided by WordPress. This plugin will make sure that all your subscribers will be forwarded to the Feedburner feed, so that you can track them and control how your feed is formatted.
7. Offer email subscriptions. Like it or not, only a small percentage of the Internet users know about or use RSS feeds. Studies confirm that this number is below 10% around the world. Why would you want to miss the other 90% of the pie? If you use Feedburner, you just need to go on the “Publicize” tab to activate your email subscriptions.
8. Use an email subscription form. For most bloggers, an email subscription form will convert better than a simple “Subscribe via email” link. That is because Internet users are used to seeing those forms around, and typing their email address there is quite intuitive. The top of your sidebar is a good spot to place one.
9. Encourage readers to subscribe at the bottom of every post. Apart from having an RSS icon and email subscription form above the fold, it is also important to place them below each single post. Why? Because right after people finish reading your articles, they will look for something to do next, and subscribing to your blog is a good option. Additionally, if the article they just read was really good, they will be on the right mindset to subscribe and receive more of your articles in the future.
10. As few steps as possible. People are lazy (I know I mentioned it before, but it is worth re-emphasizing). The fewer the steps required for them to subscribe to your blog, the better. If you can reduce the number of clicks required, therefore, do it!
11. Use icons to offer subscription on the most popular RSS readers. One practical thing that you can do to reduce the number of steps required to subscribe to your feed is to use RSS reader specific icons (e.g., “Add to Google Reader” or “Subscribe on Bloglines”). Just analyze the most common RSS readers among your subscribers and add those icons to the sidebar.
12. Have clear focus on your blog. If you write about 10 different topics, it will be hard to convince people to subscribe to your blog. They might like your articles about technology, but they would hate to receive the house cleaning ones…. Having a clear focus is one of the most efficient ways to attract subscribers.
13. Publish new posts frequently and consistently. By frequently I mean publishing many posts per week or even per day, and by consistently I mean sticking with that frequency religiously. Those two factors will communicate to the visitors that your blog is active, and that subscribing to the RSS feed might be the best way to stay updated with it indeed.
14. Don’t exaggerate. While writing many posts per week or per day is usually a good thing, there is a limit to it. Many people mention that if a certain blog starts overwhelming them with dozens of new posts a day, they will just unsubscribe. The exceptions to this rule are the blogs on fast paced niches like gadget news.
15. Write valuable content. People will only subscribe to your RSS feed if there is some value that they can derive from it. This value might come from different different factors depending on your audience: it may come from the breaking news that you offer, from the deep analysis that you write, or from the funny things you say and so on, but it must be there.
16. Write unique content. You content might be valuable, but if people can find it elsewhere, they will have no reason to subscribe to your RSS feed. For example, suppose you copy all posts from a popular blog on your niche, say Lifehacker. You content would still be valuable, but it would not be unique, and most people would end up subscribing to the original source.
17. Don’t ramble or go off topic. If your blog has a clear focus as we suggested before, readers will subscribe to it for a very specific reason. If you then start writing about off topic stuff, it will annoy a great part of them. Just consider that a bad or unrelated post is worse than no post at all, since it might make some of your readers actually unsubscribe.
18. Use your RSS feed link when commenting on other blogs. Many bloggers have the habit of commenting on other people’s blogs. Some do it simply to join the conversation. Others because they want to promote their own blogs and generate some traffic. Either way, you can leave your RSS feed link instead of the website one to encourage people to subscribe to your feed (if you use Feedburner, they will be able to see your content anyway).
19. Run a contest. Contests are very popular on the blogosphere. If you have a somewhat popular blog, in fact, it is not difficult to raise some prizes and create one. By making subscribing to your RSS feed a requirement to participate, you could quickly boost the number of subscribers that you have. If you want to control who is going to take this action, use the email subscription method.
20. Offer random prizes to your subscribers. If you are not a fan of contests and competitions, you could always entice people to subscribe to your RSS feed by giving away random prizes. For example, if some company approaches you to donate some free copies of its product, you could in turn donate it to your subscribers
21. Write guest posts. Guest posts represent a very efficient technique for generating both brand awareness and traffic. If you guest blog on a popular blog on your same niche, there is also a good chance that a good percentage of that incoming traffic will end up subscribing to your feed.
22. Welcome the new readers. Whenever you manage to land a guest post on a really popular blog, or when you get mentioned on a larger website or mainstream site, it could be a good idea to write a specific post to welcome those readers. Use that post to describe your blog briefly, to talk a bit about yourself, and to encourage them to subscribe.
23. Go popular on social bookmarking sites. Some people say that the quality of the traffic coming from social bookmarking sites (e.g., Digg and StumbleUpon) is very low. This is true to some extent, because those visitors will rarely click on anything on your page (including on the subscribe link). Because of the sheer amount of traffic that you can get on those sites, however, even a really small conversion rate could easily mean 200 or 300 new subscribers in a matter of 24 hours.
24. Explain to your readers what is RSS. As we mentioned before, it is estimated that less than 10% of the popular know about or use RSS feeds. Can you do anything about this? Sure you can! Write a post teaching your readers what RSS is, why it is good, and how they can start using it. It works particularly well on blogs that have a non tech-savvy audience.
25. Have a special “Subscribe” page with all the info and links there. Apart from writing a specific post teaching your readers about RSS, you can also create a special “Subscribe” page on your blog where you explain briefly how to use RSS feeds, and place all the subscription links, badges, and email forms. You could then link to that page from the sidebar, with a link that would say “Subscription Options” or “How to subscribe.”
26. Create a landing page on your blog to convert visitors in subscribers. If you are going to purchase some banners or other type of advertising, it is highly recommended that you create a landing page to receive those visitors on the best way possible. Use that page to describe your blog, to highlight your best content, and to ask them to subscribe. When doing guest blogging, you could use this page as the byline link as well.
27. Send traffic to that page using PPC. Pay-per-Click advertising, like Google AdWords, is one of the cheapest ways to send targeted traffic to your site. Depending on the quality score that you get (this is calculated from the AdWords side) you could start getting visitors for as low as $0.01 each. That is, with $100, you could send up to 10,000 visitors to your landing page. With a 1% conversion rate this would mean 100 new subscribers.
28. Write an ebook and ask people to subscribe in order to download it. Whether you like them or not, eBooks are a part of the Internet. Many people write them, many others download and read them. If the content and the promotion are well structured, you have thousands of people wanting to read yours. What if you then require people to subscribe first before they can download it? That would bring a heck lot of new subscribers.
29. Launch an email newsletter with Aweber. An email newsletter can be used to complement the content on most blogs. You send a weekly email to those subscribers with your insider views of your niche, with some extra tips, tools and so on. If you then choose Aweber for your newsletter, you can use the “Blog Broadcast” feature to turn those newsletter subscribers into RSS readers too (they will receive a weekly summary from your feed).
30. Offer a full feed. If your goal is to have as many subscribers as possible, then offering a full RSS feed is the only way to go. Many people get annoyed by partial feeds, and even if that does not discourage them from subscribing at first, it might make them unsubscribe shortly after.
31. Clutter your website with ads. This point is a funny/weird addition to the list, and I don’t recommend anyone doing it. I didn’t invent this though, and I saw some people in the past talking about it. The idea is simple: if you clutter your website with many flashy and intrusive ads, but offer top quality content anyway, some people might get an urge to subscribe to your RSS feed just to avoid the clutter on the website….
32. Don’t clutter your RSS feed with ads. Just as too many ads on your site can scare visitors away, too many ads or badges or links on your RSS feed can make people unsubscribe. Keep the RSS feed as clean as possible. That is what people expect to have when they subscribe to an XML file, after all.
33. Use social proof. Ever entered into a restaurant because the place was packed with people, or didn’t enter one because it was empty? That is social proof in action. If you have a good number of RSS subscribers already (I would say over 500), you could display it on your site using the Feedburner feed count widget. This might motivate people to give your RSS feed a shot.
34. Offer breaking news. RSS feeds are one of the most efficient ways to keep up with sites that are frequently updated with information that you care about. If you manage to break some news, or to offer frequent updates on popular topics (like stock market alerts), people would have a stronger motivation to subscribe.
35. Mention that subscribing to your blog is free. It might sound strange, but many people actually get confused with the “Subscribe” terminology. I received dozens of emails over the past year from people that wanted to know if there was any cost associated with subscribing to my RSS feeds! To avoid any confusion, it could be worth mentioning that subscribing to your blog is free, so instead of “Subscribe to my RSS feed” you could use “Receive our updates for free.”
36. Use pop-ups to encourage subscription to your newsletter. Darren managed to increase his conversion rate by more than 700% using pop-ups. Sure, they are intrusive, but they work like nothing else. If you already have an established and loyal following, perhaps using this technique wouldn’t hurt your traffic. We also did a recent poll on the topic.
37. Use an animated RSS feed icon to draw attention. Animated ads get a much higher click-through rate, exactly because they move around and draw people’s attention. You can use the same technique with your RSS feed icon, and make it an animated GIF to call the attention of the visitors.
38. Use feed directories. Don’t expect to receive hundreds of new subscribers by using this technique, but every small bit helps right? Some people use feed directories to find new RSS feeds and content to subscribe to, so if you have some free time you could submit yours on those sites. Here is a list with almost 20 feed directories.
39. Email first time commentators encouraging them to subscribe. Sending a personal email to your first time commentators is a kind gesture, and many will thank you for that. You could use this opportunity to remind them that they can stay updated with your blog via the RSS feed. There is also plugin called Comment Relish that can automate this process, although it becomes less personal.
40. Make sure the feed auto-discovery feature is working. Most modern browsers have an auto-discovery feature that tried to identify if the website you are visiting has a valid RSS feed. If they do, the browser will present a small RSS icon on the right side of the address bar. So make sure that your can see that icon while visiting your blog, and click on it to see if the right RSS feed will pop. On WordPress you can edit this part on the header.php file.
41. Offer a comments feed. If you have an active community of readers who often engage in discussions on the comments section of your blog, you could consider offering a comments RSS feed.
42. Offer category feeds. If you have many categories on your blog, you could offer an RSS feed for each of them individually. This would enable visitors that are interested only in specific topics to subscribe to them and not to the whole blog. At the same time this granularity could increase the overall number of RSS subscribers you have.
43. Run periodic checks on your feeds. It is not rare to find blogs around the web with a broken RSS feed. Click on your own feed once in a while to make sure that the link is working, that the feed is working, and that it is a valid XML document.
44. Recover unverified email subscribers. You will notice that good percentage of your email subscribers will never confirm their subscription. Some are lazy, some just don’t understand the process. This percentage can go as high as 30%, so you could end up losing many would-be subscribers there. Fortunately you can email those unverified subscribers and remind them about the problem. It works for some.
45. Leverage an existing blog or audience. If you already have a popular blog, newsletter, forum, twitter account and so on, you could leverage that presence to get new subscribers. People that already follow you in some place will have a higher chance of subscribing to you new blog, especially if they like your work or person.
46. Use cross feed promotion. Find some related blogs that have a similar RSS subscriber base, and propose to the blogger to use a cross feed promotion deal. That is, you promote his blog on your feed footer, and he promotes your blog on his feed footer.
47. Use testimonials on your “Subscribe” page. You probably have seen how most product sales pages on the web use testimonials, right? That is because a personal recommendation from a third party goes a long way into convincing a prospect. If that is the case, why not use testimonials to convince people to subscribe to your RSS feed?
48. Get friends to recommend your site and RSS feed on their blog. Even stronger than having a testimonial on your “Subscribe” page is to have someone recommend you on his own blog or website. Many of his readers will pay attention to the message and head over to your blog to check what the fuzz is about.
49. Do something funny or weird while asking for people to subscribe. People love blogs with a sense of humor. If you can make them laugh, you have took them half way into subscribing. Some months ago I published the Huge RSS Icon Experiment, and gained 300 new subscribers in 3 days.
50. Start a long series so people subscribe to keep update with it. Long and structured series of posts are not only traffic magnets, but also RSS readers magnets. If a casual visitor discovers that you are publishing a long series about a topic he is interested on, he will think about subscribing in order to not miss the future posts of the series.
So, if you came this far reading the post, you should already be convinced that you need to grab my RSS feed, right?!
Continue Reading
There are several lists with “ways to make money with a website” on the Internet, but none of them seem to be complete. That is why I decided to create this one. If you know a method that is not listed below, just let us know and we’ll update it.
waystomakemoneywebsite.jpg
Notice that ways to make money with a website are different from ways to make more money from it. Methods to increase your traffic or click-through rate will help you make more money, but they do not represent a method of making money per se.
For example, one could suggest that blending AdSense ads with the content is a way to make money from a website. In reality it’s not; it’s just a way to make more money by improving your ad click-through rate. The real monetization method behind it is a PPC ad network.
The list is divided into direct and indirect methods, and examples and links are provided for each point. Enjoy!

Direct Methods

1. PPC Advertising Networks
Google AdSense is the most popular option under this category, but there are also others. Basically you need to sign up with the network and paste some code snippets on your website. The network will then serve contextual ads (either text or images) relevant to your website, and you will earn a certain amount of money for every click.
The profitability of PPC advertising depends on the general traffic levels of the website and, most importantly, on the click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). The CTR depends on the design of the website. Ads placed abode the fold or blended with content, for instance, tend to get higher CTRs. The CPC, on the other hand, depends on the nice of the website. Mortgages, financial products and college education are examples of profitable niches (clicks worth a couple of dollars are not rare), while tech-related topics tend to receive a smaller CPC (sometimes as low as a couple of cents per click).
The source of the traffic can also affect the overall CTR rate. Organic traffic (the one that comes from search engines) tends to perform well because these visitors were already looking for something, and they tend to click on ads more often. Social media traffic, on the other hand, presents terribly low CTRs because these visitors are tech-savvy and they just ignore ads.
List of popular CPC advertising networks:
2. CPM Advertising Networks
CPM advertising networks behave pretty much as PPC networks, except that you get paid according to the number of impressions (i.e., page views) that the ads displayed on your site will generate. CPM stands for Cost per Mille, and it refers to the cost for 1,000 impressions.
A blog that generates 100,000 page views monthly displaying an advertising banner with a $1 CPM, therefore, will earn $100 monthly.
CPM rates vary with the network, the position of the ad and the format. The better the network, the higher the CPM rate (because they have access to more advertisers). The closer you put the ad to the top of the page, the higher the CPM. The bigger the format (in terms of pixels), the higher the CPM.
You can get as low as $0,10 and as high as $10 per 1,000 impressions (more in some special cases). CPM advertising tends to work well on websites with a high page views per visitor ratio (e.g., online forums, magazines and so on).
List of popular CPM advertising networks:
3. Direct Banner Advertising
Selling your own advertising space is one of the most lucrative monetization methods. First and foremost because it enables you to cut out the middleman commissions and to determine your own rates. The most popular banner formats on the web are the 728×90 leaderboard, the 120×600 skyscraper, the 300×250 rectangle and the 125×125 button.
The downside of direct banner advertising is that you need to have a big audience to get qualified advertisers, and you will need to spend time managing the sales process, the banners and the payments.
Related links:
4. Text Link Ads
After Google declared that sites selling text links without the nofollow tag would be penalized, this monetization method became less popular.
Many website owners are still using text links to monetize their sites, though, some using the nofollow tag and some not.
The advantage of this method is that it is not intrusive. One can sell text links directly through his website or use specialized networks like Text-Link-Ads and Text-Link-Brokers to automate the process.
Text link marketplaces and networks:
5. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a very popular practice on the Internet. Under this system you have a merchant that is willing to let other people (the affiliates) sell directly or indirectly its products and services, in exchange for a commission. Sometimes this type of advertising is also called CPA (cost per action) or CPL (cost per lead) based.
Affiliates can send potential customers to the merchant using several tools, from banners to text links and product reviews.
In order to find suitable affiliate programs you can turn to individual companies and publishers like Dreamhost and SEOBook, or join affiliate marketplaces and networks.
List of popular affiliate marketplaces and networks:
6. Monetization Widgets
The latest trend on the web are widgets that let you monetize your website. Examples include Widgetbucks and SmartLinks. Some of these services operate under a PPC scheme, others behave like text link ads, others yet leverage affiliate links.
Their main differentiator, however, is the fact that they work as web widgets, making it easier for the user to plug and play the service on its website.
List of companies that provide monetization widgets:
7. Sponsored Reviews
PayPerPost pioneered this model, with much controversy on the beginning (related to the fact that they did not require disclosure on paid posts). Soon other companies followed, most notably Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe, refining the process and expanding the paid blogging model.
Joining one of these sponsored reviews marketplaces will give you the opportunity to write sponsored posts on a wide range of topics. Not all bloggers are willing to get paid to write about a specific product or website (because it might compromise the editorial credibility), but the ones who do are making good money out of it.
If your blog has a big audience you could also offer sponsored reviews directly, cutting off the commissions of the middleman.
List of sponsored reviews and paid blogging networks:
8. RSS Feed Ads
With the quick adoption of the RSS technology by millions of Internet users, website owners are starting to find ways to monetize this new content distribution channel.
Feedburber already has its own publisher network, and you can sign-up to start displaying CPM based advertising on your feed footer. Bidvertiser recently introduced a RSS feed ad option as well, with a PPC scheme.
Finally, some blogs are also opting to sell banners or sponsored messages on their feed directly. John Chow and Marketing Pilgrim are two examples.
Related links:
9. Sponsors for Single Columns or Events
If you website has specific columns or events (e.g., a weekly podcast, an interview series, a monthly survey, a special project) you could find companies to sponsor them individually.
This method increases the monetization options for website owner, while giving advertisers the possibility to target a more specific audience and with a reduced commitment.
Mashable illustrates the case well. They have several advertising options on the site, including the possibility to sponsor specific columns and articles, including the “Daily Poll” and the “Web 2.0 Invites.”
Problogger also runs group writing projects occasionally, and before proceeding he publicly announce the project asking for sponsors.
10.Premium Content
Some websites and blogs give away part of their content for free, and charge for access to the premium content and exclusive tools.
SEOMoz is a good example. They have a very popular blog that gives advice and information on wide range of SEO related topics. On top of that visitors can decide to become premium members. It costs $48 monthly and it grants them access to guides, tools and other exclusive material.
11. Private Forums
While the Internet is populated with free forums, there is also the possibility to create a private one where members need to pay a single or recurring fee to join.

SEO Blackhat
charges $100 monthly from its members, and they have thousands of them. Obviously in order to charge such a price for a forum membership you need to provide real value for the members (e.g., secret techniques, tools, and so on).
Performancing also launched a private forum recently, focused on the networking aspect. It is called The Hive, and the monthly cost is $10.
These are just two examples. There are many possibilities to create a private and profitable forum, you just need to find an appealing angle that will make it worth for the members.
List of popular forum software:
12. Job Boards
All the popular blogs are trying to leverage job boards to make some extra income. Guy Kawasaki, ReadWriteWeb, Problogger… you name it.
Needless to say that in order to create an active and profitable job board you need first to have a blog focused on a specific niche, and a decent amount traffic.
The advantage of this method is that it is passive. Once you have the structure in place, the job listings will come naturally, and you can charge anywhere from $10 up to $100 for each.
List of popular job board software:
13. Marketplaces
Sitepoint is the online marketplace by excellence. Some websites and blogs, however, are trying to replicate that model on a smaller scale.
Depending on your niche, a market place that allows your visitors to buy, sell and trade products could work well. Over the time you could start charging a small fee for new product listings.
The problem with this method is that there are no standard software on the web, so you would need to hire a coder to get a marketplace integrated into your website.
You can see an example of a marketplaces being used on EasyWordpress and on Mashable.
14. Paid Surveys and Polls
There are services that will pay you money to run a small survey or poll on your website. The most popular one is called Vizu Answers.
Basically you need to sign up with them, and select the kind of polls that you want to run your site. Most of these services operate under a CPM model.
15. Selling or Renting Internal Pages
Million Dollar Wiki made this concept popular, but it was being used on the web for a long time around (check Pagerank10.co.uk for instance).
These websites sell for a single fee or rent for a recurring fee internal pages on their domain. Usually they have either high Pagerak or high traffic, so that people purchasing a page will be able to benefit in some way.
Implementing this method on a small blog would be difficult, but the concept is interesting and could be explored further.
16. Highlighted Posts from Sponsors
Techmeme probably pioneered this idea, but somehow it has not spread to other websites. The tech news aggregator displays editorial posts on the left column, and on the sidebar they have a section titled “Techmeme Sponsor Posts.”
On that section posts from the blog of the advertisers get highlighted, sending qualified traffic their way. Considering that the monthly cost for one spot is $5000 and that they have around 6 sponsors at any given time, it must be working well.
17. Donations
Placing a “Donate” link or button on a website can be an efficient way to earn money, especially if your blog is on a niche where readers learn and gain value from your content.
Personal development and productivity blogs, for instance, tend to perform well with donation based systems (one good example being Steve Pavlina).
A small variation of this method appeared sometime ago with the Buy Me a Beer plugin. This WordPress plugin enables you to insert a customized message at the bottom of each article, asking the readers to chip in for a beer or coffee.
18. In-text Adverting
In-text adverting networks like Kontera and Vibrant Media will place sponsored links inside your text. These links come with a double underline to differentiate them from normal links, and once the user rolls the mouse over the link the advertising will pop. Should the user click on it the site owner will make some money.
Some people make good money with this method, but others refrain from using it due to its intrusiveness. It is also interesting to note that very few mainstream websites have experimented with in-text advertising.
19. Pop-ups and Pop-unders
Pop-ups are a common yet annoying form of advertising on the Internet. If you are just trying to make a much money as possible from your website, you could experiment with them.
If you are trying to grow the traffic and generate loyal visitors, however, you probably should stay away from them. Just consider the hundreds of pop-up blockers out there: there is a reason why they are so popular.
Ad networks that use pop-ups:
20. Audio Ads
Also called PPP (Pay Per Play), this advertising method was introduce by Net Audio Ads. the concept is pretty simple: play a small audio advertising (usually 5 seconds) every time a visitor enters into your website. The user should not be able to stop it, creating a 100% conversion rate based on unique visitors.
The company is still rolling tests, but some users are reporting to get from a $4 to a $6 CPM. Regardless of the pay rate, though, this is a very intrusive form of advertising, so think twice before using it.
21. Selling the Website
Selling your website could be your last resource, but it has the potential to generate a big sum of money in a short period of time.
Market places on online forums like DigitalPoint and Sitepoint are always active with website buyers and sellers. Keep in mind that they most used parameter to determine the value of a website is the monthly revenue that it generates, multiplied by a certain number (the multiplier can be anything from 5 to 30, depending on the expectations of the seller, on the quality of the site, on the niche and other factors).
Some people also make money trading and flipping websites. They either create them from scratch or buy existing ones, and after some revamping they sell them for a profit.
Related links:

Indirect Methods

22. Selling an Ebook
Perhaps one of the oldest money making strategies on the web, using a website to promote a related ebook is a very efficient way to generate revenue.
You could either structure the website around the book itself, like SEOBook.com, or launch the ebook based on the success of the website, like FreelanceSwitch did we the book How to be a Rockstar Freelancer.
Related links:
23. Selling a Hardcover Book
Many authors and journalists leverage their blogs or websites to sell copies of hardcover books. Examples include Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell.
While most of these people were already renowned authors before they created their website, one could also follow the other way around. Lorelle VanFossen did exactly that with her Blogging Tips book. First she built her authority on the subject via her blog, and afterwards she published the book.
List of self publishing and publishing services:
24. Selling Templates or WordPress Themes
As more and more people decide to get an online presence, website templates and WordPress themes become hotter and hotter.
On this segment you have mainstream websites like TemplateMonster, as well as individual designers who decide to promote and sell their work independently.
Brian Gardner and Unique Blog Designs are two examples of websites that make money with the sales of premium and custom WordPress themes.
25. Offering Consulting and Related Services
Depending on your niche, you could make money by offering consulting and related services. If you are also the author of your blog, the articles and information that you will share will build your profile and possibly certify your expertise on that niche, making it easier to gain customers.
Chris Garrett used a similar strategy. First he created a highly influential blog on the blogging and new media niche, and afterwards he started offering consulting services to clients with related problems and needs.
26. Creating an Email List or Newsletter
Email lists and newsletters represent one of the most powerful marketing and money making tools on the Internet. They offer incredible conversion rates, and the possibility to call people to action in a very efficient way.
Creating a big list is a difficult task though, so if you have a popular website you could leverage it to increase the number of subscribers on your list.
Yaro Starak is a famous Internet marketer, and if you visit his blog you will notice that right on top he has a section encouraging visitors to subscribe to his email newsletter. Yaro generates five figures in revenues each month from his email newsletters, proving that this method works.
List of software to manage email newsletters:
27. Mentoring programs
People are willing to pay for someone or something that will teach them and give them knowledge (as opposed to mere information). Education is one of the biggest industries in the world, and the online landscape behaves in a similar way.
Creating a mentoring program related to the niche of your website could be very profitable if you manage to structure and promote it adequately. There is a wide range of media and tools that you can use to deliver the information, from text articles to audio and video lessons.
Brian Clark leveraged the success of Copyblogger to launch a mentoring program teaching people how to build membership and how to sell content online. The program is titled Teaching Sells, and it costs $97 monthly. Sounds expensive, but they have over 1,000 members.
28. Creating a conference around the website
If your website takes off and becomes an authority on its niche, you could create a conference around it. Depending on the size of your audience, the event could attract thousands of people, and you could make money directly from conference passes and sponsors.
Search Engine Land, for instance, created a series of conferences that visit several cities on the United States and on other countries as well. The conferences are called Search Marketing Expo, and the tickets and passes cost thousands of dollars.
Continue Reading
Previous Next Home
 
PROMOTE YOUR BLOGGER 100% Working Tips And Tricks Updated EveryDay