4 Proven Ways to Make Money Online

Many people who read my blog have asked me about making money online (other than blogging). I have done quite a bit of research on this topic over the years, and I have found 4 proven ways to make money online.

1. Do you have any skills that others may be looking for? Elance is a wonderful website for selling your talents to others, to include writing, bookkeeping, secretarial work, music, web design, and even voice acting. If you have any gifts or skills at all, Elance has a way for you to market them. Check out my article on easily and quickly writing research papers here.

2. Do you have old junk around the house? Maybe you like to frequent garage sales, thrift stores, or flea markets. Put you treasure hunting skills to good use by selling those great finds on Ebay. Another thing that many people do is buy store items by the truckload or pallet to sell individually on Ebay. There are plenty of websites that offer pallet or truckload purchases, but one that I have used is Merchandize Liquidators.

 

3. Are you crafty? Do you make jewelry, clothes, or other knickknacks? If so, Etsy is the place for you. On Etsy, if you can make it, you can sell it. I have personally seen people start selling their little creations (in this case, personalized aprons) on Etsy and turn it into a booming online business.

4. Finally, there is a whole lot of money on the internet for gurus of any sort. If you know how to do something, make an instructional video on YouTube or post your knowledge on the web with a blog.

If you haven’t already, check out my other posts on 12 Steps to Make Money Online Easily by Blogging and 9 Reasons to Use Google for All Your Blogging Needs to learn more. They go in-depth about blogging with Google's Blogger, marketing with Google+ (and other tips for SEO), and Adsense.

Thank you all for reading my 4 proven ways to make money online. As always, if you have any suggestions, questions, or comments, please feel free to use the comments section down below.

9 Reasons to Use Google for All Your Blogging Needs

If you are thinking about starting a blog, it is very important to research and plan your product. There are many vendors and platforms out there that offer blog hosting, but none can match everything that Google is willing to offer. Keep reading for 9 reasons to use Google for all your blogging needs.

1.  Blogger: Google’s Blogger is very easy to set up for beginners. The step-by-step wizard makes the initial layout a snap. The best part is, it is also powerful and flexible enough for the advanced bloggers, which can save you future migration headaches. There are also many add-ins available to make your blog more unique and gain traffic.

2.  Adsense: If you have done any research on blogging for profit, you already know that Google’s Adsense is a must. Setting up Adsense to work with Blogger is easy by design to encourage new bloggers to use as many of Google’s features as possible.

3.  Google+: One of the easiest ways to gain traffic on your blog is to incorporate social media into your marketing and promotion plan. The good news – Google has that covered as well with Google+, which is constantly gaining popularity. Similarly to how Facebook was considered the “mature alternative to MySpace” at one time, Google+ is becoming the more mature and professional alternative to Facebook. Additionally, Googe+ already has many communities for research, discussion, and collaboration purposes.

4.  Gmail: Almost everyone already has a Gmail account. When used with other Google applications, Gmail gives you the ability to have an email account that is directly tied to your blog, advertisement platform, and social media outlet. It gives you the professional appearance of having a specific account for your blog as well.

5.  Hangouts: Google’s Hangouts is a new feature of Google+ that allows you to collaborate with other bloggers or even your readers through text, voice, and video chat. Just imagine having the capability to hold chat sessions with your audience to discuss issues, let them know more about you, or even make suggestions about your content. Google Hangouts is the ultimate way to stay connected to your fans.

6.  YouTube: If you are anything like me, you might also be interested in trying out a video blog (vlog). With YouTube, you can set up your own channel to talk about whatever you desire. If you are smart, you will also use YouTube (with Adsense) to promote your blog and use your blog to host links to your YouTube videos.

7.  Cross-Authentication: One of the biggest advantages to using Google applications is the cross-authentication. When you log into one Google product, your credentials pass on to the next application. This saves you time and effort associated with creating, maintaining, and remembering multiple user accounts.

8. Search Engine Optimization: Many bloggers and webmasters spend so much of their time trying to figure out creative ways to get their blog to the first page of Google. Luckily for you, your blog is already hosted by them! In other words, they already see your blog – something that can be difficult to initiate, otherwise.

9. Cost: What is the absolute best reason to use Google applications for your blogging endeavors? You probably guessed it already. Google applications are free. You can’t beat that with a stick.

As you can see, there are quite a few reasons to use Google for all your blogging needs. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about getting started or making the switch, please feel free to use the “comments” section below.

-BCS

12 Steps to Make Money Online Easily by Blogging

Many of you have asked me how to make money online, simply by maintaining a blog. Well, I have listened to your questions and just like my walk-through on easily writing a research paper, I am going to attempt in at least putting you in the right direction. Continue reading to find the 12 steps to make money online easily by blogging. If my instructions are unclear or you need help in any way, please leave me a comment at the bottom, on twitter, or even Google+. I would love to know how I can make someone’s life easier.

Maintaining a blog is a great way to earn money while working at home. One thing that many people tell me is that they don’t have anything to write about. To be honest, that is perfectly fine. Topics come much easier than you would think. All you have to do is turn on the TV, look at a magazine, or hold a conversation with a random person for more than 10 seconds to generate an opinion on something, and the best part about a blog is that your opinions don’t even have to be completely supported by facts.

1. The first step in starting a blog is to pick a blogging platform. Personally, I like Google’s Blogger because it easily integrates with Google+, YouTube, and Adsense. They make it very easy to set up and customize your blog as well. Click here for 9 reasons to use Google for all your blogging needs.

2. After you set up your blog, you should sign up for a Google Adsense account. If I remember correctly, it doesn’t take long and you don’t even have to give them financial information right away (you don’t get paid until you make at least $100US).

3. Integrate the blog with your Adsense account. To do this, click on the “Earnings” tab on the left of your blog’s dashboard and follow the instructions. As long as you use the same Google account for everything, it is very simple to do.

4. Edit the layout of your blog to maximize your ad-earning potential. The best places to put ads are where your readers will see them, even though it makes you feed obnoxious. I recommend putting them on the top, side, between articles, and on the bottom. The thing is, Google only allows you to display three ads per page, and if you promote the link to just one of your posts there won’t be multiple articles to squeeze an ad between (which is ideal). For this reason, I added another ad position on the bottom of the page and if it isn’t used, that is just fine. Does that make sense?

5. To get even more ad revenue from your blog, I suggest setting up in-text ads. Those are the little links under specific words in my articles. They are pretty unobtrusive, yet allow you to have more than the default three ads per page. I have been using InfoLinks for a while, and I am impressed with the performance. The only downside with going through them is that it might take a few days for your account to be approved.

6. Now that you have your blog set up, it’s time to start blogging! Anything that comes to your mind is fine, but you can only expect to earn a decent amount of money if you have content that people want to view, and also matches up with higher paying ads. Don’t just post a few articles and expect to hit it rich, either. Make blogging a part of your routine and knock out at least a few every week. Starting out, I would actually suggest more – once or twice per day. Remember, one or two pictures could be the difference between getting people to click on your link or not.

7. Now that you have blog entries, you need to find a way to get people to see them. There are many things you can do for this. First, get a Twitter account and do whatever you can to gain followers. To start, follow people who are into the same things you are writinTwitterFeed, that do it for you. I use it and it wor

ks great.
g about. More than likely, they will follow you back. Stay away from #followback and internet twitter follower increasing scams. What you really want is people who pay attention to what you say and want to click the links to your blog articles. You can manually share your articles on twitter, but there are free services out there like

8. Promote your articles through your friends and family. There is nothing wrong with sharing everything you do on Facebook, then asking your friends to do the same.

9. Join blog search engines like Technorati so people can find your blog. Note: Getting approval from Technorati seems to take forever. For me, it was over a week.

10. Use services like PingOMatic, which ping your blog from search engines like Google and Yahoo and can increase your position for searches, also helping people find you.

11. Consider also starting a YouTube channel, where you can also use Adsense ads to make money. The beauty behind this is that you can then promote your videos on your blog, which gives you the opportunity to get double the amount of ad views.

12. Finally, and probably most importantly, create a StumbleUpon account and add the page for every post you make. You can actually sit and watch your page views go up immediately after you do this, which is pretty cool.

That’s pretty much it. Keep in mind that the process is very slow at first, but if you follow these 12 steps to make money online easily by blogging, keep with it, and find your own ways to market to current and future readers, people have gotten quite a bit of money. For other ways to make money online, check out my 4 proven ways to make money online.

Again, if you guys have any suggestions, corrections, questions, or comments, please feel free to use the section below, find me on Twitter, or send a message on Google+.