Saturday, January 3, 2015

12 ways to earn extra money online

If you want to make a little spending money from home or earn a full-time salary, now’s the time — especially if you have a computer. Just going online opens up a host of opportunities. The trick is knowing which businesses are legitimate. Here are my top picks.
Sell your crafts Do you knit? Make jewelry? Sew? If so, there are lots of opportunities to sell handmade wares online. As a member of Etsy ( etsy.com), you’ll have your own online store to showcase your items. It’s free to become an Etsy seller, but you’ll pay a fee of 20¢ to list an item with up to five photos for four months. When the item sells, you pay a 3.5 percent commission to Etsy. There’s no limit to how much you can charge, and what you earn is based on how your crafts sell.
At Jewelry Wonder ( jewelrywonder.com), sellers must have at least 30 items to open a free online store. There’s no charge to sellers — no setup fee, monthly or transaction fees, or listing or hosting fees. And sellers set their own prices, so the sky’s the limit.
ArtFire ( artfire.com) is the home of artists, crafters, suppliers and media creators from around the world. Sellers can choose either a basic free account that includes unlimited listings with four pictures per item plus the ability to sell directly from your blog or website, or a Pro account for $15.95 a month with 10 pictures per item plus a customizable “store” and promo features. There are no transaction fees on ArtFire, so you keep what you make. The site also offers online training in merchandising and marketing.
Make money from your talent At Fiverr ( fiverr.com), you can offer services that use your skills — designing a business card, creating a podcast jingle, planning a trip — for five bucks a pop. Fiverr keeps $1 and the seller gets $4 per gig. Stefanie Strobel, 28, of Newport Beach, California, writes people’s messages in the sand at the beach and takes a picture that she then emails to them. “I make about $300 per month and can do about 10 to 15 messages per hour, depending on length and complexity,” says Stefanie.
More From Today: The 4 Best Ways To Make Money from Home
Be a nurse on call If you’re a registered nurse, consider a company like Fonemed ( fonemed.com), which provides phone-based triage and medical information to their customers in Canada and the U.S. These companies contract with medical-related clients, mostly doctor’s offices and especially pediatrician’s offices, to answer questions when the offices are closed (the work hours are typically evenings, nights and weekends). You must be licensed in the state or province where you are located and have at least three years of recent clinical experience with adults and children. Fonemed nurses are paid an hourly minimum plus a fee per call, and are eligible for benefits like health insurance and paid leave. A typical Fonemed nurse makes $27 per hour, according to Fonemed owner Charlene Slaney.
Write, edit, proofread Sites like Demand Studios ( demandstudios.com) and Associated Content ( associatedcontent.com) hire experienced freelance writers, editors and filmmakers to work on projects for sites like eHow, LiveStrong.com and YouTube. At Demand Studios, assignments pay anywhere from $15 to $100; if you meet tenure and activity requirements, you can be eligible for health insurance plans. At Associated Content there are three ways to earn money: Upfront payments for content you write ($2 to $15 per article), assigned articles ($10 to $100 per article) and performance payments ($1.50 for every 1,000 page views of your article if it’s posted online).
Design graphics and websites Elance ( elance.com) works like an online marketplace, setting up designers and computer programmers with companies that need their services. Companies post jobs and freelancers bid on them, listing their experience, portfolio and the price they will charge for the job. If your bid is chosen, you’ll pay Elance a commission of 4 to 6 percent of what you earn.
Tutor kids or adults If you have a college degree or are currently enrolled in college and think you have the skills to tutor math, science, English or social studies, tutoring online might fit you perfectly. Check out Tutor.com, where tutors work as independent contractors and earn around $10 to $14 per hour based on the subject and hours worked. Very active tutors can earn anywhere from $800 to $1,600 a month. Give advice Know a lot about medicine or car repairs? JustAnswer ( justanswer.com) is a paid question-and-answer site that’s growing its community of experts in the medical, legal and financial fields, as well as in other specialties like car repair and home improvement. Registered customers ask a question and then name the price they’re willing to pay (usually from $10 to $40) for an expert answer. The expert usually responds within an hour, and once the customer accepts the answer, keeps from 25 to 50 percent of what the customer pays. How much experts earn depends on how many questions they’ve had accepted by customers. Experts are vetted through a fairly grueling process, with credentials, education and background verified.
Provide customer service Many retailers are outsourcing their customer service operations to third-party companies like Alpine Access ( alpineaccess.com) and Working Solutions ( workingsolutions.com), who in turn contract with home-based workers. The reps, who typically work 20 to 40 hours a week, take calls for large and small companies. The hourly rate is about $9, but agents can earn up to $13 with incentives and bonuses or up to $30 for special projects. Some companies offer benefits like health and dental insurance and a matching 401(k) plan. LiveOps ( liveops.com) is similar, but service reps operate as independent contractors, typically invoicing LiveOps $10 to $15 per hour depending on the type of call and performance. And with LiveOps you can work as many hours as you want. The hiring process is rigorous: Expect a comprehensive written or online application, skills exam, phone interview and background check.
Make a little spending money When career librarian Rachel Singer Gordon, 40, of Lombard, Illinois, quit her job in 2005 to take care of her children and pursue freelance writing, she knew she’d need to find other sources of income to supplement her writing. She dove headlong into couponing and frugality, and became a wizard at finding ways to earn money online. Soon Rachel was bringing in small amounts of income from lots of sources she calls “multiple profit centers.” “They’re the equivalent of a nice, steady part-time job,” says Rachel. In 2009, she started the blog Mashup Mom ( mashupmom.com) to share all the stuff she was learning. In fewer than two years, the blog has become yet another profit center for Rachel, as has her first book, Point, Click, and Save: Mashup Mom’s Guide to Saving and Making Money Online. Tap into multiple profit centers with Rachel’s favorites.
  • Launch a blog. “If you have something interesting to say, grow your readership, post ads and earn some dough,” says Rachel. Start your blog at a free site (go to blogger.com or wordpress.com ), then go to Google AdSense ( google.com/adsense) or the affiliate program at Amazon.com ( affiliate-program.amazon.com) to feature advertising on your site. With AdSense, you make a little bit every time someone clicks on one of the ads hosted on your site. With Amazon’s program, you earn a small commission when someone clicks through on an ad and makes a purchase at Amazon. The income will start small, but if you build your following, your cash flow will increase. Rachel typically makes several hundred dollars per month from ads or affiliate links on her blog.
  • Give your opinion. At MySurvey.com, Surveyhead.com or ValuedOpinions.com, you can sign up to take surveys about products and services and get paid for it. Sites typically pay $2 to $5 per completed survey and will send you a check or deposit to your PayPal account, or gift cards or merchandise once you reach $20 in your survey account. Scam alert! There are lots of survey sites out there, but not all are trustworthy. Avoid participating in anything that charges a fee up front to participate. “I try to take three or four surveys each week while the kids are watching TV, and that brings in $20 to $30 per month,” says Rachel.
  • Search the Internet. Rachel loves to scour the Web, and one of her favorite things to do is use Swag Bucks ( swagbucks.com) as her search engine instead of, say, Google or Yahoo. By doing this, she earns Swag Bucks points — called “SBs” on the website — redeemable for merchandise like Target gift cards and beauty products. (Maximize the number of points you earn by installing the Swag Bucks toolbar on your computer.) You can also earn more Swag Bucks points by taking the site’s daily poll and by participating in the company’s “trusted surveys.” But be warned, it could take awhile to accumulate SBs. A $300 Apple gift card, for example, costs 37,000 SB. If you don’t want prizes, you can trade your Swag Bucks points for PayPal deposits into your account.
  • Do online tasks. Have a few extra minutes with nothing to do? Companies like Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk ( mturk.com) will pay you to complete little tasks that they need done, such as searching the Web for certain products or answering questions and giving opinions. There’s usually a time limit of anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour, and pay ranges from a few cents to a few dollars. This may not sound like a lot, but do enough tasks and you’ve earned yourself some extra spending money.

7 Tips To Help You Become A Millionaire

Income Report: I’m A Million Dollar Blogger

Back during the early days of this blog I used to write income reports on a semi-regular basis. John Chow made the idea of reporting your blogging income popular, and before him guys like Darren Rowse and Shoemoney would show pictures of checks they had received from advertising programs like Google AdSense or affiliate programs. Today guys like Pat from Smart Passive Income keep the trend going, though most of the other guys have stopped reporting now.

There’s no doubt people are inspired by seeing how much money others make (I certainly was before I started earning much online), and for the person sharing their details, it’s great for the ego to talk about how well you are doing. It’s also beneficial as a practice to report income to monitor your trend growth rates and also see if you can sustain a level of income significant enough to live off long term.
I’ve often had people, especially those who work “normal” jobs, question the practice of revealing your income online. How much money you earn is considered one of the most private things you don’t tell even your friends or family, let alone the entire planet through the Internet. I personally don’t think income levels should be hidden, it could be a force for better wages if the knowledge was public, so I’ve never had a problem talking about how much money I generate. Plus it’s fun to report back your successes when you have them, even if it does seem a lot like bragging, which I think it is, but it’s great for social proof too.

How I Made A Million Dollars

It’s amazing for me to write this, but during the last two years I’ve generated over a million dollars in revenue online. What’s even more amazing is I did this without any full time staff and only one regular contractor.
In Australia the tax year runs from July to June, and in the 2008-2009 tax year I made over half a million dollars in revenue doing what I do online. I was expecting the next year to be less because I wasn’t launching as many new things, but it turned out that I actually surpassed the previous year (just), though the profit was less (I bought a new BMW – that tends to hurt your profit a bit!).
Obviously profit is different from revenue, so I didn’t keep the million dollars I made over the last two years. For my business, tax compliance (the cost of setting up a new tax structure), outsourcing to contractors and affiliate commissions are the largest “expenses” I incur. In general I make about 70% profit (and tax comes out of that), which is incredibly high compared to most offline businesses. That’s what is so good about online business – the low cost structure.
Before the last two half-million dollar years I was making a solid six figures a year, so I actually surpassed a million dollars earlier. I feel comfortable saying now that I’ve made more than a million in sales and kept more than a million in profit in the last five years running my current online business.

How You Can Make A Million Dollars

Obviously it’s nice for me to be in this situation and I’m incredibly grateful I can live the life I do, working on a few hours a day, make what I make and do it by helping others through sharing words, but I know what you really care about is how can you replicate my result.
There’s no simple answer to that question, however I’ve met enough millionaires to notice what they do differently, not to mention had my own experience becoming a seven figure blogger.
Here’s some key points as I see it to help you reach your own million dollar result –
7 Tips To Help You Make A Million Dollars
1. Although I don’t have staff, I couldn’t get this result without some kind of leverage generated by other people. The best two examples I can give you from my experience is my partnership with Gideon Shalwick, who co-created the Become A Blogger program with me, which is responsible for a fairly hefty junk of my income in the last two years, and my affiliates, who have helped me reach a much larger audience than I could alone.
2. Repetition of what works. Although I’ve done many different things over the last ten years, when I found something that worked and I enjoyed doing it, I stuck to it long enough to get a result much higher than the average.
3. Choose a business model that has the potential to make you rich. This might seem obvious, but many entrepreneurs are smart enough to know that working a job won’t make them rich, but then make the mistake of choosing a business model that won’t do it either. If you can’t see how your business could make you a million dollars, then you might want to think about changing your model.
4. Isolate your core strengths and then build on them. I mentioned it’s important to find something you enjoy, and what you enjoy is always a strength, so if you can find a business that allows you to express your strength, develop it through repetition and reap financial rewards from it, you’ve hit the holy grail.
5. Tap significant sources of traffic/audience/customers. Most people I meet who are millionaires have access to large amounts of people. Yes you can make a million dollars without needing distribution (like through property or shares), but for those who do it with a business, they generally have a means to access lots of people. It might be having lots of physical stores in retail, or a large email list or popular website online, or affiliates/joint venture partners, or money to spend on advertising, or some kind of media like a television or radio show, or magazine or newspaper. Whatever the case, you need thousands of customers to make millions of dollars, unless you operate in a high profit-margin market (see below).
6. Pick an industry with significant profit margins and high demand. Profit is a function of how many sales you make and the money you keep from each sale after the cost of providing the goods or service. Obviously the greater your margin, the fewer sales you require to make a million. While you might have trouble starting a business where selling just one or two items can make you millions (for example, selling jumbo jets), it is possible to be calculating when you choose what you are going to sell, so your path to millions is quicker and more likely.
7. When something is not working or won’t take you where you want to go, quit. This is probably the biggest reason most people will never make a million dollars – they are too afraid to change. If today as you read this you have no potential to make a million doing what you do – and you want to make a million – then start making changes so you can.
You don’t necessarily have to quit your job or close your business, but you will need to tap on some kind of potential million dollar system to what you are doing. For example, investing in property with your business profits, or starting a business on the side if you’re still working a job, or finding someone to partner with to start a business so it doesn’t require all your time. If you can’t see how it will happen then how on earth will it ever happen?

5 ways for Make Money On Your Lunch Break

How do you spend your lunch break? Taking a turn round the park? Checking Facebook? Catching up on the work you should’ve done in the morning? All of these options have their place, but here’s something else you can be doing: Making money.
There are more ways to earn some extra dollars from the comfort of your office chair than ever before, thanks to the all-encompassing power of the internet. That said, there’s no magic formula here — you’ll need a bit of persistence and imagination to start turning your lunch break into dollars and cents.

1. Freelance your skills

The number of freelancers in the workforce is growing, and if you’ve got a skill — whether it’s writing, coding, designing or something else — chances are you can find some work. Get yourself a professional-looking website (or at the very least, Twitter profile) and start pitching. Sites such as Freelancer.com sometimes make the process easier, though there can be a lot of junk to wade through first, depending on your particular niche. Twitter is another useful tool for searching for freelancing opportunities, though again the signal-to-noise ratio is somewhat overwhelming unless you add a few more specific keywords. Airtasker is also a great way to get a quick task or two done during your lunch break, depending on the proximity of the jobs of course.
Of course, you don’t have to spend your lunch hour working on small projects — the 60 minutes you have to yourself can be used to work on something much bigger, such as that novel you’ve always been meaning to write. Self-publishing is easy, too — if no one likes your writing, start your own blog. If no one picks up your designs, put them on t-shirts and sell them yourself on CafePress. Photographers have plenty of options for selling their pictures, including Flickr.
With the office internet connection to hand, you can work for someone hundreds of kilometres away, but don’t dismiss the local option. Does your church need a new logo? Would your local sandwich shop appreciate some help with setting up a website? Even if you’re not a HTML genius you may well know more about WordPress than they do. Word-of-mouth recommendations can then lead to more opportunities.

2. Give your opinions

Even if no one in the office ever listens to what you’ve got to say, your opinion is more valuable than you might think — and people are willing to pay for it. SliceThePie, for example, will pay you to listen to and rate unsigned bands, with the amount you earn dependent on the length and quality of your review.
Filling out online surveys doesn’t bring in a huge amount of cash, but it’s not difficult to do and is certainly better than nothing. Stick to the bigger, more reputable survey companies such as Opinion Outpost, and avoid sites that ask you for an up-front payment. Gift vouchers are a common form of payment, so you can pick up some free music or movie rentals based on lunchtimes spent ticking a few boxes.
This doesn’t have to be an online activity, either; check local press for market research groups meeting in your area, where you can give feedback on a new shampoo packaging design or fruit juice flavour. Another way you can earn money for your opinions is by becoming a mystery shopper. This doesn’t mean you have to walk into your local Coles or Woolies with a broad-rimmed hat and enigmatic air, but you do have to rate the shops you visit based on service and quality. As with online surveys, there are a number of agencies you can sign up with.

3. Offer your services

There are all manner of online marketplaces where you can offer up your services to help others for a fee. One of the most comprehensive and well-known is Fiverr — here you can offer to do anything that will fit into your lunch hour for $US5. It could be dog-walking, it could be writing a poem, it could be showing tourists around your home town. If you’re struggling for inspiration, check the “Request Gigs” panel where users are looking for specific services. This one’s a little US-centric, so make sure to check Gumtree’s Help Wanted section, too.
The Amazon Mechanical Turk marketplace is another site you can frequent to find simple, online tasks that pay. You’re not going to get rich in the space of a week, but if you’re willing to research web rankings, complete short surveys, or transcribe videos you’ll have enough for an extra beer or two come Friday. Use the sorting filters to place the highest-paying tasks at the top of the screen.

4. Sell your stuff

Selling your unwanted bric-a-bric via eBay or Gumtree is an old trick but still a good one; you might get more than you think for that unused router sitting at the back of your wardrobe. What about the vintage vase in the roof? Now might be a good time to have that spring cleaning you’ve always been promising yourself, and you can use your lunch break productively by listing items and responding to buyer questions.
Selling on eBay doesn’t have to be restricted to unwanted goods you no longer have a need for. You can use it to easily set up a storefront for your hand-made crafts, your unsigned band’s latest album, or anything else you can make a profit on. If you’re going to get serious about your eBaying, think about products that people can’t easily get elsewhere.
If you’re craftsy, you should also consider setting up an Etsy shop to sell your homemade or vintage goods. There are no membership fees to join, and it only costs 20 cents to list an item for four whole months. Those hand-carved troll dolls will be paying off in no time.
Even your old clothes can go for a buck or two thanks to places like Asos Marketplace.

5. Try your luck

Entering sweepstakes and contests usually costs you no more than an email address (and you can set up a special one for just this purpose) or an entry card, but the prizes on offer range from weekends in the sun to the latest gadgets. Websites and companies constantly try to drum up interest through sweepstakes and giveaways, and even if you don’t like the prize on offer you could sell it on and pocket the cash instead (always check the small print for what the prize involves and what the entry requirements are).
Pay particular attention to contests that require some kind of skill, whether it’s completing a tie-breaker in a certain number of words or sending in a photo of yourself from a far-flung location. If you can stand out enough, it’ll give you the edge over the thousands of other entrants. Looking for local sweepstakes is another way of narrowing down the field. One of the potential downsides is an increase in junk email or spam, but most entry forms include an ‘opt out’ escape route if you’re not interested in receiving future communications.
While they are no guarantees you’ll win anything, some people do make a decent extra income as ‘sweepers’, and it’s better to be in with a chance than not. Entering competitions is an easy and free way to spend your lunch hour, and just might lead to your next holiday or car

3 tips for earning more from online

Online fundraising is of key importance to most charities looking to achieve healthy income growth, or perhaps even survival, in the future. However, the truth is that for all the fascinating new ways in which nonprofit organisations can engage with donors via the internet, in most countries the proportion of charity income received online remains irritatingly small.
For example, Australians are keen online shoppers and a November 2013 study from The Summer Foundation found that of 800 Australians surveyed, 26% ranked online as their preferred way to donate. Yet few Australian charities see anything like that proportion of their income arriving online. So what's causing the gap between expectations and the reality?
Some say "online shoppers are just not the same people as our donors". However, this seems increasingly unlikely as ecommerce is adopted by ever more consumers. Indeed, Blackbaud's Next Generation of American Giving research found that valuable Baby Boomer donors (born 1946-1964) said they were as likely to give online as via direct mail.
A more likely reason for the gap is that most charities have yet to evolve beyond the discrete silos they've always worked in. No organisation can successfully plan and deliver online engagement unless all teams can work together effectively.
If you're a fundraiser whose online income is suffering because of traditional silo-itis, then here are three quick tips to help you start on the road to recovery:
1. Don't treat fundraising and online fundraising as different disciplines
Fundraising is about inspiring people to help change the world for the better by funding your organisation's work. Online simply offers you new ways to achieve this same fundamental objective. Don’t start by thinking about doing new things online. First focus on what fundraising is working for you already and how online might make it work even better.
2. Focus on the basics before getting too excited about 'innovation'
According to UK user, experience specialists Nomensa, 47% of would-be online donors give up before donating because of badly designed websites. So ensuring your donation pages work for the user will certainly deliver you more income. The clarity that you'll gain from such focus will also be key to you effectively assessing any new opportunities and will mean you’re better able to brief your digital team on the priority activities needed to help you raise more money.
3. Adopt a consistent approach to planning across all teams
An integrated strategy is needed if you are to achieve maximum benefit from the resources you have available. Those organisations which have successfully recovered from silo-itis typically use a clearly defined and consistent objectives-led approach to planning, measuring, and evaluating online activities across all teams. That way, conflicting requirements can be identified and addressed as early as possible, consistent and coherent messaging can be achieved through all digital channels, and effort and investment will be focused where it delivers best value.
Bryan Miller has been a UK-based marketing and fundraising consultant for more than 20 years, specialising in helping nonprofits around the world make more effective use of digital engagement to support their fundraising, campaigning and communications.

Increase Your Income by Making Money Online

In this article you will learn how to make additional income online so that you can pay off your debts or just boost your monthly income with our list of top paying apps and websites. Our guide will go through the best websites and online apps that pay for your time, effort and opinions.
Nowadays you can make money by watching videos, writing, making YouTube clips or through just using a search engine!
Before we get into the details of the sites that you can use, here are a few tips to make sure that you get the most out of each income stream. The trick is to know that although some of these sites pay low amounts they quickly add up!
• Setup one specific dedicated email address for all competitions. Keep everything in one place.
• Use any gift vouchers that you have won as soon as possible. Vouchers (particularly online) can run out very quickly.
• We would recommend that you don’t store cash in online earning accounts.
• Remember the taxman, he might want a share of your winnings…
• These things take time, don’t expect to be rich within a day, a week or even a month!
O.K. so now we’ve gone through a few helpful tips let’s get cracking with areas where you can make your fortune online

Amazon

Amazon



  • What is it? Earn money by advertising on your own website.
  • What is required? An internet connection and your own website.
  • What can I make? You can make around $100’s every month with Amazon Associates but it obviously depends on your website traffic and popularity.
  • How? Sign up to an account and add affiliate links to Amazon onto your website. You will then be paid when a user clicks through to Amazon and purchases a product via your website.

Bzz Agent

bzzagent
  • What is it? Earn free products by recommending them to friends.
  • What is required? An internet connection, social media account(s) on Twitter and/or Facebook and friends.
  • What can I make? The free products can vary from shaving equipment to cakes to ironing boards. Sign up to see what you can gain.
  • How? Create an account, become an ‘agent’, receive free products and then start “meaningful & authentic conversations” about the product with your peers. It’s important to understand the difference between natural conversations and just plain spamming.

Clickworker

clickworker
  • What is it? Earn money by writing, data entry, research and much more.
  • What is required? An internet connection and high grammatical standards.
  • What can I make? You can make around $40 every month.
  • How? Sign up to an account, add a profile and get writing. There are usually a large number of project on offer including advert writing, travel location descriptions and much more.

DooYoo

dooyoo
  • What is it? Earn money by writing product/services reviews. Reviews have to be over 150 words in length.
  • What is required? An internet connection and high grammatical standards.
  • What can I make? You can make around $40 every two months.
  • How? Sign up to an account, create your profile and start reviewing. DooYoo will pay a maximum of $1 per review (the amount of which depend on the products niche.)

Field Agent

field agent
  • What is it? Earn money by taking photos, reviewing prices etc.
  • What is required? An internet connection and an iPhone.
  • What can I make? $20+ per month. Each task will generally pay between $5-$15.
  • How? Download the app to you iPhone and search for jobs within your local proximity. You’ll be sent on missions where you have to do market research for particular brands. These missions can vary but include taking photos of products, checking prices in stores.

GetJam

getjam
  • What is it? Earn money by watching adverts, movie trailers and game previews on your mobile phone.
  • What is required? An internet connection and a smartphone.
  • What can I make? You can make around $10 a month in cash paid via Paypal.
  • How? Download the mobile app, watch videos on your smartphone, see the cash roll in.

Gift Hulk

gifthulk
  • What is it? Earn money by using their search engine, watching videos and answering polls/questions.
  • What is required? An internet connection.
  • What can I make? You can make around $10 a month in vouchers.
  • How? Sign up to an account, watch videos, use their search engine and get paid in points that can be converted into rewards like vouchers.

Gift Hunter Club

gift hunter club
  • What is it? Earn money by completing fun tasks like watching videos, entering competitions and answering questions.
  • What is required? An internet connection.
  • What can I make? You can make around $60 a month or over $700 a year with Gift Hunter Club.
  • How? Sign up to an account, answer questions or watch a video to earn points. These points are then converted into vouchers or cash paid via PayPal.

Kindle Ebook

  • What is it? Earn money by writing your own ebook.
  • What is required? An internet connection and some writing talent.
  • What can I make? The sky is the limit and you can earn up to 70% of the listed price if you self-publish your ebook. There have been some very successful authors who have written ebooks, fifty shades of grey being a recent example.
  • How? Write & finish your book (in a word document). Review it via the Amazon ebook previewer tool to see whether it formats appropriately to a Kindle. Upload to Amazon and wait for the dollars to roll in :) (it can take between 24-48 hours for your ebook to be live)

Maximiles

Maximiles
  • What is it? Earn money by watching videos and/or adverts.
  • What is required? An internet connection.
  • What can I make? You can make around $10 a month in vouchers.
  • How? Sign up to an account, watch adverts or videos and get paid in vouchers.

Niche Online Surveys

  • What is it? Earn money by giving your opinion on a recent punk band album, a certain breakfast cereal or perhaps your favourite cleaning product. Brands are looking to find out people’s honest opinions on their products and will pay for it.
  • What is required? An internet connection.
  • What can I make? Between $100-$125 per month or around $1500 a year by giving your excellent opinions.
  • How? Sign up to an account, wait for an email about the survey and answer the questions accordingly.

Nielsen

neilson
  • What is it? The Nielsen Android App that tracks your smart phone activity. It doesn’t affect your phone at all and simply monitors how you use it.
  • What is required? An Android phone.
  • What can I make? You can earn between $50-$100 in gift vouchers per year. The gift vouchers include stores like John Lewis, Debenhams, Boots as well as online giants Amazon.
  • How? Sign up to Nielsen, install the app (free) and log in using your smart phone. Then just use your phone as normal. Rumour has it an iPhone version is also in the pipeline so iPhone users can soon also earn a few dollars for nothing.

Qmee

qmee
  • What is it? Earn money by doing searches through Google and clicking on a few adverts.
  • What is required? An internet connection.
  • What can I make? This one isn’t a massive earner but you can earn around $10 each month for not much work.
  • How? Download the app for your internet browser of choice and then search online as you would via Google, Bing or Yahoo! The results will also include Qmee’s own adverts which will pay you a small sum each time you click through to one of their results.

Qustodian

qustodian
  • What is it? Earn money by reading specific adverts on your mobile phone.
  • What is required? An internet connection and a smartphone.
  • What can I make? You can make around $20 every 6 months. This isn’t a massive earner but it will help top up your income.
  • How? Download the mobile app, add your likes and dislikes to your profile and then review adverts matching your interests. You will then get paid for checking your inbox, answering questions or watching video adverts.

Slice The Pie

Slicethepie




  • What is it? Earn money by writing reviews on unsigned musical acts/bands. You get paid for each song that you rate/review.
  • What is required? An internet connection and some writing talent.
  • What can I make? $10+ per month.
  • How? Create an account and start writing reviews. Unfortunately you can’t choose specific musical genres so hopefully you have an eclectic taste!

Swagbucks

swagbucks
  • What is it? Earn money by playing games, searching via its homepage and watching videos.
  • What is required? An internet connection and a sense of humour.
  • What can I make? Between $40-$50 per month. Payment is either cash via PayPal or vouchers.
  • How? Sign up to an account and start earning today.

Text Broker

textbroker
  • What is it? Earn money by writing for others.
  • What is required? An internet connection and high grammatical standards.
  • What can I make? If you have the necessary skills and commitment you can make over $100 every month.
  • How? Sign up to an account, add a profile and write newsletters, webpages, blog posts, adverts and much more for your new clients. TextBroker works as the middle man between yourselves and your employer and take a cut of each piece of work.

YouTube

youtube



  • What is it? Earn money by creating your own videos.
  • What is required? An internet connection. Video creating capacity via a videocam or smartphone.
  • What can I make? You can make around $100’s every month with YouTube but it obviously depends on your video(s) popularity.
  • How? Sign up to an account, create your video, upload and get it out there! You will then be paid by Google AdSense if a user clicks through to another website via an advert, next to your video.
So there you go, 18 ways to make money online that could definitely help you pay off your debts or boost your income. Be sure to keep checking out our blog to find more ways to earn or save or make money.

Top 20 Ways To Make Money With Amazon Associates

1. Niche Selection Is Crucial

I’ll get to the actual methods I use on my websites in the next tips, but the first thing I want to say is that the niche you choose is the absolute most important decision you can make.
I love to target physical product focused niches and keywords
It’s easiest to make money using Amazon’s affiliate program if the people coming to your website are looking for a specific product that your website discusses. It’s more difficult to use a website like my blog here and make money linking to physical products because the people coming here are looking for advice on how to earn money online – not what iPod speakers they should buy.

2. Link To Products Inside Your Content

Roughly half of my Amazon income comes from basic text links posted inside the content body area of a blog post or page.
Example: Check out this cool helicopter. I’ve been covering these RC helicopters for months and I’ve never seen this one priced for only $25.98 well off it’s $129.95 list price.
Simple text links in the content of an article are the most effective way to get web visitors to click. People trust the body of the content on a page more so than any other area of the website and I know this because the tracking data I’ve collected.

3. Make Product Images Clickable Affiliate Links:


The second best thing I’ve found next to a simple text link is to use images of the product you’re talking about and make them clickable like this cool usb missile launcher:
Roughly 15% of my total Amazon income has come from simply making all of the product images on my websites clickable affiliate links.

4. Link To Amazon.com As Many Times Possible

I alluded to this in the previous few tips but I want to make sure you understand that each link inside one of your articles is another opportunity for a visitor to click through and make their way onto Amazon.com.
It’s common for me to link to Amazon five to ten times in a single article (more if I’m doing a product review).

5. Product Review Articles Convert The Best

Doing a quality product review for a product directly related to your niche is a very easy way to garner higher click thru rates and increased sales, but only if your review is higher quality.
Ideally you contact the manufacturer’s marketing team or PR agency and get them to send you a demo unit of the product to review, but this takes a lot of effort and may not be worth it on a smaller traffic site (at first).
You want to convince the reader to investigate their purchase options by the time they finish reading an article, which is why I’ll always include links to all of the products mentioned in a review at the end of the article. That way it’s an easy transition from learning about the product during your review and then at the end it’s time to make a purchase.

6. Build An Email List

You’ve probably heard this a hundred times by people telling you to build an email list from the blogger and internet marketing crowd, but building an email list is way easier on a physical product oriented website.
Why? People don’t have their guard up when they are researching a physical product to purchase (when compared to other purchase decisions online i.e. digital goods). So what I like to do is offer some type of freebie like a buyers guide or some type of information that provides more details about the products they’re researching.
On the flip side, I’d love for you to join my email list for this blog but I have to be a little more convincing by showing you that I’m a credible resource first.
For my newsletter provider I use Aweber and highly recommend them. Overall I could attribute at least five to ten percent of my total income due to my email lists because I like to focus on promoting products heavily to my lists during the holidays which leads into my next tip.

7. Write Sales And Promos During The Holidays

I typically made between $500 and $1,000 a day every day during Black Friday Week, Cyber Monday and Cyber Week. It is lower during other holidays like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Presidents Day, Valentines Day etc. but you can still promote various sales during these holidays as well. I target every holiday because Amazon creates an actual dedicated sales page every time one of these holidays come around. The deals shared on these pages are generally really good too.
So what I’ll do is put together an article of all the top products that are on sale in my niche using the tips I’ve shared earlier like linking as many times as possible, making the product image clickable and then sending out an email to my list etc. to get even more conversions.
Stats From A “Cyber Monday (My Niche) Discounts” Post Last Year

(Some of that traffic pop is also attributed to the day I mail out to my email lists though)
For the structure of these articles I like to target a frequently searched keyword such as “Cyber Monday (My Niche) Discounts” etc. because I know people search for “Cyber Monday” and “Black Friday” millions of times each year but they also search a longer form version like “Cyber Monday (My Niche) Discounts” as evidenced by the above traffic graph from one of my Amazon sites

8. Sell More Products To Make Incrementally More Money

This one sounds simple enough and it really is. The more you sell with Amazon the more you make AND the higher percentage you earn. During holiday months I will typically hit around the 8% mark which is double the 4% rate you start with for shipping only 1 – 6 items per month. Even if you sold 7 items you get bumped up to 6% and the best part is that this increase in commission percentage is retroactive (meaning once you reach the next level you get to apply the higher percentage referral fee to every product you’ve sold during the entire month).

9. Sell Large Quantities Of Inexpensive Products To Boost Your Payout On High Priced Products

One thing I do is have websites that are set up in lower competition niches where the items typically aren’t as expensive and where it’s easier to sell these products in larger quantities ($50 or less). Then I have other niche sites that sell more expensive products at much higher prices ($XXX – $X,XXX) that are sold less frequently. So this way I get to use the increased quantity of sales from these lower priced product websites to help me get up into higher payout brackets so instead of making 6% on that high end item I’ll get 8% instead.

10. Use Multiple Tracking ID’s For Each Website

By default Amazon assigns you one tracking ID like blahblahblah-20 but you can create additional tracking ID’s here up to a total of 100. If you hit that total you can always ask for more so feel free to be liberal with your creation of tracking ID’s for your websites.
You wouldn’t install the same Google Analytics code on every single website you own right? Of course not, because you wouldn’t be able to tell how much traffic each of your websites were receiving individually. So the same thing can be said for tracking the money you make on your websites (and yet people still tell me they use only one Amazon tracking ID for all of their websites /facepalm). In the past I’ve gone so far as to create 15 different tracking ID’s for use on a single website.

11. Use EasyAzon To Save Time And Make More Money With Amazon

One of the ways I’ve also been able to make good money with Amazon is to automatically populate information from a WordPress plugin that I had developed based on the needs I had for building Amazon centric websites. The result was EasyAzon. The plugin allows you to insert information and affiliate links to Amazon in a much faster way than creating the links yourself by hand from Amazon.com.
Short Summary: Basically what the plugin does is allow you to quickly insert a text based affiliate link, the image of the product as an affiliate link, a product information grid, convert US Amazon links to UK, GR etc. via link localization etc. etc. and have all those things be affiliate links to Amazon.com so it does a great job of improving click through rates.
The plugin is currently only $47 and available at EasyAzon.com

12. Insert Buy Now Button Into Your Articles

This is something that EasyAzon could do for you, but if you don’t want to spend the money you can simply insert your own buy now button and turn it into an Amazon affiliate link.

13. Create A Product Comparison Grid

Creating a product comparison grid for all of the products within your niche and allowing people to sort by various features is a great way to get some additional sales. I’ve used this tactic on several of my websites and the product comparison page alone can add an additional 5% to 10% income increase for a website.
If you do it manually you’ll need to use this WordPress plugin called WP Table Reloaded and what I do is include various columns for information about the product and in the final column I use a buy now button that people can click to see more info about the product.

14. Publish A Recurring Deals Post

If you want to find a way to be able to mention products that are on sale more frequently on your website one of the easiest ways I’ve done that in the past is to just do a weekly deals post. So what I’ll do is publish a post every week with the best deals for my niche and then incorporate all of the previous tactics I’ve discussed above to link to the products on Amazon.com. Depending on how often you publish articles you could do it more or less frequently (I’ve seen some websites do these style of articles every day).

15. Publish A Monthly Bestseller List

Amazon has a bestseller page found simply at Amazon.com/bestsellers and so one thing I’ve done on my site is publish a bestsellers list and simply mention the currently trending bestsellers. Generally speaking the cream rises to the top so if you write an article talking about the bestselling products those are likely to be the best products your visitors are looking to buy anyway.
Just go to Amazon.com/bestsellers and look for your respective niche category. I shoot for top 5 or top 10 products.

16. Use Carousel Banner Ads Over Static Banner Ads

Through testing I’ve found that the carousel style Amazon banner ads are about 3 times better than the static style Amazon banner ads. Even Adsense out performed static Amazon banner ads in my testing. Here is what the Amazon carousel widgets look like:


You can create the Amazon carousel banner ads inside your Amazon Associates account here and you’re able to manually add products or just display bestselling products from a specific category.

17. Don’t Bother Creating An Amazon Astore

When I created a store page and used the Amazon Astore tool to “build my own store” I found it converted terribly. Less than 1% of my total income came from Amazon Astore pages before I stopped using them. If you’re not familiar with Astore’s just take my word for it when I say they suck.
I know people like to shop, but sometimes I believe they’d rather just find a resource that tells them what the best deal is instead. Whatever the reason, the tracking data I used to track my Amazon Astore’s showed that they routinely underperformed.

18. Use A Website Layout That Improves Conversions

I’ve been using Amazon’s affiliate program heavily for a little over two years now and the one thing I found through constant testing is that the layout of your website matters when it comes to how well it converts casual visitors into affiliate sales.
Armed with this knowledge you’d think that people would spend more time testing their theme or website layout to determine the optimal way to make money from their website right? Well, I still see some of the worst converting themes around and that’s why I actually paid for a theme to be created specifically for these physical product focused websites I had been building.
Azon Theme Created:
I spent around $2,000 on the creation and subsequent modifications of Azon Theme. It’s basically a theme with a ton of different options that has evolved based on my own testing and the feedback from members of my Niche Profit Course (all customers get Azon Theme and the upgrades for free). You can watch a brief video which covers some of the Azon Theme options here and if you want to buy it there the price is $97 just $10 but you can even get it for free when you sign up for web hosting using my link (See complete details over at Niche Profit Course)

19. Just Get People On To Amazon.com

I know 30% of my earnings came from products people bought because I happened to be the one that sent them onto Amazon.com. For example, I sold a watch a while ago for $5,000 and got a $400 commission but I don’t even own a website that even remotely discusses watches. This is one of the other reasons why I love using Amazon’s affiliate program.
When you send someone to Amazon.com you get a percentage of anything they buy for the next 24 hours (30 days if they added an item to their cart) so if you can just get them onto the website and they happen to buy something completely unrelated you’ll get the money for it.
Amazon spends millions of dollars on improving the way they get people to convert. The fact that they provide a custom user experience for every person that goes to Amazon.com based on the buying behavior and viewing patterns tells me they know what it takes to close a sale. Some of the best closing advice I can give is to simply find ways to get your visitors onto the Amazon.com webpage and they’ll take care of the rest.

20. Learn More From Niche Profit Course


If you’re read this far then I’m sure you’re still interested in ways to make more money with Amazon.com (or to just finally get started). So I actually created a training course with over 3 hours of video content to walk people step by step through how I build my Amazon sites in addition to showing a few of my own Amazon income generating sites so you can learn from my example.