Using sketchy methods to market your products online could keep you from making any profits. Even if you’re not using black hat methods to market your products, there are certain techniques that never work in Internet marketing. If you are guilty of these methods, you should start using organic SEO and other forms of marketing to sell your products.

Here are the top 5 Internet marketing techniques that never work.

1. Image Searches

Image searches are a great way to generate traffic to your websiteor blog, but it’s not going to convert. If you are submitting images to Google or Yahoo, you are probably getting some great traffic, however, the traffic is just coming for the picture. When the reader clicks on your image, they will get a small window with the image displayed. Once they have the window open they can click on the link to your website, but it’s not guaranteed.

Furthermore, this isn’t targeted traffic. Yes, it’s targeted for your niche based on an image search, but not for converting it into a sale.

2. Keyword Spamming

Keywords are one of the best ways to get traffic to your site. However, keyword spamming is one of the best ways to get blackballed by Google and other search engines. Keyword spamming is basically stuffing your content with an insane keyword density. Google and other search engines like content to have a keyword density around 3-8 percent.

If you are going anywhere above this percentage, you could be at risk of getting your content flagged as spam. Use a keyword density tool to help you determine the keyword density in your blog posts and articles. Make sure that you stick around the 2-8 percent for successful traffic.

3. IM Auto-Responders

This was a method that was primarily used with online dating sites. When it was first implemented, Internet marketers were making a killing. Basically, they would put a post on Craigslist in the personals section and leave their IM client running.

They would have an auto-responder installed on the IM client with a script for when somebody responded to their ad. They would basically say that they had pictures on an online dating site to get the person to sign up. This gave them a lead commission for the site and it worked really well. This has been dead for a long time. If you are using IM auto-responders, you should completely delete the program from your computer.

4. Time Restraints

How many times have you seen a website that is offering you a deal for the next hour? “Buy our product in the next hour and you’ll get our special price!” Although this might work with television, it doesn’t work on the Internet.

People know that you’ve just installed a countdown script to try to entice them into buying the product. They also know that if they come back to your site in a couple of days the countdown will start over. This is a sketchy method that your readers will see right through. Focus on soft sell copywriting instead of giving them a fake countdown script.

5. Free Gifts

Everybody loves a free gift, but when you’re offering free gifts that nobody wants you’re going to come off as unprofessional. The worst cases of the free gift involve rehashed versions of other products. These products are usually compilations of Ezine articles or other content that you can find online.

Giving your readers real products as free gifts is the best way to entice them to buy from you. Offering a free gift is a good method, but you have to make sure that the free gifts are worth their investment. The thought that any free will work isn’t the mindset you should have in your Internet marketing. If you’re offering bad free gifts you might as well not offer any at all.

Internet marketing is an ever-changing field. When you are using bad methods to try to bring in sales, you could be costing yourself traffic and readers. People remember the sites that come off as unprofessional. Don’t fall into the trap of bad marketing techniques just because they are easy to implement into your site. Most of these methods will not only come off as amateur, they will come off as unethical to your readers. Do the work and you should see a great amount of traffic and conversions from the products that you are selling.

Research has shown time and time again that people prefer to watch videos to reading a page of text too, so you’ll be able to get your message out to more people too. Here’s another benefit to video marketing: any one that you post to the web can be shared amongst the various social networks out there. This sharing is exactly what will make just any plain old video made for marketing or promoting your blog go viral. As long as the one that you put out there provides a link back to your blog in the description of the video, you will see a huge increase in the number of visitors that you will have to your site.

TIP: Top internet marketing firms have now chosen to use video marketing as their number one method when it comes to promoting companies, products and services online.

How To Create A Video

Bloggers have this misconception that it takes a lot of work and money to be able to create a videos that have the potential of going viral.

Well, we’re here to tell you that this could not be any less true. As a matter of fact, a lot of the ones that have gone viral were absolutely free for the user to create! Viral videos can be of Superbowl commercial quality, or they can be as simple as using a webcam attached to your computer.

When creating videos, you can do two things:

• You can be the star of your videos! This is great if you are giving a product review or if you want to talk about your experience when using a particular product or service. Having your face on the camera is going to be a huge benefit to your blog. It will give your blog a real human element, and it will help your visitors or customers come to trust you and therefore become more loyal to your product, brand, or opinion.
• If you’re a bit camera shy, you can still produce  high quality promotional videos. You can create a PowerPoint style slide presentation and insert an audio clip of you speaking in the background about a product, service or your blog. If you include a catchy song in the background (one tat you are authorized to use, of course) and video or picture of a product or service you are reviewing, you can still captivate your audience.

You don’t need a lot when it comes to materials to create viral videos. Just having a handheld camera is probably the one and only tool that is required. Make sure that when the videos are taken there is good lighting so that people can see what’s going on, and aim to keep it at around 2 minutes or less. Anything beyond 2 minutes and people tend to wander off to the next thing that grabs their attention.

How To Get Your Video Out There

Once your video is complete, it’s time to start spreading it out on the web. Start off by uploading it to the internet by using several online video upload services so that the whole world can find it. Here is a quick list of the sites you should submit it to:

• YouTube
• Hulu
• Google Videos
• Dailymotion
• Metacafe

If you don’t already have a fan page on Facebook or a Twitter account for your blog, now is the time to create one. You can upload your videos directly to social media websites and start spreading the word there, too. If your videos are good enough, then your friends and fans will start “sharing” and “retweeting” it, which is the beginning of you video going viral!

TIP: When you post your videos to social media sites, make sure that you always provide an enticing link back to your blog along with the link to your video. Suggest to viewers that they should check out your blog and include information on a special deal (like 20% or free shipping) on the product or service that you are reviewing. This is a great advertising technique that will definitely boost your blog’s traffic!

Additional Viral Video Tips

If your first video doesn’t get a whole lot of hits, don’t worry about it. It will take some time for you to figure out just what exactly people want, and what they don’t want. It may not even be until your 20th video that you are able to go viral with it or start to see an influx of traffic to your site.

Don’t give up. Continue to make videos regularly.

When you make your videos, they have to be original. If your video is a copy of another one that already exists on the web, you can be sure that someone who will view your videos will call you out on it, which will totally destroy you and your blog’s credibility. Not only that, but chances are that your videos will be removed from the video hosting site too.

You also need to come up with a great title that’s going to capture your audience’s attention. This may be harder than you think. Your title can be outlandish or it can be a bit of a teaser. Use a free keyword searching tool to find out which keywords are doing well in your niche and this can help your rankings in search engines.

If you are having a hard time getting any views, then why not visit other high traffic blogs and post a video comment or a video response to their blog entry? Provide a link back to your blog so that visitors who frequent this high traffic blog can swing by and check you out, too.

1. Target The Right Keywords

You have to know what keywords you’re targeting so that the search engines know how to categorize your blog. You want the search engines to rank you for the most popular keywords in your niche – meaning that if you have a site about training puppies, people can find your site in the first few pages of a Google search when they type in the popular keyword “puppy training.”

Identify the top 10 keywords you’re targeting. It’s important to know how much potential traffic is available for the keyword phrases that you’re targeting. Otherwise, you may find yourself disappointed. Your post may be ranked #1 for a term that only gets 10 searches per day. It’s better to be in the top 10 for a stronger keyword or keyword phrase.

2. Use Back Links

Getting links from high ranking (PR3 and above) sites in your niche is critical. Reach out to other blogs and website owners to  see if they’ll link to you or let you write guest posts with links back to your site.

Social media is excellent for getting these types of links! Write good content that people want to share and make sure that you’re publishing it on the top social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

3. Use WordPress SEO Plugins

There are two plugins that you must have on your blog for SEO! These are easy to use and will help fine tune your site’s SEO so the search engines can find you more easily.

All In One SEO - Optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization). The free version works just fine – haven’t found a reason to upgrade to the pro version.

Scribe SEO – Think of it as a content optimization assistant – that analyzes web pages, blog posts, and online press releases at the click of a button. It’s the only one that we’ve found that let’s you analyze your content BEFORE it goes live and it’s a great tool to get you in the habit of writing both for people AND for the search engines.

We run the Scribe SEO Analysis on every post we write.

Be Patient – Getting Free Search Engine Traffic Takes Time

It may take at least 4 months to start seeing regular traffic from the search engines. Google especially is like a stuck up dog – it’ll sniff your yard, go away, come back, mark the territory, come back again, and eventually, your blog will be a regular stop for Google’s crawlers – but it doesn’t happen overnight. Be patient and let the tools work for you. As long as you’re putting up valuable content that people want to read and using highly searched keywords within your niche, it will happen!

One of the best ways to make some extra cash either on the side, or to make enough to quit your full-time job, is to simply set up a landing page. If you have a blog or are starting up an affiliate marketing campaign, this is definitely a “must.”

What Is A Landing Page?

A landing page, which is also commonly referred to as a “squeeze” page or a “capture” page, is really any page that traffic is directed to on a website which will then try to prompt a particular action. A few different examples of landing pages include:

• Internet traffic is directed from your blog post or a link on a sidebar to a landing page that is selling affiliate products
• Internet traffic is sent from a link that the clicked to a page that is prompting them to purchase something
• Internet traffic is sent from a banner advertising that they clicked to a landing page that is designed for that particular target audience (i.e. if the banner ad was about doggie daycare, it is to be assumed that whoever clicked it is looking for doggie daycare. The landing page would then be related to that)

The goal of a landing page is really to obtain personal information on whoever is coming through your site. You may ask for an email address on a landing page, or a name and an email address. Some landing pages ask for phone numbers and addresses, though people are far less likely to offer up that information. The benefit of this is that when a person who provided you their email address leaves your website, you then have the ability to contact them again. You can send them follow-up emails, daily specials, deals… you can send them whatever you choose and boost your potential sales as a result.

How To Write The Best Landing Page

The problem with a lot of landing pages out there is that the quality of the writing is lacking. There are some things that you should do when you write a landing page to ensure it is successful. First, provide a clear call to action. Whether you use hot linked text or graphic buttons doesn’t matter. The text on your page needs to tell your reader what they have to do to get in on whatever it is your landing page is about. Try to add in a call to action at least 3 times in a landing page so that you are sure that they got the message.

The headline of your landing page should also refer to where your visitor just came from. Make sure that you always write in the second person (which means using “you” and “your”) and make sure that the message is clear and persuasive. Don’t try to be clever, don’t try to be overly creative – now is not the time. Be direct, be clear, and you will have better results.

TIP: When it comes to writing your landing page, you can write your copy to be as long as you want. Just keep in mind that it should be as concise as possible and to keep it tight. As a general rule of thumb, have a longer copy when you want to sell something and close the sale, and have a shorter copy for any sort of newsletter or subscription sign-up (or something of no monetary value).

All of your most important points should be at the beginning of each paragraph, and in bullet points. Keep in mind that visitors are just skimming your page and not looking at it word for word. Having things like bullet points and white space will help you draw your customers’ eyes to exactly where you want them to be.

Oh yeah, and keep that first paragraph short. 1-2 lines is just enough to engage them rather than bore or overwhelm them.

How To Design The Best Landing Page

Not sure how to design your landing page? Not a problem. Start scoping out what your competitors are up to. Make note of what you like and what you don’t. Write it all down and start thinking about what you could use for yours. Think of any simple revisions that you may want to make.

One thing that we have to stress is that when it comes to your landing page, remove all visual clutter. This includes navigational bars and any links to other sections of your site. Your goal is to have the reader focused on your writing and your writing only. Their eyes should not be tempted to wander off to a flashing graphic in the sidebar.

On that note, any critical landing page elements should be placed in the upper 300 pixels of the page. Why? Because people want information quick and immediately. Most people who are just skimming through your site are only going to look at the top half of the page and won’t even bother to scroll down. So make sure that you get right to the point straight away without having to make any visitors do any “work.”

It’s also a good idea to use standard conventions when creating your landing page. For example, if you have any links, underline them. Allow them to be “blue,” this is what people expect. Be clear, be descriptive, and make sure that any visitor looking at the link will understand why it’s there.

Lastly, make sure your page loads quickly. Having a page that doesn’t load quickly enough will have them clicking that “x” in the upper right-hand corner faster than anything else. This means keep the graphics to a minimum and only optimize those which are essential.

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t start your own web hosting company; but before you dive right on in, you need to educate yourself on this type of business and then decide if it’s for you.

What To Consider Before Opening A Web Hosting Business

Let’s start with the first most common misconception about the business: because there are control panels, you don’t need to have a lot of technical knowledge. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Control panels will make some tasks easier, sure, but you still need to know how to actually trouble shoot.

The money also isn’t as easy as some may make it seem. First and foremost, it’s a saturated market, so you must have something to offer to actually make any cash. This means that you have to be able to do your job, and you should also have great customer service. Customer service is what will make or break your business.

You also have to think about how much you have to spend on the server. So let’s say the server has 80GB of hard disk space. You pay maybe $100 a month for it, and then sell off in 20MB chunks for $10 each. Since 1 GB equates to being 1024MB in space, you can make decent money but again, you must have great service in order to attract any attention.

This means working well over 8 hours a day. As a matter of fact, if you do not have a partner with you in the business, you can easily be sitting at your computer and working away for 15 hours a day. So really, you’re not making a whole lot considering how much of your day is being spent on it.

Before you go into your own web hosting business, think about the above points seriously and then come up with a solid business plan before jumping into it. You’ll be able to see how much money you will actually be making off of the business, and see if you may be just running yourself into a deficit in the long run.

Deciding On The Specifics

So you’ve decided that web hosting is for you. Great! Now there are some things that you will need to keep track of and think about, regardless as to whether you are building your own infrastructure or using a hosting service. We’ll go over these in brief detail:

Terms of Service (TOS): This is the service level agreement. You will have to decide what is a fair terms of service for both you and your client. You may want to check out some message boards on web hosting talk forums and threads to see what are reasonable terms at around the time and date you plan on starting your online business.

Pricing: All prices should be ones that people can afford, but you don’t want to make your prices so low just to have some sort of competitive edge (you will definitely be losing money if that’s part of your business plan). Focus more on advertising the fact that you have an available, uncluttered server and that you also have great customer service.

Billing: You may want to request for payment of services in advance. Think of subscribing to a third-party merchant service to help keep your finances in order a well. Trying to keep numbers in a spreadsheet on your computer isn’t going to cut it.

Some other things that you will have to keep track of include:

• You will need to monitor your servers religiously. If a server goes down, you need to know about it. Try a program like Alertra to help monitor things
• Always backup. Even when you haven’t had a server go down in ages, keep backing up so that no data is lost.
• Maintain a good email list so that you can keep your clients in the loop about scheduled or unscheduled service interruptions or outages. It’s best to keep the email lit off of your own servers.
• Problem customers will happen. This is also another good idea to have a fair but not too cheap pricing scheme. If you’re too affordable, then someone with little to no knowledge will probably sign up because $1 a month is nothing to them. Think about also including in the TOS that you can terminate service at any time.
• If you are building your own infrastructure, then you must keep your servers up to date with the latest security patches.

Web Hosting Options: Building Your Own Infrastructure

So you’ve decided that web hosting is for you. Great! There are a lot of great advantages to building your very own infrastructure for your web hosting company, the most obvious being that if you built it, you are in complete control. You can choose the hardware, operating systems, the database and a number of other tools. Not using a web hosting company also mean that you won’t have to learn their web hosting procedures, and you probably won’t have to pay any extra fees for bandwidth use or hard disc storage space.

Web Hosting Options: Using A Web Hosting Service

You don’t necessarily need to turn your nose up at hosting services, such as HostGator. If you have less tech knowledge but still want to open up your own web hosting company, this is probably the best way to go. You get a fast Internet connection, and the start-up costs are pretty low and reasonable. Technical support is often offered for free, and you only need to buy into the services that you need and can add-on as you grow.

The only thing about these hosting sites is that you are totally limited to the type of hardware and software options that they offer. Your monthly fees may also change from time to time, depending on how many customers you have visit your site. Whatever you do, make sure that you do your research prior to choosing any particular web hosting service.

If you want your blog to be seen as exceptional, if you want to make sure that your blogs are getting read, and if you want repeat readers, these five tips are the essentials that will make sure that your blog is a success.

1. Be Consistent

Write whenever possible. But keep in mind that whenever possible sometimes comes tomorrow and tomorrow is the worst possible day because it never happens. You want to write consistently. Your readers expect consistently and the search engines expect consistently so do not do it for 7 days in a row and then not for three months. You are much better off doing it twice a week or three times a week. Start at once a week and then move up from there. If you do feel inspired to write seven posts in one day, schedule them out so that it looks consistent.

2. Stay Up To Date

If you want to be a good writer you need to be up to date in your topic and niche. Read trade journals, magazines, stay up to date with the news, or to training or seminars; whatever you need to do to do to truly be an expert in your field and it will come through in your writing.

3. Avoid Being Boring

Be interesting and let your personality come through, if you are putting people to sleep it is not going to do you any favors. Keep in interesting, keep it fun – adding a little humor is ok. If you are one of those people that tends to be extremely wordy and flowery and find yourself writing 2,000 word articles you need to go back through that article and take out everything that is not absolutely necessary because if there are too many words people get lost.

4. Be Concise

Nothing is more of a turn off than visiting a website or a blog that has huge blocks of text glaring back at the reader. A simple way to avoid annoying and inducing a headache for the reader is to keep your blog limited to short and concise paragraphs. This is important for two reasons:

• Readers like to skim, and short paragraphs allow their eyes to skim the page and find the information far easier than if they were to scrounge through a large, bulky paragraph
• Blogs have to be visually appealing, too. Having short paragraphs provides your readers “visual relief.” No one likes a website loaded down with text!

If you are making some important points in your text and you know that your target readers are skim readers, you can further draw attention to these points through some basic methods, like using bold text, italicized text, and highlighting text. Make sure you break up text by using things like bullet points and numbers, and make sure that you also learn how or have the ability to include pictures to go along with your blogs. Using images along with text also gives peoples’ eyes a break from reading, so try mixing it up from time to time.

5. Check Your Work

You do not want to look stupid after you have done all this great work. Use the tools available to spell check your work before you publish.

Additional Writing Tips

A. It’s All About Your Tone

Make sure that your blog “voice” is human and conversational. You also want to make sure that your blog “voice” actually matches the niche and the audience you are writing for. A lot of blog owners know that they have to be conversational in their blogs, but a lot don’t actually bother to find out who their “target market” or readers are. Your blog has to be written in a way that the majority of those who are coming to your blog will appreciate.

If you are just starting a blog, you need to think about:

• Who is going to want to read what you write?
• Why are they going to want to read your blog?
• What sort of goals do you have for your blog? Is it for personal reasons? Affiliate marketing? Do you have your own company/business that you will be using this blog for?
• What expectations is your audience going to have for your blog?

B. Be Honest

As touched upon briefly in point #1, you have to be honest when you wrote. If you love something, say so. But if you hate a product that you may be reviewing, for example, make sure you say so too. Make points about what you love and what you hate. Don’t skirt around issues, and try not to leave anything in the “gray.” People come to blogs for honestly and for a clear decision, not to be further confused

C. Give Credit Where Credit Is Due

One of the worst things that someone can do with their blog is stealing content, plagiarizing, or copyrighting material from the web. There are a lot of bogus bloggers out there whose only purpose is to steal content from other hard and honest bloggers. Never, ever steal or use any material that’s either on the web or “in real life” without giving credit.

To keep yourself from potentially stealing material – which can even happen unintentionally – if you find anything elsewhere that didn’t come right off of the top of your head, then provide a link to the source. Reference your information. Acknowledging where a piece of information is from doesn’t make you seem all the less credible. In fact, it will only further support any comment or argument that you may have, so don’t be afraid to do it.

D. Avoid “Over” Linking

You’ve probably seen these blogs, the ones where people just link to other peoples’ content all day long. While blogging does take a lot of time and effort, that time and effort is so worth it when compared to constant links. No reader wants to be stuck constantly clicking on links that source back to other information and which is not explained in your blog content. It’s your job to put things together, to make it all make sense, and package it in a well written, well thought out piece that your followers will appreciate and enjoy.

If you’re just getting started, this may seem a bit overwhelming. After all, when it comes to marketing on the web, there are a ton of different choices you can make on how to run your campaign. We’ve listed some of the more effective ways for internet marketing below, but we must stress that not every business is the same. You need to monitor and keep track of how well the campaign’s doing and adjust accordingly. Using a tool like Google Analytics and GetClicky will help you keep track of a number of different things that will help you determine the success of your internet marketing campaign.

1. Video Marketing

The best way to give your business a real boost is to start up a video marketing campaign. Think about it: when you actually see the face of someone behind an online business, you immediately feel more connected to the brand and the product. You feel as if they’re more trustworthy. Plus, if you actually are able to see the product or the service in action, you feel more assured in your choice for buying that product or service than if you were to look at a flat image on the screen.

Time and time again video marketing has shown that it will help you increase your conversion rates. But even if you aren’t selling anything on your website, having videos will help build trust with your visitors and regular followers. People also tend to prefer watching a video over reading text, so you can get your message out faster and reach a broader audience.

2. Blogging

When people start up a blog, they see themselves as a professional when it comes to whatever niche they are blogging about. But it’s not only you who sees you as a professional. Other people who visit your blog will come to see you as an expert in your niche topic as well. People trust experts, so if you make suggestions that they view, check out or even eventually purchase an item that you recommend, they will be more likely to do so.

Blogs are also a great way to direct people to other sites related to your business, such as the company website and to your social media websites, like Facebook and Twitter. Just make sure that you update your blog regularly with fresh content (there should be a new post at least 3-5 days a week). If you start to run a bit dry on content, ask someone to guest blog on your site and you can guest blog on theirs. There is a mutual benefit in this. The host will get fresh content, and the guest blogger will receive a backlink from the host, thus giving them an SEO boost.

3. Social Medial Marketing

Have an online business? Then you need to have a Twitter and a Facebook account for social media marketing. You can also consider opening up accounts on sites like Google Plus and LinkedIn too. Search engines are putting more and more emphasis on how popular links that are shared through social media outlets when it comes to SEO. It’s become a form of “link building”, which will definitely increase your website’s ranking in search engines.

But here’s the tricky part: how do you get people to share links that you post that are related to your business? The challenge that most businesses face is learning how to create content that is of value and therefore worthy of being shared. Twitter and Facebook are very different social media platforms too, each requiring a different technique. Try to entice the viewer with a great offer (50% off!), put in a call to action (Only until midnight EST!) and then include a link (for Twitter, there are tools that will give you a “tiny URL” so that you take up less character space).

4. Pay Per Click (PPC)

Pay per click has been around longer than most of these other marketing strategies. It’s still incredibly relevant in that it helps create awareness about your company, product or service, and it does produce high quality, targeted leads.

When you start with a pay per click campaign, you want to keep your target audience in mind. What do they like? What is their age demographic? Use jargon and images that you think would appeal to your target market.

Pay per click is also highly valuable in that it will help you determine which keywords bring in the most traffic to your site. Not sure which keywords are worth using? Don’t take a guess at it. Use tools like the Google Keyword tool to help figure it out. And as always, monitor, monitor, monitor! Keep track of how successful or unsuccessful your campaign is. Be prepared to change it up from time to time.

5. Mobile Marketing

Almost everyone has a smartphone these days. If you want to stay relevant and on top of the Internet marketing trend, then you have to appeal to mobile marketing as well. This means using QR codes, social media, and SMS or text messaging marketing. Get peoples’ phone numbers and send them deals directly to their phone in the form of a text message!

Create an app for your business that will make shopping online with you and breeze. Release video and audio content online so that those who are on a smartphone can easily put on their headphones and watch and listen while they’re on the go. Mobile is the way of the future, so if you want to make it big with Internet marketing, start exploring your mobile marketing options too.

DISCLAIMER: We do not condone or recommend any of the following methods. This is simply for educational purposes.

1. Writing Horrible And Useless eBooks

eBooks were once something that were well considered to make money online. But now, the story has definitely changed. A lot of the eBooks out there tend to make big promises with zero delivery, such as “How to Make $1000 A Day Working from Home.” What makes these eBooks so appealing is that they are making a big promise, and they cost very little to buy when compared to a paper copy of any book. Most eBooks go for any where from $1-$20.

Why this is an illegal or “evil” way to make money online isn’t necessarily because of the content; it’s because the content that is contained in the eBook can easily be found online FOR FREE. A lot of the eBooks that are being sold are also full of “filler” information that isn’t even relevant to the subject matter of the book, and there is a lot of promotional material in there for one’s particular company.

2. Selling Pirated eBooks

Speaking of eBooks, pirated eBooks are another way to make money online, and often times it is illegal. People always want something for free, so if someone’s offering a free copy of an eBook that would otherwise cost them a mere $2, they’ll take it. A lot of individuals or companies will buy eBooks, and then they will update all of the affiliate links and information in the book to match their own company. So the original company who has produced this book and released it to the public no longer gets credit or royalties for eBooks being sold since they are giving away a free version with their own links and company information. Sneaky, sneaky.

3. Creating Autoblogs

Autoblogs are a total cheat for the bloggers who just don’t like to blog. To have an autoblog, they set up a self-hosted WordPress blog. Then, using automation software such as WP robot, they can then pull fresh posts from other blogs on the internet.

In order for this to work, they will need to make a lot of these blogs since most duplicated blogs will end up in the Google sandbox. But if they keep at it regularly and frequently, they’re bound to make money online off of other’s blog information.

4. CPA Offers On YouTube

YouTube is a monster when it comes to making some extra cash due to all of the traffic it gets on a daily basis. CPA, also known as “Cost Per Action,” is quite effective when utilized properly on YouTube. With this method, they get paid every single time someone performs a particular action, like signing up for a newsletter or filling out a survey.

To use this effectively, they would want to upload something that has the chance of going viral – such as a funny video or a hot new music video (who ever knew Rebecca Black would go viral?) In the video description, place a link which links to a domain with a CPA relating to that particular video.

Note: Many watermark their link in every video they publish.

5. Creating A Fake Facebook Account

Facebook is a powerful tool which can easily be utilized to put some extra cash in their pocket. To start off the process, they need to create a new Facebook account (they don’t want to jeopardize their own, just in case something goes wrong). Unscrupulous advertisers make sure that the account looks real and legit so the people they are going to be sending “friend” requests to won’t question it. They choose a name that is somewhat common so that others may mistakenly believe they actually know the person.

Note: There are software programs out there that will find friends and “add” them to Facebook account.

Once they do then have a decent amount of friends (they should have thousands before they do this) they can set up a fan page about whatever their niche topic is. Weight loss, acne – anything that has to do with beauty tends to work particularly well with this method. Make sure that their page has a catchy title with good keywords, and then suggest their page to all of their new “friends.”

If any of their new “friends” “likes” their page, the link will go onto their news feed and the vast majority of their friend list will then notice. When they have obtained a lot of “likes” for their page, they then start adding some regular content relating to their niche page. Once in a while throw in a CPA offer which related to what they’re offering, and they’ll start making money online from this method.

6. Selling WordPress Footer Links

If they can create a WordPress theme, then they can make money online by selling a footer link (if they don’t have any experience with WordPress, they can use a program such as Artisteer to make it happen, or they could pay someone to do it for they). If the theme is a good theme, then they will not have any trouble selling the link in the footer to those who buy it. Users who install the theme will be giving all of the people who have paid for the links some valuable “backlinks.”

Note: Many encrypt the footer. This will prevent people from being able to remove their links.

7. Tweet Spamming

The one thing about this method is that, due to Twitter’s very low click through rate, they need to have thousands upon thousands of followers to possibly make money online through this method. They can use it for legit reasons, or to send out spams and obtain followers from one particular demographic, which then they can target with the CPA offers.

After writing up my response, I decided that it just might help you too!

I want to do a blog redesign and since you’re my tech-iest friends, I was wondering if you had any recommendations?

Interesting timing… We’re about to roll out a complete redesign of all of our sites.

Blog Success Journal is the first one to go live…

Here’s what AskDanAndJennifer will look like in the next few weeks: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/id1eiejruikk1ul/aFXFy0jX3J/ask_v1.png

The focus was a cleaner, less busy design that sucks visitors in…

Also, because we have several sites, we wanted a design that could easily be updated across all of the sites – i.e. we wanted to be able to make one change to ad a new ad unit to all the sites, or to add a widget to the sidebar of all sites. As part of this roll-out, we’re also moving to WordPress Multisite (don’t recommend this unless you REALLY need it).

What Other Blogs Should I Look At And Emulate?

There are several sites that we looked at when going with the new design.

http://mashable.com/

http://techcrunch.com/

http://www.johnchow.com/

http://dynamo.dictionary.com/

If you look at these sites, you’ll see certain similarities in the way the header, content, and footer are designed.

Most of all, they are clean, inviting and easy to navigate.

What Are Some Cool Blog Themes?

I have always and still do love Brian Gardner’s stuff – StudioPress WordPress Themes

Our previous design was a deep customization of their Magazine theme.

The new design is a totally custom design but all built on the new Genesis framework – it has literally cut our site load time in half!

What Are Some Useful WordPress Plugins?

The one thing I’m really loving at the moment is Scribe SEO – its the only tool that let’s you SEO your post before you publish it.

Also, we’re in the process of moving ALL of our forms over to Gravity Forms – what forms should be… Totally customizable and configurable contact forms and way more…

What I’m hating are the FaceBook widgets – they take FOREVER to load and really slow down your page load time.

What Every Blog MUST Be Doing Right Now

Every blog needs to put out good quality content – Google is really cracking down on landing pages and anything spammy.

Blog Success Journal was recently penalized (Our Google Ad Words account was turned off because we were linking to a site that they flagged as spammy – we thought it was a good site!)

So having said that, be careful who you link out to and never ever sell text links.

I want my new blog to stay ahead of the curve, not fall hopelessly behind, and if you had any resources to get me and my team up to speed, I’d be eternally grateful.

That’s my brain dump for now… Hope it helps.

Losing focus is a serious problem for anyone who is trying to start their own business, or who is trying to work from home. Think about it: when you go to an office, you have a boss keeping an eye on you, a cubicle that can only hold so much, your internet usage is probably monitored, and there is no television to tempt you away from your desk. There are a lot of roadblocks put up to stop you from becoming distracted when you are in an actual office. At home, however, we tend to slack off. Our home is our area of refuge, after all, but when it’s working time, one has to stay focused.

Below are the most effective tips for anyone who wants to make money from home, but who is having difficulties keeping themselves motivated.

1. Kick Distractions To The Curb

This is especially true when you are trying to make money from home. There’s the television. The radio. The kids that may be running around your home. The quick and accessible food in the kitchen that may be calling out to you. Not only that, but a lot of people think that as you make money from home, you must have all the time in the world to sit around and chat, right? One excuse that is commonly heard is, “Well, you work from home, right? Can’t you just do your job later?” But this could not even be further from the truth.

Not all of these distractions can easily be removed. No one’s going to throw out their television because they are having a hard time staying focused, and goodness knows that when you have children at home, you can’t always send them out into the backyard to play or over to a friends’ house.

In order to successfully make money from home and be able to stay focused, you really need to have a home office. A corner in the kitchen doesn’t help, nor does sitting on the couch tapping away on a laptop. You need an office with a computer, a desk, an adjustable chair, and all other necessary office supplies.

You also need to have a door with a lock so as to keep out any unwanted visitors.

Make it clear that when your door is closed, that it is closed for a reason – you’re working and cannot be distracted! If your children will need you throughout the day, set up times where you will make a point to be available to talk, just like your normal breaks at work. This is also when you should make any personal phone calls or set up any personal appointments.

2. Take Breaks

To further add to point number one, you need to take breaks. You need your two fifteen minute “coffee” breaks and at least half an hour at lunch. These breaks are integral to your success as they let you recharge your mind and refresh your thinking. Don’t be afraid to take vacations too. Allot for a minimum of 2 weeks off and set aside a percentage of each pay check for your vacation pay.

3. Write In A Journal

Writing in a journal isn’t something most people tell you to do when you try to make money online , but it is a very effective tool when it comes to keeping you on track. In the journal you should write down your goals, set up a timeline in which you can accomplish these goals, and then also write about your progress. We oftentimes forget just how well we’re doing, but having that reminder there will keep you motivated to keep at it.

You don’t have to write in your journal every day, but make a point to write in it at least weekly. Your journal doesn’t have to only be related to you trying to make money from home, either; you can mix in personal goals as well.

4. If You Change, Change For 21 Days

Making changes isn’t any fun, but if you are finding yourself easily distracted and losing focus when trying to make money from home, you know it has to happen. The problem is that most people try to change themselves and, after a week, they give up because they aren’t seeing any progress.

NEWSFLASH: Change doesn’t happen overnight! You’ve heard it before, but most people have to hear it again, and again. If you are changing anything, stick with it for a minimum of 21 days. After that period of time this new behavioral change will become more deeply engraved into your personality, and you will start performing this changed behavior without even thinking about it after a month.

Keep track of your progression with the changes not only with your journal, but with a calendar that you see regularly. Write notes. Keeping this visual reminder out in the open will help remind you and reinforce your desire to change.

5. Forget Bad Friends

As mentioned earlier, some people really don’t seem to respect the fact that in order to make money from home, there need to be limitations. If you have friends who are ringing you up at all hours during the day which should be regular office hours, or ask you out to do things from 9am to 5pm on week days, or if they make comments about how you should come hang out with them simply because your job offers potential flexibility – forget them. Friends who are less than understanding about your job demands need to be let go of. Try to surround yourself with people who have the same sort of goals and who both respect and understand exactly what it takes to make money from home.