Wikipedia’s definition: RSS (most commonly expanded as Really Simple Syndication) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.

Its a simple way to read/follow a blog on regular basis as quick as possible. You could have seen the RSS icon which looks like below:

If you are already used to RSS, some times you will be curious to know, how many people have subscribed to a particular blog ? Now the question, how to check the RSS subscriber count ? for a particular feed.

Google’s Feedburner is one of the free RSS system where you could easily check the subscriber count. You don’t need to register for Feedburner, instead type the following in your browser which shows the count as an image.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/YOURFEEDNAME

For example, if you want to check the feed count of Techcrunch.com then type the following in your browser.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/techcrunch

More information about RSS here especially for beginners.

Incoming search terms:

• wordpress com subscriber count

I would say, these are the basic requirements for any individual who wants to begin online business, simply from their home. It hardly depends on how your lifestyle ? either you may be working in a day job or you are sitting idle in your home. At maximum, if you are able to spend 1 to 2 hours every day then its extremely possible, to setup an online income. What are those business ideas ? I know, you are more curious to know all these stuffs.

This blog has bunch of resources and to mention, a step-by-step course on Start Up Online Business helps you towards starting a business over Internet.

What are the Requirements for online business ?

An article for beginners may help you to understand the requirements to start online business. To simply summarize the requirements:

• Time – The  basic need is time. As i mentioned earlier, its completely  bound to your lifestyle. Either part time or full time, if you are ready to sit and work with your computer then its well enough.
• Knowledge – Next requirement is Knowledge, at least the basic knowledge of online business is required from where to start ? how to start ? how to proceed ?

From my past experience, i have identified that if you have Time to work & proper knowledge to run a business then you could survey. Otherwise, its really a waste of time, money and energy.

Ideas To Begin Online Business.

Lets come back to the ideas that you are more curious to know about. In general, running an online business is a complex process in terms of understanding and exploring the steps. Beginners may find bit difficult in the initial stage but once you are in the track, you could easily survey. So whatever you do online, you must need the understanding first.

The following are few of the most common and proven methods of online business. I will refer you to the right articles which makes you to understand the clear steps.

Business Blogging.

Blogs are very much popular now-a-days, those days of static webpages are gone. Blog is a dynamic platform to share your thoughts. Simple example, the one you are reading is my blog and i am interested to write alot about online business. Similarly, you could start a blog and write useful stuffs on a topic. There are many ways to make money from your blogs like: Running advertisements, selling digital downloadable products, selling ad space etc.

• Read, steps for Making money from Internet using blogs which tells you everything related to blogging business.

Affiliate Marketing Business.

Next comes the affiliate marketing, which is basically selling digital products over Internet and earning commission for every sale. The idea is, joining affiliate network (web sites), picking products which are demand in the market and marketing it on Internet to drive sales. The number of sales you make decides the volume of income. This requires a bit of Internet marketing knowledge, especially on wisely selling products to the right audience.

• Read, steps for Making money from Internet using affiliate which guides you towards affiliate marketing steps.

Sell Your Skills.

There are web sites called Virtual Offices where you could join as freelancer. Based on your skill set and work experience, you could select job offers provided by virtual employers. Once you complete the job, you will be paid for the work done. Its more or less same like working in the real world office but its over Internet. If you have better skills for example, if you know software programming or web design then you are in the highest demand.

• Read, How to start money making as a freelancer ?

Few Insights About Online Business.

Its completely flexible to work over Internet because you are not tied to time and location. You could work from anywhere and work at anytime as per your convenience. And moreover, it has many advantages like:

• You will become your own boss and you don’t need to work under any body.
• You could utilize your spare time useful.
• You could setup extra income every month.
• You will feel financially secured and safe, because you are getting backup income.

Apart from these advantages, operating an online business simpler and the risks involved when compared to the real world business is very less. Because, investment is less for these ideas and even if you loose your money, it may not affect you much. Frankly speaking, you could well setup a web site online by spending only lesser than $100 per year.

Few more readings about beginning online business:

• Steps To Start Online Business – A beginners course
• Best Ways To Start Your Own Online Business
• Starting An Online Business From Scratch

Good Luck and Stay tuned with us !

image: dave

Incoming search terms:

• domain name selling without investment
• investment requirement for starting a company

In general, earning an extra income from Internet is 100% possible for any individual who has basic computer skills. For busy day job workers, if you are able to spend at least 1-2 hours per day, its well enough to operate an online business of your own. Lets see few ideas on how to make an extra monthly income ? Keep in mind, all these ideas won’t make you rich the next day !

Become An Affiliate Marketer.

The most common way of earning an extra income that too, by spending lesser time is affiliate marketing.

• It involves selecting a digital product, sell it over Internet and earn commission for every sales.
• There are web sites called Affiliate Networks from where you could join free and pick any digital products. Few of the best affiliate networks to mention are: Amazon Associates, Clickbank, CJ, Neverblue etc.
• You will get a referral link for the selected product which helps to track your account/status.
• Your work, send visitors to your referral link and make them to buy the product.
• Depends on the number of sales and percentage of commission, your monthly income varies and you may have to spend less than 1 hour every day.

Its tough to summarize all these stuffs within this page, so read more…

Further Readings:

• How To Start Money Making As Affiliate ?
• Steps For Making Money From Internet Using Affiliate
• Sell Affiliate Products Free of Cost

Trade with Domain Names.

Domain names are the regular web site names and they are going in demand. Yes, due to the increasing number of new websites every day, it is hard to get a good domain name especially “common words” like “paintingtips”, “drivingtips”, “beststore” etc.

• The idea, you have to buy such hot domain names and register them in your name.
• Later, you could sell them for higher prices.
• Domain names are available for less than $10 and it is true that, if your domain name goes demand, you could sell them for $1000+.
• There are web sites like sedo, godaddy, names pro to specifically trade with domain names. Only thing, you have to spend money from your pocket to buy domain names.
• You don’t need to spend much time, it takes few minutes to buy/sell domain names.

Further Readings:

• Making Money From Internet By Selling Domain Names
• Selling Hot and Demand Domain Names

An Extra Income...

Become A Freelancer.

One of the best part-time job in Internet is freelancing. Web sites like Odesk, Freelance, Elance etc are offering online jobs.

• You have to join these freelancing sites, create your experience profile, take job offers, complete the work and earn money for the work done.
• Generally, you will be paid by hour basis or based on the completion of the work. Jobs are like Data entry operator, Software programming, Copy writers, Web Designing, Virtual Assistants etc.
• If you are able to spend 2 hours per day then freelancing suites you best.

Further Readings:

• Start Money Making As Freelancer
• 10 Best Sites To Start Freelancing Career
• How To Increase Freelancer Income ?

Start Your Own Blog.

Starting your own blog is too simple with Blogger.com.

• If you are passionate about a topic, you could start a blog and write useful articles. You have to publish articles regularly say 1 per day.
• Over a period of time, your blog will become information rich on the topic.
• Running Advertisements, Selling related digital products are few of the ways to make money from blogs.
• The hardest part is driving more visitors to your blog. Because the more visitors yields you more income. And it takes time to pick up because it falls under Long term business model.
• The growth of your blog depends on the topic and the marketing strategies that you utilize to promote your blog. Generally, it takes 6+ months to turn a new blog into a matured blog.
• Spending 1 hour per day is well enough to run a blog.

Further Readings:

• Start Up Online Business – A step-by-step beginners course
• How To Make Money With Low Traffic Blogs ?
• 5 Elements of Constant Blog Growth

Importing Products From China.

Another idea, which involves importing digital products from china market.

• We all know that Chinese products are dead cheap, its a wider business that people are importing such digital products at lower rate, and selling them locally online.
• You have to build an online store showing the digital products (basically, an ecomm store) and you need to bring in supply vendors to deliver the digital products to the customers (and customs clearance).

Even i don’t have much idea about this business and one of the guest blogger suggested this here in my blog.

Further Readings:

• How To Import From China Without Being Scammed ?
• Importing Electronics From China For Profits
  

Conclusion…

Apart from these ideas, i have compiled more than 25+ Money making tips which definitely helps you to take good decision today (i don’t ask you money ). Its really possible to setup an extra monthly income from Internet. First step, you have to understand where to start ? and how to proceed ? Also, don’t expect too much of money during the earlier stage of your online business and be patience. An article on how to avoid online business mistakes ? for sbeginners shows you the most common mistakes (you could avoid them).

image:angel

Incoming search terms:

• extra monthly income

This article is for those serious affiliate marketers, who want to really show the product to a wider audience that too instantly. There are many ways to sell products free of cost over Internet but the nature of traffic that brings in matters. Lets see, how to show your product instantly to many people ?

Utilizing Targeted Email List.

Many of the famous Internet marketers are utilizing the full power of email lists. They are rigorously building their email list with targeted people.

• The major advantage of building email list, you could instantly show an affiliate product to huge number of audience by sending 1 bulk email.

Only thing, you have to build such a huge targeted list. An article on Steps to build email list will help you to build email list using a free method (you don’t need to spend money for aweber or mailchimp etc.) Successful entrepreneurs like Jeol comm, Johnchow, zacjohnson are having such big email list and bombarding with brand new products. And finally, making millions of money.

It takes bit of time to build such a huge list, but if you are able to get at least 500-1000 peoples then its well enough to ping them with your products for sale. I would say, this a game by “giving free stuffs” to build such targeted email lists.

Show To Forum Members.

This is one of the simplest method and you don’t need to spend great time or energy. What you to do ? drive traffic from forums which are highly related to your affiliate product.

The steps to create a big picture:

• Write a blog post and link your affiliate links (with product images, videos). It should be a rich blog post about the product or its feature. Publish it.
• Now write 100-200 words about the problem which actually your product solves.
• Post it on the forum, with a good catchy title (which should address the problem) and link your blog post.

Generally, the traffic coming to forums are either regular forum users or those coming from search engines. Both of them are targeted to your product. So its a great exposure which happened instantly.

• Instead of using a forum post, you could Write a guest post in a high traffic blog. Link your original blog post where you have the affiliate links.

Conduct A Traffic Contest.

This is a tricky method, which involves conducting a contest to bring in traffic to your article (which has affiliate links). What you have to do ?

Offer a contest like: “One who sends more traffic to this page will win the price”.

Track down the traffic sources using Site-meter or Google Analytics and announce the winner, who sent more traffic to your page. This way, you could simply create a huge hype to wider audience, that brings in more traffic and definitely, chances of more sales.

Final Thoughts…

The success of every affiliate marketing campaign depends on the volume of targeted audience that you derive. When there are huge targeted traffic, there are more chances of sales. That’s the de facto. Though there are many options available to sell affiliate products, these are the 3 methods which bring in wider audience instantly.

image:victoria

• In general, a best blog name should reflect the purpose of the blog.

When it comes to blogging, branding and marketing plays a major role (because blog name affects them) than making money. So you have to pay much more attention in this earlier stage especially to select the best blog name.

Exact Keyword As Blog Name.

Keywords are playing the major role in driving natural search engine traffic. Using keywords as blog name is one of the best SEO practice universally accepted by many search engines. You may have noticed many times, if you search in Google or Yahoo with a short keyword, you will end up seeing site names as keywords.

If the keyword you choose has more search volume, its a gold mine. Go ahead and pick them as blog name. Many people are directly entering keywords in their browser URL to locate random web sites.

• For example, if you are starting a blog about painting then the most comfortable blog names “paintingtips”, “paintinghelp”, “paintinguide” etc.

Simplest way, use Google Keywords Tool and enter the keywords which are related to your blog topic (keywords should tell the purpose of your blog). It lists 100′s of more related keywords, select the best 10 and see if that name is available for you. If you got 1 then its a great effort. Its good idea to find keywords which has reasonably higher search volume say, 10000+ per month.

• The advantage of keyword based blog name, you could easily catch the top 10 in SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages). In my theory, these kind of keywords are called “Money Making Keywords”.

Your Own Branding.

Branding your blog is one of the powerful marketing strategy. Establishing a brand in your blog takes time and it depends on numerous factors starting from blog design, fonts, colors, content and much more. More important, blog name plays the top role in branding. Your blog name should reflect the brand name. A simple, short and rhyming blog name is the best branded name.

The advantages of branded name:

• It easily sits into visitors mind and they will remind your blog.
• It helps to get more repeat visitors because they will get addicted to your branding sense.
• Brand name spreads faster when compared to ugly names.

Mimic A Brand Name.

This is short cut to bring in hot blog names. Just by mimicking an established site name as your blog name. This way, people will easily remember your blog and they will give the same feel/importance like the original name.

• For example, you could name your blog as Xaahoo which mimics Yahoo.

Combining Keyword + Branding.

Another way, you could combine the above ideas into one. Like bringing a blog name which has keyword as well a brand name. It has more advantages, when compared to other ways because keyword reflects the blog purpose and brand name gives you the branding touch.

Generally, if you decide for exact keywords you may not get the blog name (because somebody would have already registered it). But either brand name or brand+keyword names in combination’s, you will easily get many options.

Few more tips to select best blog names:

• Use short names
• Use simple, clear names without double words (eg. “paintinguide” is good than “paintingguide”)
• Don’t use hyphens (looks it has no ill effects, apart from tough for visitors to remember)
• Use rhyming and ear-catchy blog names.

image:stefo

Incoming search terms:

• best blog names

But for a beginner, for a new blog, this is not the case. Your blog gets only low traffic and in that situation, how to make money ? First of all, is it possible to make money in that situation with low traffic ? Yes but you have to play a bit of wiser role. Lets see them in detail.

Keep Expectations Aside.

It is common that new bloggers have more expectations especially in making money from their blog (than getting traffic). They don’t even write useful blog posts, and in a week or month, they will get frustrated and they will quit blogging. Because they are not seeing any income.

Keep in mind that blogging is a long term process (in most cases) and it takes time to pick up. What i am saying, keep reasonable expectations and work towards achieving them. Don’t expect too much of income in the earlier stage of blogging. Instead, focus towards constant blog growth.

Low Traffic Into Targeted Traffic.

A blog with low traffic is not a bad scenario but a blog with no Targeted traffic is worser than anything. If your blog gets less 100 targeted visitors then good enough to start monetizing. Because your income depends on how targeted visitors are coming to your blog.

• For example, you are writing about “finance” and the visitors coming to your blog are looking about “fashion”. Do that makes sense ? So targeted traffic is the quality traffic and not quantity.

How to get such targeted traffic ?

There comes the keywords, you have to use the right keywords which are more tied to your topic. Be focused in your blog and stay in the topic. Whatever you write, make it more specific to your blog around the same keywords. Over a period of time, your blog will become information rich on that topic and related keywords.

This way, you will get search traffic which means real visitors to your blog. In the earlier stage, if you get at least 100 visitors then its a good point to start monetizing your blog. Learn these Long term methods to get more blog traffic.

Effective Conversion of Low Traffic.

In general, the word “effective” is more powerful. It means full utilizing. The idea is, utilizing every visitors to make money for you. So how to do that effective conversion ? Let see few tips which tells which are the high priority and low priority ways to make money:

Low Priority Methods.

• PPC Ads works well in high traffic blogs only. But many people will start running Ads on their blog first. Even Google Adsense doesn’t makes you anything, if you don’t have high traffic. It is good to avoid PPC Ads completely, if you get lower traffic.
• Pop ups and impression based advertising requires high traffic. Because its all based on the number of visitors coming to your blog and every impression counts. On a low traffic blog, it performs poor. Avoid them.
• Selling Ad space doesn’t works. For example, if you get into BuysellAds.com you don’t get an advertiser because your blog has less traffic, less readers and lesser ranking. No one will advertise with you.

High Priority Methods.

For a low traffic blog the following are the best methods which converts good:

• Selling Affiliate Products works out because you are getting targeted traffic which means more chances of sales. But that too depends on the niche and for what keywords your blog gets traffic. Start with Clickbank.com or CJ.com and pick 1-2 products which are closely related to your blog topic. At least, you will get 1-2 sales every month. You could make 25-100$ per month.
• Referral Based Promotion converts well on a low traffic blog. These involves referring visitors to take a free sign up or offering free downloads. Every successful offer earns you at least $1 and if you make 100 successful offers, your blog earns 100$. You could join RevResponse.com which is a similar program which offers free downloads to your visitors.

Learn how to convert traffic into money ?

Conclusion…

With low traffic blog you should not expect more income. But when effectively utilized, it makes few dollars. It depends on targets of the traffic and how well you are monetizing. In general, PPC Ads won’t make money for low traffic blogs so go for affiliate/referral based promotions.

image: joisey

Incoming search terms:

• earn from a low traffic website

Market Analysis.

The analysis starts with the market and spending few time for market research helps you to make better steps towards profit. So you have to do the market analysis first.

• What kind of market you are targeting ? How is the demand for that market from which you are picking products ?
• Its basically strategy of demand and supply. Where there is higher demand, you could supply more and obviously, you will see more competition.
• A good recommendation, always go for a moderately demanding market instead of putting your head into too many competition.
• Use Google Keyword Tool, look for keywords with moderate search statistics (say, 5000-20000) and also, search Google to check the top 10 occupancy of established sites.

This is the best...

Product Analysis.

Once you have selected the market, the next level is selecting the best products from that market.

• First, browse through your affiliate network and find the products that are okay to your mind (use your common sense).
• Predict like a buyer and see the product.
• Do the product solves the buyer problem ?
• Compare the products and see, which one gives better solution to the buyer ?
• Compare various features offered by these products.
• Finally, select few (say, 2-3 products) which are best and pick your affiliate links.

A quality product which solves the buyer problem with better solution, wins the market which has demand.

Sales Page Analysis.

Next comes the affiliate page ie., the sales page from where the buyer clicks the Order button. So its more crucial part of affiliate marketing.

• Scan through the sales page and see how it is built professionally ?
• Do the page speaks the truth or taking over opportunity to promote the product ? (basically, cheating the buyer).
• Do the product provider has contact details (which is more important) ?
• Do the product provider has customer support (at least by email) ?

Generally, established product providers will have customer care support which is an added advantage for affiliate marketers. Because, on seeing the sales page visitors will get more Trust on the product and they decide to buy.

Keyword Analysis.

This phases comes once you have selected the affiliate products and before selling it. Keyword analysis is more important in affiliate marketing because it defines the source of traffic. The nature of visitors (buying visitors) is highly controlled by keywords.

Once you are ready with product, either you use PPC Ads (Adwords or YSM) or Article Marketing to sell products, you have to keyword research. Again, Google Keyword Tool is the best option to pick the right keywords. I would recommend you to use the words buy, order, download etc combined to your main keywords.

• For example, “buy best personal finance ebook” is a more targeted keyword which brings in people who are seriously looking to buy an ebook.

Result Analysis.

Experimentation and result analysis are part of best affiliate marketers. Serious affiliate marketers are more focused on the results of their experiments. So what ever you do, keep a list/history on the results. This data helps you to easily take good decision in the future.

For example, the market of health care is more competitive and if you failed once on that market then the next time, you will be able to judge a better market using your experience. So always keep a note on what you doing.

• Also, track the visitors and find out which source of visitors are really buying the products. Many of the affiliate networks have this feature. For example, in Clickbank you could add a tracker to the hop links which succeeds with ‘?’ symbol. This way, you could work towards getting more such buying visitors.

Finally, selecting the best affiliate products and selling them is a big game. When you are doing proper analysis on each phase, you will see better results and profits. So do analysis and do more analysis.

Few more articles to read:

• After Selecting Affiliate Products, How To Sell ?
• How To Experiment Affiliate Product Sales ?
• How (Not) To Pick Quality Less Affiliate Products ?

image: flashes

The question of, how to start online business has many answers. It depends on individual experiences and knowledge. And the most view videos, must have useful information. I didn’t watched all these videos, instead, i assume they have a value add (because many people watched these videos).

I would recommend beginners shall go through my course which guides to start your own online business:

• Start Up Online Business (short and clear course)
• Steps to Start Online Business
• Start Online Business Income From Home

Many sellers import some or all of their products from China, as it is an option that can result in higher profit margins. In importing products from China, you buy goods directly from the manufacturers and thus pay much less. You can then sell them in America for up to 80% more than you originally invested.

Avoid Being Scammed.

However, there are some dishonest suppliers out there, and it is imperative to keep in mind some basic information to avoid being scammed.

• An extremely important tip to keep in mind when importing goods from China is to avoid purchasing brand name items, particularly clothing, purses, foot wear, and electronics. These run a very high risk of being fake imitations of the genuine items.
• DVD box sets are also to be avoided, as they are typically pirated and burned copies.
• Selling these counterfeit items can result in, at the very least, earning a bad reputation for yourself as a seller and your business in general. At the worst, you could run into some considerable legal trouble. Either way, you will be stuck with a lot of useless merchandise that you cannot sell.
• Don’t allow yourself to be manipulated by attractive domain names that include brands such as Nike, Gucci, etc. Scam artists use this tactic to lure in foreign importers and to lull them into a false sense of security. If a domain name includes a popular name brand, it is almost certainly a scam and should be totally avoided. Many unfortunate importers have gotten sucked into this trap only to have the site go offline shortly after investing, and have then found themselves out of a potentially substantial amount of money.

Beware of Scams !

Research Before You Import.

It’s absolutely crucial that you do your research.

• Google the company you are considering and look into alternative business databases, as well.
• Even more importantly, look deeply into customer reviews. Even scammers can have shiny, appealing advertisements. By looking into customer reviews, you can be certain if the site is legitimate or not.
• It is also important to look into contact information, as scammers will usually not provide an authentic (if any) address, phone number, and fax.

Read more Ways to avoid money making scams.

This is a guest post by Corry Cummings.

image: peteswede

Gradual Start Up.

Giving a bigger start up for the first time without experience may not work. Instead, break the strategy into multiple stages and give a gradual start. In practical, start with few affiliate products.

• Go to your affiliate network and select only one product which gives the best solution to the buyer.
• For promoting the product, take one method at a time. For example, if you are not sure about the returns then don’t go for PPC Advertisements. (You may loose your money)
• Write a review about the product and publish in article marketing sites (Hubpages to star with), embedded the affiliate link.
• Drive traffic to that article.
• Measure the results.
• Write another article and wait for results.

Based on the results, decide whether to proceed with that product or find another affiliate product. If you don
t see good results then take another product. Have only the performing products in hand.

Don’t play with more than 2-4 products at a time during the start up stage.

Experiment It !

Divide And Improve Experiment.

Its one of the best business improvement strategy. As an example, it involves:

• Experiment with 2 (or 4) products.
• Measure the sale results.
• Drop the poor performers.
• Take another product and repeat the same.

This way, over a period of time you will be having only the best products in hand. Similarly, try out article marketing, ppc ads, guest posting and promote the product sales. Finally, take the most comfortable strategy which works out to sell. I personally recommend, give less importance of PPC Ads in the earlier stage.

Sign Up Page Experiment.

Sign Up page experiments drives better results. It involves, designing a sign up page and ask the visitors to join. Offer them free downloads for signup. Drive huge traffic to the signup page and gather huge list of customers (email ids). Now send mails to your customer list, marketing the affiliate products.

• You could use Aweber a paid email management service or Freeautobot a free email management service.

Many successful Internet Marketers are using this signup page strategy to increase their affiliate sales. You have to work initially to build the email list but once done, you could reap the results. To make simple, there are many sites to buy such signup pages (Unique Blog Design Squeeze Theme is one to refer here).

Avoiding Affiliate Mistakes.

Humans are born to mistake but we could correct the mistakes. Its common that, you will be making mistakes until you don’t you are doing a mistake. Either somebody has to pinpoint the mistake or you will realize only on failure. But prevention is better always that you will know from other experienced people.

• Read, how do affiliate marketing fails ? which tells the basic/advanced mistakes that generally we do in affiliate marketing (its my view).

Finally, every business requires experimentation. You have to measure the results and tweak your strategies until you see better returns. Affiliate marketing is one of the best online business, if you are following the right steps. It fails most of the time, if you don’t care. Don’t directly jump into PPC Ads, its like a flood where you will loose your money.

I made that mistake, when i started doing affiliate marketing and realized that, there are many other free ways to sell products. Currently, i don’t do affiliate marketing instead focusing towards the strong growth of my blog. Definitely, i will jump back once my blog reaches that level of success (planning to sell products through my blog).

Now read the ways to sell affiliate products free of cost, which actually gives 100% profit on every sale.

image:deeleea