How To Make Money With Google Adsense

If you have a website or a blog, you should definitely sign up for Google Adsense. It’s one of the few programs you can truly ‘set and forget’ – once it’s there you don’t really need to do much else with it.
But there are ways and means to maximize your income from Google Adsense, and as you get to know more about it you can start to generate a decent income from it that will keep rolling in month after month. It’s a true passive income, which is why so many people are using it.
Most people have heard of Google Adsense, but not everyone understands exactly how to use it to its best advantage. So we’ll start with how to use it in its most basic sense and then progress to the more advanced benefits you can get from the program.


Basically if you have a website or blog you can sign up for a free account at Google Adsense and start putting contextual ads on your website. What do I mean by contextual? It means quite simply that the ads which appear on your site will be relevant to your content. So let’s say for example that your website is about tropical fish. The Google ads will then be related to tropical fish in some way. And because of the information that you give to Google, they will also display adverts that are relevant to your area. So if you are based in the UK the ads that appear will be relevant to UK buyers; if your site or business is based in Australia the ads will appeal to Australian buyers.
All of this is carefully worked out for you in order to attract the maximum click through possible for your website and your ads. Every time someone clicks on an ad you will get a few cents into your Adsense account, so it makes sense that the more attractive and relevant your ads are to your visitors, the more money you will make.
Let’s have a look at the appearance of your ads now, since this can affect the amount of click throughs you get. You can choose the color and borders of your ads to fit right in with the color scheme on your site if you wish, but it’s worth experimenting with having no borders at all around your adverts since this makes them blend in with your content more seamlessly and may encourage more click throughs in a subtle but effective manner.
However well you integrate Google Adsense into your current blog or website though, there is obviously a limit to the amount of money you can make from one site. If you get thousands of people visiting your site every day then you can expect to get a good income from it but many people don’t get this number of visitors and that’s where you need a separate strategy to try and up your numbers.
In this case you can go to the advanced level of Adsense income and think about starting several sites, all based around a different yet popular subject. You should think of these essentially as being content sites, since they are often chock full of articles and useful content which is carefully keyworded to attract plenty of search engine traffic on that particular subject. The Adsense ads are then placed in the optimum positions to achieve the best click through (the Adsense pages will give you ideas on where to position them but it’s worth experimenting to see what works best for you), and the site goes live for people to find and read through.
You can also insert affiliate links for products into these sites in order to gain even more income if you wish, but they are often known as Adsense sites simply because they are set up to attract visitors and click throughs on a specific subject.
Some people end up with dozens of sites like this, and the beauty of them is that once they are built and you have bought your domain name and hosting plan you don’t really need to do too much with them except for promote them. Updating them fairly regularly is good if you want to get to a higher position in the search engine results though, which will gain you more visitors as a result.
You can also keep your site updated more regularly (and encourage repeat visitors) by inserting RSS feeds of news stories related to the subject of your website. Anything that will get people returning to read more – and possibly click on more ads as a result – is worth a try.
One final note here – choose the subjects of your Adsense sites wisely. It’s tempting to go for whatever is in the news at the moment, but once the stories die down so will your traffic. You want something that people will always want to know about – saving money, getting a better job, earning more, and various other more personal subjects such as skin care and successful dating for example. There are plenty of options to choose from; you just need to get your thinking cap on to find them.
In short the best place to start making money from Google Adsense is to integrate it into your existing website or blog. As you gain experience and discover the best ways to use it you can start thinking about adding extra sites into the mix. You might end up being an Adsense guru and raking in plenty of money for very little work indeed. That’s the best thing about it – the ‘set and forget’ benefit that keeps on working even when you’re not.
If you enjoyed this article or have any questions or comments about it, please leave them by using the form below. Once you’ve done that it will be time to visit Google’s Adsense site to get started! Good luck.

Making and Earning Money Online with website.

Making money with a website not only requires very little initial investment, but depending on what you want to focus on, it can be an extremely profitable venture as well. From affiliate marketing to blogging to actually selling your own products or even just running advertising on your site, even beginners with little to no experience can make money with a website if they just follow a few simple guidelines.
Building a website is also a lot easier than most people think. Gone are the days when you needed to understand html code, or be a design guru. There are now simple push button scripts available that let you get up and running with a professional looking website or blog in just minutes. There are also hundreds of great tutorials available online that will show you step by step how to make a website.
Affiliate marketing can be a great way to get started with making money online. With your own website, you can see where your audience is coming from and directly test new strategies to encourage new potential customers to come and buy a product that you’re marketing.
Affiliate marketing is when you market someone else’s product and receive a percentage of commissions in return for directing customers to another’s site. Depending on your niche, this can be quite lucrative. It will require some research to determine the best topics to work on, but regardless, it can be easy to leave links in your articles or even go so far as to have your own online store of goods you are affiliated with.
Blogging is another easy way to make money with a website, because once you’re established, that opens up many more opportunities to dip into other income streams. Given the propensity of other blogs out there today, it’s imperative to create a unique angle that will attract readers and eventually, advertisers. Top bloggers earn thousands per month from advertisers paying them to leave ads on their blogs for their millions of readers to potentially click on. Advertisers like this because they have a targeted audience already assembled for them; they just need a mechanism to get the traffic to their site.
You Can also build simple content based sites that offer visitors information about a particular subject they are search for. Then once you get the traffic coming to your site, you can monetize it by either promoting affiliate programs or by placing ads on your site. (just like the ads on this site) Then every time someone clicks on one of the ads on your site, you get a paid for it. Then you just have to work on producing good quality content which will attract more and more traffic. More Traffic = More Clicks = More Money.
Selling products through a website can also make you a healthy profit, because this gives you access to an entire network of internet users all over the world, not just customers who live in your area. Info-products are still making money, albeit not as much as they used to. But these are easy because they cost very little to make and it doesn’t take much effort to market them if your audience is there and possibly willing to purchase them.
Selling info-products means you are providing specialized information to a privileged group of people willing to pay for access to this information. This can be in the form of e-books, newsletters, or reports. All you need is a website, a quality product, and great advertising copy that will have customers lining up to buy.
Having your own website can be extremely helpful in boosting your other business ventures, such as freelance writing or consulting.
This is great in many ways because:

1. This means you are (hopefully) very knowledgeable about the services you provide and can offer great insight on them to your readers and
2. Writing articles on this subject matter can reel in not only loyal readers but potential clients as well. For example, if you are a small business consultant writing about marketing tactics, this could interest a business owner looking for further help with their own practice and encourage them to contact you in regards to further services. Offering free reading material is more valuable than most people realize, because it usually leads to actual paying customers.

Whichever way you choose to make money out of your website it’s easy to see why some of the most successful people and companies in the world are building their own websites.

How To Make Money Blogging

More and more people are realising that blogging is one of the best ways to start your own online business. It requires minimal start up costs, you can build an impressive and loyal readership over time and once you know how to monetize your blog it can also bring in a decent income that will keep on coming even on the days when you don’t update your blog.
There are several ways to set up a blog online. You could use WordPress, Blogger, or another free site that hosts your blog for you; or alternatively you can set up your own blog under your own domain name.
If you want to make serious money from blogging, you must have complete control over your blog – and that’s something the free blogging accounts won’t give you. You’ll be bound by their terms and conditions and that usually includes not being able to actively promote anything. There are plenty of people who have established a blog only to have it removed without notice some weeks or months later.


It will cost you a few dollars to buy your domain name and set up a web server that will host your blog, but the benefits will far outweigh the cost involved. It can literally be as little as $20 a year we’re talking about here – and that buys you total freedom.
Once you’re ready to set your blog up you’ll need to choose a good theme and layout for it. You might find one that relates to your choice of subject (more on that in a moment) or else there might be one you just like the look of. But there are thousands of templates available for you to use – a simple search on Google will reveal the ones that will be best suited to your topic.
But perhaps the most important question is what you are going to blog about. The whole world is your oyster here – some people blog about their lives in general; some blog about their jobs; some blog about their hobbies; some tell the world about their kids and what it’s like to be a parent, and still others blog about the weird world of celebrities. But whatever you choose to blog about it needs to be something you are passionate about. Don’t forget, you are going to be writing about this topic several times a week, and if you don’t have the enthusiasm for it, that will show in your posts – and no one else will have the enthusiasm to read them.
Okay – so you’ve got your subject. Now you have to start writing your blog posts. If you take a look at just a few of the blogs already online, you’ll notice that the length of the posts varies a lot. Some people only write a paragraph or two each time, but you’ll get better results if you go for something a little longer than this. Around 400 to 500 words makes for a good post with a lot of information in it; some people write hugely long posts that are thousands of words long and could be called an e-book by another name.
But you can also take the format of this blog, by posting a short blog entry which leads into a longer article. This has the benefit of highlighting a lot of blog posts on the home page of the site, and people can then click through and read the ones they like the most.
You should remember however that there are no real rules when it comes to blogging. Over time you will naturally find what works for you, and your blog will settle down into a nice pattern that both you and your readers will enjoy. You’ll find your character and personality will start to come through in your writing too; don’t fight against this as it is one of the hallmarks of blogging. It is, after all, a personal account of an individual’s life and experiences, so show people what you’re made of! You’ll get a more loyal – and bigger – audience like this.
So you’ve got your blog up and running and you’re posting to it on a regular basis. The next step is to get it in front of as many interested eyeballs as possible.
One great way to do this is to submit it to as many of the social bookmarking sites as possible. You can also join social networking sites and build a profile which contains a link to your blog. Other no cost ways to generate traffic include writing free articles for article directories with a link to your blog at the end, and creating signatures at the end of any posts you make to internet forums, and also in all the emails you send out. When you really start thinking about it, you don’t actually need to spend anything to generate plenty of traffic.
All we need to do now is monetize the blog itself. You’ll want to generate some money from all the visitors you’ll start getting, and there are plenty of ways to do this easily. Google Adsense is probably the most well known method – you can join the program for free and display contextual ads that your visitors will be interested in to maximise your click through rate.
There are also a handful of websites which give you the opportunity to get paid for each blog post you make on a specific subject. Pay Per Post and Review Me are two such examples, and they will pay you a certain amount of money to review a product or website for the owner. In a similar vein you can also review and recommend other people’s products through affiliate links inserted into your blog posts, and earn money on commissions earned through any purchases people make.
And once you’re more established you can offer ad space on your blog too, and charge a fee for both classified and display ads if you wish. What could be better than setting your own price?
But there is one final step you can take with your blog if you enjoy a change of scene every now and again. You can sell your blog! Once it is established and has plenty of revenue and traffic, you can usually sell it for ten times its monthly revenue.

How To Make Money On EBay...........

There is a lot of money to be made as a seller on eBay. Thousands and thousands of sales are made each day, resulting in a lot of income for a lot of sellers. And there is still room for you if you want to get involved – whether you want to earn some part time cash or set up a whole new full time business on the side.
But where do you get your stock from? How do you get started? And how can you build a business that gives you PowerSeller status? Relax – you’re about to find out.
It’s easy work to get started earning money on eBay. Once you’ve signed up for your free account the best way to get a feel for what selling is like is to auction off some of your personal items that you no longer want. If you are going to start buying stock to resell, you’ll do better by getting some basic selling experience first.


While we are on the subject of stock, you’ll need to decide what kind of business you are going to set up. Of course you can sell anything you like, but if you want to make a name for yourself it helps to become known for selling a specific type of product.
Now that doesn’t necessarily mean your product area needs to be a small one; on the contrary it could be quite large. You could sell toys for example – there’s plenty there to keep any seller going for months on end without selling the same thing twice. You do need to pick a popular product though, and it’s worth doing some research using eBay’s advanced search feature to find out what is selling and how much it’s selling for.
So let’s say you want to sell computer games, for example. There are hundreds of games you could buy to sell here, but if you don’t know which ones will sell you could lose a lot of money buying the wrong stock. By searching the ended listings you can see which titles consistently sell well, and which ones will produce the best profit for you.
Okay – so you know how to figure out what to buy. Now you need to know where to get it from. It stands to reason that no seller is going to tell you where they get their stock; that would be like giving away the keys to their business. In order to find the best sources for stock you need to do a bit of legwork.
We should mention here that there are two main sources for stock – wholesalers and dropshippers. Both have their pros and cons; it just depends on which method you personally prefer.
Dropshippers hold all the stock for you, so you only actually pay for an item once you’ve received payment from the customer. You may have to pay a fee to join the scheme in the first place though. If you choose to go with one or more wholesalers you will need to have the room to buy the stock, and the money to buy it in advance. This comes with more risk since you could buy stock that doesn’t sell, but with the tactic we’ve already covered for checking completed listings before you order anything, the risk here should be kept to a minimum.
So – back to where to find these sources. If you have a particular product in mind that you want to sell, the simple act of looking at the packaging can often reveal the name of the supplier. You can then check out their website to see what else they do.
Another method is to search for what you want on Google. This sounds deceptively simple and in fact many people don’t think of doing this. It can be a bit hit or miss, but it’s possible to find some excellent wholesalers through this method. Over time you will go from having one wholesaler to a handful of sources to get your stock from, and you can build up your product range as you start to grow.
Building your feedback is an important part of being a good seller and the higher you can get your score the better. It sets you apart as being a dedicated seller. And the faster your score climbs, the closer you get to attaining PowerSeller status.
The PowerSeller symbol is highly prized among serious eBay sellers, and there are five levels to strive for. The first is Bronze, and it’s a lot easier to reach than you might think. While you might set a goal for yourself to reach PowerSeller, you will find that if you build up your product range and gradually increase your sales, you will reach it in no time. And if you get off to a great start you might just do it in three months – the minimum time you can actually do it in.
Many sellers have their own shop on eBay, but it’s not necessary when you first get started. In fact you are often better off waiting until you have a good range of stock before opening a shop, since it can look rather empty if you only have a handful of items.
The final thing to think about is the price of the items you are selling. It stands to reason that if you sell a hundred different products in the $5 to $10 price range, you won’t make as much cash as you would selling a hundred in the $50 to $100 price range.
But you need to work out what you enjoy selling and what you can sell lots of to experience real success on eBay. Don’t go for expensive products just because they might bring a bigger profit. Go for your calling – that’s where you will experience the biggest success.

Is making money with surveys difficult?

Not at all. You just need to be able to answer a few simple questions and fill in some details, and you’re ready to earn a nice income from taking online surveys and helping companies with their market research.
How do I pick the right survey sites?
Start by joining a survey site that will connect you with the best sites. After all, how much you can earn will depend on which survey sites you sign up for. Some of those sites will pay you money every time you fill out a survey, while others use more of a sweepstakes approach, and offer cash and prize draws to those who fill out their surveys.
The sites that we recommend will help you find surveys that pay real cash for surveys. Many other sites will send you surveys that offer prizes and points, so you need to be careful.
No matter which site you sign up for, though, they ultimately all work the same way. You tell them your basic information and then they start sending you surveys whenever they become available.
How will it work?
First you join the survey site. Then, you’ll get access to a list of pre-screened survey companies which in turn will send you the surveys.
You sign up for several of those companies and fill out your profile with as much information as you can. This will help the site in deciding which surveys to send to whom.
Do all survey companies pay cash?
No they don’t. we will be sure to steer you towards survey companies that have lots of cash-paying surveys and away from those that don’t.
How much can I earn?
The amount you will receive for each survey or market research exercise varies between sites and countries, and it depends on the amount of time each one will take you. One site pays between $4 and $50 which is about average, although most surveys will be at the lower end of the scale. Of course, you can fill in several surveys per hour, so the earnings can add up.
Can I answer the surveys any time I want?
Yes you can. However, you should know that you’re usually competing with other survey takers. Each survey may only need to be answered by a set number of people and they often send it to more than is needed to make sure they get enough replies. The sooner you can complete each one and send it back, the better – and the faster your money will add up too.
Is there anything else I need to know?
Make sure you set up a new email account purely for use with your survey sites. After all, you will be getting lots of emails to plough through, and you don’t want them all going into your normal accounts. That way, you won’t have to sort through them to find your personal email. You also don’t risk missing a potentially lucrative survey in an inbox full of personal email.

« Back to More Ways To Make Money Make Money Taking Paid Online Surveys – Free Membership

Are you looking for a legitimate way to make money online? Maybe you want some extra spending money. Or perhaps you need the money to pay bills. Either way, getting paid for filling out simple surveys can be a fun and lucrative way to earn that extra cash.
In fact, there’s quite a lot of money to be had — and the cool thing is that you can earn it in your spare time. Any time you can spare a few minutes — or a few hours, you can make money.
It’s easy too. Once you have signed up with the right survey companies, all you have to do is check your email and pick the best surveys, and you’re off to earning money every time you fill in the blanks.
Want to get started making money doing online surveys right away? Visit SurveyMastermind and enter your details. (It’s a completely Free service). Then you will start receiving surveys to fill out and start earning money. Click Here to get started now!
And if you’re wondering why anyone would care about your opinion, let alone pay you good money for it, read on. There’s a reason why you can make real money with surveys:
Countless companies, including the largest international corporations, are desperately trying to find out what consumers want. And they’re willing to pay a whole lot of money for market research.
But they still have a problem. How can they connect with you, the consumer? It’s not all that easy, so they hire survey companies to help them find out what people think about their products and what they would be most likely to buy in the future. They also want to know what it will take to get people to buy…
And if you sign up, you’ll become part of that cutting edge market research.
It’s really cool. You may have the chance to find out about new products long before they actually become available in stores. You might get to play video games that haven’t even been released yet. And you might get to watch trailers for movies that haven’t even finished filming yet. And the best part…. you get paid for your “efforts.”
That’s because paying for you to take surveys is the quickest and easiest way for a company to get the information and feedback they need. And believe it or not, even when they pay thousands of people several dollars each for fill it in even one quick survey, it’s cheaper (and more effective) for them than many other forms of market research. And it’s way cheaper than making a costly mistake.
Remember the NEW Coke? What a disaster that was! And it would have been so easy to prevent. All they had to do was ask people what they thought of the idea and they would have known better than to mess with a tried and true formula.
But noooo. The company executives thought they knew what was best — and they fell flat on their face.
So surveys can be essential for a company’s survival. And they know it and are willing to pay for it. So why not let them pay you?
Now you’re probably wondering what it will take to connect with those big companies and get paid for sharing your opinion?
All you have to do is find the right surveys… And the easiest way to do that is to join a club that specializes in helping consumers like you and me to hook up with the surveys that pay the most money.
We have searched the internet and found what we believe to be the best sites for online surveys. Unlike a lot of other survey sites out there, it’s a Free Service. Not only that, but they also specialize in connecting you with surveys that actually pay.
And as soon as you join and sign up with the companies they recommend, you will start receiving surveys to fill out… and start earning.

“How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing”

How would you like to earn a little extra cash each month? Or even replace your income, working less to make more money…

For anyone wanting to make money online, affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to get started. Affiliate marketing is the act of referring online shoppers to various products and gaining a percentage of the sale in return. As an affiliate marketer, you are given your own links to a product so the seller knows when a customer you referred buys their product.
So what exactly are the benefits of affiliate marketing? There are dozens. Many sellers offer great incentives to affiliate marketers, with some offering as much as 50% commissions on products you refer customers to. This means you can make money on the side (or even replace your entire income if you become successful at it). This is one of the legitimate ways to bring in a passive income, as people from all around the world are buying products online at every minute of the day. You don’t have to develop any products yourself, either. It’s very easy to find outlets in which to plug in your links (oftentimes for free!). And make great money.


Writing articles related to the products you’re trying to market can be very beneficial in many ways. One, this builds your online presence, and thus, your credibility. Writing articles on one subject but with many angles will help you understand exactly what the product you’re affiliate marketing is all about, and help you to identify your target audience. Also the more articles you write, the more people will know about you, which will be great later down the road when you’re ready for your own website.
Writing blog articles for free in exchange for being allowed to include links to your products can be helpful in that you will have full access to each blogger’s followers. This way, you won’t have to go out and find your own customers, you just market to people who are already interested in the subject and are web-savvy (a must for anyone who would consider buying products online).
There are also article sites that will allow you to include links to your products at the bottom of the article, and better still: some sites might even pay you small fees for your articles. The key to attracting as many customers as possible is writing a fantastic article that isn’t too sales-pitchy and showing them how their lives can be even more enriched if they check out the products you have listed.
One day, you’re ultimately going to want to take the leap and get your own website. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just something simple enough for customers to navigate easily. Here, you can have your own store with links to the various products you’re marketing, as well as build a customer base through blogging. This opens multiple channels of communication with millions of potential consumers. Combined with social media marketing in order to get even more people connected, you can eventually have great success with affiliate marketing, as long as you choose quality products to market and sell them effectively.

Making Money Online:How To Earn Money From Twitter

There has been almost one million + articles written on making money online. While every niche is filled with more people than it can handle, there is still one field about which people don’t know about .Twitter as a micro blogging service created a revolution in the world of social network, & people started to explore the way to use twitter not just keeping up with friends but to do things like marketing products, making sales, earning money through twitter & lots of other stuff as well. In this post I have shared some of the tips that will help you to earn money using Twitter.
These are some good ways to earn money using Twitter, but I suggest you don’t over do it as you would look like a spammer & no one likes to get spam not even on their Twitter Timeline. So use this method cautiously

Affiliate Advertisement

If you are connected with many affiliates to sell their product and services, you can use Twitter account to tweet your affiliate links to your followers & get paid for the selling product. Be cautious using this method, see that you are not breaking the terms of service agreement.

Increasing Traffic

This is indirect method of monetizing Twitter. Many people use this method effectively to send huge amount of traffic to their website which in turn generates revenue from the ads you post on your website.

Look For Leads

When I was working as an marketing executive I had used Twitter to find potential leads for the company. Twitter Advance Search offers some best method to find people who are looking for services & products. This is an indirect method but still you can try it.

Get Paid To Tweet

This is one of the easiest way of making money on Twitter. You Don’t need to have a website, product or services to earn money, It’s one of the direct way of earning money through Twitter. There are various sites that offers services where you can get paid-per-tweet. Following list of website that offers such services.
SponsoredTweets.com
Its one of the most used website that offers pay-per-tweets services. I have personally used this website to monetize my twitter account & found it to be working & useful. Even many of the celebrities are using Sponsored Tweets Services.
Ad.ly
Ad.ly is another website which offers similar services. Recently it has also included MySpace to its network. Ad.ly algorithm automatically calculates the amount that you will be paid per tweet. It depends on the factor like number of followers & how often you tweet.

Sell Twitter Related Services

If you are designer you can offer services like creating custom professional twitter background you can use your own background to promote it as a service. Also if you know how to get mass follower & influence people on twitter account you can provide services like Twitter profile management & become  face of a brand in your local area.

Sell Your Product & Services

Selling your product & services through twitter is an also effective way of making money on twitter. You can use Twitter Advance Search option to find out people that are looking for product or services that you are offering & you can directly get in contact with them offering your services.

How to Make Money With Twitter

Yes, it's no secret that Twitter can be a tremendous time-suck. But imagine getting paid for wasting those precious minutes of your day. Thanks to companies that are desperate to reach consumers in the social-media crowd, it's now possible to make a buck or two — or much more — on Twitter. A company called IZEA, which made its name connecting bloggers with companies willing to compensate them for plugs on their sites, has set up a similar service for the Twittersphere. At the appropriately named site Sponsored Tweets, Twitter users can sign in, set the price they want companies to pay them for the privilege of tweeting an ad on their behalf, and wait for the offers to come in. "I'm a stay-at-home mom who uses Twitter while the kids are napping," says Jocelyn French, mother of a 2-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter. Through Sponsored Tweets, she has tweeted on behalf of Kmart, a parenting website and a college-information site, among others, each for $1 a pop. "I figure, hey, why not get paid at the same time?" French says.

Ted Murphy, founder and CEO of IZEA, says more than 7,000 Twitter users have signed up for Sponsored Tweets in its first month. Murphy says about 500 advertisers, mostly small- to medium-size businesses, plus a handful of Fortune 500 companies, are using the platform. Marketers have access to the entire database of tweeters and can select whom they want to pay and how much they're willing to dish out. Compensation is based on a user's expertise or passion, how many followers that person has and other metrics, like how often the tweeter's followers click to links posted on his or her Twitter page. Murphy says he has paid more than $100,000 to Twitter users in his site's first month of operation. As commission, he charges companies 15% to 50% of their payments to the microbloggers.

For users like French, sponsored Twitter messages are a way to pocket spare change on the side. But for many others, this movement of marketers into the Twittersphere could be another reason to despise the whole Twitter craze. It's painful enough to get regular updates on your neighbor's dinner plans. What if he started littering your inbox with product pitches? "Sponsored Tweets is controversial," acknowledges Robin Dance, a part-time fundraiser and blogger from Chattanooga, Tenn., who has amassed an impressive 2,800-plus-strong Twitter following and has also tweeted for Kmart. "I've had good friends and fellow bloggers say they have no use for Sponsored Tweets, and will un-follow me if I use it. They say I'm selling out, that it's Twitter blasphemy." If anything, Twitter is supposed to be real — at times, perhaps too real (no, I did not need to know the details of your stomach virus). That could be lost if it gets commercialized. "How do you preserve the authenticity of the conversation?" asks Pete Blackshaw, a brand strategist and social-media expert for Nielsen Online. "That's what everyone is struggling with."
For example, tweets that are sponsored raise the messy issue of disclosure. If someone speaks highly about a product on Twitter, don't followers have a right to know if that messenger is a compensated mouthpiece? Murphy insists that all tweets that flow through his site will carry some form of disclosure. For example, French's Kmart tweet reads: "Bluelight Special Alert: This Saturday at Kmart all patio furniture is 70% off! For more deals follow http://bit.ly/tupjE (sponsored)." Others include signposts like "#ad." But within a 140-character limit for all tweets, is there truly enough room to clearly spell out the relationship between Kmart and the Twitter user? It's all too easy for a reader to gloss over the "sponsored" tag at the end of the message, or not fully comprehend what it signifies. "I don't think we've cracked the code on disclosure," says

Even with full disclosure, paid tweets carry risks for brands. If it's clear that a company is paying a Twitter user to put in a good word for them, will the message ring true — or reek of desperation? "Oh no," says Tom Aiello, spokesman for Sears Holdings Corp., Kmart's parent company. "A lot of brands have had successful campaigns go through the paid side." Still, brand strategists recommend that companies tread into the Twittersphere lightly. Real word of mouth is much more valuable. "I have urged clients to be very cautious about pay-to-say on Twitter," says Blackshaw. "Get the word out naturally. There's lots of love on the organic side; go for that first."

Tweeters must be careful too. Stuffing your Twitter feed with advertisements is a good way to lose followers — and even real friends. "I do understand the arguments against Sponsored Tweets," says Dance, the Tennessee blogger who plans to use the service (she won't disclose her price). "But I'm not going to be flooding someone's Twitter stream. There's nothing subversive about it. It's just a little payback for the four years of my life I've invested in my blog."

How to Make Money With Twitter

Everyone seems to like twitter these days which is a really cool way of staying in touch with your customers, friends & colleagues. Basically twitter has presented itself as a micro-blogging platform where a user can shout out anything they want to his ‘followers’ within the limit of 140 characters.


I have just started twittering since last month (*yes I’m pretty late starter!) because initially by looking at it for the very first time, I couldn’t find any ‘value’ that it has for my work & my social life. However after reading a convincing post by Aaron Wall, I thought of giving twitter a try. Since then onwards I have been using twitter all day long, just to keep track of some of the leading experts in the Internet & Search Marketing field as well as to have some ‘fun’ with my online buddies. Anyway the whole point of doing this post is to highlight some of the key monetization elements that an individual can explore using twitter. I assume you have the basic knowledge of what twitter is and how it works, so I will directly deep into some ideas which can make you earn money from your twitter.

• Direct Advertisement – If a lot of people are following you in ‘twitter’ or in other words if you have a ‘wide reach’ to a large number of twitter users, you can probably look into direct advertisements for monetization.

• Recommendation – You can recommend a particular product or service on behalf of your advertisers & peruse your followers to take an ‘action’.
• Promotion – You can help your advertiser to promote a new product or service to your twitter followers.

It works pretty much like niche marketing because, say if you are an Internet Marketer, It is very likely that most of your followers in Twitter are also from the same area which is why they have ‘followed’ you in the first place.

Affiliate Marketing – I was listening to Shoemoney’s podcast yesterday where he talked about how affiliate marketing can actually be blended within Twitter.

• Affiliate Links – If you are recommending a Product or a Service to your followers, you can always embed your affiliate link in your tweet. (e.g. Using a service like TinyUrl.com)
• Sales Pages – Instead of taking your followers to another website using your affiliate link, you might just want to promote your own product & services and sell them directly via your sales / landing page.

This is an area where every one can really look into. For instance say when one of your followers is asking for suggestion to choose a web host, you can always suggest him the best one from your experience but at the same time use your affiliate link which can earn you some quick cash.

Paid Review– This is pretty much like the direct advertisement, however the only difference would be, instead of blindly suggesting a product or a service to someone, you can actually do some ‘paid reviews’.

• Product – You can do a paid review about a particular product (e.g. Internet Marketing software)
• Services – You can do a paid review about services that your advertiser offers. (E.g. SEO Services, Web Hosting Services etc.)
• People – You can also do a paid review about people. For instance, maybe you can review someone’s web design skills, or you may promote someone’s ‘twitter’ account for instance.

Sponsored Contest– An advertiser may want to run a contest via a popular twitter user to get feedback about his product & services or just to create some brand awareness.

• Feedback – Example – “What New features would you like to see in Product X”?
• Brand Awareness– Example- “Describe product X in 140 Characters” or “Tell us why you like product X within 140 Characters”. The best answer can be given a cool prize sponsored by the advertiser.

Sponsored Advertisements– There isn’t must difference between this & the direct advertisement. However when I was creating the mind map, this ‘branch’ did somehow pop in, so have decided to include it. I guess the main difference would be that all the tweets which are actually sponsored advertisements can get a predefined prefix which will help your followers to identify them as ads.

• Auto Ads – There can be a mechanism or a ‘new’ 3rd party service which can actually help you to distribute or Tweet the “Ads” when you are ‘not’ tweeting or say when you are idle. An ad interval can also be set so that your frequent sponsored ads don’t annoy your followers.
• Sponsored Actions– Well this might sound like a weird idea but, I feel that some aggressive marketers might like it. Example – “I Love #Google. Re-tweet this message and WIN yourself a GPhone”. Since a hash-tag is used, all the massages can be tracked using that and a lucky winner can actually be picked from the pool.

Some of you may think that all these ‘monetizing’ options can actually turn twitter into an ‘evil’ place and slowly reduce its value. But let’s face it, if you aren’t fully utilizing all the areas of twitter today, somebody else will – tomorrow. But of course you should set a ‘limit’ on how many ‘such tweets’’ you are going to do on a day, so that your followers still consider you as a valuable contact rather than a commercial junkie.

How To Become The Next YouTube Star Making $100,000 Plus Per Year

  YouTube isn't profitable yet, but that doesn't mean you can't make money on the video sharing site.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         we recently profiled 10 YouTube stars who have already figured out how to make hundreds of thousands of dollars off their videos. We estimated one star, Philip DeFranco, makes $181,000 per year.
As easy as folks like Philip make it look, however, the road to making money on YouTube isn't smooth. It takes plenty of time, patience, and luck to see a payout of any sort.
To make life easier for the average YouTube user, we've created a step-by-step guide on what you need to do to become the next Philip DeFranco and begin making money on YouTube.

STEP 1: Make an awesome video:

Get a video camera

Record puppies, kittens, and anything else that can turn a video into a viral hit

Edit your raw footage into a short, watchable video

5 beginner tips-for-making-a-professional-quality-online-video

If you're looking to expand your business's customer base, you've probably heard the same advice a million times: create a Facebook page and open a Twitter account. While it is important to create and maintain a strong presence in social media, it is also important to find a way to stand out from the rest.
One way to do this is by creating a video and uploading it onto another social media site, like YouTube, or adding it to your blog to make things more interesting.
For someone who’s never held a camera, figuring out how to get started can be daunting. But, once you understand a few basics, you can produce a great-looking video on your own.
Here are five basic tips for beginners looking to make a professional-quality video

Shoot with the right equipment:

First, plan out what kind of video you want to make.
If you’re going for the classic home-video look, something as simple as a Flip camera (which, given it’s size and price, the result should suffice) will work.
If you want to upgrade your audience’s viewing experience, the person behind the camera should have steady hands, or you should use a tripod.

Pay attention to the audio!

Image: woodleywonderworks via Flickr

Anyone who watched the World Cup certainly knows how annoying the vuvuzelas were as they buzzed through every match. Your video could sound like a World Cup broadcast, too, if you don't pay attention to the audio. Whether it's wind blowing into the microphone or too much background noise, bad audio can ruin a good video.
If your camera has a headphone jack, plug in and do some sound checks.

Watch what you're filming

Beginner videographers should never shoot with a window in the background. The camera, other people and objects could reflect off the glass, making for an awkward video. Light may also come through the window causing your subject to be backlit – meaning that the object or person you're shooting will look like they have a shadow cast over them.
Lighting is important, but it doesn't have to be perfect. Just make sure your subject isn't backlit or so bright that they're reflecting light back to the camera

Edit to your audience:

 There's a reason why YouTube gets over 2 billion views a day. People want to watch videos, but they have short attention spans; so, they skip from video to video until they find something interesting. If you're not shooting a one-take video, be ready to take some time out of your day to edit. Rarely will someone watch a 5-minute plus video all the way through if they don't know what it's about.

Upload and distribute through social networks:

Once you're satisfied with your piece, export the video and upload it onto YouTube. You can't expect the world to fall in love with your video if you just let it sit there; so, tweet out the link to all your Twitter followers, post the video on your Facebook page, and email it out to anyone who you know would be interested (but no spamming!). Even if your video doesn't sweep the nation and go "viral," it's almost a guarantee that through social media distribution, people outside your current customer base will hear about your business.

STEP 2: Upload your video to YouTube

STEP 2: Upload your video to YouTube

While waiting for your video to upload, come up with a catchy yet simple and easily searchable title. For example, "Charlie bit my finger," "Sneezing Panda," and "David after Dentist" are legendary viral videos with self-explanatory titles that seem to roll off the tongue.

STEP 3: Repeat steps 1 and 2

What separates a major YouTube Partner like Philip DeFranco from the average YouTube user is that the former knows how to distribute and market their videos to maximize viewership. If you ever want to be a YouTube Partner, you have to "regularly upload videos that are viewed by thousands of YouTube users."
So, keep on making videos and distributing them to social networks and media

STEP 4A: Check your inbox

STEP 4A: Check your inbox

If one of your videos does well, YouTube will send you an email with this subject line: "Apply for revenue sharing for your video (Video Title)." However, if approved, you can only make money from the video specified in the email.

STEP 4B: Apply through YouTube's Partner Program page

STEP 4B: Apply through YouTube's Partner Program page

If you think you finally have enough video uploads AND views, you can apply directly for partnership on YouTube's Partner Program page. Once approved, you'll be able to turn on revenue sharing for all your videos (as long as they meet the criteria), and you can even rent out your videos.

STEP 5: Start the application process

Read through the YouTube Partnership Program tutorial, and double-check that you haven't violated ANY of their rules.

NOTE: If YouTube rejects your application...

" ... you will not be able to apply to the program again for 2 months."

STEP 6: Create a Google AdSense Account

Once you're done reviewing the guidelines, you need to link a Google AdSense account to your YouTube account. This is how Google/YouTube will pay you for your awesome video(s).

NOTE: YouTube will only pay you once your video makes $100...

STEP 7: Be patient

YouTube could take up to 2 weeks to review your video.

STEP 8A: Start making money!

Soulja Boy

Once you're approved, you can turn on overlay ads that pop up on the bottom of a video, banner ads that appear next to the video, and/or pre-roll ads that play in front of your video.

STEP 8B: Go back to Step 1

Image: iStockphoto

If YouTube rejected your application, you obviously didn't follow one of these steps. You have another two months before you can apply again; so, get back to working on your videos.

If you followed these steps, you could end up like...

... The YouTube Stars Making $100,000 Per Year