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If You Are From India…

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if you are from IndiaIf you are from India, then you may be an outsourcer who works at link building via blog commenting.

If that is the case you are in luck here!   You may also share this site and this post with other blog commenting outsourcers from India.     This goes for blog commenting outsourcers from other countries as well!

You can safely post your comments here, provided that you follow these 2 easy guidelines.   

1.  Have a picture associated with the email address you are using for commenting.   You can have a picture associated with your email address for free at Gravatar.com.

2.  Post only unique,  thoughtful comments that are related the blog page you are commenting on.   These comments should not be generic, like, “Great post, I think I’ll share it”  – or anything like that!    Instead, your comment should be intelligent, unique and it should show that you read and understood the page you are commenting on.

If you can do the above two things,  you are  free to comment all you want on this site.   If the above two items are not followed, you risk having your comment flagged as spam and deleted.

But, really, it is quite easy to follow the above guidelines, you should have no trouble at all doing so.

It Is Easy To Find Posts To Comment On

There are plenty of posts and topics on this blog to comment on.  You can find them by using the search site function (top left sidebar – at the time I wrote this).

Leave as many comments as you would like – so long as they follow the simple guidelines above.

Share The Word About This Site

Make sure that all of your blog commenting friends and all of the blog commenting outsourcing companies know that this blog is a good and friendly place to comment on, provided the above guidelines are followed.

I understand the importance of the work that you do. This blog is a great place to carry out that work.  You may also add the site: tobeinformed.com to your list as well.

That’s It.  Now Comment Away!

 

PS:  It is really easy to do.  Be sure to let the other people you know about this good and free deal.

How I Make Money On The Internet

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how I earn a living olineFull Time For Over 3 Years Now

I thought it would be interesting to share with you how I earn a full time living on the Internet.

I have not had a regular ‘job’ for a little over three years now.  This is because I was laid off from my job right at the very end of 2008.

But, this does not mean that I do not work.  I probably put more work and effort into my business than I ever did for any other work I have been involved with in the past.

This is a key point.  If you want to make money on the Internet, you will (most likely) need to work hard for that income.

Fortunately, I had already been earning a part time income on the Internet before I was laid off.

I found that my previous employer did not seem to care about my well being at all.   It was totally up to me to make something happen.

Having lost my income from that job, I decided to put a lot more effort into my online business.

I continued to search for a job as well.  I never did find one.  But, my Internet business fortunately turned into a full time income.

The drawback is that my income goes up and down and I am never sure that it is completely stable.   I no longer have that benefit of a set paycheck from my employer every 2 weeks.

I know a lot of people want to know how to make money online.   I understand.  But I want to be very upfront with you in letting you know that you (most likely) will have to work very hard for any money that you earn on the Internet.  As far as I can tell, there are no short cuts.    In many ways, it could be harder than just working a regular job for someone else.

Having said that, I will share with you the  ways that I personally generate revenue on the Internet.

 

Multiple Revenue Streams

The first concept you should probably be aware of is that you need multiple sources of Internet income.  This is because any one individual income stream can increase or decrease in any given month.

Perhaps your E Commerce store does well one month but poorly the next.   Then your affiliate income may fare better or worse on any given month.   Having multiple revenue streams can help to even this out a bit.

However, you might be subject to fear, as I am, when several income streams decline at the same time.   So you can see, making money online is not always the dream that people have.  The grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence.

Therefore, it is really a good idea to not rely on a single revenue stream.

I do not really know why these ups and downs happen.   I suspect that people who own businesses understand exactly what I am talking about.  But for me, coming from an ’employee’ mentality, it has been one of the biggest shocks that I have had to get used to.

There was a time when I would freak out if sales were low for even one day.  It took my mind a very long time to get used to the idea that revenues fluctuate on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

You cannot depend on a weekly paycheck when you run your own business.  Therefore, your only option is to work hard enough that you can be assured to surpass a certain minimal level that you set for yourself.  The question becomes ‘when’ you have reached that point.

The answer will vary depending on many factors that you may not even be able to pinpoint.  On top of that, these factors may be things that you can only influence but may not be able to fully control!

Scared yet?  You should be, because running an online business or any other business for that matter is not a walk in the park on a fine spring day.   You will most likely worry when your full time living depends on your business.

If I were to have several ‘bad’ months, I would certainly consider getting a job again.  But for now,  it seems to be working.   However, I am aware that things could fall apart, or conversely, get better at any time.   There is no way to accurately predict what will happen in a few months or even next month.

These are some of the difficulties that inherently exist when you try to make your living with your own business online or perhaps even offline.

 

List Of Revenue Streams

I will make a simple list next and expound on each item further down the page.

This list and the explanations are in no particular order.   In other words, they are not listed in order of greatest to smallest or anything like that.

1.  Book Sales

2. Product Sales from my E commerce Store

3. Affiliate Programs

4. Advertising Revenue

These are the main categories.   Now let’s talk about each one.   If you have questions, use the comment section below to ask or comment.

 

Book Sales

Creating books can be a good revenue source.   Of course, it will depend on the popularity of your book(s).  But, you can compensate for lack of popularity by creating more books.

It is not very likely that a single book will allow you to live happy and free.   As the number of books that you draw revenue from increases the greater your potential for profit and possibly greater stability.

Stephen King makes a LOT of money from his books.  There are others,  but there are also many who make very little, if anything on their book sales.

Here again, much depends on factors that you have only varying degrees of influence upon.

For a better understanding of why some people are successful and others are not, I suggest reading the book Zhuan Falun by Li, Hongzhi.   He reveals what I believe are the real reasons for the variations in personal success.   It is not anything like the self-help gurus imagine.

When you have a better understanding about how the world really works, your perspective will become more accurate.

I have two books that currently bring in revenue for me.    I may create  some more in the future though.   I have been thinking about taking old blog posts and making them into an e-book.  Why not?

1. Currently, I have a paper back book entitled,  What You Should Know About Gum Disease,  which is available on my ecommerce website as well as on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  It is also available on Kindle

This book is also available on a lot of other online retail sites as well.  In addition, most ‘real world’ book stores will be more than happy to order the book for you.

2. The second book I have is entitled  How To Stop Gum Disease In 4 Easy Steps  and is available on Kindle  and Nook for a price.  It is also available for free in exchange for an email submit.

These books also help bring traffic and sales to my Ecommerce store.

For those who shun Kindle, Nook and Ipad devices,  I sell a bundled package of these two books in .pdf form at https://www.gingivitiskiller.com.  This .pdf file format is readable on every computer with the free adobe reader software.    The difference is that you can read these .pdf files on your computer without the need for a special device, such as a  Kindle or Nook.

 

Self Publishing has Advantages and Disadvantages

When you go through a publishing company, the publishing house or company takes the vast majority of what is earned on each book sale.

An author might typically get a dollar or two for each book sold.

When you self-publish, assuming you have done it correctly, you can make a lot more.   For example,  I currently enjoy about $10 for each copy of What You Should Know About Gum Disease that is legally sold anywhere in the world.

The dark side of self publishing is that you must also be responsible for ALL of the promotion.  A big publishing house has established methods to help.  But, they typically look for author’s that already have a name or an audience.   This is because they worry about whether a book will make them enough money or not.

This also explains why it is difficult get your book accepted by a big publishing house.

If you would like a longer post on self-publishing,  let me know in the comment section below.

 

Product Sales

There is nothing quite like selling physical products of quality to customers that really want them and are happy to purchase them.

My online store is Toothy Grins Store  and we also have a great affiliate program.You can help to spread the word about better dental health and earn a commission at the same time.

Notice that the niche of my online E Commerce story closely matches and complements the theme of my books.  A wise entrepreneur (or future one) will take note of that fact.   It is not a coincidence.

You may have heard the term ‘synergy’ before.  Sometimes you can obtain a synergistic effect when you have related revenue streams.

‘Synergistic’ just means that the whole is greater than its isolated parts.  If I get more sales at my E Commerce store  because of my related books and vice-verse, than either part alone, then my business is experiencing a form of ‘synergy’.

If you would like to read a longer post on selling the E Commerce way,  let me know in the comment section below.

 

Affiliate Programs

I earn from affiliate programs in two basic ways.  The above affiliate program helps Toothy Grins Store generate revenue allowing other affiliates to earn a commission for the sales that they refer to our site. This is a win-win situation.  The affiliate earns money (currently around 12% of the sale(s)) and my E Commerce store earns money for my business as well.

For those who worry about search engine positions, it is great to have affiliates because they represent a pathway to sales that you would not otherwise have or make.

However, I also enjoy the other side of the coin as well.   I am an affiliate in several programs.  In this situation, I make a commission for selling products for other businesses.

With one particular program, I use coupons to help sell products for dental health and for combating bad breath in particular.   Using these coupons has been very helpful to me as an affiliate and for the customers who are eager to save money on their purchases.  (Please don’t steal those coupons).

The coupons provide a win-win-win situation for the customer, the merchant and the affiliate.  The customer gets a valuable coupon that saves them money, and the affiliate gets commission earnings on a sale that makes money. Finally, the merchant gets a new customer and adds their name to an ever growing customer list that they continue to market to for years down the road.

By the way, this is an added benefit for a merchant to have an affiliate program.  Your list of buying customers grows with each new lead or first time purchase.

Win-win situations are a good path forward for your business as well as all other aspects of your life. You might consider seeking out as many win-win situations as you possibly can.   At the very least, you will feel better in that you are truly helping others instead of just worrying about your next paycheck.

It is the takers in this world that degrade the quality of  life on Earth for all of us.

I think it is an important aspect of earning an income from your business that you exchange value in return for the revenue you enjoy.   You want to feel good about what you do as much as possible.   Insuring there are win-win situations in place is a good way to do this.

I suppose you could say that the more win-win situations you can create, the greater your income can grow.

Affiliate programs can be an interesting source of revenue.   Although, there are pros and cons to being an affiliate.  This is similar to most things in this world.
One Potential Problem For Affiliates

Affiliate programs do not always track sales well.   You can never be sure if that is due to technology or some other reason.

It does not pay to be suspicious, as you can waste a lot of mental energy and time on it.   However,  you also should be aware of the potential for abuse.   It is not that such abuse has never taken place.  Keep that in mind when finding and working with affiliate programs.

You can ask questions on this topic in the comment section below.

 

Advertising Revenue

I have several sites that allow advertisers to place their ads on them.   This type of revenue generation is difficult to achieve because it requires that you have an audience – a.k.a. traffic.   The more traffic you have the better you will do in monetizing advertising.

Without a significant amount of traffic, ads will probably not generate very much revenue for you.   Although, I suppose there could be situations I am not aware of.  Advertisers generally do not take out advertising to lose money.  They want to obtain customers.  If advertising on your site is not cost-effective many advertisers will not be willing to stay.

Most of the time, this means that you have to be able to offer enough traffic for it to be worthwhile to your advertisers.   Again, exceptions and special situations may exist where it works out.  But I am just speaking in general terms here.

With little to no  traffic, it may not be worth your time to put ads on your site.

Some very popular sites make a lot of money from their advertisers.

 

Conclusion

It is possible to make a living online.   However, you should be aware that even if you have an income stream from the Internet, it could change or decrease at any time.

Working on the Internet, generally speaking,  requires a great deal of work and effort.   It is not a true passive income as you must continuously work.

how i make money onlinePerhaps there is a point when that changes, but I have no idea where that point is or might be.   Frankly,  I think you will never be free or absolved from the responsibility of putting some kind of effort into your Internet business.

Before you can even think of  hiring workers, you have to first achieve a level of income that covers all of your personal expenses and then have enough surplus left over where you can afford the cost of hiring others.

I have not reached the point of hiring others.   I am only able to cover my own expenses and cost of living at this point.    I still am trading my time (on the Internet) for money.   Therefore, this is NOT a passive form of income for me.

In addition, I cannot be 100% sure that it will continue to work for me in the future.  There may come a time when I will need to seek offline income as well.

If you don’t have an existing business on the Internet, you will need to work and (most likely) work hard to get it to to be profitable for you.

If you had an illusion that making money online is (generally) easy to do,  I hope that I was able to dispel that myth for you.

If you still want to make money online:  Are you prepared for the challenge? 

 

Share your thoughts and opinions below.

Related Posts:

Monetizing with E Commerce

Affiliate Marketing

Traffic Through Quality Blog Comments

Outsourcing To The Philippines – Should You Believe The Hype?

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I’ve hired several contract workers from the Philippines to do work for me and sometimes I have been happy but I have also been very unhappy.

Do not believe the hype that Filipino workers are honest and hard workers. I’ve run across a couple that were but I’ve also run across several that I believe have outright lied to me.

If you are going to outsource to the Philippines (or anywhere else) for that matter, here are some tips that might help.

Control! You have to control your workers by setting the standard of what they will be doing. Tell them exactly when you expect them to work and make sure that they are logged into to your favorite chat the entire time they are working so that you can communicate with them.

Although seeing them on Chat doesn’t guarantee they are in front of the computer, if you have any doubts, you or your outsourcing manager could just send them a quick query to see if they are there.

I’ve had Filipinos lie to me and I’ve seen the same story come up with two different outsourcers who didn’t know each other and I was having production or quality problems with both of them. They both would take time off and say something like, “my mother wouldn’t let me work”. Yet, neither one of them lived with their mother.

I also experienced very low production from a worker. She would do about half the work required and then would say something like, I’ll do the rest tomorrow. The problem was that she would get further and further behind. After a month of work, she had actually accomplished less than half of what she agreed to.

My speculation is that she may have been working more than one job, it is difficult to know for sure. She begged me for a second chance, and when I gave her one, she still didn’t complete her work for the next two days. Then she wanted yet another chance.

At that point it become fairly obvious that she was not being fully honest about her schedule and / or her ability to complete the work. This time she had the excuse of being sick. Maybe she was. The point being that there were far too many excuses over the course of a month to warrant continuing to pay her.

This is why I say you sometimes have to set strict guidelines to counteract this type of behavior. It seems she had trouble juggling her time between my work and whatever else she was working on. When asked she would always say I was her only client. But it seems to me that if you have only one client, that you should make that client very happy and she did not.

It really seemed her time was divided elsewhere. So be aware that the hype about outsourcing is just focused on the positive, but there is also a negative. If you can get the work done in house, where you have more control, then my opinion is that you should!

Do not misunderstand me, there are indeed many hard working Filipino outsource workers. You just have to be careful. Monitor, monitor, monitor! If you are not getting the results that you want, then you may consider making ‘adjustments’. You might find some workers here.

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Marketing Fusion Secrets

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Many people on the Internet are familiar with marketing online. In fact, many people make their living that way. On the other side of that coin, there are countless numbers of people who don’t make their money from the Internet. Many of those would like to.

Internet Marketers that are successful have skills and put many resources, techniques and ideas together to form a powerful business that can drive sales and make profits. Others struggle to make an extra three hundred dollars per month. What is the difference between these two groups? Could it be information?

Maybe it is having access to information and experience that others don’t. There is more to running a successful business than you general hear in most e-books out there. There is a learning curve, there is an experiential factor and maybe there is a luck or perhaps fate – depending on your own personal belief system. Perhaps not everyone can be successful no matter how hard they try.

However, there are a few people out there that may be destined for success. Coming across the right information is important to their pending success.

Perhaps not all Internet marketers make ALL of their money online. What if they were using offline methods to drive customers to their websites with open wallets? What if they were bypassing the Internet completely and doing direct sales to customers. They could be using online methods to grab customer addresses for their offline methods.

What you have when you combine online and offline methods for marketing is ‘fusion marketing’. Fusion marketing is an art form that many of the really successful Internet marketers are utilizing. How do they do it, exactly?

You may be an expert at the methods you utilize to market on the Internet now, but you might know very little about this offline marketing thing. How does it work? On the other hand you may have no or very little Internet marketing experience.

What if there was a way to jump over that learning curve and get information that most people just don’t have access too? Do you think it would make a difference in how you market in the future and possibly affect your bottom line.

Well, marketing is an art form and it could be a science. This could be true in the case of those who utilize split-testing to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Success with such methods requires traffic in the first place. Taking the time to try and test out new methods could be tedious, take a long time and require an abundance of planning.

Taking a short cut would be easier, wouldn’t you agree?

David Snape invites you to discover the secrets of fusion marketing for yourself. David is also the author of What You Should Know about Gum Disease . ISBN: 978-0-9814855-0-8.


Membership Sites – A Rip Off?

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Are membership sites a rip off or the pathway to a pot of gold? 

Of course, I’m often skeptical of every new product that comes along and Jason’s site is not an exception.

I was recently perusing Jason James’ new product about membership sites.

And it struck me how incredibly brilliant and true the concept seems to be.

Think about it for a minute. 

You have an incredible opportunity for lifetime residual income with a membership
site.

Look at your self to discover the truth about the human psychology that allows this to happen.  How many times have you signed up for a magazine or a book club or some other club or organization that automatically takes a monthly payment from your credit card?

If you are like me, it has happened more than once. 

People are oftentimes lazy about shutting such things off, even after they decide that it isn’t the same value as originally perceived.  Or maybe the person is afraid to miss something good by breaking their membership off.

There is that psychology of missing out that comes into play.  Once you are in a club, you don’t often want to leave and lose the benefits and status of the club membership. You might be afraid of missing out.

You see this on the internet all of the time. You can find them all over the place. Some charge a small monthly fee of 29.00$ some charge hundreds of dollars per month for a membership.

Now imagine this. You own a membership site. You have some members.

Let’s say you have only 10 members. 

Let’s say those ten members pay you $29.00 a month for their membership.

That would be about 300$ a month of profit for you because hosting a website doesn’t cost that much.

Now that is a very small membership.  Some sites have 100s of members,  like maybe 500 members, for example.  

Let’s say 200 members for the purpose of this example.  What’s 200 and 29$?  That’s around 5800$ per month.

You don’t have to keep asking for the members money it is being debited from their credit cards monthly!

Can you say, “passive residual long term income” ? 

You know how people like routine, people will even get used to the money being removed from their credit card accounts every month.  You need only take an honest look at your own life to see how routines set in.

But wait, it gets even better.  Most membership sites charge more than 29$ per month.  Some charge hundreds per month.

Let’s say for our example that you charge $100 per month for your membership fees. 

Ok, that’s 200 members x $100 dollars per month =  $20,000 folks. Not bad, is it?

How would you like to make $20,000 per month?   Do you think that would be enough for you to live off of? 

Oh yeah . Now you are seeing the light.

Membership Sites have the potential to make you big $$$$.  And Jason has compiled information on how you can start your own Membership site.  

Now, I’m not sure what he is charging for his info.    But think about this, if he could teach you how to make big $$$$ from membership sites and he has collected all of that data on specifically how to do it, wouldn’t it be worth whatever he is charging to get your own membership site going?  

Hmmm, not a bad idea there.  I guess it might be worth it to hop over to his site and see what he has to say!

– Dave

 
 

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Affiliate Project X – For Suckers?

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Yup, “what a flashy sales page”. It gets you all excited and hyped up about…. the possibility of making a fantastic living on the Internet, more than your day job will ever pay. I thought, “here we go again”.

I’ve spent thousands on Internet Marketing Guru products. They all left me dissatisfied. Seems like none of them ever give you the big picture and the REAL steps you have to take to be an Internet winner.

Honestly, there are a couple of things that I don’t like about Project X. It is too short for one. It’s only 55 pages. What I do like about it though is that I actually learned a couple of techniques that I haven’t heard or been taught in any other guru products anywhere else.

Affiliate Project X consists of four techniques the author claims to have used to give himself big paychecks through click bank. Unlike some people, he actually shows off his paychecks on his website.

Technique three is the one I like because it doesn’t cost you anything except for a little hard work. I’m all for that, because I’m tired of spending money on every scheme that comes down the pike. I don’t mind working hard if I know or actually believe I’m going to get paid.

I learned a lot from reading the other techniques as well in Project Affiliate X. There are some really neat tricks there. If you can get a check from click bank like some of the author’s checks, it would be worth it.

Like I said before, I’m not afraid of working hard so long as I know that I’m working at something that I can reasonably expect to have success at. Nothing is worse than working hard at something that doesn’t pay in the end.

That’s why I think it might be worth the time to read and learn from affiliate project X.

Particularly if you are going to use PPC advertising as some of the techniques rely upon, you should be aware of how much you are spending on your bids. Monitor that closely.

So is affiliate project X for suckers? Possibly, if you aren’t willing to work a bit. If you are, it could be worth it to read and learn from.

With the money back guarantee (90 days through Click Bank) you can’t go wrong by giving it a try. 

You’ll know if it is going to work for you or not by then. If not, simply contact CB and ask for a refund.  When you think about it like that, there is no downside.

Read more about  Affiliate Project X

 I’ll say good bye for now.

 

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