Guest Post: This post was written by Couponing’s James Lander. Check out Couponing for deals and tips for familiarizing yourself with the couponing world.

In 1995, Craig Newmark started a small, innocuous email distribution list to help his friends connect with one another. What began as a friendly, supportive group of individuals quickly turned into what today is the 7^th most popular website in the world. Craigslist is the largest classified service available. Over 20 billion people take advantage of this free service daily for all manners of incongruous things– arranging romantic encounters, finding jobs, ranting about politics or even making money. If you are looking to supplement your income from home and have exhausted other options, you may be surprised to know there is significant money to be made on the site.

1. Polish and Shine!

One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure. Craigslist takes this cliché one step further making one man’s garbage another man’s income. There is an entire section on the site devoted to giving away old or useless items that with a little effort can be refurbished and resold. However, it’s crucial that you have the necessary repair skills in order to make this profitable. For example, if you have no idea how to reupholster a sofa, it’s probably not the best idea to spend the time picking up and lugging a ratty old piece of furniture up to your apartment. Be sure you match your skills with what you want to repair. There’s nothing worse than a house full of junk that you plan on polishing up one day…. when you get around to it!

2. Clear out your closets.

In the same manner, if you are surrounded by items you simply don’t use it is relatively easy to post your items online and profit from them.

In fact, you may be astounded at what people will give you money for. How often do you use your toaster oven? There’s a quick fifty dollars. Do you have a shelf of video games you haven’t touched in a year? List them as well. Because the service is free, you have absolutely nothing to lose by offering your belongings up to the marketplace. It’s a quick process and one that may help put some much-needed cash in your pocket.

3. Help those that can’t help themselves

As previously mentioned, it is comparatively easy to post on the list. Nevertheless, there are people out there that are lost when it comes to both computers and the English language. There is surprisingly good money to be made helping others with this process. Many people are willing to pay well to have someone else take photos of their items, write an intriguing advertisement and submit it online. If you have a decent camera and a working knowledge of writing, you can sell yourself just as easily as your old bike. This is an excellent option if you’ve already liquidated all your junk and are still looking for a few extra dollars.

4. Be gainfully employed.

If you currently hold a steady job but have the need for more income, Craigslist has a section devoted to ‘gigs’ – low paying positions that offer more experience than anything else. Obviously these jobs are not going to make anyone rich, but what they can do is provide a bit of extra pocket money as well as help you to gain contacts in your chosen field. This is of greatest benefit to those with artistic leanings or people just starting out on their chosen career paths.

5. Work within the system

Although Craigslist does not endorse it, affiliate marketing is another way many people choose to exploit the site as a source of income. Many affiliate programs allow individuals free membership, allowing them to work to promote certain companies and/or products. Each time a customer clicks on a company’s link that you’ve embedded in your Craigslist post and buys a product or signs up to receive a newsletter; the affiliate company makes a small deposit in your account. The more links you generate, the more money you earn. However, if you choose this route, be warned. If you make more than 3 posts in a day or post to more than 3 different cities you will be ‘ghosted’ – that is, your ad will be flagged and subsequently removed.

Although the CEOs of Craigslist refuse to divulge their company income, it’s estimated that they made a profit of 150 million in 2010. It’s difficult to imagine that Newmark, unassuming software engineer that he was, had even imagined that his listing would become so popular. Instead of grumbling bitterly to yourself, use his success as an inspiration. If he made that much from Craigslist, there is an excellent chance that you’ll be able to generate some sort of income, however small.

I’ve worked in online marketing for over a decade and a lot’s changed since 2000. Back then, search engine had only been widely used for a few years and many people still used the AOL portal and hyperlinks almost exclusively to find new sites. There was no social media, no site acceleration, and banner ad placements were often the result of bilateral negotiations between the publisher and the advertiser’s marketing department. The result was highly targeted ads directed at niche demographics who were already interested in the product, and this has continued today but with even more specific targeting.

As a result, online marketers have continued to have trouble getting people who haven’t even heard of their product to progress down the sales cycle even though they’ve continued to do a great job at converting leads who’ve progressed pretty far down the sales funnel into sales. That’s why I’m sharing a few techniques that online marketers can use to generate more potential leads and also funnel those early potential leads into leads and sales.

SEO: Make sure people can find you on a search engine

SEO, or search engine optimization, is optimizing your website for ranking highly on Google and other search engines. It’s a big part of almost every online marketing campaign since about 3/4ths of landings begin with a search engine query.

On-site SEO

This involves creating text content for your website and writing it in a way so that it shows up high on search engine results. For example, if you want to make a landing page about “cheap travel coupons”, then you should make a page with “cheap travel coupons” in the URL and the title, and then use the phrase “cheap travel coupons” (you can break it up a few times if the words are nearby each other) four or five times within the first two hundred words of your page. Make the landing page around a thousand words. However, it’s still unlikely to show up high on Google unless you do some off-site SEO.

Off-site SEO

This is basically building links to your pages, since search engines rank sites with lots links higher than sites without many links. If you have a page about “cheap travel coupons” then you want to build links to your landing page using the anchor text “cheap travel coupons” and make sure that the links aren’t nofollow. A “nofollow” rel attribute tells search engines to not follow a link and therefore not count it as a backlink for the purposes of search engine rankings.

Hire experts

Many inexperienced marketers make the mistake of hiring an outsourced SEO company to build backlinks for them because they offer cheaper rates. However, overseas writers are usually poor English speakers and thus can only get backlinks on low-quality spam blogs and forums. They also usually have good initial results since they can pump out links pretty fast, but eventually Google catches on and removes your site from its search index because you have too many links from low-quality spam sites. Your site will stay hidden from Google results until you remove the shoddy links, which could take months. How many potential leads are you going to get if nobody can find your site on Google?

Site acceleration

Once you’ve hired a good SEO company that gets you high-quality links on good websites, you can start focusing on how to keep people who’ve found your site there long enough. One of the most overlooked aspects in determining whether or not people leave your site shortly after landing is how fast it loads. Most potential leads are lost within eight seconds of landing so a fast-loading site can be the difference between whether your marketing site flounders or shines.

Load faster with multiple local servers

Normal websites are hosted on one server, which means that somebody in New York has to wait for a server in San Francisco to send them the website’s content across the entire United States, where there’s many points of failure that could cause your site to load slowly. However, accelerated sites are hosted on multiple servers so that people in New York receive your website from a server in New York, and people in San Francisco receive it from a server in the Bay Area.

SEO bonus

Site acceleration also helps your site show up high on search engine results because Google and other search engines favor sites that load quickly. Video loading times can be a particularly big problem for many websites, so good site acceleration services like MaxCDN inject the videos into your website from separate high-speed local servers so that they don’t weigh down your load time.

1. Network

All successful businesses share one thing in common, they network with each other. Never try to just do it all by yourself, making friends in the industry can make all the difference in whether you succeed or fail. Not only is it more fun to have people to talk to, but you can also share helpful tips and strategies that will help you both succeed.

2. Diversify

One of the most important affiliate marketing strategies, is to never put all your eggs in one basket. What would happen, if you only made money from Amazon, and you happened to live in California when they decided to can all California affiliates due to the Nexus tax law. Lesson learned, have multiple streams of income.

3. Quality versus quantity

Sure it can be tempting to try to make a quick buck, but in the long run this is not a viable strategy whatsoever. Quality always ends up paying off in the long run, whether it be dealing with customers, writing content, or link building, the fast way will make you some money in the beginning, but you’ll never be able to build a successful business from the ground up using these tactics.

4. Research

Always be sure that you are up on all of the information, and you do plenty of researching. Many people fail simply because they don’t know what to do and how to do it. Spending some time in Internet marketing forums, watching helpful YouTube videos, and reading blogs will certainly help you to really get the right affiliate marketing strategies ingrained into your head.

5. Never give up

Internet marketing is a tough game, about 90% of those who want to make money online never even make a dime. Only the strong survive, and the ones who are willing to fail repeatedly until they finally succeed. If something is not working, take a few days off, and come back with a fresh approach and a strong mindset. Do not be willing to take NO for an answer, and make it work for you. There are tons of money to be made online, and you can get a big chunk of that pie.

I hope these affiliate marketing strategies were helpful for you, they should serve to set you on the right track, right from the get-go, good luck.

Technique #1 – Forum marketing.

While this is a notorious and somewhat tedious process of getting traffic online, it works—really well. The great thing about this particular form of marketing is that you’re getting extremely targeted visitors who will convert far better than other streams of traffic. For example if you want to promote a weight loss product making helpful and informative posts on a weight loss related forum along with an affiliate link in your signature is a great way to get targeted traffic that will translate into more sales.

Technique #2 – Social media marketing.

Selling as an affiliate through social media platforms (think Twitter) is a great way to tap into groups of people who are interested in what you’re promoting. Imagine you are promoting a golf niche related product on ClickBank and you want to promote to golfers. Set up a Twitter account or Facebook fan page where you offer useful and valuable golfing related tips and advice. Every now and again offer your affiliate link and a call to action to get people interested.

Technique #3 – Take it off online.

All too often marketers forget that there’s a whole world out there that isn’t seeking products online in forums or Google search results. That being said, taking your efforts offline is a terrific way to tap into large pools of prospective customers who are looking for what you’re offering. A very common and easy to implement technique is to print out flyers promoting your affiliate link and product you’re offering and post them in targeted areas. Promoting a weight loss product? Post your flyers at a gym bulletin board. Promoting coupon offers? Post your flyers at a grocery store bulletin board.

Using the best affiliate marketing techniques to maximize your profits is important if you plan on scaling your online affiliate business. There are a lot of great ways to make more money with your internet marketing efforts and being creative has a lot to do with your level of success. Implementing any single one of the above techniques and simply scaling it out to several forums, social media sites or local bulletin boards can help you to make more money and get more eyeballs on your website.

Whether you make your living promoting affiliate products, cost per action offers or monetizing traffic through Google Adsense, it’s important to diversify your strategies and traffic sources the best you can. Try implementing the above various techniques or getting creative with your own if you feel ambitious. There are always untapped markets, audiences and wallets looking to purchase what you’re promoting.

John Abrena is a marketing consultant for Serverpoint, one of the leading dedicated server and VPS hosting providers in the world since 1998. You can follow him on twitter @johnabrena.

Choosing the right product to promote is the most important step to successful affiliate marketing. Consider the following six tips before launching your business.

1. Do Your Homework

We’ve all made bad purchases or received sub-par service and wished we had done more research before handing over our hard-earned cash. When you’ve had a bad experience, you’ve told others about it. Do you want to be the one that others complain about to their friends? Of course not.

Research potential from affiliate programs and products before signing on with a particular company. What is the merchant’s reputation with other affiliates and customers? Is the product any good? Promoting a junk product for a company that treats both affiliates and customers poorly wastes your time and energy and damages your reputation.

Choose a merchant that is responsive to both you and its customers, has a quality product, and provides excellent customer service. Money-back guarantees also often increase conversions, as customers feel more confident about opening their wallets.

Before making a decision, request a review copy or sample of the product and try it out for yourself. Meet with the product owner via Skype and ask questions about the product and the business. E-mail questions to customer support to gauge their responsiveness. If you’re not convinced the product is right for you, walk away. There are plenty of other opportunities.

2. Be Passionate

It’s simple: If you don’t like the product, you’re not going to sell it successfully. Choose an affiliate product that you feel passionate about and that gets you so excited that you can’t wait to tell others about it. Your enthusiasm will leap off the page, making it impossible for readers not to open their wallets.

Showing passion for the product entails knowing about the product. Learn the ins and outs of what it does and how it works. If you can’t figure it out, or you don’t really like it, then there’s no way you can create passionate, compelling content that will lead to conversions.

3. Find a Market

There’s no point in marketing a product that no one needs or wants. Lack of competition doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a market. No competition might just mean that no one wants the product.

Again, do your research — there should be a mid-to-large sized, underserved market for the product you’re promoting. Know your audience — both what they want and where they are. Ideally, you want an audience that is looking to the Internet to solve a problem and will try any product or service if they believe that it will work.

Research market trends, too. Understand what’s happening in your niche, and choose a product that gives customers the latest and greatest benefits. Find something that people WANT — not necessarily what they need — and you’ll see more conversions.

4. Know Your Competitors

In a perfect world, you’ll find a product that you love, which offers high commissions, is easy to convert and no one else is promoting. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world.

Competition is not necessarily a bad thing. The trick is to find a way to make yourself different from other affiliates marketing the same or similar products. When you’re looking for an affiliate product, think about how you can stand out. Can you offer a bonus? Will your enthusiasm help you create irresistible content? Does your product offer something that similar products don’t?

If you’re confident that you can leave your competitors in the dust, even a popular product can be a winner. If not, keep looking.

5. Show Me the Money

 Obviously, the more money you can make on your affiliate product conversions, the better. Look for a commission of at least 50%; 75% is even better.

High commissions are important, but consider value and earning potential in addition to commission percentages. Promoting a high quality product to a niche market for a slightly lower commission might actually earn you more money than promoting a junk product for a high commission.

6. Merchant Support

Does the merchant expect you to do all the work to market the product, or is the company going to help you? Some merchants offer their affiliates plenty of support and marketing materials, such as e-mail templates, reports, free articles and other content that you can use to market the product. Check out what the merchant has to offer. Solid resources make your job easier and increase the chances of conversions — putting more money in your pocket.

Choosing the right affiliate product takes time and energy, but the end result is well worth it. Making an informed choice not only earns you more money; it also builds a loyal customer base. After all, it’s much easier to market the right product from the start than it is to undo the damage from the wrong one. So take your time, do the research and watch your affiliate marketing business take off.

This post was written and provided by Christian Willis. Christian has been making a living from affiliate programs for the last 3 years and is a freelance writer for Clickbooth.com.

PPC stands for ‘Pay Per Click’. An advertising block is hyperlinked to the advertiser’s website. If a visitor clicks on the advertisement, it will lead to the advertiser’s website. The advertiser pays the host website based on the number of clicks (or sometimes impressions) on the ad, and hence also called PPC Internet Marketing. There are several PPC campaign providers like Google Adwords who can host and promote your campaign with relative ease.

Here is a compilation of how effective you can make your PPC Internet Marketing. There are many components involved in a PPC ad. Headliners, body, ad layout fonts, colors and so on.

• Prepare keywords which are most relevant to the subject. Think what your customer would type in the search box. Do not come up with more number of keywords. This may spoil the relevance and quality of the campaign. Example: if your campaign is for designer clothes, keep ‘Designer Clothes’ itself as the keyword.
• Use a keyword rich headline which is very simple and straight to the point. Keeping a keyword itself as the headline also works. Example: ‘Cheap Designer Clothes’
• Ad content can be of various types and tones. It can be a question to the visitor. Example: ‘searching for lowest priced designer clothes?’

It can also be persuasive: ‘Your search for quality designer clothes at affordable prices ends here. Hurry! Limited period offer’s and so on.

• Never use flashy, florescent colored and odd looking layouts because this might irritate and drive away genuine customers. Instead use decent and attractive ad layouts. This not only catches the visitor’s attention but creates a better impression in the visitor’s mind.
• Do not irritate the visitors by frequent pop ups and ad layouts which fly all over screen etc. But at the same time make sure your ad is noticeable on the screen. Movement of the ad layout is very important. Few simple animations can do this job.
• Try and be more innovative. Discover new ideas. Example: a small game of duck shooting using the mouse pointer etc. This makes sure there are more clicks and better CTR (click through rate) and hence better conversion ratio.

Keep track of the ad statistics like Cost per Click, Click through Rates, Conversion ratio and so on. Ad tracking importance is realized when substantial money flows out of your pocket. Never forget that a click which goes without conversion is a loss to you. If the statistics are not convincing then you may as well think of cancelling the whole campaign instead of wasting capital.

Always remember that PPC and Affiliate PPC programs only can help the visitor enter your site and see what you have got to tell. But for better conversion ratio, a visitor should be actually offered what he was promised before. So sharpen your marketing strategies along with the advertising efforts.

There are a lot of players on the Paid URL Shorteners market, the top of the league being ad.fly, linkbucks and ity.im which I have already reviewed in my lowdown on the top URL shorteners that pay to shorten links. I think using paid URL shorteners is a great idea if

• You have a URL intensive site i.e. sites which have a lot of URL in them like forums.
• or if you share a lot of links in social media sites like Facebook and Twitter

Click Here To Sign Up Now

My years of marketing experience and the close attention I’ve paid to the emerging mobile app market has taught me some great ways to make money off mobile apps:

Advertise within the app

You can make a lot of money by simple putting advertisements inside your apps. That’s what Google does for its mobile search apps, and that’s how a lot of non-mobile websites make their money.

In-app ads work best if your app has a highly targetable audience, since advertisers will pay more money per click, view, or whatever other method you use. This is because people who are targeted who click on an add are more likely to convert to a lead or a sale, meaning that the company gets its money’s worth for the click that they pay you for.

While you could negotiate with individual companies to place ads within your app or do a product placement, it’s a lot easier and you will probably make more money if you use an online advertising company like Moolah Media.

The main drawback is that it’s hard to justify charging much money for your app if you have blatant advertising in it but mobile apps (especially Android apps) are usually only a few bucks anyway, and you can make more than this and have a constant stream of revenue with in-app advertisements.

Have transactions within the app

The main apps placing transactions within the app works for are shopping apps and apps with microtransactions. Shopping apps like iTunes are rather straightforward to monetize, but gaming apps with microtransactions aren’t as transparent.

Prior to Microsoft introducing paid-for “downloadable content”, gamers expected additional maps to be free unless they came as part of a large expansion pack. An expansion pack for a multi-player first-person shooter would cost $15 or $20 and would be bought once, and might contain 8 or 12 new maps. There would also be new game modes, new weapons, and some new levels for the game’s single-player counterpart. When DLC was introduced, however, Microsoft started charging $5 per map, or $10 for a pack of 4 or so maps. By chopping up the content into little bits, Microsoft was able to charge gamers more money for less content.

This same concept can be applied to mobile gaming apps, and other apps that are used a lot. By chopping new content up into smaller bits, you can both spend less resources developing less content and also get more money by selling the content for many times what you’d sell it for if you sold it all at once.

About the author: Murray Newlands is the Founder & CEO of Influence People, a San Francisco-based online marketing consulting firm.

Disclaimer: Influence People does blog relations for Moolah Media

But what’s shocked me the most is that although there is a lot of talk about monetizing online content, there really anywhere with all the information together in one place. That’s why I’m sharing what I think are the five easiest ways to monetize your blog’s content.

1. Placing Banner Ads

Banner ads are easily the most used tool for creating a solid revenue stream. First used in offline media, banner ads have existed online since before blogs became popular. Google AdSense is the most popular service for placing banner ads for people who want results without using lots of time trying to sell banner space without a third party.

Plus, Google’s ads are usually less intrusive than others and more relevant to each blog, as they use viewers’ search history to cater ads toward them. Alternatives include Kontera and adBrite. You can use them with other types of ads since banners occupy up space that’s not used by anything else.

2. Using affiliate marketing

You can get good revenue by simply placing an affiliate marketing link after each product review, service recommendation, or pretty much any blog post. Unlike banners which are usually pay-per-click or pay-per-impression (views), most affiliate programs use pay-per-sale or pay-per-lead. These work best if you have a fair amount of traffic to your site, but it can work for smaller sites too since it’s almost always free to become an affiliate.

3. Inserting links

Unlike banner ads, inserting links puts ads in the actual text of your written content but does so in a non-intrusive way. Usually, the program used automatically finds and highlights keywords that, when hovered over, display a small pop-up that can then send the reader to the relevant product. These ads are like AdSense in that they target the reader’s actual interests (e.g., a food blog is typically read by a foodie, thus enjoying the Campbell’s soup ad). They also don’t spoil search engine results since the links use nofollow tags. The most used programs, many of which are free, include INTENTclick,Vibrant, etc.

4. Social Media

The opinion of trusted people who are known personally has a great influence on consumer choice. For example, a Mac user might tell her friends looking to buy their first laptop to buy a Macbook Air, and they’ll trust her more than they’ll trust an Apple commercial. As a result, social media, such as Facebook has seen a surge in use within the business world and rightfully so. As a blogger looking to make some money, you can use social media to drive a market to your website and use any of the aforementioned methods to cash in. Many bloggers and businesses start a Facebook fan page and simply copy and paste content into the page to get more readers and subscribers.

5. Getting sponsored

When a company sponsors your blog, you get paid to display their logo or write blog posts about them. The upside is that your blog doesn’t need tons of traffic, and logo sponsorships are even less intruding than link insertion. Also, they’re easy to set up from a technical standpoint compared to other methods, which usually depend on using specific programs or services.

While sponsorships can be very rewarding, they can also take a while to establish. Usually, companies will contact you themselves if they wish to sponsor you, so put your email address somewhere on the site (companies really don’t like web forms) in a “Contact Us” or “About Us” section. If they’re emailing you, try contacting their public relations and marketing departments. Be sure to know how many visitors you get per month. In general, blogs with more targetable viewers gain more money from getting sponsored.

I wrote Content Monetization, an eBook about content monetization that you can read for more detailed information on the topic.

Guest post by Murray Newlands.

Disclosure: Murray Newlands’ company, Influence People, does blog relations with INTENTclick.

Online money making is not as easy during the very first stage but as time flies, you will be able to get used to it and eventually succeed in the next few years of hard work. There are many ways one could do to make real money online. It is just a matter of perspective, strategy and hard work.

In starting your online money making, there are certain steps to follow as to guide you in getting at the top of your chosen career. Since online money making doesn’t require you any monetary expenses, you will have no reason to not start it as soon as possible. Only with a lot of time and effort is required to succeed in this kind of career path.

Launch an SEO Agency

Since you are working as an online search marketer, you have many challenging responsibilities to do. Being an SEO Specialist, you have many options to what kind of specialty you want to concentrate on. It is an ever evolving industry thus many opportunities are being opened on a regular basis.

Establishing your own SEO agency is one of the options that you have when planning to build your own online business. It will not only give you with starting rewards, but also gain the skills on getting higher ranks for your website.

The web offers a lot of resources one from one could learn about basic SEO skills particularly from blogs like SEOMoz, Search Engine Land, and Kaiserthesage.  Also, it would be beneficial for you to participate in some of the community forums where you could ask some important questions to people who have gained enough skills in SEO.

Publishing an E-book and Sell it Online

Selling e-books is one of the unique ways to earn a living online. Because of the latest devices that we have today, e-books became of much demand. You could choose to write about anything that you are interested about and make sure it would also be of great appeal to your target readers. E-books are portable and convenient to use, many people opt to read on an e-book.

You could hire good copy writers and editors to help you in making your digital product sellable online.

Play Online Poker

“Money from online poker? Oh really?” this would probably be one of your first reactions when hearing about making money through playing poker online. It may seem a bit ridiculous but it is a serious stuff. Since there are many online Poker sites where people could start playing and gaining money, internet has become Poker players’ virtual best friend. With an exceptional bluffing skills and credit card, it would be easy for you to register on the online poker sites that you chose. Always take note of the legitimate online poker sites to where you will about to register with. There are many poker reviews to where you could read on before trying out online poker games.

It is not easy to be a professional because one needs to have enough skills about the game before having it perfectly done. With a few charms and luck, it would be easy for you to have the game played into your hands. I have recently ran across into an extensive poker tutorial page as well as the important strategies on playing online poker on PokerStars, so if you are really interested in getting a shot at it, the very first step is to check out these websites and start reading and practicing the game. There are many online poker website to where you could start practicing your poker skills.

Become a Youtube Superstar

It is not only Hollywood actors and actresses, who could be on top. Even normal people have their own way of creating their own name through the use of online sites like Youtube and become a YouTube sensation. With a video camera at hand, some catchy scripts and a YouTube account, you can also become famous! Look at Dane Boe’s Annoying Orange, NigaHiga, and SoldiersKnowBest, you could also become one of the highest paid stars who arise from YouTube because of the viral videos that you posts.

Because of the advertisements that could be posted by sponsors on YouTube channels that are usually ranked by curious subscribers. And in just a click, a lot of money will be generated using your YouTube account.

Farming gold and rare items on World of Warcraft then sell them

Playing online games has become one of the high paying jobs most people are into nowadays. One of the most played online games is the World of Warcraft. Most of its users who are merchandising their items would greatly agree with question regarding how online games could help one player to earn money online. It is like earning from what you like and doing what you want.

WoW as most people know it, could be a means of living for most of its serious players. Although it is a bot risky and is not recommended by the WoW organization, selling gold is done by most players to help them earn money with World of Warcraft. Since it is not allowed to sell gold inside the game proper because they might get banned for breaking the terms and conditions of WoW, what they do is that they join forum sites and other websites from where they could legally trade the gold that they have.