If you happen to be a design minded person, there are unique opportunities to make money online. One such place you can let your creative juices flow, is a place called Zazzle.

On Zazzle you can make money selling designs and ideas for various products. If you have a killer t-shirt idea, then you can upload it and create your own Zazzle store where people will purchase them. The only limits to what you can sale is based on your imagination. And of course convincing people to buy your designs.

You’re able to to add both text and images, so there’s a lot of options for creating a custom design. Along with T-shirts, you can create designs for shoes, sweatshirts, and even things like calendars.

So get out there and get your killer t-shirt to make money for you.

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Starting your own blog is one of the most fun, rewarding experiences you’ll find on the internet. If you write a blog for fun or a creative outlet then things like traffic, page views might not interest you. But your blog could be a means for you to make a pretty penny. You just have to remember a few things when starting up to be successful.

1. Know Your Content & Audience - If there’s one thing that most all successful blogs have in common it’s that they almost all have a central theme. General interest blogs might be entertaining for you, but if you’re looking to make money then you’ll want your blog to have a point. If you enjoy electronic gadgets, then a blog surrounding electronic news or reviews would be a good start. Having a strong singular focus will also payoff in the long run for advertising interests as well.

2. Finding Readers & Keeping Them - This is probably the most challenging step when making money from your blog. Finding an audience is a daunting task, considering how many people are out there and how many blogs saturate the market. The first thing to remember is making your blog SEO compliant. A huge majority of people surfing the internet use a search engine, so you’ll want your page as high up on the hit list as possible. Here is a good site with tips on implementing good SEO for blog writers. Another great way to find readers to be involved in the blogging community. Frequent other writers’ sites and leave comments. In the blogging world, the more people you visit then the more people that will visit you.

3 Advertising…It’s All In The Content - I mentioned earlier that you want to find a core audience when starting your blog. While attracting visitors is the main reason, finding companies to advertise on your site is another. Advertising is where you’ll directly be making money from your blog. If your blog has a core theme, and a strong audience then a lot of times advertisers will come to you. If not then this is when you’ll have to take risks to be successful. The easiest, and fastest way to monetize from advertising is to utilize AdSense. Google Adsense simply takes your article and puts ad links into various keywords throughout the post. How much money you receive is based on how many clicks each ad gets.

4 Keep Up With New Technology - The blogosphere is just like any other entity of the internet. The technology and advancements for blogging are continually changing. One of the best ways to keep up with new tools is to join a forum. Blogging technology is usually spread through word-of-mouth and forums is the perfect platform for new information.

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When most people think of making money online, their mind tends to wander to advertising. This is a great method to keep up a steady flow of income, but there are other ways to make a decent amount of cash. Have you ever wondered how much your website is worth, and if it’s value is worth cashing in on?

If so, check out this Website Value Calculator. This tool uses a wide variety of parameters to determine your site’s value. Here are a list of those parameters:

- Alexa Traffic Rank

- Google Page Rank

- Backlink Report
Yahoo
Altavista
General Web

After determining these values, it will then provide you an approximation of your site’s worth. It will also show you how much of a monthly earning potential your site has the potential for. It will provide figures for Text Link Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, and Independent Advertising.

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Do you know anyone that’s looking for a job? I’d say that you at least know of one person looking for work. What if I said you could get paid for finding work for them? I’d say that you would be pretty happy and curious at who would pay you for this. Well, Referearns is one place will pay you for connecting someone you know to an employer.

The site is a Job Search network, where employers, job seekers, and referers are on the same system. Of course, each play their roles but if you want to make some quick money you’ll want to refer. Whenever an employee is connected with a job seeker, they owe a pre-determined amount of money to the referer. Of course, the trick is getting the process of your seeker to the employer. Depending on your skill set, this can be an easy or hard process.

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Sometimes making money online isn’t about ‘getting rich’. I think we can all agree that most money making schemes online are fake. Some though don’t make unrealistic promises, and can deliver what they state. Project Payday is one of those services. If you’re looking for some extra income, and just want an easy way to make the money the Project Payday is worth a look.

The service isn’t perfect though. You’ll be required to sign up for free trials, which in some cases will require cancellation. So, you should know what you’re getting into before signing up. Some of these cancellations can be a hassle, but also pay dividends that make it worth it.

Here’s a quote from the site’s help page:

With Project Payday you’re in complete control. You decide how often you want to work, when to do it, and how much money you want to make.

Everyone is in a different situation, but that’s what makes this so great.

You can get up an hour earlier and put in some time before work, you can do it during the day when the kids are napping, or even at 1am in the morning.

You might plan on working 2 hours a day, three days a week. But if you find out there’s an awesome game on TV or something else comes up … it’s no big deal because you can just move Project Payday to another day.

Here’s the site if you wish to give it a visit.

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The old saying states, “The only constant is death and taxes”. I believe webmasters would add to that by saying that another constant is that SERP and Page Rank will always change. With Google continually changing their algorithms, it can become a chore to adapt to these changes. Primarily because Google doesn’t make it public what these changes are.
Read the rest

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I admit it I’m a sucker for Z-list blogs! There’s just something about the Z-list that the A-list just doesn’t (and never can) have. Reading about someone making their first dollar online just seems so much more useful and relevant to me than reading about how to get a six-figure book deal. Despite their great reputation and credibility, a lot of the A-list bloggers seem to be writing about here’s what I do now rather than here’s what I did to get here. Hence, the Z-list can provide you with lots of great information on how to make money online from the very beginning.

The newest Z-lister in the blogosphere is Anthony from Blogging Dosh whose site is exactly one week old. That’s right - one week! Anthony is a 19 year old Australian entrepreneur who writes that he’s been blogging for over 5 years! That means he’s been doing it for over a quarter of his life which is pretty cool! Recently, he decided to sell his blogging network Tap Media and get to work on some new projects online.

Containing just 16 posts (6 of which were written on the first day!), this site is about blogging and making money and is as new as they get. Reviewing a site this new isn’t easy, but there’s probably no better time to get some advice and tips on how your site is going.

It’s always all about the content

With just 16 posts, does Blogging Dosh have the content to keep you coming back?

It only took about 10 minutes to read the entire site…

The first five posts on the site are what I’d call ‘introduction posts’ and are pretty standard welcome to my blog postings. While I did it myself, I have to say that writing posts about joining MyBlogLog and your plans to add widgets aren’t really the type of posts that hold a reader’s interest. They’re just not useful or informative to anyone except the author.

However, there is a gem in there entitled Starting A Wordpress Blog Checklist that is quite on the money. Although quite applicable to all bloggers (not just wordpress users!), the article takes you through what you should do in the first few days of your site and while it’s not revolutionary, it is a very good checklist that should probably be required reading for anyone asking, I have a new blog and want to make money, what should I do first?.

After these introductory posts, Blogging Dosh gets straight into the business of blogging and dosh by providing some tips and advice for making money online. The first post that Anthony admits contains useful information regards building screensavers and bundling them with a possibly adware-containing toolbar and receiving a commission every time the software is downloaded. Perhaps a nice way to make money, but reading this really turned me off downloading anything from his blog.

And then he offers a toolbar download¦.

The toolbar is the DoshBar 1.0 and is a reasonable concept. The toolbar contains quick links to popular money making sites (FriendFinder, myLot etc) and lets you receive updates from your favorite blogs. It also contains weather updates (make money from rain?) and a dictionary (make money from spelling?) installed. Looking at the names of the money making programs in the links, I get the feeling that these links are affiliate links designed to sign-up toolbar downloaders. That’s a smart idea and if it’s successful it has the potential to be a real money earner.

However, while Anthony claims that the toolbar doesn’t contain any adware, after reading his post on possibly bundling adware into screensavers, I wasn’t game to download it and try it out.

Blogging Dosh’s latest post is a little more useful and contains a list of advice on How To Write Traffic Pulling Posts. Not to be too critical, but Tip #6 was to use pictures and the post didn’t contain pictures. Similarly, Tip #3 was to write something unique yet I’ve seen posts on this topic at least 20 times on Problogger alone. Take from that what you will.

Where is the ka-boom?

For a new site with few posts, it’s essential to grab the reader’s interest from as soon as they land on your page.

The first thing that I noticed when I visited Blogging Dosh was the use of the Misty theme for the site. As I’ve written before, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this theme (I use it myself!), but it has to be one of the most used themes in the blogosphere. Anthony has done his homework and knew to create a custom header immediately which gives the site a bit more of it’s own personality. Always a great thing to do first!

However, the site is still using the standard Misty color scheme and I’d recommend Anthony get to work adding some bling and color to the rest of theme to give it a bit more of the wow factor. A few more graphics and bold colors on the site would be great as it is now, the site is rather grey and pastel looking.

Anthony is using an interesting plugin under his profile picture that states how many posts and comments have been written on the site. This plugin isn’t such a bad idea for some sites. It’s a well known fact that Success breeds success and that blogs that display large RSS subscriber numbers usually find their subscribers increasing more. Similarly, a site with 4000 posts and 30000 comments would command a lot of credibility.

On Blogging Dosh, the plugin reads 16 posts and 4 comments which is advertising to me straight away that the site is new and contains a small readership. That doesn’t worry me, but there are many bloggers who would ignore the site completely based on these numbers and that is definitely not what you want for a new blog. Just as you shouldn’t show how many RSS subscribers you’ve got until it reaches at least 50, you probably shouldn’t list how many posts you have until you’ve got more than a few month’s worth.

The design of the site just lacks that extra something to make it stand out from the millions of other blogs out there.

Free domains!

Everybody loves a competition and right now Blogging Dosh is giving away 3 free domains with 3 months free hosting and wordpress setup to bloggers looking to get off blogspot and use their own custom domain. To enter, you just have to link to the competition page with the words Make the Switch. The competition closes today and there aren’t any entries yet, so get in there!

Money to be made?

Anthony is only 19 and claims to have already made quite a bit of money online. That’s a good start and I hope his blog can be just as successful for him. At this stage, it’s a little too early to tell how successful it will be but I’ll be monitoring his progress and keeping up the search for those tips that A-listers just don’t have.

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In their efforts to remove any monetary whatsoever from Google PageRank, Andy Beard reports that there is yet another update underway and that some sites which were previously downgraded are now having their rankings return.

Why are the rankings returning? Because the webmasters explained to Google that they didn’t sell paid links or that they have now removed them.

A messed up market 

As I’ve explained before, despite Google’s efforts to devalue PageRank it can still be a moneymaker as (like it or not) there is a still a market where people are looking to buy it.

The latest shake-up merely creates a situation where only sites that don’t sell links get a high PageRank which makes

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Watching some of these big sites get slapped by Google and have their PageRank reduced is quite hilarious from my point of view.

Many of these sites have often written again and again about how they’re not about the money and all about building a community and engaging with others….but watch the mad scramble and backlash when their advertising dollars are threatened!!

At least I’ve always been 100% open about my harsh greed and exploitations.

This is just one reason why I believe that thinking you’re part of a “community” that consists of “loyal and respected readers” is for suckers.

If you’re on the internet, you’re either a customer or a salesperson. Even when a “community building” blogger writes about their respect for their readers, they’re really doing nothing more then building their credibility up so it’s easier to sell you on their next product.

Therefore….

If you want to make money online, you better have a product that you can sell.

If you don’t - you’re the customer.

And then you’re nothing more than the salesperson’s toy.   

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With the current frenzy of sites being sold as webmasters attempt to cash in on their long-awaited Google PageRank, you may be tempted to jump on the bandwagon and sell your site.

But here’s what you need to know before you sell it:

Now that your site is established, it’s primed to be a money maker and you may actually miss out on cash if you sell it right now!

To illustrate, consider a modest site that has grown to the point of earning $500 per month. Using the rule of thumb that a site is worth 10x it’s monthly earnings, the site would be valued at around $5000. Now factor into that equation that things move pretty fast on the internet and that it’s not unreasonable for a site’s profits to grow at 5% per month.

Therefore, if you wait a month before you sell it the earnings per month could rise to $525 and the site would be valued at $5250. You’ll also earn $500 in that month you waited which means that if you waited just one month to sell your site, you would find yourself $750 better off.

Keep at it for 6 months and you’ll be $4782.36 better off than if you sold your site now!

The opportunity cost

Of course, the other side of the equation is that you could take the $5000 now and invest it in something that gives you 191% annual return to earn that $4782 in 6 months. Let me know if you find that investment.

So what should you do?

Putting time into a website is like building a business and selling it for a “quick flip” isn’t always the best thing to do. The internet enjoys rapid growth and revenue for minimal capital outlay and you exploit this to your benefit.

If the site has reached it’s limit or you don’t have time for it anymore - sell it - but if it’s still growing and you’re still prepared to devote yourself to it then you should probably stick around and enjoy the cash flow.

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