Business at Home Income Blog

Archive for July, 2009

by Brian Konradt

Blogging (short for “web logging”), born from the Internet age, is one of the newer venues for freelance writing. The Internet has generated a lot of news about the financial possibilities open to bloggers: an audience of potentially millions — along with possible corporate sponsorship, a byline, and infinite creative control — captures the imagination of many prospective bloggers, and makes blogging seem like an infinitely desirable, lucrative field.

The truth is it is much more difficult to become a successful freelance blogger. A good knowledge of marketing, web design, and being consistent are skills you need to make a living (or a comfortable extra income) from this new form of media.

The reason for this is the low barrier of entry. Anyone with access to web space can start a blog. Sites like Blogger, Livejournal and even MySpace offer free web space to anyone willing to sign up. This has resulted in millions of blogs in existence today, many of them literate, many of them wildly popular, and nearly all of them free to read and browse.

That variety of free content makes it difficult to charge for access to your writing, no matter how good it is. You could be the greatest expert on foreign policy or nutrition known to man, and few people would be willing to pay $5 — or $1, or one cent — to read a blog post by you, the expert, when there are thousands of semi-qualified (but bright and engaging) writers giving away similar material.

So your main sources of revenue are going to come from advertising and from whatever paid content you can fit into the site. Luckily, web advertising is becoming less dicey than it was a year ago.

Google’s “AdSense” program is a good baseline for a page, providing targeted advertising based on your content and paying you, directly, per click-through (although the pay rate per click is low.) You can supplement that amount with other forms of web advertising, from the comparatively unobtrusive banner to pop-up animations that “float over” the text.

This brings us to the “double-edged sword” problem in web advertising. The most effective advertising is obtrusive advertising; that is, advertising that blocks valuable content until the user clicks on it either to make it disappear or to take you to a different website.

However, obtrusive advertising also irritates your readers, which can lead to a lower reputation for your blog overall. On the Internet, reputation is the single best determinant of your web traffic. Using obtrusive advertising can significantly lower your traffic and make your blog that much less attractive to potential advertisers.

So you’ll need to find a happy medium between heavy advertising (and light traffic) and little to no advertising (and high traffic, but little revenue.) Luckily, the instant responsiveness of the Internet, along with the commenting features available on nearly all blogging software, make it easy to ask your readers about exactly what level of advertising they’d be willing to accept. Reader connectivity is one of the most important features of any good blog: not only does it allow you to fine-tune your blog over time, eliminating features that readers find irritating or off-putting, but it also allows you to develop personal connections with your readers, the kind of connections that build loyal audiences.

There are other ways to make money by blogging, such as the following:

1) It’s possible to sidestep advertising altogether by making some of your content unavailable, except to subscribers. For example, you might only keep your most recent five or six blog entries unlocked, and require a monthly subscription fee to read the rest of the archives;

2) Or you might keep your current posts and your entire regular archives active, but produce some longer or specialized entries or other content and charge a set fee for these;

3) You could even compile some of your best entries into a physical book, along with some new content, and offer it for sale. Even if all the entries are available online, you’d be surprised how many people are willing to pay to have something they can hold in their hands;

4) Additionally, you could go the Salon.com route — make all of your archives available to anyone willing to watch a short full-screen advertisement — or you could rely on readers’ willingness to support content that they find worthwhile by asking for donations outright.

Many prominent blogs and online content providers have done this and found themselves able to make rent and pay all of their bills every month on donations alone.

No matter how much advertising or subscription services your blog has, it’s all worthless if people don’t want to read you in the first place. And there are three simple rules to make your blog popular:

1) Write on something you care about 2) Write consistently and thoughtfully on a regular schedule (daily is best) 3) Read and comment on other blogs

People read blogs because they provide a source of information and analysis on topics that traditional media sources only cover sketchily and hastily, or don’t cover at all. Don’t try to figure out an ideal money-making blog topic and proceed from there. People care about blogs because blogs are about personal, in-depth viewpoints and thoughts.

If you can provide those to your audience regularly, and you can set up a minimally-intrusive but still worthwhile revenue system through advertising or subscriptions, there’s no reason why you can’t become a successful blogger.

Generate MLM Leads Cost Effectively

by Scott Schreiber

Remember that wonderful feeling you had when you first signed up to start your home based business, that flutter in your stomach as the excitement of a new opportunity was right there in front of you. Just like that, you had the chance to make great money, spend more time with family and have a residual income to support you for the rest of your life.

You passed out the flyers, you talked to friends and family members at social gatherings, and perhaps you even sponsored parties yourself. And now, a short time later you realize you’ve spent a lot of money resulting in little profit. Friends and family avoid you. Its no longer a creative game, its expensive.

What happened here? You did everything you were supposed to do, attended seminars and events and you have a great product. You were eager to tell friends what you had and you thought everyone would want it. But you are still spending more than you make.

You may want to reconsider your tactics before you quit. The technology of today offers other ways to generate leads cost effectively that cost less and often are more effective.

Here are three of the ways to generate leads cost effectively that you may not have tried yet:

Networking events

As unemployment rates climb more individuals are searching for a way to make money. They are more open-minded about listening to your plan. Check out your area on the internet and find networking events so you can meet these people. Most neighborhoods have events like these nearly every week ” people come to sell something or to find a job. Become friendly with the people who attend and find out how you can assist them before you hold up your product or service as their great opportunity. Chances are you will succeed in an association that is built on friendliness and helpfulness and that will increase your opportunities. Don’t try to oversell your product.

Social Networks

This area is one of the fastest growing parts of the internet and the most discussed in the form of tools to grow your business. As with actual in person events, if you make everything about the sale of your products or getting people to sign up as your distributor, you will turn people off faster then a universal remote with a plasma TV. Take your time, use these sites to get to know people. If they like you, trust you and respect you they will come around over time, if they think its a fit. But the last thing they want is another MLMer trying to sell them something. Be a friend, its more fun for you, too.

Other Internet Activities

While social networking is part of the internet, there are a lot of additional tools that are very effective to help you grow you prospect base without spending a lot of money as well. In some cases you can make money as well by using tools such as eBooks and webinars to attract people to your business. This process is commonly referred to as attraction marketing and works very much on the same principals as described above, by providing information and support before asking for anything. This way you can help to build a relationship that will increase your credibility and improve your odds of getting a person to join your team.

In all three examples above, the main key is to make yourself into a person who will give as much or more than they get so that the lead trusts you before you attempt to sell something. Don’t pretend, actually be that way. If you have a good product, people who are treated in a helpful and friendly manner will begin to come to you for it and you will be successful.

Effortlessly Sign up distributors without even picking up the phone.

	CLIENT SEDUCTION: A Step-by-Step Lead Generation System for Professional and Technology Service Firms List Price: $15.50 Sale Price: $14.35
	CLIENT SEDUCTIONÒ: A Step-by-Step Lead Generation System For Professional and Technology Service Firms In today’s market, it is not enough to offer a great service. You must be able to win and woo clients, which means the subtle art of client seduction…

	Managing Sales Leads: Turning Cold Prospects into Hot Customers List Price: $44.95 Sale Price: $22.47
	Sales leads are what successful marketing is all about. That’s where the money is. This book shows how to get the most out of this crucial corporate investment. Good, qualified leads make sales forces more efficient, more effective, and – bottom line -more profitable…