$100 in 3 Hours? The 7+1 Easiest Ways to Quickly Make Money Online
by Matt
Filed under Getting Started, How to Make Money Online, Recommended, Your First $500
If you’re a frequent follower of MakingMoneyOnline.com, you know that generally we advocate legitimate, sustainable approaches to generating passive cash flows on an ongoing basis. But sometimes you just need to make a little money fast.
One of the most common questions we receive is: “What’s the easiest way to quickly make money online?” As in, by tonight?!
The Scenario: Faithful MakingMoneyOnline.com reader Walter has a problem:
Dear Making Money Online,
I know that slowly building my reputation, giving value before I take, focusing on a niche, etc. etc. is the right way to go about making the big bucks online in the long term. But what about today? I don’t have the cash or the time to spare building my online empire: I just need to put some ka-ching in my pocket NOW. Please hook me up with some suggestions for things I can do today to earn a little extra cash without having to wait for months?
Muchas gracias,
~Walter
The Solution: Can we help Walter earn $100 in just 3 hours working online? Can we help you make $100 in just a few hours? For each technique, we’re going to assume that you have access to a computer with internet access, basic writing ability, and a healthy dollop of enthusiasm, but no existing website/ blog/ or mailing list with 10,000 subscribers (which, by the way, would make this whole endeavor quite a bit easier!).
Our Suggestions for the Easiest Ways to Get Started Making Money Online:
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Become an Expert
Everyone's an expert in something. Might as well get paid for it!
Just Answer is about as simple as it gets: someone posts a question they need help with, and if you can answer it you’ll earn anywhere from a few dollars to $25. Perhaps the only downside to Just Answer is that it is difficult to get accepted as an expert (hence the 2 stars out of 5 for “chance of success”). If you’re interested in trying it out but would like help getting accepted as an expert, use the form to contact me and I’ll send you instructions for how to get in.
Ether.com is a similar service focused on helping you sell your expert advice over the phone.
MiNeeds allows bidding on a variety of tasks that need done.Earning Potential: $$$$
Chance of Success: ** -
Create the new Viral Sensation
The bad news is that online video advertising is still relatively young, and with most revenue sharing programs you’ll only earn a fraction of a cent every time your video gets viewed. The good news is that some videos can get a LOT of views. Viral hits like the JK Wedding Entrance Dance or “LonelyGirl15” rack up tens of MILLIONS of views, which means those pennies could add up pretty quickly!
If you're going to embarass yourself in front of millions of people on the internets, you might as well get paid for it.
YouTube only offers revenue sharing once you get big, so instead you might want to try http://revver.com/ or http://www.break.com/.
Earning Potential: $$$$$
Chance of Success: * -
Do 20 Tasks on Fiverr
Aye, these are desperate times, my friends. The things that people will do for a mere five bucks simply blows the mind: PSD to HTML website conversion, Joomla setup, even be your Facebook girlfriend. At rates like that, my advice would be to skip trying to earn money doing tasks on Fiverr, and instead set up some sort of task arbitrage scheme whereby you accept jobs from Craigslist for $25, and then hire someone from Fiverr to do them for $5. Yeah, now we’re doing it making money online style!
A measly five bucks and she can be your (fake) girlfriend (on Facebook)
Earning Potential: $$
Chance of Success: **** -
Test 10 New Websites
Usability testing is when companies hire random people to tell them what they think of their website. Think you could be that random person? If so, you can earn up to $10 a pop by completing a few simple tasks on the website, and filling out a report on your experience. Each test should take about 10 to 20 minutes, which means that this may be one method where you actually can meet our goal of $100 in 3 hours (while still having time to make a sandwich).
You can get paid to test websites, as long as you can make a pensive face.
Some sites to try include:
http://www.usertesting.com/betester.aspx – Appears to be the most generous, and the most professional.
http://www.usabilitysciences.com/contact-us/recruiting
http://www.testarmy.com/app/view/more-tester/
http://www.userfocus.co.uk/panel/index.html
http://www.usabilityexchange.com/uehowitworks5.php – UK based, for disabled usersEarning Potential: $$$$
Chance of Success: **** -
Pimp Out Peoples’ iPads/ iPhones
This one is inspired by a story on the founder of HungryPod, who (at least at one point) was making over $100,000 a year uploading CDs to peoples’ iPods. In my mind there’s a similar opportunity to profit from the iPad and iPhone craze: who has the time to wade through the Appstore to find all the most useful bits? If you know iPhone backwards and forwards, why not offer a “Pimp my iPhone” service to get peoples’ iPhones set up with the very best apps (along with music, photos, videos, or anything else the customer wanted on there). This one might be easier to work if you live in New York, where people have a lot more money than time.
Earning Potential: $$$
Chance of Success: ** -
Come up with 4 Cool Domain Name Ideas at PickyDomains.com
A good name is hard to find– and especially so when you need to find an available .com domain name to match. If you’re one of those people who just has a way with names (eg, you’re so clever your cats are named “José” and “Hose B”), then you may find your money-making niche at PickyDomains.com. All you have to do is come up with name ideas, and if your suggestion wins you’ll earn somewhere around $25.
Earning Potential: $$$
Chance of Success: ** -
Flip a Domain Name
OK, this one might be difficult to pull off in just 3 hours, but you also have a good shot at earning a lot more than $100. Here’s the gig: every day thousands of domain names expire and are auctioned off at sites like NameJet.com, SnapNames.com, and TDNAM.com. Although some auctions go in to the tens of thousands of dollars, most start at $60 (or just $10 at TDNAM.com). Since we’re just interested in making a quick buck, rather than getting serious about domain investing, you just want to find an opportunity to flip a domain for an easy profit. The best way to do that is to look for domains that offer a better version of an existing website’s domain. For example, if my website is YogaDVDs.net and you grab the domain YogaDVDs.com in an expiring auction, there’s a good chance I’m going to be willing to pay you something for that domain. Ditto for singular/ plural combinations, and hyphenated/ non-hyphenated domains. Most small businesses and website publishers don’t even know that expired domain auctions exist, so you’re actually doing them a favor if you sell them the domain at a fair price and prevent it from ending up as a permanent parking page in a mega-domainer’s collection.
PS: Make sure you only apply this strategy for generic descriptive domain names, not brand names like “Yahoo” or “Microsoft”.
Earning Potential: $$$$$
Chance of Success: *** -
Help 10 Students at StudentOfFortune.com
I saved one of my greatest finds for last. There are many variations on the “get paid to answer questions” theme, but StudentofFortune.com seems to be one of the more promising ones. After all, who is more desperate to answer questions than students? It might help to be a bit of an academic, but hey when questions pay up to $150 each, that’s a lot of inspiration to hit the books!
Textbook Rockstar? You can make money online helping out students.
Other sites where you can earn money online by tutoring students:
http://www.ehomeworkhelp.com/tutors.cfm
http://www.tutorandmentor.com/careers.html
http://www.tutor.com/apply/why-tutor-with-usEarning Potential: $$$$
Chance of Success: ***
Now Go Get Started Making Money Online!
Did you find any of these suggestions helpful? Any additional ideas that you would like to add? Please let me know if you found this tutorial useful or how you would like to have seen it done differently, and next time will be even more valuable for you!
A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online (Part 4)
by Doug Dillard
Filed under Getting Started, How to Make Money Online, Your First $500
“Getting Started Series” (Part 1d) – A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online… Lessons Learned!
(…continued for Part 1c which you should read first)
I am sure that story ended a little abruptly for many of you, and I am sorry… but I know more than a few people that have had very similar stories to Johnny’s, and that’s how their making money online journey ended… they just gave up. I have spoken with lots of people that have started online businesses over the years, and many of them have had very similar experiences to Johnny’s. Some of them made it to a year or more, while others gave up in only a month, but their stories each ended the same.
Now I did not write this to discourage you from starting an online business, but I wanted to show you the fate of a large percent of the people that start out trying to make money online. Hopefully you can learn from Johnny’s mistakes (which we will go over) and that will “hopefully” help you in starting your online venture. So let’s go over some of the things that Johnny did wrong…
He jumped at the first thing that came along – Johnny did no research whatsoever when he started out. He typed in the search term, “Making Money Online” into Google and clicked on an ad saying he can earn $25,000 a month sitting on the beach… and he was sold. If Johnny were smart, he would have done a lot more investigating before jumping into any business. He could have visited blogs and forums to see what other ways people are making money online to see what the best fit for him was. There are lots of ways to make money online, and if you are looking to make a lot of money fast… it most likely will not happen as a blogger. I’m not saying you can’t make a lot of money blogging, because it is definitely possible, but it takes time and a lot of work… and it’s not for everyone.
He chose a niche he knew nothing about – Here’s a big mistake a lot of bloggers and internet marketers make, and Johnny did as well. Johnny chose a niche that he thought would make him the most money, even though he knew nothing at all about the subject. When starting an online or offline business you want to start one in a niche you really know well and hopefully love. One of my favorite quotes is, “Do what you love, and the money will follow”. Why not start your online venture in a business you are passionate about, so you can enjoy the time and effort you put into it?
He put no time or effort into choosing a domain name – Choosing a good domain name is a very important step when starting your business and Johnny put no time or effort into it at all. There are many factors to be considered when selecting a domain… which we will go over in more detail later in this Getting Started series. Let’s just say that Johnny’s way of grabbing the first domain that he found available probably wasn’t the best way to go.
He had unreal expectations – Okay… Johnny was a little mislead by the blogging course’s sales page, as he thought he would start making money online right away. He and every one of you just starting out (on your online adventure) needs to know that making money online takes time and effort on your part. There is no getting around it. There might be that one in a zillion person that stumbles across some huge money maker with not much effort, but the odds of that happening are like you winning the lottery. So before you get started you need to know that it will take a while until you start making a lot of money online and you will have to work to accomplish it… and not everyone will. As for me, I would recommend giving yourself at least a year before you see any significant amount of income coming in… especially for you bloggers out there.
He had no kind of schedule – When Johnny started out… he started with a bang. Some nights after he got home from his 9 to 5 day job he would stay up until 3am working on his online business. The next day at work he would be tired all day… which would make the job he didn’t like even less enjoyable to be at. What happened to Johnny happens to many new internet entrepreneurs. They start out working super hard, (putting in a ton of hours) and when success doesn’t come fast… they slowly start getting discouraged, and each week start putting in less and less time and effort into their business.
The smart thing to do is to create a schedule for yourself right from the beginning. Decide how many hours you want to put into your online venture each night and what days you want to take off… and try and stick to that the best you can. Maybe put 2 – 4 hours a night aside to work on your business and take the weekends off… it is totally up to you. Just don’t burn yourself out!
As a blogger you might want to put certain days aside to write posts and other days to leave comments and work on other tasks. It is a good practice to publish your posts on a consistent schedule, so your readers know what days to expect a new post from you. You can post once a week, every day of the week, or any amount in between… just try and keep it consistent each week.
For the internet marketers and the rest of you… you also want to create a schedule for your business activities. If you have a project that needs to be completed on a certain date… divide it up in manageable sections and give yourself a certain amount of time each night to complete each task. That is way easier then trying to get as much stuff as you can do… done in one night.
Throwing in the towel too soon – You hear these types of stories all the time… where someone was just about to give up on their business and it finally becomes super successful, and then others that gave up just before their businesses was about to take off. Now in Johnny’s case, could he have made his business work? Probably… but it would have taken a lot of time and a lot of effort on his part. I think it was better that Johnny stopped working on that particular project and hopefully he finds something to do that he really enjoys.
Hopefully you learned a few things from this story. I didn’t write it to discourage anyone from doing whatever they want to do to make money online. I wrote it to help you avoid some of the pitfalls that many new and old online entrepreneurs fall into when they start their online ventures.
Next in my “Getting Started” series I will go over some of the basics things you will need to know to get online business started like; how to choose your niche, registering a domain name, getting your domain hosted, what type of website you should start, some simple techniques to start making money online, etc…
A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online (Part 3)
by Doug Dillard
Filed under Getting Started, How to Make Money Online, Your First $500
“Getting Started Series” (Part 1c) – A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online
(…continued for Part 1b which you should read first)
So Johnny steps up his commenting. That night when he gets home from work he gets on his computer and starts searching for every making money online blog he can find. On each blog he writes well thought out and useful comments, as that is what it recommends in his blogging course. Before he knows it is 3AM and he has to get up in a few hours to go to work. So Johnny heads for bed, but this time he is so tired he has no problem falling asleep.
The next day at work he is dragging all day, but he is excited to get home to see if all his hard work from the night before has brought him in some cash, as he has still not made any money yet. When he gets home he sees over 20 new comments in moderation ready to be approved, so he approves all of them.
He then checks his Adsense account and affiliate accounts and he has still not made any money whatsoever. Now he is starting to get a little bummed, as he has been doing this for almost a couple of weeks now with nothing to show but some nice comments on his blog.
Well Johnny (though a little frustrated) continues following the same steps for the next couple of weeks, as he is at least starting to build some traffic. He has also learned from reading a lot of other blogs… that in reality it takes a while to start making money online.
During this time Johnny actually starts earning some money with Adsense. Nothing much though…. 17 cents one day, 40 cents another, even one day he made over a dollar, but most of the days nothing. By the end of his first full month Johnny made a grand total of $4.89 from Adsense and nothing from his affiliate programs. Not the kind of money Johnny was hoping for when he first started.
Johnny is really getting frustrated now, as he is putting in way more time than he thought he would when he started, and he is really having a hard time coming up with new things to write about. He thinks to himself, “This blogging thing isn’t as easy as they said it was in the blogging course, and it really isn’t that much fun either”. Also, his day job is getting even harder to go to… as he is so tired from putting in all the long hours into his new Internet business.
Now Johnny’s really thinking about throwing in the towel (only after a month), but he decides to stick it out a little while longer, as he told all his friends and family how rich he was going to become making money online. So Johnny continues running his blog, but with a lot less enthusiasm than when he started. He starts posting less often, and he pretty much gives up on commenting all together as it takes him too much time and it isn’t making him any money.
Finally after 3 months from when he started, Johnny has had enough. With a total of just over $10 in his Adsense account and no other income to speak of, Johnny says to himself… “This blogging stuff sucks” and he calls it quits.
THE END OF THE STORY, BUT THE BEGINNING OF SOME VALUABLE LESSONS…
(Click Here to read what lessons have been learned by Johnny’s first online venture. There are MANY!)
A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online (Part 2)
by Doug Dillard
Filed under Getting Started, How to Make Money Online, Your First $500
“Getting Started Series” (Part 1b) – A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online
(…continued for Part 1a which you should read first)
Well after a night of no sleep whatsoever Johnny heads to his 9 to 5 day job with a new bounce in his step, as he knows he will be turning in his resignation any day now.
Later that day when Johnny gets home from work… he rushes to his computer to start his journey to making money online.
He starts doing the things the course recommends… step-by-step! He chooses “Making Money Online” as his niche, as it seems like all the big successful gurus are making money blogging about it (even though he knows nothing at all about the topic). He then registers some “just okay” domain name, as he could not find any good ones available (in the 10 minutes he spent searching) for that particular niche.
After that… Johnny signs up for a hosting account, points his domain name to the webhost’s nameservers, installs WordPress (the blog platform) to his server (all things I will go over later) and he is ready to start blogging.
Johnny thinks to himself, “Wow that was a lot easier than I thought. This blogging stuff is easy!” Little does Johnny know.
So Johnny starts on his blogging venture. Since he doesn’t know much (okay… really nothing) about the topic of making money online, he starts reading all the blogs he can find on the subject and starts writing about similar topics for his blog. Once the site has a little content, he applies for a Google Adsense account as recommended in the course he purchased. A couple days later, after he has been approved, he starts adding Adsense code to his site. Again, he does exactly what the course says… he adjusts the color of his ads to blend in with his blog and he places the ads in just the right spots to get the maximum amount of clicks.
He then searches to see what affiliate products and services other bloggers in his niche are promoting on their sites, and he signs up for many of those affiliate programs as well. He then adds a bunch of the banner ads the affiliate merchants provided him to his blog. Now Johnny website is really starting to look nice, and he is getting more and more excited about all the money he knows he is about to start making.
It’s late and Johnny still has his 9 to 5 job to report to in the morning, so he heads off to bed. Again, he has a real hard time sleeping as he can’t wait to see how much money he has earned while lying in bed. He knows the cool thing about running an online business is… you can earn money 24 hours a day, even while you are sleeping!
Fortunately, he does manage to get a few hours of sleep this time. When Johnny wakes up the next morning… the first thing that he does is he hops on his computer to see how much money he has earned. He signs into his Adsense account and looks at his numbers and sees he didn’t even make one penny last night. Even worse, it looks like only one person visited his site while he slept. He quickly logs into his different affiliate accounts and he sees that none of his banner ads got any clicks either. He is a bit disappointed, but he figures most people are on the same schedule as he is and his site would probably do better during the daytime hours. So back to his 9 to 5 job he goes.
When Johnny gets home later that day from work… the first thing he does is he gets on his computer to check and see how much money he has made so far that day. Again disappointment hits Johnny, as he has still has not made any money, and it looks like he only had one visitor all day long. Johnny thinks to himself, “How can this be? I have a beautiful website, with a lot of great content… why aren’t people visiting?”
Johnny decides he probably should do some of the “Traffic Generating” techniques (which he was hoping to avoid) in his blogging course. So he visits other blogs in his “making money online” niche and starts commenting on other blogger’s posts. He also starts visiting different forums and leaves replies on different thread posts with a link back to his site in his signature file. He also wants to try guest blogging and article marketing… but he really doesn’t know that much about the subject (Making Money Online), and he barely has enough time to write 2 or 3 posts a week for his blog, so that is definitely not going to happen. He figures he will getting around to those other traffic generating techniques sometime down the road when he is not working his day job anymore.
Amazingly, right after Johnny started commenting on other blogs and replying to forum thread posts he starts to see some traffic to his site. People are actually commenting on his blog as well. Johnny is really excited now, as he thinks he has found the secret to success!
(Click Here to read what happens with the rest of Johnny’s first online venture)
A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online (Part 1)
by Doug Dillard
Filed under Getting Started, How to Make Money Online, Your First $500
“Getting Started Series” (Part 1a) – A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online
In part one of my “Getting Started” series I want to share with you one of the key secrets to making money online. Seriously, if more people knew this secret and followed it each day, there would be so many more people making money online. The great thing about this secret is it actually works in anything you do in life, but unfortunately (for some reason)… even if people know the secret, most don’t use it on a consistent basis.
Now many Internet Marketers (but not all) don’t want you to know about this secret, because… if everyone knew the secret, there would be a lot less people buying their “Get Rich Quick” products, and they would be making a LOT LESS MONEY.
So are you ready to know what the secret is? The secret is… “MAKING MONEY ONLINE TAKES HARD WORK AND DEDICATION, JUST LIKE ANY OTHER BUSINESS”. That’s the secret!
That is an important lesson to remember, as I have known so many people (over the last 10 years that I have been doing this)… that thought making money online was suppose to be easy. Let me give you an example of a typical unsuccessful online entrepreneur’s journey, so hopefully you can avoid a similar fate.
For this example I am going to give this “wanna get rich quick entrepreneur, without much effort” the name… Johnny.
Johnny has been reading lots articles and seeing news stories lately on how all these people (young and old) are getting rich online by starting these simple Internet businesses. Well Johnny wants to get rich too, and he hates his regular 9 to 5 job, so he decides to investigate what people are doing to make all this money online.
So Johnny jumps on Google and does a search for “Making Money Online”. Well there are just a ton of results that pop up, but one catches his eye. Over on the right side he sees an ad that says, “I make $25K a Month Blogging on the Beach with My Laptop and so can You!”. He thinks to himself… “Now that is the kind of business I want to have” and he clicks on the ad.
He is taken to this great looking website with a picture of this guy sitting on the beach, with a Mai Tai and a beautiful woman next to him, and a computer on his lap. Also on the page is a photo of his multi-million dollar mansion, with a few of his exotic 100K-plus cars parked out front.
As Johnny reads the long sale-page, he becomes almost in a trance on how easy and fast it was for this guy to start making 25K a month, and Johnny knows he is a lot smarter than that guys is, so this should be easy. On top of that, there are a dozen testimonials telling Johnny how great this course is and how they are all making a ton of money too, as a result of taking this course.
As Johnny scrolls down the page farther he comes to the “FREE Bonuses” section where they are offering over $1400 in free eBooks and videos (10 extra products total) if he purchases the course by midnight tonight. Now Johnny is really intrigued, as all the bonus products sound AWESOME and he really wants each one.
Finally Johnny makes it down to the section with the price of the course, which is only $47. “Wow”… Johnny is thinking. “The course is only $47, and it is going to teach me how to make over $25K a month online, plus I am going to get over $1400 in free bonuses, which are also going to help me make even more money online. Then on top of that, they are offering a 60-Day “No Questions Asked” Money Back Guarantee. How can Johnny say “No”?
So Johnny clicks the “Buy Now” button, pulls out his credit card and places his order. In most cases this would not be the end of the ordering process. Most of the time when buying these types of products Johnny would be introduced to several up-sell promotions before he actually ever gets to the product download page, but we will save that story for another day. For this example Johnny is just going to purchase the “How to Make Money Online Blogging” course (with the free bonuses), and that’s it.
Once the order has been completed Johnny is taken to the product download page. Since everything is in digital format… each product needs to be downloaded individually. So Johnny downloads the course and the other 10 bonus products to his computer one by one… which seems to take forever!
Finally all the products are downloaded and Johnny can open his making money online course on blogging. As Johnny reads the course from front to back he grows more and more excited on how easy it sounds to start making money. He actually reads it twice to make sure he doesn’t miss a thing. That night while he lies in bed, there is not a chance he is going to get a wink of sleep… as his mind is just racing with different thoughts of how he is going to be so rich, and he envisions all the cool things he will be buying in the next couple of months when the money starts rolling in.
(Click Here to read what happens with the rest of Johnny’s first online venture)
Making Money Online Swiping Ideas
by Doug Dillard
Filed under How to Make Money Online, Your First $500
When it comes to making money online, there are literally unlimited ways to go about accomplishing that goal. But the smart internet entrepreneur is always keeping a close tab on what other successful online marketers are up to with their business. That is where the “Swipe Files” and “Idea Files” come in extremely handy.
What is a swipe file? It is basically exactly what it sounds like. It’s a file full of content that you have swiped from other sites, magazines, newspapers, etc…. Swipe files are usually used by copywriters, and whenever they see a great ad, sales letter, headline, etc… they make a copy of it (or cut them right out of a magazine or newspaper) and put it a file for future reference. Then when they are getting ready to write an ad or sales letter, they can browse their swipe file to get ideas. People have been creating “Swipe Files” forever and there is nothing wrong with it, as it is a commonly used practice. Just know that the content in the file is used for inspiration and ideas, not for copying and pasting as that would be plagiarism.
Like swipe files, I like to visit my favorite sites and take notes on what I like and don’t like about each site and save that information in what I call my “Idea File”. My idea file is similar to a swipe file, as it is a place to draw inspiration, but it is different because I am not saving actual content. I am creating a list of things that I like about different sites I visite. Here are just few examples of things you might find in my “Idea File”.
SITE DESIGN – When surfing the web (which I do a lot of each day) I love to take note of each site I visit’s overall design to see if there is something that I really like that might look good on one of our sites, or future sites we have planned.
For example, this site’s design was created from a cool site I saw that was using the WordPress Church theme from StudioPress. So I purchased the theme, customized the color layout, added a logo, uploaded it to Making Money Online Dot Com’s server and I thought I was done.
Then a few days later I found another theme that I really liked called the Ultimate Blogging Theme from Carl Ocab. I loved the theme, but I really liked 2 elements of the design a lot (the 3 boxes on the top of my index pages and the footer layout), so I purchased that theme too, and extracted those 2 elements and added them to my site.
Then there was one more thing I really wanted, which I had in my Idea File for months before ever opening Making Money Online. John Chow and Zac Johnson both have this cool way of displaying their featured posts on their index page with a scrolling display plugin. So I sent a few emails to the guys over at Unique Blog Design (the company that designed both their themes) asking them what they would charge to create that for me. Well I never heard back from them, so I just went to Elance and found someone to create it for me there.
Of all the things I keep in my Idea File, “Site Designs” probably has the most in it. Not only do I have just a whole bunch of URL’s in there, but I have taken hundreds, if not thousands of screen shots over the years of sites where I like some part of their design.
COOL PLUGINS – Since this site is built on the WordPress platform there are just TONS of plugins out there to enhance your visitor’s experience. Whenever I see some kind of cool function on sites I visit I try and find out if it is a plugin, and if so… which one they are using.
Also, many bloggers nowadays run posts each month (if not several times a month) listing their favorite plugins and/or any new plugins that have just come out and let you know exactly what they do. I have a HUGE LIST of plugins now and what they do in my Idea File for whenever they might come in handy.
PROMOTIONS – Everyday website owners are coming out with new promotions for their sites, as well as running contests to get people coming back each week (or if you are lucky each day). The first contest we ran was a result of a post we read from Dan Keller over at TycoonBlogger.com. It is a Comment Contest which we are still running now.
Another example of a promotion I have in my Idea File is Shoemoney’s “Free Shirt Fridays” where each Friday Jeremy promotes a company that sends him a shirt. It is an ingenious idea, and he gets a ton of free shirts to wear (or do whatever he wants with) as well as other products sent to him each week. We have a cool idea planned for this site that I am sure you are all going to love, and the inspiration for it came from that promotion.
WHAT THEY ARE PROMOTING – It is hard to stay on top of every new product, eBook, service, etc… that comes out in your niche each week. A good way to find new products is by visiting other websites and see what they are promoting. Of course everything your competition is promoting might not work for your current site(s), but it might work down the road, so I like to keep a list of things people are marketing. This really comes in handy when you are writing a post, as one of the products you saved might be perfect to promote in that post. Also, if you are short on ideas of something to write about… you could always do a little research and write a post on one of the products in your file.
NEWSLETTERS – Do you have a subscriber list for your site, or are planning on building one? Before we ever added our first sign-up subscription form to one of our sites, I literally signed up to hundreds of online newsletters, and I kept a copy of my favorite newsletter layouts in my idea file. Not only did I keep a copy of the layouts (which helped a lot when designing our newsletters), but I also kept notes on how each webmaster’s subscription process went. Many have cool “Next Step” pages that explain the double option process so the subscriber knows they have to do one more step before they are actually subscribed. Others have thank-you pages that are designed to get you to do something else. I really like the fact that every newsletter is different and you can learn something from everyone you sign-up for. With some you will learn something that you want to add to your newsletter, and with others you will learn things you do not like and want to stay away from.
If you are ever planning on creating your own subscriber list, I suggest you sign-up for as many newsletters as you can and see what others are doing. If you don’t like receiving a bunch of newsletters in your current email account, I suggest you create an email account just for newsletters. Then you can check your account once a week, or whenever you feel like it.
There are several other things I keep in my Idea File, but you get the basic understanding of how it works. There is nothing worse than seeing something really cool and saying to yourself, “I need to do that on my site” and then a little while later totally forget what it was. If you are good about keeping an Idea File, then you won’t have to worry about that happening.
Remember… Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, so don’t feel bad doing something similar to what your competition is doing. Just don’t copy them exactly or you might offend them a little, and you don’t want to do that either.
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