Money Online Fast

Actually it does have to do with making money online in the sense that I am going to find out exactly how G decides which videos it pushes to page 1 in the search results. To that end I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest the videos with the most anchored backlinks will win. Yes a real stretch so with that in mind you can go directly to youtube and watch the Red Fox Video there. (You can watch it here - I just needed an excuse to send a proper keyword anchored backlink to the vid.) ;-)

And yes - I shot the video. That's my 7 year old feeding the Fox and yes I know... don't feed wild animals. (Last time I did I ended up with a pet wolf for 15 years - btw. Max the Wolf passed on two months ago from old age - we miss him a lot.)

So as long as I lured you all here under false pretenses I have a question for all you twitter users. Have any of you signed up with Ad.ly? Okay 2 questions - if you have are any of you getting advertisers?

On paper Ad.ly sounds like it might make a few bucks if you have enough twitter followers. The premise is simple enough - sign up and tweet a couple of ads a week to your followers and get paid a weekly fee for your effort. The thing is I signed up with my small following of twitterers (only 800 followers) and have yet to see an advertiser darken my doorstep. Not that this surprises me as I haven't played the twitter game of following everyone who follows me. If I had I would be well in the 5 figures by now. Many of my readers do have thousands of followers though and I thought I'd trouble you folks for some feedback. Are you using Ad.ly and if so how many followers do you have and what kind of rate are you getting based on your followers? If it turns out that there is money to be made in this I may have to rethink my twitter following.

If you haven't heard of Ad.ly and have a lot of followers (you need a minimum of 50 to be accepted) then you might want to join up (it's free - really free...) and test it yourself. That link has my referring id in it and normally I wouldn't care if you used my link or not but I got an email from Ad.ly yesterday that said I had cracked the top ten for referrals for some contest they are running - who can send the most traffic to them of course - and the prize is a MacBook which I don't need or want (I'll give it away on here should I win it once I think of some lame contest...) These kind of contests never interest me but when I saw the list of who was in the top ten I felt the urge to catch Mr "I make money online by taking pictures of my food" Chow... If inclined please join and full disclosure - I make no money from you joining and have not been paid to promote Ad.ly. (I really just want to find out how many people Chow referred and I need to beat him to do that - Ad.ly isn't publishing the numbers.) Yes I do have better things to do...
Speaking of which - I just found out my friend Allyn Hane finally got his Beer Review Blog up and running and I want to lend him a hand with a link and some traffic if any of you are into cold frosty beverages. Allyn is a heckofanice guy and drop in on him if you have a moment. If you are a struggling musician he is looking to promote unknown music on his beer videos (Allyn is a video blogger) so get in touch with him if you are looking to promote your stuff.

Lastly for the 16 emailers who politely and some not so politely asked me to put up a new post... I just did. :-)


Cheers,

Griz

Prologue - It took about an hour for the video to show up on page 1 of the serp's for "Hand Feeding a Red Fox" - not a competitive term but apparently links work just as well for vids as they do for pages.

Money with no work

Making money online used to pretty much require you to have your own Web site, products to sell and some marketing savvy. But a new generation of dot-coms have arisen that will pay you for what you know and who you know without you having to be a web designer or a marketing genius.

But it's hard to tell hype from the real deal. I did a search on "make money online" and "making money online", and much of the information out there is just promoting various infoproducts, mostly about Internet marketing. I see why people sometimes ask, "Is anyone making money online besides Internet marketing experts?"

So I put together a list of business opportunities with legitimate companies that:

• Pay cash, not just points towards rewards or a chance to win money
• Don't require you to have your own Web domain or your own products
• Don't involve any hard-selling
• Aren't just promoting more Internet marketing
• Give a good return on your time investment

In the interest of objectivity, none of the links below are affiliate links, and none of them have paid or provided any other consideration for their presence here. These are legitimate companies with business models that allow you to get paid for a wide range of activities.

Help friends find better jobs.

Sites like ReferEarns, Zyoin, Who Do You Know For Dough?, Bohire and WiseStepp connect employers with prospective employees, many of whom are already employed and not actively job-hunting, via networking - the people who know these qualified candidates. Rewards for referring a candidate who gets hired range from $50 on up to several thousand dollars - not chump change. If you know a lot of job-seekers (and who doesn't these days?), this is a great way to break into the recruiting business with no overhead.

Connect suppliers with buyers.

Referral fees are a common practice in business, but they haven't been used much in online networking sites because there was no way to track them. Sites like Salesconx, InnerSell and uRefer now provide that. Vendors set the referral fees they're willing to pay (and for what), and when the transaction happens, you get paid. uRefer also allows merchants to set up referral programs for introductions and meetings, as well as transactions.

Write.

A growing number of sites will pay for your articles or blog posts. Associated Content and Helium will "pay for performance" based on page views for just about anything you want to write about. Articles on specific topics they're looking for can earn direct payments up to about $200. The rates are probably low for established writers, but if you're trying to break into the field and have time on your hands, they're a great way to start. Also, a lot of companies are looking for part-time bloggers. They may pay per post or on a steady contract. Our Weblogs Guide posts blogging jobs weekly in the forum.

Start your own blog.

You don't have to have your own Web site, or install blogging software, or even figure out how to set up the advertising. At Blogger you can set up a blog for free in less than five minutes without knowing a thing about web design, and Blogger even automates setting up Google AdSense so you can make money off your blog by displaying ads and getting paid when people click on the ads. To make even more money from it, set up an affiliate program (see below) for books, music, etc., and insert your affiliate links whenever you refer to those items. You'll have to get a lot of traffic to become a six-figure blogger, but pick an interesting topic, write well, tell all your friends, and you're off to a good start.

Related: Monetizing Your Blog

Create topical resource hubs.

Are you an expert on a particular niche topic? Can you put together an overview of the topic and assemble some of the best resources on the topic from around the web? Then you can create topical hubs and get paid through sites like Squidoo, HugPages and Google Knol. Payments are based on a combination of ad revenue and affiliate fees. You'll get higher rates doing it on your own, but these sites have a built-in supply of traffic and tools to make content creation easier.

Advertise other people's products.

If you already have a Web site or a blog, look for vendors that offer related but non-competing products and see if they have an affiliate program. Stick to familiar products and brands - they're easier to sell. To promote those products:

• Place simple text or graphical ads in appropriate places on your site
• Include links to purchase products you review or recommend in a blog, discussion forum or mailing list you control
• Create a dedicated sales page or Web site to promote a particular product

They all work - it just depends on how much time you have to spend on it and your level of expertise with Web design and marketing.

Related: How to Really Make Money on the Internet With an Amazon.com Affiliate Site

Microstock photography.

You don't have to be a professional photographer to sell your photos for money. People are constantly in need of stock photography for websites, presentations, brochures and so on, and are willing to pay for the right image. People generally search for images on stock photography sites by keywords, not by photographer, so you have the same chance as anyone else of having your image picked. Just be careful that you don't have images of trademarked brands, copyrighted art or people's faces that are readily identifiable (unless you have a model release), but just about anything else is fair game, and I promise - you'd be amazed what people need pictures of, so don't make any assumptions. If it's a decent photo, upload it. Some sites to get you started include Fotolia, ShutterStock, Dreamstime and iStockphoto. The great thing about this is that it's truly "set it and forget it".

The above list is by no means comprehensive, but it highlights some of the new and interesting ways to make money online without investing any money, without having a product of your own, and without having expert sales and marketing skills. Most of all, unlike taking surveys or getting paid to read e-mail, the potential return on your time investment is substantial.

Make Money Online

Video Marketing is an efficient way to promote your business. Customers are attracted to a product rapidly if the same is promoted by visual based ads. Ansel Adams, the famous US landscape photographer once said, “A picture speaks thousand words”. If a picture can speak thousand words, videos can tell you a complete story! We live in a very busy world and we have to deal with quality obsessed customers. Most of today’s customers do not have time or do not bother to read a detailed print material where everything about your business is detailed. They are quickly inclined to a brochure with lots of images or a crisp yet enlightening video advertisement.

If you thought that free video sharing websites like YouTube and MetaCafe are meant for people who want to share their family moments with relatives or for teenagers to share funny stuff, you probably didn’t notice the possibility of using these sites as an effective marketing tool. These websites are an easy and inexpensive method for you to promote your local business. You can shoot a small video of your shop by yourself or hire a local videographer to shoot and edit your own advertisement. This advertisement can easily reach your local community and more people will come to know about your business.

When you begin with video marketing, you can try with some already existing footage which you shot to promote your business or you can borrow a handycam from your friend and shoot it by yourself. This will help you to cut video production costs. There are some uploading tools which will upload your video to several directories. Get help of such uploading tools. Traffic Geyser and Tube Mogul are two major uploading tools used in video marketing.

Watching several commercial advertisements and other promo videos will help you get some idea for your own footage. Your video should be very informative in the first place. It should clearly explain where your shop is located, how can someone reach there, products and services you offer, possible advantages of a consumer if they do business with you, discounts going on, warranty on products etc in the footage. Try not to exceed 3 minutes so that your viewer will pay complete attention to the footage without getting distracted.

Advanced editing techniques and right background music will make your footage look very professional. You can seek a professional video editor’s help for this. A video editor can help you in picking up the right titles and fonts for the video and the necessary color enhancements. You should attain the maximum sharpness and resolution to your clip while uploading to directories.

The last part in an effective video marketing is the information you provide with your video. You should be able to enter sufficient metadata so that search engines can quickly pick your video in their search results. When you upload your video in a directory like YouTube, try to give appropriate title which mentions the type of business you do and the location. Entering as many keywords or tags possible will help search engines to pick up your footage if someone search with a tag you entered in your video. You should avoid inappropriate tags because it will only help you get several hits but will not actually promote your business. There is a possibility that spam filters will exclude your video while searching.