Planning Your Dream Online Business

Before you come up with a business plan you have to know what you want to accomplish with an online business.

The first step to creating the online business of your dreams is to define it. You can’t create your ideal online business if you don’t know what it even looks like!

The best way is to ask yourself questions that will help you create a clear vision of your ideal online business.

Here is a small sample of the kinds of questions you should ask yourself:

• Why am I starting a business ?


• Why do I want to make money online?


• What am I willing to do to make money online?


• How much money do I want to make per year with my online business?


• How many hours a day do I want to work?


• Do I like to deal with customers?


• What are my strengths and weaknesses?

When you ask And answer questions like that you can get a picture of your ideal online business.

With that picture in mind, you are well on your way to creating your successful online business.

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How To Pick The Right Niche For Your Monetised Blog

In this post I am going to briefly discuss on how to pick the right niche for your monetized blog.

Here is a quick outline of the steps you need to take :

1. List out Your Passions

2. Make A List Of Things You Do Well

3. Merge the 1st Two Lists mentioned above

4. Choose Your Favorite 2-3 Niches

5. Determine The Traffic Potential

6. Determine The Money Making Potential

7. Make Sure You Have Time For The Niche

You should choose a niche in a target market that you CAN and WANT to spend a LONG time serving. While you can have online success by going from one niche to another or by creating products in niches that you are not passionate about, it is always much easier to build a monetized blog by sticking with one niche market that you LOVE and cater to that target market.

To help target the right niche, you need to decide who your ideal audience is. You can do this by answering the following question: Who will I enjoy serving the most?

To sum up : If you REALLY want to make big money online AND enjoy it at the same time, target your monetised blog for a niche you would LOVE to serve. You would want your blog to be enjoyable and easy to read !!

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INCREASE Blog Traffic With Quality Content

So why do people visit a blog in the first place ? Think about the blogs that you visit frequently. What is holding your attention to these blogs ? I’m very sure that your favorite blogs do a good job of entertaining and/or educating you. And they do this with quality content.

Blog traffic can be increased by writing posts with quality content, and it turns random visitors into regular readers !

The benefits of quality blog content do not just end there. Other bloggers are also more likely to link to and/or cite one of your blog posts (or your blog in general) if it contains great information.

And as you probably know, increasing the number of links to your blog from other websites also increases your search engine visibility on top of generating direct referral traffic to your site.

What Is Quality Content?

So what is quality content and how do you create it?

I feel that quality website content should have the following traits :

1. It explores the subject matter in great detail, regardless of the subject being addressed.




2. It is well-written with proper spelling and grammar which makes it easy for people to read.




3. It is interesting and insightful. It doesn’t just rehash what everyone else is saying — it speaks for itself.




4. It is updated frequently to address current events / changes within the subject matter.




5. It is written with a clear purpose in mind – be it to entertain, educate or persuade, etc.

Now that you know blog traffic can be increased with quality content, the only thing left for you to do is start generating that great content !

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Online Tools : Forum Marketing

Forums are one of the aspects of the web that make is such a great medium.

It is shocking how many people there are interested in almost any topic you can imagine. Forums give those people a place to congregate and talk about what they like.

If you're promoting a product or service in a given niche, you need to become part of that community. That means you need to locate online forums where those folks hangout, and start participating.

Once you sign up for a forum, post regularly so people get to know you. Post questions, answer questions etc. Tell people where to find good information etc.

Or make frequent contributions to popular threads there. Be sure to go into your forum profile and edit your "signature". Make a signature that includes the link to your blog or site. That way, every time you make a post, anyone who sees it will see your signature and potentially click on your link. For posting on forums without a profile signature creation, remember to conclude with a signature ad/link.

Working on forums takes a little time to work, so don't expect a traffic gusher right away. But this is also one of the easiest ways to get free traffic, and it lets you build a reputation in your niche for the long run. That will build your traffic steadily over time.

Some of the popular forums are listed below :

My Marketing Forum

Instant Buzz Community Forum

Free Advertising Forum

Marketing Study Hall

ABlake Forum

The Warriors Forum

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1

eBanking Tools : Online Credit Card Processing

Hello fellow bloggers ! The first of my series on toolkits is internet credit card processing for businesses that operate or intend to operate online.

Processing credit cards online was once only for the privileged large ecommerce sites like Amazon. Since the introduction of affordable online credit card processing facilities, a variety of websites both large and small now have merchant credit card processing services which enable them to take orders online and charge credit card orders in real time.

Credit card processing facilities have now enabled the more traditional merchant to practically work from home, automating the entire online shopping experience thus freeing up more time to focus on other important areas of running an online business, such as website promotion and marketing. And when you accept credit cards online, you can expect your sales to increase by an astounding 50 to 400%.

Internet credit card processing generally requires that you have a merchant account with your local bank (many new website owners who are entering the online store arena already have this from their existing business). This merchant account simply ties into the service that the online credit card processing company has. Often the company or payment gateway can help you set this up if you have not already done so.

Still lost as to how a payment gateway / online credit card transactions work?

Below is a simple flowchart which hopefully will give you a clearer picture of what this is all about :

For more information on payment gateways and accepting credit cards online I suggest contacting one of my recommended ebanking / credit card processing partners:

eBanking / Credit Card Processing Partners

Charge.com

• A registered ISO/MSP for FDIC insured Wells Fargo Bank, Walnut Creek, CA.
• Offers free online application and setup
• Same day approval service available
• Can accept major credit cards for your sales within 24 hours upon approval
• FREE Search engine submission of your web site to all of the major search engines
• FREE ecommerce shopping cart for your web site
• For a limited time only, currently offering a $300 free value added package for signups

Free Credit Card Machines

• Operated by North American Bancard and is a registered Independent Sales Organization/Merchant Service Provider for HSBC Bank USA, National Association, Buffalo, NY
• Also offers free online application and setup
• Same day approval service available
• Plus a free Omni Vx570 and Verifone Pin Pad or ViVOpay 4000 processing terminal for those with retail sales

PayPal
If you don’t know what PayPal is then you’ve been living under a rock. This is pretty much a must have if you want to make money from a blog or do your shopping on eBay. Possibly one of the biggest secure payment services used on the internet today.

• Accepts all major credit cards
• Also allows you to send, receive or request money from anyone with an email address in 190 countries and regions that accept PayPal or have a PayPal account
• Offers Mass Payment via a Premier or Business account to send multiple payments instantly—saving time, money and the hassle of having to individually send funds to every payment recipient
• Offers transactions in 16 currencies

I will cover more on PayPal's Mass Payment in a separate post.

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Free Image and File Hosting

Hi Bloggers !!! It’s a brand new day !! Had fun uploading your blogs with plenty of images, audios, videos or files ? Reality check, you find your storage space running low. Either you buy additional storage space, OR you can also upload them onto third party hosts and show them in your Blog page using Links. A simple search on the net will reveal many such sites, some of which I will highlight below.

As these are free sites, you can expect them to impose limits on their bandwidth and storage space usage. Read their terms carefully and try them out if you'd like, but as a precaution, keep backups of all the files in your computer or CDs.

Free Image Hosts

• Photobucket
• Picasa Web
• Picburst
• PhotoCrib
• DropFiles
• EasyPics
• ElectronicFiles
• ezyPhotoShare
• Flickr
• BagThatPic
• BlogPulp
• Forumsigs
• FreeFileHosting
• Image4you
• ImageCloset
• ImageDip
• ImageDoll
• ImageGrip
• ImageHigh
• FreeImageHost
• FreeImageHosting
• Supload
• TheImageHosting
• 4FreeImageHost
• Alkaspace
• Allyoucanupload
• TheImagePlace
• ThePixPlace
• FreeShare
• Hostforpic
• i-ImageHost
• ImageHostFree
• ImageOx
• Img4Free
• ImgFreeHost
• Imgjax
• imgPire
• ImgUpp
• InstantImageHosting
• Myonlineimages
• Mypicshare
• pHosted
• PhotoJerk
• UploadYourImages
• Village Photos
• Warst
• FreeMyImage
• Superfilehosting
• Photolinko
• PhotoPeg
• Piczs
• Pixloads
• PixUpload
• TurboImageHost
• Upithere
• Upload2
• Uploadhouse
• iWebPhoto
• KeepMyFile
• LargeImageHost

Free File Hosts

• Mediafire
• MediaMax
• SnapDrive
• UploadingIt
• Rapidshare
• Ripway
• mFileStash
• Pixilive
• Box.net
• Boxstr
• FasterUpload
• FileAve
• 4FileHosting
• ShareBig
• Megaphile
• YouShare
• 4shared
• fileXoom
• GigaFiles
• Woofiles
• FileHigh
• FileHosting
• FileNanny
• FileWind
• HappyUpload
• PutFile
• YahooBriefcase
• YourFileLink
• Axifile
• FileDen
• FileFactory

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1

SEO and Blog Indexing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) aims at increasing the volume and improving the quality of traffic to a blog from search engine results. Search engines work on different algorithms to analyze the contents and keywords, and present the search results. Google, for instance, assigns page ranks, and blogs that rank highly will appear early in the results.

Many other factors are also considered by search engines, such as relevance, unique content and quality of links. The major search engines know that revealing these factors will only encourage manipulation of the ranking system and have thus been secretive about how the ranking algorithms work.

The common agreement is that the more visible your blog is on the internet, the higher your ranking will eventually be. Hence, having your blog linked to by many other blogs and indexed by different search engines increase its exposure and visibility.

Blog Indexing

Following up from my previous post, I assume that your blog is now up. It is a matter of time that your blog is indexed by the major search engines like Google and MSN. One of the fastest ways to have your blog indexed is to get another blog that is already in the search engine listings to link to you. When the search engine crawlers visit that blog, they will find your blog and index it.

When submitting your blog, you can just submit the top-level webpage and for Blogger Blogs, it will be an address like this http://blogname.blogspot.com without the www.

Some of the sites send advertisements and newsletters to you in exchange for free submission. If you don't want that, remember to opt out of it. Note that different search engines have different standards of content, design and technical specifications, submission of your blog does not guarantee that it will be included in their database.

Search Engine Listing

You may submit your site URL to these search engines to see if your blog has been indexed.

• Google
• Yahoo! Search
• Microsoft Live Search
• Alexa Web Search
• Baidu
• ExactSeek
• SearchSight
• EntireWeb
• Gigablast
• SearchKing
• Splat Search
• SearchIt
• Jayde
• Infotiger
• Abacho
• Submit-one
• TowerSearch
• Shoula
• The-search-site
• Websquash
• Unasked
• DinoSearch
• SearchtheWeb
• BestYellow

And the list goes on .........However, this should be more than sufficient to get you going.

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Getting Started : Blogging and Webhosting

So you’re looking to make some nice cash on the side? Have a great product or plenty of great ideas but do not know where to start ?

You’ve come to the right place! All you need is a blog or a site and you too can tap into this unlimited source of online income.

BLOGGING

Blogging has taken the online world by storm. It started out as dynamically editable websites people used to talk about topics of interest. Now, however, blogging has become a high-powered business tool.

The easiest and fastest way to get your blog up and running is to use Google's free Blogger tool @ www.Blogger.com, which is also where my blog is hosted.

Just follow the simple instructions and you are up ! Make sure you choose a sub-domain unique to what you are going to do as you can't change that later.

Click here to create your own Blog Spot !

SOCIAL BOOKMARKING

Another way to showcase your products and ideas is to set up your page on a social bookmarking site like www.Squidoo.com.

Squidoo is a very popular site for building free, single pages about your passions -- Highlight products, books, blogs, vids, online shops, or just spread the word about the stuff you love.

From an Internet marketing perspective, Squidoo is vastly different from other social bookmarking sites. You can sell blatantly without worrying about somebody shutting you down, as is the case at MySpace. The Bonus feature is, it allows you to raise money (for you or charity) at the same time.

Go create your free Squidoo lens now and join the niche groups that suits you.



MANAGED WEBHOSTING

Another solution to start your website or blog is to engage a hosting provider to manage your site/blog for you. This is an excellent choice if time is a factor or you find it difficult to install the software, make your own theme, add plug-ins and upgrade it without loosing all your posts.

A managed hosting provider addresses all of them at a fee ranging from $5 to $20 per month depending on the package you choose. For something more than that, then either it is too expensive or you are a really big business owner.

Anything between $7 to $12 per month is a good deal.

Providers will come equipped with an easy-to-use website builder, customised ready to use design templates or site integrated themes, click-drag-drop plug-ins, plenty of other unique features and your site will be up in no time. And of course, you get to have your very own domain name !

My personal recommendation is Micfo Group Webhosting Company. For $9.95/month, Micfo comes equipped with 5G disk space, 100G bandwidth, unlimited domain names/FTP/email accounts setup and an excellent 24x7 Email/Ticketing/Live Chat/Phone Technical Support and a 30-day money back guarantee if you are still not satisfied with their comprehensive and affordable service.

Site management tools include : cPanel, RVSiteBuilder, Frontpage, Dreamweaver etc. Micfo also offers Webalizer statistics software, pre-installed scripts like Wordpress Blog, and other awesome database and multimedia support (like Flash and Shockwave.

Lastly, an added bonus for readers is that you get 1 month free webhosting if you sign up for a 6 month membership, while you get 2 months free if you sign up for its 12 month package. This works out to $8.29 per month (16.67% discount) compared to singularized monthly renewal @ $9.95 per month.

To find out more, please proceed to Micfo Group Webhosting.

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Introduction

Hello everyone ! A very big Welcome to my Blog !! My name is Albert and I hail from the sunny island of Singapore ! If you see me chatting on irc channels, do remember to say hi hi !!

So you like to blog ? Why not try to make money at the same time ?

My blog serves to review and showcase popular money making tools, eBooks, traffic generators, web hosting sites and plug-ins found on the Internet as well as provide helpful tips on monetised blogging.

As I populate and grow my blog, I hope you will continue to come by and check out the stuff I have for you. And while you are at it, do remember to add me to your feeds :) Errmm I will cover feeds in another post.

Okay let's start and cut to the chase !


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