How to Make Money from Blogs

Thank heavens for blogs. Blogs are the easiest way to be on the Web nowadays - you don't even need to be skilled in CSS or HTML to start your own blog. But starting a blog is one thing; earning money from it is another.

Here are some steps to start a successful blog and earn money from it:

1. Set up your blog. You can have the option of using their URL (e.g. http://widgetsblog.blogger.com) or use the blog software in your own domain name (http://www.widgetsblog.com). Some of these are free, while some has monthly/annual subscription

Here are some places that will allow you to create your own blog

Blogger http://www.blogger.com
Typepad http://www.typepad.com/
Moveable Type http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/
Wordpress http://www.wordpress.org/

2. Create great content. Everything starts with content. Give a reason why visitors will frequent your site. Why will they want to read your blog? Why will they want to spend their time in your blog? Provide value, useful information and other benefits to the readers.

3. Get traffic to your blog. You can't earn from your blog if the blog does not have traffic. Getting traffic is going to be your biggest challenge.

Here is a comprehensive list of places where you can list your blogs and syndicate its content - Resources for Marketing Your Blogs and RSS Feeds

Use carnivals, which are a technique for showcasing your blog. Carnivals occur once a week, and you need to submit your blog post to the carnival moderator. Here is a submission form: http://www.conservativecat.com/Ferdy/Carnivals.htm An example of a carnival in action is that of the Carnival of Entrepreneurship hosted by About.com

4. Think of how to monetize your blog. One of the most common way of earning money from blogs is through advertising and donations. Here are some ways you can earn money from your blog:

Google Adsense http://www.google.com/adsense
Chitika eMinimalls http://www.chitika.com
Text link ads - you can sell for fixed price for a fixed period of time
Donation (yes, you can beg) Affiliate programs such as Commission Junction http://www.cj.com and the Amazon Associates program

Business Plan Competitions

Business plan competitions have become an important venue for finding investors. Jenny Lefcourt, co-founder of WeddingChannel.com, found venture capital to support her business at a school business plan competition. Other competitions award cash prizes that the entrepreneur can use to jumpstart the business.

If this is something you want to try, here are some of the business plan competitions:

Oxford University Business Plan Competition (2006 competition has lapsed but you can try next year) http://www.science-enterprise.ox.ac.uk/html/busplan_timetable.asp

USF International Business Plan Competition
http://www.usfca.edu/sobam/nvc/bpc/

Tech Valley Business Plan competition
http://www.techvalley.org/Pages/News%20_%20Events/Tech%20Valley%20News/1-24-2006.html

IBK Capital Ivey Business Plan competition
http://www.iveybpc.com/

International Business Plan Competition for Poverty Reduction and Profit
http://www.nextbillion.net/event/2006/02/07/bid-challenge-2006-the-international-business-plan-competition-for-poverty-reduction-and-profit

Rice University Business Plan competition
http://www.alliance.rice.edu/alliance/RBPC.asp

Business Idea: How to Start a Credit Collection Business

Bad times can be good times for certain types of businesses, particularly the credit collection business. With interest rates rising, cost of money becomes more expensive squeezing many businesses. As a result, they are unable to pay on their debt obligations or get delayed in their payments to their creditors, vendors and suppliers. It is one big ouch for the company waiting to be paid, but bonanza for credit collection businesses.

So how can you start a credit collection business?

The first thing is to have an understanding of the laws of credit and collection. Lawdog.com http://www.lawdog.com/state/laws.htm offers law information for collections in all fifty states.

Other resources include:

Michelle Dunn website
http://www.howtoadvice.com/CollectionService
http://www.collectionindustry.com/home.cfm (subscription-based website for the collections industry professional)
http://www.firstdetroit.com/ (offers research and analysis on the debt collection industry)

Below are books for starting a collection agency:

• Starting a Collection Agency by Michelle Dunn
• How to Start a Home-Based Collection Agency by Robert H. Bills
• Credit & Collection Letters That Get Results by Harold E. Meyer
• An Attorney's Guide to the Collection of Bad Debts by Robert L. Lewis

Another good resource is the Association of Credit and Collection Professionals http://www.acainternational.org/

The Gaming of Link Exchanges

Link exchanges when it all started was a noble idea -- I link to your site so my visitors can check out your site, and you link my site so your visitors can also check out my site. A tit-for-tat exchange.

Until link exchange figured prominently in the search engines algorithms. Then the process of link exchange became muddled with trickeries.

For those requiring link exchanges, some webmasters will show a page where the reciprocal link is found -- but that page cannot be found anywhere on their website because it is well hidden away from visitors' view. That page's sole purpose is to show potential reciprocal link partners where their link resides. Or they may put you in their link exchange page, only to remove your link after you have put their link on your pages. Then they end up with one way inbound links. Smart, eh?

Thankfully, the search engines especially Google have started to catch up on this game, and now penalize sites that links to sites totally unrelated to their theme.

For us, we believe in the inate goodness of men and trust that whoever requests for a link to their site honor the agreement that they will link back to us. Alas, we found a LOT of sites that have removed their links to us, leaving them with a one-way link from our site. Not fair! Some of these even begged us to put their links to our pages, sending us several pleas until we relented. Only to find now that they have removed their link back to us.

Because of this, and search engine concerns, we have suspended (or make that "removed") our Add URL section. The form is live now, but any submissions are automatically deleted. We do not intend to accept any more reciprocal link exchanges. We are also cleaning up our links section, removing all those sites that have benefited from their inbound link from us. We will also revamp the entire concept of our Recommended Sites page from a place where reciprocal links were placed, to only the best of the category that we would be proud to recommend to our visitors.

We're done with reciprocal link exchanges.

How to Check if a Business is Legitimate or Not

There are several ways to help you find out if the business is real or fake:

1. Get their business credit report. For US businesses, you can check their business credit report at Dun and Bradstreet , or a cheaper alternative is Experian Business

2. Check with Mapquest the accuracy of the address. It can be as simple as this, but one website that advertised with us looks incredibly professional but the address does not exist. They paid us with stolen credit card.

3. BBB member - note that BBB is a non profit organization, not government agency that requires every organization to register. Check with the report BBB has on their website.

4. Check the EIN number using databases such as freeerisa.com http://www.freeerisa.com/ (they allow you up to 3 free searches) or http://www.knowx.com/

5. Check if they have any address or phone number located in their website. Contact the phone number. If you can't get hold of anyone and you tried to call at different times, you can assume that something is not right

6. Check how recent the domain of the website was registered. The older the domain the more assurance you can get that this is the real deal. Scammers typically set up a new domain, create a website, scam other people, then close up the site immediately. Note though that many owners are opting for private domain registration so you cannot see the whois details in terms of contact name and address.

7. Search the web using the company name as your keyword. If you can find any derogatory or complaints in forum or blogs or websites, then that can be a red flag for you. Check especially websites such as RipOffReport http://www.ripoffreport.com/ to find out if others have complained about the businessOne rule of thumb to follow: if they are offering you a deal too good to be true, it probably is.

Top Items Sold on the Internet

I got my copy of Internet Retailer magazine's 2005 Top 500 Guide http://www.internetretailer.com/top500/index.asp , and it contains a lot of very interesting information

In 2005, the leading items over the Internet in terms of sales are:

• Mass merchant/department store = $18.267 billion in sales
• Computers/electronics = $17.667 B
• Office supplies = $10.323 B
• Apparel/accessories = $7.061 B
• Books/CDs/DVDs = $2.500 B
• Housewares/home furnishings = $2.416 B
• Specialty/non apparel = $2.325 B
• Food/drug = $1.872 B
• Health/beauty = $1.748 B
• Flowers/gifts = $1.203 B
• Sporting goods = $1.336 B
• Hardware/home improvement = $0.851B
• Toys/hobbies = $0.740 B
• Jewelry = $0.615 B

Starting a Coin Laundry Business

Here are some free articles that can help you get more information about the laundry industry and help you prepare your plan for success:

• Coin Laundry: An Industry Overview http://asbdc.ualr.edu/bizfacts/8005.asp = a good overview of the industry
• IRS Market Segment Specialization Program: The Laundromat Industry http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-mssp/laundry.pdf = deals with cashflow and books of a laudromat business including water consumption analysis
• http://www.coinlaundromat.com – California Coin Laundry Association

You can also contact and join this organization:

Coin Laundry Association (CLA)
http://www.coinlaundry.org
1315 Butterfield Rd., Suite 212
Downers Grove, IL 60515
Tel (630) 963-5547
Fax: (630) 963-5864

The Coin Laundry Association has a paid report called Today’s Coin Laundry ($69)that covers everything from inspecting an existing laundry to closing the deal, while helping you:

• Decide if the laundry business is for you
• Select the right equipment distributor
• Interpret demographics
• Conduct lease negotiations

Recommended books:

• Start Your Own Coin-Operated Laundry by Mandy Erickson
• How to Start and Manage a Coin-Operated Laundries Business: A Practical Way to Start Your Own Business by Jerre G. Lewis

How to Start a Travel Website Successfully

A couple of years back, I interviewed Durant Imboden, the owner of EuropeforVisitors.com named one of Forbes Magazine Best of the Web for the travel business. Travel is a very competitive area on the Web, and Durant offers tips on how to succeed in this market segment

Here are some things you need to consider to succeed in an online business focused on the travel business:

1. Choose your focus. With so many travel sites on the web today, why would a person actually go to YOUR website? What will you offer that can't be found in other websites?

I suggest you search the Web. Select a geographic region, then find out what travel websites talk about for that area. The think how can you be different from the others, and offer a whole different content that people need and want.

2. Think of how you will monetize your website. Getting traffic to read your content is good, but getting checks in the mail or money deposited in your account every month is even better. From the very start, plan how you will get income from the website.

There are several options:

- Advertising such as Google Adsense and/or banner ads (it's not an either-or choice as you can do both)

• Burst Media http://www.burstmedia.com/
• Fastclick (ValueClick) http://www.fastclick.com/
• Advertising.com http://www.advertising.com/
• Tribal Fusion http://www.tribalfusion.com/
• Google Adsense https://www.google.com/adsense/
• Yahoo! Publishing Network (currently in beta and available to US publishers only) http://publisher.yahoo.com/
• Intellixt http://vibrantmedia.com/site/web_01a5.htm
• Quigo Adsonar http://www.quigo.com/adsonarexchange.htm
• IndustryBrains http://www.industrybrains.com/

- Affiliate programs so you can focus on the content but visitors can use the affiliate programs you promote to do their online hotel bookings or air travel reservations

• Commission Junction http://www.cj.com/
• Linkshare http://www.linkshare.com/
• Clickbank http://www.clickbank/

- Partner with hotels and resorts in the area, and get commission for any visitor you refer to them

3. Consider the size of the readership. There are travel destinations where not many people go to -- and if there are less traffic, then it means potentially lesser income. If lesser people are interested in what you are writing about, then there is a chance that you may find it hard to monetize the site. This is something to consider when deciding on what site to create.

4. Pictures, pictures and pictures. A travel site needs to have gorgeous pictures of the place. Consider how and where you will get pictures to put in your site.

5. Type of audience you want to attract. Who are you trying to reach with the destinations you will be featuring -- the independent travelers or package tourists? The type of audience can significantly affect your revenue models.

If you are attracting independent travelers, these people are on the lookout for deals, ways to get to their destinations easier, how to plan their travel, etc. The implication is that they are more responsive to your contextual and affiliate ads -- which means more money for you. On the other hand, if you are attracting package tourists, they already have their travel preplanned and prepaid. This implies that they are simply looking for information about the place -- and less interested in your ads. Banner ad networks that are CPM based are better suited for this type of website.

6. Key is content. Put yourself in the shoes of a traveler: if you go to a certain area, what do you want to know about the area? If it's a tropical area, discuss the scuba diving. A cold weather area, skiing. Then develop a plan how you will write your content.

Other articles you may want to read:

• 7 Steps to Successful Web Site Development http://www.powerhomebiz.com/vol142/website.htm
• 10 Ways to Convert Visitors to Buyers http://www.powerhomebiz.com/072005/conversion.htm
• Free Ways to Promote an Online Business http://www.powerhomebiz.com/guide/cases/ii-lexi.htm

My final advice is to BE PATIENT. It takes time to be listed in the search engines and to build a good base of readership. Continue to develop good original content, and assess your business model.

Tips to Starting and Managing Restaurants

I was answering a question on tips to starting and managing a restaurant business, and would like to share some of the great resources I've found:

• Restaurant Guide to Waste Reduction and Recycling
• Culinary Institute's Food preparation tips
• IRS Restaurant Tax Tips (VERY IMPORTANT!)
• Retaurant Management Tips
• Restaurant's Voice "First Impression Tips for Restaurant Owners"
• Restaurant Startup and Growth Magazine
• How to Create a Winning Restaurant Business Plan
• Noise Control Strategies for Startup Restaurateurs
• The Easiest Way to Cut Your Food Cost 10%
• Thirteen Ways to Prevent Theft Behind the Bar
• How to Conduct Effective Pre-Shift Meetings Maintaining a Positive Climate
• Cross-Training
• RestaurantOwner.com

Here are some recommended books:

• Opening a Restaurant or Other Food Business Starter Kit: How to Prepare a Restaurant Business Plan and Feasibility Study by Sharon Fullen
• The Restaurant Business Start-up Guide (Real-World Business) by Paul Daniels
• Restaurant Financial Basics by Raymond S. Schmidgall
• Restaurants That Work: Case Studies of the Best in the Industry by Martin E. Dorf
• The Restaurant Managers Handbook: How to Set Up, Operate, and Manage a Financially Successful Food Service Operation by Douglas Robert Brown
• Good list of must have books for a restaurant owner http://www.winecountryjobs.com/amazon_rest_mgmt.htm

Getting a Loan to Start a Business - But with Poor Credit

I have received several emails from visitors asking how they can get a loan to start their business when they don't have good credit.

The reality is that if you don't have a good credit, you may have a tough time getting a loan from financial institutions, even from SBA. SBA requires a number of factors to avail of their loans, and one of them is good credit history (see SBA Basic requirements). Your chances become even dimmer if you have no collateral or say that you are going to start a home-based business.

Many banks and financial institutions see home businesses, more so if online home businesses, to be high risk and thus avoid lending money to these industries. I remember going to the bank several years before with a business plan that I've worked on for a couple of months. I did the research, crunched the numbers, and defined my strategies. I had excellent credit. But the moment the banker heard that I was to start a home-based online business, he did not even look at my supporting documents and business plan. He just told me to come back a week later, and I was not surprised to receive a letter disapproving the loan.

If you don't need a big amount, and you have available credit card funds, then you can use credit card to finance the business. Credit card requires no collaterals but it can be an expensive source of funds. Resort to them only after trying to get a loan from your parents, family and friends and couldnt get any.

For ideas on where to get startup capital, visit our Getting Financing channel

Tips to Increase ROI from Pay Per Click Advertising

I'm always on the lookout on how to improve returns on our PPC investment (not that we're a big spender). Here are some techniques I've found useful:

1. Check the ad copy and landing pages on your ads (or if you have 100s of ads, at least the top 20) - is the ad copy specific to the search phrase? Is the landing page enticing, and does it have any call to action (buy now, subscribe or whatever your call to action is).

2. Analyze your results. Put in an excel spreadsheet your raw PPC advertising sales data, and cost data. What keywords bring in the most revenue? What keywords cost the most? If the keywords that cost the most are not bringing in enough traffic, ask yourself why? Is it the landing page? Or are there ways you can lessen the cost and get the same results?

3. Check your brand. Scan the list of your keywords for your brand name (including misspellings). Check what fraction of your sales comes from those brand PPC keyword. These are sales that come from customers who already know you and seek you out. Maximize this by improving your non-PPC marketing efforts.

4. Evaluate your phrase lists, and make sure that it covers the entire breadth of your products and services.

5. Compare your general terms vs. specific terms. General terms (e.g. "diamonds") may cost more - but you may need to be on top of that list and pay higher so buyers looking for this term sees you. This is for top-of-mind awareness. Specific terms (e.g. "4 karat yellow diamonds) often convert better and enjoy lower PPC rate than more general terms. Analyze how important getting good rankings for your general terms, and what is the most efficient combination of general vs. specific terms.

User Generated Content and Traditional Media

Someone at Yahoo Answers posted the question if the user generated content will end traditional media.

The Web was said to end print publication when it started. That did not happen. In the same way that I don't think user-generated content will end traditional media/publishers.

User generated content has a different purpose from traditional media and publishers. It is to harness the community. It is using the web as a social gathering. As Newsweek said in a frontpage article in April, user generated content is putting the "WE" in the word "web". Sure, it is the hottest business model on the Web right now. It is at the forefront of what they call the Web 2.0, or LiveWeb or whatever buzzword they are using to describe it. It allows the web to be highly collaborative and definitely more interactive. We discussed user generated content in our article 6 Hottest Businesses on the Web

But to say that user generated content will end traditional media, I don't think so. User created content is oftentimes less authoritative, and some of the content are downright wrong or questionable. Think of Yahoo Answers, a leading example of user-generated content, and you can see junk answers if not totally wrong winning as the Best Answers. Think of a student researching on a topic on advertising - that student will have greater credibility if it cites the advertising bible Advertising Age magazine instead of saying to the teacher that she got her answer from MySpace.

Traditional media has to reinvent itself to catch up, sure, but nah, it won't go away. People would rather carry Washington Post (print version) in the bus or subway rather than open a laptop and read news from their computer screen.

Redefining Press Releases

The project I was working with another organization was finally completed, and the final product was launched on the Web. I asked their PR Department to issue a press release announcing the availability of this new product. This organization has extensive media contacts and is extremely good in tapping the print, TV and radio media. Unfortunately, they're not savvy with the workings of the Web.

I waited for the press release to appear both in Google News and Yahoo News - to no avail. Finally I checked how they sent out the release, only to find that they sent it to traditional media alone. Getting mentioned in Washington Post is great, but we need traffic as well to the new product and being linked to by the online media is even greater.

It dawned on me that this organization's PR department still has the old school view of press releases, which is simply a means to get media attention. You issue a press release in the hope of getting the media to write about your product or your business.

Not anymore.

Like many traditional ways of doing things. the Web has transformed the rules of the press releases. Traditional marketing should come hand in hand with Web marketing; it is now hard for one to exist without the other. Both should be part of a comprehensive marketing strategy.

So what are the new rules of press releases? ProductMarketing.com has identified 6 new ways of using press releases, as follows:

1. Send press releases all the time. You don't need a big news to send out a press release. Whether you are speaking at a seminar, you launched a new product or you are going to be a guest at a television show, trumpet it to everyone and send out a press release.

2. Target your buyers. Instead of thinking solely about the media, create press releases that talk directly to your buyers.

3. Use keyword rich copy in your press release. Think of search engine optimization strategies, and make sure that Web visitors can find your press release on the Web. Focus on the keywords and phrases that your customers will use.

4. Don't forget the links. Always put in your press release a link back to your site. A press release is worthless if it does not have your URL. If your target market is interested with what they read in your release, but can't find you because there's no URL, then the whole effort becomes wasted.

5. Optimize press release delivery. You can save a bundle if you send out your release yourself, but press release distribution services have the reach and cachet to get indexed in important news sites such as Google News or Yahoo News.

6. Drive people in the sales process. You need to get your prospects to read your release AND to visit your website, where you have a greater chance to engage them in a sales process. You can achieve this by offering a free ebook download in your website, availing of a discount, or participating in an online demo.

Read the complete ebook "The New Rules of PR: How to Create Press Release Strategy for Reaching Buyers Directly"