Make Money Online

Starting your own business is always a challenge. You need to stay motivated, prioritize your business activities on a daily basis, take care of your marketing, and handle all the back-office bookkeeping needs.

You also need to make decisions about how to structure your business in a way that makes sense for you and your business goals. If your business is a side-venture and you have a full-time job, then a sole-proprietorship will probably suit you fine. But if you are looking to build a bigger business and hire employees, then creating a real corporation may be more in order.

There are three basic types of Corporations that you can form. Choosing the right structure depends a bit on where you live, who you are in business with, and how large your business may grow. In general:

You want to form an S Corporation when:

• the owners live in a state with no personal state income tax.
• one or two individuals own the company (can be as many as 100).
• you have sales less than $250,000.

You want to form a C Corporation when:

• the owners live outside the country.
• the owners live in a state with a state income tax.
• several individuals are involved in the ownership.
• other entities are involved in the ownership.
• you have sales greater than $60,000.

You want to form a Limited Liability Company (LLC) when:

• you have any partnership.
• you own real estate for investment purposes.
• you have several entities that own the business.
• you are looking for complete protection of the owners’ personal liability.

You can start the process of incorporating your business with an online service such as IncParadise.com. There prices are reasonable, as they only charge $89 plus the applicable state fees to get started. For example, if you wanted to start a Nevada LLC, you could do this for only $283, which also includes them serving as your Registered Agent for 12 months.

My first post through SponsoredReviews is completed and available here at my Online Video Sharing blog.  I have yet to be contacted through the Advertiser marketplace for a sponsored review.  Instead, this review for PhotoFrameShow was initiated by my bidding on the opportunity in a marketplace similar to PayPerPost, except that I was able to bid an amount for which I was willing to do the sponsored post.  We’ll see how it continues to go.  This particular blog is very niche-oriented, so I don’t expect to be doing too many sponsored posts there except as highly relevant opportunities present themselves.

I just listed Online Video Sharing into the Sponsored Reviews system.  Unlike ReviewMe, SponsoredReviews.com only charges a 35% administrative fee.  They also require a 3 to 1 ratio of original (i.e. unpaid) posts to paid posts, which lends itself better to blogs that are primarily targeted toward adsense or affiliates for revenue generation.

If you need a review for a video or photo-related website, check out my profile on SponsoredReviews.  Online Video Sharing is a blog focusing on reviews and updates from Web 2.0 video sharing and photo-sharing start-ups, user-generated content, video-oriented social networking, and the technology that holds it all together.

When I started blogging (only one month ago now?), I really had no idea what people earn who are blogging for money. It is still a bit fuzzy, and many numbers are being thrown about. To top it all off, many people think that just by blogging about about how to blog for money, they will punch their ticket to online fame and fortune.

Truth be told, there are only a few bloggers who will own that space, and if you had not started your blog about blogging in 2005, chances are you’ve already missed the boat. Darren over at ProBlogger and others have already nailed that market with informative and authoritative content about Professional Blogging. Ironically enough, these professionals also do not seem to make the bulk of their income from these blogs, instead earning their income from content/product sites that are much more targeted.

But back to the question at hand - How much money can you make online with blogging? By most reports, most bloggers earn less than $100/month. But don’t get discouraged! Your efforts are not a sprint, and you won’t start making money right off the bat. New services like PayPerPost and Blogsvertise have certainly helped new bloggers make money at their start, but you really need a 4 to 6 month period of blogging consistently (including content creation and networking) before starting to see results through increased Search Engine Traffic and organic travel overall.

And finally, someone has started to develop a list (lists are great!) of blogger earnings that consists of bloggers who disclose their income online. Paula’s list of blogger salaries runs the gamut of blogger earnings, from a low of $480/year to a high of $3.6 million/year. Don’t be discouraged by the low number of high “salaries” on the list - many bloggers do not disclose their earnings - but use it as a measuring stick to learn about other bloggers and what they are doing to make money online.

In an earlier post, I wrote about Chitika eMiniMalls, and had mentioned that they were probably best suited for blogs or websites heavily focused on product reviews.  Well, apparently they think the same, as this website was not accepted into their network.  Another site in our network - DVGadgets is launching later this month, so we will be submitting them to the Chitika network to see whether we can’t get started.  From what I’ve heard from others, Chitika advertising can be a very lucrative PPC program if used correctly.  I’ll continue to update as we find out more.

Search Engine Marketing is vital to the success of your online business.  There are many activities that you can undertake on your own — such as writing good quality content on a consistent & frequent basis — but if you have a number of sites and are wanting to make real money with your online business, at some point you may need to retain the services of an online marketing firm.

DiscountClicks.com is an online marketing firm that provides a wide range of services ranging from Link Building to Search Engine Optimization services.  Prices may be a bit much for new businesses just starting out, but for established businesses or those wanting a rapid (but consistant) growth in traffic, the pricing is reasonable - from $500/month to $2,000/month.

I would recommend spreading your budget out over a 3 or 6 month period instead of blowing it all in the first month or two.  This will lead to a more sustained growth for your site, allow you to judge the marketing activities over a longer period of time, and most likely won’t alert the search engines to any sudden spikes in inbound links or content.

Depending on the online business that you start to make money online, you may at one point need to be able to process credit cards. But as a new online business you may have a hard time finding a company to process your transactions for a reasonable fee, especially if you are selling actual products online.

If you are looking for merchant solutions for your online business, you want to check out AdvantageProcessors.Com, a company that can handle your online credit card processing whether you are an established business (low-risk) or are a new online business and need high-risk credit card processing services.  Their team of sales agents will work with you to understand your business and find you the best processing rates for your business.

Here’s another entry into the Sponsored Blogging universe - Blogsvertise. Similar to Pay Per Post, Blogsvertise typically pays in the $5 to $15 range per sponsored post that you include in your blog. Unlike many other services, however, you do not get to choose from a qeue of opportunities — instead, the “blogsvertise administrator” will assign you writing tasks. You don’t have to necessarily endorse the product or service, just mention it in your blog and link to the sponsor three times in your post.

If you have just setup your blog within the last 30 days, or have sparse content, you are unlikely to be approved for a standard account. However, Blogsvertise will accept you on a “probation” status that allows you to accept and complete writing tasks for the service. While these tasks only pay $2 per completed task, this will provide you with some level of income (and start filling out content on your blog!) during a time when most other services will not accept you.

I’ve just signed up for the service, so do not have any specific experiences to pass on about the service yet. If any readers have used the service, please pass on your experiences with Blogsvertise.

Inspired by a recent microsite I uncovered this morning,  I just went and registered http://www.waterheaterinformation.com/ based on the inspiration from this site, and will be setting the site up over the next week or two.  The PPC profile on Google and Yahoo is similar, with a rate of approximately $1.50 to $2.25, and a similar number of estimated clicks/day - in the low to mid hundreds.  I will report back and let you know how building this site has gone, both in terms of costs/time/effort and revenue results.

I’ve been debating how much work I should be doing prior to my April 1 launch (Only 1 month away now… Yikes!). The reality, however, is that I need to hit the ground running, so I’ll be including this month’s activities in a "Pre-launch" section.

So what am I doing this week? Call it laying the groundwork for the basics of building an online blogging business. In otherwords, I spent the day creating accounts with the companies that I will use in this venture, including:

1. PayPal
   I’ve never had a PayPal account before today. I have never bought or sold anything on eBay, and have always counted on credit cards to take care of me everywhere else. I have found today, though, that most online services will take credit cards for payments, but online make payments via PayPal without charging an egregious processing charge.
2. Amazon Associates Program
   I plan on doing a lot of reading over the upcoming months to learn everything I can about social networks, blogging, motivation, sales and a multitude of other products. But the key reason here is to be able to promote specific products through my other network blogs. It should prove interesting to see what my readers purchase through Amazon…
3. Google AdSense
   Seems like AdSense needs to be the first stop for anyone wanting to make money online. Contextual advertising is their forte, but their recently added video advertising may prove to be an engaging medium for the readers.
4. Google Analytics
   Still need to set this up in my blogging platform, but having good Analytics is a must for knowing where your readers are coming from, and what they are reading. This will help you prioritize new content as you move forward.
5. PayPerPost.com
   This new company has received a lot of flak in the online community (read TechCrunch coverage), but I believe it pays a critical link in hooking up advertisers with promoters, provided that appropriate disclosure is provided in all paid posts. We’ll see how it works from an income-generating standpoint.