What would you say if I told you that you could be selling someone else’s product to thousands of people and take a cut of the profits from their hard work? This method isn’t used nearly as often as it should be, and is a completely legal and completely “whitehat” method to making fast money online.

No, I’m not going to spin you toward some eBook demanding that you pay for this information. This technique is all about using affiliate networking in your favor by setting up your own “middleman sales page” and offering rebates to your sign-ups in order to convince them to pay you, not them. With a little practice, this method can make thousands. Let me explain!

The first thing you will need is an affiliate marketing system so that you can begin collecting profit from other publishers’ products. These programs are almost always 100% free to join, and have made thousands of people rich beyond their wildest dreams.

The Net Fool’s Top Affiliate Networks:

1. ClickBank
   
2. NeverBlueAds
3. MarketLeverage
4. Commission Junction

Now that you are registered to one (or more) of these affiliate networks, it’s time to hunt for just the right offer. Fortunately for us, finding the top-paying affiliate programs through any one of these networks is easy! Search through their marketplace list and check out what each offer is providing publishers in terms of “earnings-per-click” (EPC) and then join those that convert the best. Clickbank calls this “gravity.”

Taking a look at some of the best-converting and best-earning offers available to you, go ahead and check out their sales page and see if they have an affiliate program available. If they do, make sure it is a pretty high percentage that they kick back to you on each sale. Confusing? In a nutshell, you want to promote whatever offer offers the highest affiliate commission and is also selling well (high conversion).

Once you have your offer, and have signed up for their affiliate network, it’s time to milk the offer for profit. I’m going to walk you through this method in a minute, but let’s get a hold on the basics first. So you sign up as an affiliate and are promised, let’s say, 75% of every sale. If you were selling a $100 product, you’d make $75 for every customer that used your link. Here’s where the fun part comes in! What if you offered the same $100 product for $75, so a 25% discount? You’d keep 50% of the profits, and the buyer would save 25%… it’s a win-win and it works every time!

Let’s take “Satellite TV for PC” as an example. The product is $49.95 for ordinary buyers. If you sign up as an affiliate, you keep 75% of each sale or $39.95. Knowing that you are making 75% of each sale, you could very easily entice buyers by offering them the product at a 25% rebate. Why would anyone buy a $50 item that they can get through you for under $40 from you!? So you aren’t keeping your full 75%, but you are getting 50% of the sale (or $25) on each successful commission!

All you need to do to make this work is create your own alternative sales page, and promise people the discount via PayPal with proof of purchase. Once someone buys through your referral link and emails you with their rebate request, you can just look through your records and issue them the money back.

One thing that many people underestimate is the power of forgetting. I would estimate that only about 20% of buyers actually remember to follow up and request their rebate within the allotted time. This means that you could literally start offering free products (with rebate) to people, banking on the fact that only 20% of these people will follow up on your offer. This could come back to bite you, but the more you can knock off of the retail price, the more people will be convinced to buy from you, not them.

At this point, you are probably saying to yourself, “why don’t these people just do this themselves?” While this certainly sounds right, you must remember that your typical internet user isn’t clued in to the obvious X% discount they could be getting by signing up through their own affiliate link. So capitalize on their lack of knowledge by offering them the same product, at a superior price through affiliate marketing programs.

Bottom Line: Being the middleman can certainly be a rewarding experience. I know people who have made thousands just reselling other people’s content on the internet. You can do this with more than digital goods, but I’d rather not deal with shipping costs or any of that. Sign yourself up with a nice affiliate network and start exploiting affiliate commission fees in your favor to steal sales away from the competition!

-The Net Fool

Disclaimer: Credit to Steve McGrath for identifying that offering rebates to your clients is now in violation of the updated ClickBank affiliate network Terms of Service.

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Another great week in the books here at theNetFool.com.

We had another solid week in traffic performance and several noteworthy blog posts to wrap up the week ending May 24th. With just six days left in The Net Fool’s Outrageous Blog Contest, there’s a lot to report as people scramble to get all those last-minute entries in. Remember, even the latest RSS subscribers will count! That being said, let’s focus first on some of the best articles to be found this week.

• Zac Johnson - Tech’s Worst Work Places
• The Blog Entrepreneur - Make Money Online With Backlinks?
• The University Kid - Make Money Online By Blog Commenting
• Garry Conn - Why I Chose The Debt Consolidation Niche…
• Ian Fernando - Onwards To Promotion And Marketing

I was legitimately impressed with some of the posts that described ways to make money online this week. With all of the back-and-forth competition occurring in the blogging world, it’s nice to see some bloggers slow down and actually offer useful content for a change. Before I get into the news, let me run-down my current plans and projects.

My Projects & Ideas
I’m on the brink of making the move toward a web hosting change as my server continues to experience downtime. I am not running the kind of free-hosting operation you’ll find on most blogs, because the services I use are normally paid. However, I’d still like to see a change into a more established hosting company, so I am planning on making that move shortly.

Sales of my latest eBook “Work Smart, Get Rich” are still coming in relatively strong. I plan on marketing the book further to see some link development. My eventual hope is that I can get enough exposure to kick back and start making even more revenue from the title without lifting a finger. I am going to go ahead and forge ahead with $100-worth in paid reviews from the likes of Winning The Web and The Blog Entrepreneur… so I’ll be keeping an eye on how that turns out.

My latest blogging project has begun. I am starting up a fresh new blog at ClassroomTraders.com as a joint venture with a few of my friends. Yes, I am fronting all of the money, design, marketing, etc… but it is essentially going to be a stock market blog with posts daily from me and my three friends from Penn State University. This should be fun, and a cool website to share some money making ideas… I will let you know when this is up and running.

Stock Market News
Uh Oh! Another topsy-turvy week in the stock market has investors worried. Oil once again hit new highs at $133 before finishing the week on a down day, and people are legitimately expecting a continued downtrend in the United States exchange. I feel like with all of the analysts that labeled a bottom just last week, this is a major reverse-trend. I honestly expected a decent week, and having such an unpredictable trading week has me and other investors worried.

I made one trade last week of Deere & Co. (NYSE: DE) @ $80.50/share as they have fallen off their highs and I believe they are undervalued. You all know the famous John Deere tractors and such. The agriculture products that they make are in high demand with the commodity boom, and their profit margins are through the roof as people continue to favor their superior brand name over other products. I like this company to make a run up to $95 within a few months (if that).

Blogosphere News
The war wages forward between Garry Conn and John Cow. It is all but certain that the owner of John Cow dot com is, well, no longer John Cow (Bob). The only real question now is who the mystery owner is at this point, though there are plenty of theories in circulation. Regardless, the blog is a lot better off now and has doubled traffic over the last week.

I continue to see improvement in the blogs from the “make money online” niche this week, and feel that while many people settle into the summer groove, blogging is now back in style. The Net Fool dot com managed to see ANOTHER bump in 45n5’s Top 100 Blogs ranking. While I was amazed that my website was given a #65 ranking last week, I actually moved up again to #56… wow! Other than that, I was happy to break the 200 RSS subscriber mark two days ago (205 subscribers) and hope to see this trend continue throughout the month.

The Net Fool’s Outrageous Blog Contest
I don’t want to reveal the amount of entries thus far, but I continue to believe anyone getting more entries in this competition is setting themselves up for a win! With the relatively small size of this blog compared to the large prize pool, anyone getting entries in… even in the last week (or day) of the competition… has a great shot. That being said, make sure to subscribe to my RSS feed and start getting those additional methods of entries in that are outlined in the official contest post. There are still plenty of ways to win, so be sure to get as many entries in as possible!

This Week In Focus
This week, I am planning on making two useful money-making technique posts that should have you turning a big profit online. Hopefully I can crank out another solid stock market post as well. Expect the “Creating A Blog” series that I am currently running to see parts four and five come your way as I run you through setting up your own blog on the internet for as little cost as possible.

Stay Bullish on the Net!
-The Net Fool

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It’s Part Three of “Creating A Blog” brought to you exclusively by theNetFool.com. By now, you’ve got your domain name and blog concept all worked out, time to pay the piper! I’m here to get you the right deal, at the right price, with the right company.

First things first, in order to run a blog, you will need both a domain name and some web hosting space. Often, you’ll get a free domain name along with any purchase of web hosting. If you are going to go for the free hosting option, you’ll need to buy a domain name yourself. I’m going to take this post from the assumption that you are buying both of these separately.

Now, you could order your domain name first, but without anywhere to point it… it’s going to be mighty useless. So let’s knock out web hosting first! In any web hosting account, both paid and free, make sure that the plan offers the following features:

• MySQL Databases (at least one)
• FTP Access (for uploading files)
• All Major Scripting Services (PHP 4 and/or 5, CGI, Perl, etc.)

Free Web Hosting
If someone is going to give you free hosting, you need to be skeptical. These can be utter rip-offs and a waste of your time. However, many are actually great deals. You need to make sure there won’t be any ads run on your website to compensate the provider. Also, be sure that there is no size cap on uploaded files (what a pain!) and that you are allowed to edit your “.htaccess” configuration file. Let’s have a look at some of my favorite providers:

• Zymic (5,000MB Space, 50,000MB Transfer) TNF Favorite!
• FreeHostia (250MB Space, 5GB Transfer)
• AwardSpace (200MB Space, 5GB Transfer)

You should be safe to go with either of those hosts, and I know some people that paid for hosting will be shaking in their boots when they see what they offer. Still, it’s really essential to make the move to paid hosting once business picks up… so plan for that move later on after you get your feet wet.

Paid Web Hosting
Looking for the professional setup from the get-go? It’s a pain to switch hosts, so I would definitely recommend starting early with paid hosting from one of these great providers. Any of these hosts will get you what you need at a budget price, and you can rest easy that your website isn’t going to see any downtime. Here are my favorites:

• HostGator (”Hatchling” Plan) TNF Favorite!
• Top Hosting Center (”Speedy” Plan)
  
• Go Daddy (Economy Plan)
  
• BlueHost (Professional Hosting)
  
• Host Monster (Professional Hosting)
  
• 1&1 Internet (Beginner Hosting)
  

All of these hosting companies are top-notch, and will get you the hosting you require, and the price that fits your budget. I recommend getting the smallest packages available… you shouldn’t be paying more than $10 a month for hosting unless you have a whole network of website you are running. You need about 200MB space per blog, and you should bank on having 5MB bandwidth (traffic) for every 1MB space for maximum efficiency… that’s my general rule of thumb.

Registering Your Domain Name
Web hosting is out of the way, and assuming you didn’t register through your hosting client, you still need to grab a domain name. You should always get a private registration for security purposes… trust me, it’s worth it. This may cost extra, maybe $5 on top, and I’d recommend it above all else.

It really doesn’t matter where you register your domain name, I would just go for a more reputable registrar that offers you the best bang for your buck. Here are my favorites:

• 1&1 Internet ($6.99 + free private registration) TNF Favorite!
• Go Daddy ($9.99)
• Name Cheap ($9.29 + free private registration)
• APlus.net ($7.40)

Now, and this is very important, the domain name registrar (if they are smart) are going to try and get you to order all of these extra features that you absolutely do not need. Most of the stuff is either useless “bonus” software that you don’t need, or things like SSL Security Certificates that you could just purchase later if you needed.

Putting It All Together
You’ve got your domain name. You’ve got your web hosting. But how do you get the domain pointed to your hosting? Well first of all, if you registered your domain name and web hosting with the same company, there should be a way to link your purchases together with relative ease through their control panel. Otherwise, we have to get smart.

I’m a bargain hunting fool, so I register hosting and domain names separately for the most part. To link them together, log into your domain managing page (through the website you registered with), and navigate to your DNS Management page. We are looking to modify the “nameserver” settings, changing them to your hosting account.

So what the heck is a nameserver? Well it’s essential a unique mapping device that is registered to your web host, and your hosting account. You can find out what your hosting’s nameserver is through their support website, or FAQ section. The format is typically “ns1.website.com” and “ns2.website.com”. You usually will need to input two nameservers (primary + secondary) so make sure you have both addresses!

By default, your domain name will be “parked.” What this means is that they are setting your nameserver’s to point to their default page. We need to get this changed so that your domain name is forwarded to your web hosting account. This may take a few hours to one day for the effects to take place, so be patient!

We’ve got our website all configured, just like we need it. Everything is ready, all we need to do now is build & launch our website to the public! Stay tuned to Part Four of the “Creating A Blog” series when I will explore different blogging platforms and installing them on your server.

-The Net Fool

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Welcome to Part Two of the “Creating A Blog” series on theNetFool.com! In Part One, I discussed the task of creating a focus on what you are going to be blogging about. It is very important to have not just a general idea, but to have a specific game plan in place. The common advice goes to start small, and grow over time.

Now that you have your niche in mind, let’s talk about grabbing that all-important domain name to direct traffic your way. Before I get ahead of myself, lets start with the basics… what exactly is a domain name?

“Domain Name (noun): A series of alphanumeric strings separated by periods, such as www.hmco.com, that is an address of a computer network connection and that identifies the owner of the address.” -Dictionary.com

So a domain name is that all important “example.com” that you use to direct people to the place on the internet where your website is stored, or your web hosting. Some people think initially that domain names are big and expensive purchases, they aren’t. A domain name can be bought in seconds, and readied within 24 hours, for under $10 by a domain name client like GoDaddy.com, NameCheap.com, 1and1.com or Register.com.

Before I take you through the process of finding and registering that winning address, I want to define the two types of domain names: private and public. No, not referring to who can and who can’t see your website… I’m talking about the information you register with. I recommend 1and1.com to register domains (for now) because they offer free private registration with every .com name. When you register a domain name, you are required to submit all your contact information… which becomes publicly available to anyone who looks. So basically, unless you register privately (anonymously), you are going to be sharing your contact information with the world. Most places tack on a few bucks for a private registration, but some will give it to you for free… so be aware!

Know What Makes A Good Domain Name
Okay, so you know what your website is about… but “money.com” is already registered, eh? Time to dig deep and find that diamond in the rough domain name that nobody has registered. Great domain names exist, you just have to look for them. I want to give you an idea of what you are looking for, before you actually start looking. Here’s a list of good and bad domain name formats:

Great Domain Names: Really good domain names are going to be the one-word and two-word domain names that aren’t separated by a hyphen, space or anything (word.com or wordword.com). Of course, the words should always be somewhat related.

Good Domain Names: Take those two word domain names and add a hyphen in between the words if it isn’t available. If it’s short (like ebook-rich.com), then you have a good domain name. If it’s longer, I’d suggest going back to the drawing board and looking for one without a hyphen as it lowers value.

Poor Domain Names: I would only recommend “.com” domain names. If the “.net” version of your favorite name is available, keep it on standby and continue looking. You don’t want more than two words (unless its a prefix or suffix like “thenetfool.com” or “webhostingpro.com”) in any domain name.

In all, you want a domain name that search engines will pick up on easily, giving you better rankings. Have your keywords in the domain name if possible, and try to limit the length of your domain name to 16 characters (not including .com, .net, etc) max.

Finding A Winner
There are a lot of domains taken, but don’t think there aren’t a lot of good ones available. You might have to be creative to get what you want… so there are quite a few tools to get the creative juices flowing.

First of all, open up a word document and load up a domain name website like GoDaddy.com. This will be for checking if a domain name is available, and recording the ones that are in the word file. We want to start building a list of available domain names that you can look back on when you are done to choose your favorite. For an example, here is the name list I generated for finding my latest blog.

Basically, I recommend sitting down and plugging in different word combinations until you get something you liked. You can see my thought process in the text file above. Here is a list of tools to get you on your way:

• Dislexicon - A great tool that takes common words like “money” and generates short domain names that look like they could be real words.
• JustDropped - This site gets you a great list of domain names that have recently expired and are fresh on the market.
• DomainsBot - A popular search engine that is geared specifically to helping you come up with good domain names.

The most important thing is to keep at it, you’ll know when you found a good one. Keep tracking the names that are available, add them to your list, and keep searching. If you can build a list of 15-20 available domain names, you are sure to find a keeper!

I hope you enjoyed this lesson on finding a good domain name. Some people stress the importance of a domain name far too much for anyone’s good. And while it’s really important to have a brandable, easy to remember, and search engine friendly domain name, in the long run it is up to your content to get your blog popular. Part three of our series here is going to take you through actually “registering” that domain name, as well as web hosting… so stay tuned!

-The Net Fool

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Back in January 2008, I awarded SWATcash.com “The Net Fool 2008 GPT Website of the Year” award. As things have changed dramatically over the past few months, SWATcash has proved to me that they are by far the best GPT website on the internet for making fast money online. This is a sponsored review, but this is not a sponsored thought. The Net Fool uses SWATcash, and I urge you to use them too!

Have you ever looked online for a way to make money online, but couldn’t get past all the scam websites that just end up wasting your time? SWATcash.com is a proven website that has been paying its users hundreds of thousands of dollars for years, and they aren’t about to stop. The Net Fool dot com guarantees that you will make money and get paid by using SWATcash, the best “get paid to” program in the business!

How It Works
Here’s how it works on SWATcash’s end: advertisers come to them and pay them to refer users to their business, to complete surveys and even click ads. So just as they are getting paid, they kick back a high percentage of that profit back to you, the ones completing the offers. This makes sense from a business point of view, and it does work! The difference between SWATcash and the other GPT websites is that they pay you a higher percentage than anyone else on the internet, have the most offers available, and pay back bonus cash to users (I’ve won over $1000 without completing offers). This truly is the cream of the crop, and if you are interested in these “get paid to” (GPT) websites, I want you using SWATcash first.

Let’s Review - The Features
There is so much to do on SWATcash, that it can sometimes be a lot to go through. Granted, they have one of the most aesthetically pleasing layouts around; but let’s explore all of the features!

When you first login, you’ll see a top navigation bar, and a bottom one. The top bar will get you back and forth from the main user panel, to the great forum (where you can win additional prizes), to the chat room, etc. We are going to focus on the website itself, so the second navigation bar is what we want to explore.

Before I start, I want to discuss SWATcash’s bonus and credit system. Not only can you earn cold hard cash, but you can earn “swatcash” to exchange for prizes later on like iPods, PayPal cash and gaming consoles. Every offer you complete on the site earns you at least one “bullet,” which you can use on the Artillery page once a day to “attack” other members using the website to steal their earned swatcash. So you can either complete offers expressly for swatcash, or earn “bullets” to attack others for their swatcash. It’s all a fantastic way to get money on top of money.

Account: The account page has all of your earnings and statistics inside. This is one of the most organized systems around, and you’ll find everything from what your referrals are earning, to the last time you’ve been paid. You can even track your individual payments! Swatcash allows you to donate a percentage of earnings to charity if you chose to, and you can see how you stack up to the top users in several categories from the “rank stats” section.

Earn: Here’s your offer-panel, where you find a full listing of all available and completed offers. These are all very well organized and sortable for your convenience. Additional ways to earn, other than completing offers, are as follows: completing the “circadian missions” every day (brief surveys for $1.00 each), participating in cash shopping (get paid a percentage of your order on various online shopping destinations), and pay to click (a new system that pays you just to click on banner ads). If you are an advertiser, you can even purchase your very own ads for display.

Artillery: So here’s where those “bullets” come into play that I described earlier. Additionally, you can win “grenades” by doing various things. Grenades act as “super bullets” and do that same thing, but win you more swatcash in the process. The Artillery page includes this daily attacking system to earn swatcash, and a display of all the awards you have won along your path to success. In addition, there is a way to exchange your money and battle points to swatcash.

Missions: Missions are a great way to earn easy money every day. This is an objective-based adventure that, once completed, allows you the opportunity to “crack the safe” once a day for free. This safe includes cash, swatcash and more… and can earn you some serious money. It even looks like a second mission is on the way!

Armory: Here’s where you take the swatcash you have racked up to exchange for prizes, I’d check this out yourself for all of the awesome prices you can win!

World Map: The world map is a move-based game run through the website that you can earn extra money on in the form of “battle points” (exchangeable for swatcash) without completing any offers at all. This is pretty hard to explain, so I’d give it a look yourself… its a great feature that no other GPT website has.

If all these features bogged you down, don’t worry… it sounds a lot more confusing than it is. Sign up, and have a look around! You’ll get a hang of it within minutes, and can earn insane bonuses with minimal work so you aren’t only earning more money than any other GPT website on a per-offer basis, you are earning the best bonuses in the business for extra money!

My final recommendation is for you to join the SWATcash forums. At the very least, sign up for SWATcash just to use the forums, there are ridiculous contests going on every month always with $10,000+ in value up for grabs. May 31st has a HUGE forum-based contest in store for members, so get signed up!

Time and time again, SWATcash has proven to me that they are the best GPT website. If you want to make a lot of money online, you need to check out SWATcash.com because they really are a best of breed company with a great track record (check out the payment proof). I’m bullish on SWATcash.com!

-The Net Fool

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