With all of the talk about making money online doing things like flipping blogs, affiliate marketing or building web traffic, we often forget of one of the more fundamental methods of earning some extra cash… being sneaky! A lot of bloggers will constantly push and promote different products for visitors to try and make sales. Is this really the most effective way to turn an ordinary post into a full-fledged money maker? Not Necessarily!

What is perhaps more effective is the casual approach. Say I am talking about making an eBook for cash… why not mention off hand that I have a cheap eBook that will go further in depth into the topic at eBook-Rich.com? Or what if I’m talking about setting up your blog to run WordPress? It’s pretty easy to say hey, I’m hosted on HostGator servers and love my service. Slip in a link, and you have yourself a few sales that could make you a few $100 in week!

Let’s talk about the advantages of making commission off of sales in an indirect way. Call it being sneaky, but avoiding the constant bombardment of “buy this” and “order that” could be your golden ticket to profit.

Profit-Seeking Bloggers Are Divided Into Two Schools of Thought
I feel that in the “make money online” niche (or entrepreneur, what have you), bloggers that write content with a profit-seeking mindset can be made into two distinct groups. In the old mantra, people would pick up extra referred income by making posts directed at selling a product to people. The new class would be made up of blog owners that openly offer advice on more broad-based topics, slipping in the occasional promotion (at an appropriate time) to make that killer sale.

Old School Technique: Market for the Sake of Marketing
Since the first few blogs have appeared on the subject of making money online, there have been a whole bunch of writers that make articles with the intention of selling you something. Many times, this comes in the form of opt-in newsletters that send occasional email advertisements intent on getting you to purchase a product. In a few other cases, bloggers will make individual posts to advertise a product that they came out with… or perhaps even try to sell you on someone else’s promotion with a referral link in place.

This “old school” mantra would suggest that you get the most bang for your advertisement by simply smacking people over the head with information. There’s nothing wrong with this method, as it does bring in fantastic sales and is probably the best way to let people know of a product without having to flat-out teach a new lesson. One example of this school of thought is when I wrote about my new eBook. A more recent example is when John Cow pitched his Traffic Kahuna service.

New School Technique- Marketing to Enhance and Enrich
As nobody is going to read a blog that contains post after post of “in-your-face” advertising, the “new school” technique of writing involves cleverly slipping in a product pitch into an otherwise ordinary article. This can be even more effective than devoting an entire post to a new product. Why? People are often turned off from the start when the title of a post reveals itself to be a simply marketing ploy. By being a little sneaky and writing about a related topic, slipping in a commission-paying link as a point of reference along the way, a lot of readers will be much more inclined to hear you out and buy your stuff.

How about a little example? Garry Conn does this in marketing the popular HostGator web hosting referral program. This program pays him commission on everyone that buys hosting through his link. So when he wrote about migrating a blog installation, he slipped in his HostGator link as his “preferred” hosting solution and got sales from people that were interested. It’s descreet, albeit a bit sneaky, but it’s a really helpful way to maintain your excellent content and make profits from marketing at the same time.

How Can Being Sneaky Make Money?
It’s a pretty simple concept. Rather than coming over the top to get people to send you some affiliate cash, it can be much more effective and rewarding to simply try and write as normal. You can turn almost any “ordinary” post into a full-fledged profit machine simply by being creative. If I’m writing about “bum marketing,” I could put in a link to a product that help users submit articles to directories. If I’m writing about how to tie your shoe, I could put in a spot advertisement for Nike shoes assuming they are my “favorite brand.”

I’m amazed that some of my older posts on WordPress plugins still generate 1-2 sales every month of the OIO Publisher plugin… getting me a quick $15 a pop. Hey, maybe I’ll get some sales from this post now that I just slid a reference in!

Bottom Line: A lot of bloggers don’t grasp how easy it can be to start making money online from your everyday writing material. The best of the best will make a great deal of money simply by being creative. Referrals to products that will help readers out can even be helpful if the service is truly worthwhile… so there’s no need anymore to actually degrade your blog into worthless marketing. Use the old school and new school techniques more effectively, and watch your income soar!

-The Net Fool

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One of the more popular methods of making money on the internet is the process of “flipping” websites for profit. It’s talked about far too often, so I’d like to let those of you who are still a bit fuzzy on the details into the big secret. Before we discuss the actual process, it’s important to understand the concept of arbitrage.

What is Arbitrage?
While arbitrage sometimes refers simply to the process of arbitration (think mediating in a court of law), financial arbitration refers to the process of concurrent buying and selling for profit. Confused? Well we all know the basic idea of buying low, selling high… right? Using arbitration would be buying something and then selling it for a higher profit. Essentially any trade where you make out ahead, is utilizing arbitration to your advantage. Now enough business talk, let’s discuss flipping!

What does Arbitrage have to do with Website Flipping?

A successful “flip” of a website is one that makes a profit. Therefore, website flipping is really all about an individuals ability to seek out a low purchase price on a website that allows for a higher selling price at some other time down the road. Now, I don’t like to mess too heavily in risk by putting down a few hundred dollars for someone else’s website. Luckily for us, flipping a website (arbitrage) can also mean starting up your own low-cost blog on a new domain name and getting it to sell.

The Process
Many people preach making $1000s every day by starting up a slew of new blogs and selling them the same day. This is a lie that is being permeated by fools that like to believe in these get rich quick schemes. Nobody buys a website that is one day old for anywhere north of $20… so best of luck if you are going to go against my recommendation and try anyway.

It doesn’t take much to buy some cheap articles and build a website up over time, so let’s aim for a two week turn around time. Just remember that we really don’t need to pay any attention to the blogs we are going to flip, so it’s kind of just money building up in the background.

Here is the simplified process: Register a creative “niche” domain name Install WordPress on your web hosting account Grab a monetized theme with a brandable logo Add articles and content to your blog List your blog for sale and PROFIT!

Arguably the most difficult part of flipping a website is finding a brandable domain name that has a keyword in it and a .com extension. You are going to want to make sure that you register domain names with .com endings only, because this will add about $20 average onto your sale price… and that could make or break your profit margin. I would recommend buying with 1and1.com because they offer consistently low pricing and have free private domain name registration on all new names ($6.99/yr).

What makes a good domain name? Basically you want something that is easy to remember (brandable), has something obviously tied to your niche (one keyword minimum) and isn’t too long. You can have a hyphen, but anything more than two words long isn’t what you are looking for (excluding word like “the” or “pro”). Check out my domain guide for more information about this process.

Setting Up Your WordPress and Web Hosting
Obviously, a blog needs to be hosted somewhere. Fortunately for you, if you don’t already have web hosting I wrote a guide as part of my “Creating a Blog” series that will get you the best deal of your life!

I recommend installing and using the WordPress blogging system if you are going to flip a blog for profit. Not only is it the most widely used system, which will give you the best profit margin on your buy-sell arbitrage, but it is one of the easier programs to install and set up on your blog. Again, if you need help installing WordPress I have a handy installation guide for you to use yourself.

Configure a Monetized WordPress Theme with a Brandable Logo
Making your blog look great is really a lot easier than it would seem at first glance. You don’t want to pay anyone to do this for you, because there are plenty of free themes from providers like WP Theme Designer or OSWD that you can use 100% free… further increasing your margins and decreasing risk.

If you have a copy of Adobe Photoshop, it’s pretty easy to whip up a free logo on your own. You can just grab a neat stock image from a free service like Stock.Xchng or a paid service like iStockPhoto, slap on the name of your website and save it! Otherwise, why not try and hire a cheap designer off of a webmaster forum (I use Digital Point)? This will run you $5-$15 a piece, depending on quality of course.

Adding Articles and Content to Your Blog
If done effectively, the set-up will take about 30 minutes per blog. So by the time you have worked through your set-up, you should have a whole army of good looking blogs ready to go. All you need now is some unique content! You could, again, either write up articles yourself or pay someone to do it for you. I recommend paying someone, as writers will give you some good work that Google picks up well for a very affordable rate. You could end up paying as little as $1-2 for each article, a very affordable down payment!

I recommend adding anywhere from 5 to 15 articles total per website. Where can you find someone to write articles for you? Try the “content” sales section of Digital Point forums or have a look on Google. You really only need around 350 words on each article, so it shouldn’t be too costly.

List Your Blog for Sale, and Take Your Gains!
Now that we have an “established” blog… or at least one that appears to be… it’s time to talk things up a bit and pitch it for sale. If you have done this effectively, you can successfully flip a blog in less than a week. However, I still recommend building blogs for two weeks before considering selling. You want to talk your website up a bit, targeting things like niche market exposure, great domain, brandable content and design, awesome start up…. things like that.

It’s pretty easy to spin off a website on Digital Point to another member, but you will usually get a higher sale price if you are using a fee-based service like SitePoint. Depending on the job you have done making the website and pitching the sale, it shouldn’t be too hard to pull in $50 to $100 for each website that you made.

Where is the “Big Money” in Flipping Websites?
So you’ve seen how easy it is to make a quick $50-$100 turn around for a blog that you make, load with content, and sell. But where’s the profitability in this? Seeing that the only real set up is day one (the rest is just putting up some easy content), you can literally do five of these websites a day and have a whole recurring train of income coming your way once things mature a bit.

Of course, the bigger money is made by picking up a blog yourself and turning it around to make a bigger profit later down the road. However, there is a lot of risk involved in this… especially if you don’t know what you are doing.

Bottom Line: By starting up and subsequently selling a bunch of niche targeted blogs you can easily “flip” for profits of a few $1000 every month. It may not be too glamorous, but now that you have the tools necessary to start “flipping” on your own… there’s nothing stopping you from seeing the money roll in!

-The Net Fool

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A bit of a break from the normal posting pattern here, so bear with me. All this week, I’ve been repeatedly nagged by Max, the co-owner of a start up blogging resource called BlogGears.com. Basically, it is a collection of user-submitted videos that are used to promote individual websites and blogs in an open arena. It’s all completely free, and could potentially grab a few hits over to your website. But for me, I was a bit hesitant to spend time making, editing and uploading a video for TheNetFool.com on the new and unproven website.

Everybody has there breaking point, so rather than block my buddy Max from any hope of communication with me in the future , I decided to go ahead and make a video because I had some free time on my hands.

Why Blog Gears Is Destined To Fail
We can’t all be the next YouTube, and despite receiving videos from the likes of John Chow and Uber Affiliate (among others), this website has yet to take off. This further confirms my original bet with the owner that you cannot make a website that provides no incentive for any organic visitors!

This is nothing against the owners, Max and Simon, who are both great guys. I just feel that the concept is fundamentally flawed because about 90% of the traffic is going to be coming from blogs like mine that have a post or two saying “check out my video.” I don’t see why anyone else would decide to go to BlogGears just to watch other people talk about their blogs. It could happen, but my bet is negative.

Bloggers Make Some Pretty Darn Boring Videos
I’m a bit amazed in the lack of enthusiasm that a lot of bloggers show in videos. If I’m going to get a camera out, I’m going to make sure that I at least have a cup of coffee in my system and a clean shave before putting out a publicly available clip! I would say that about 85% of the videos featured on BlogGears are people holding the camera up and talking in a very monotone. boring. voice.

Here’s your standard video: “Hello. My name is _____. My blog is _____. I like to blog. My blog is about money. My blog is fun. Visit my blog. I do lots of things on my blog. You should visit my website. Thanks.”

But hey, not to discount the field, there were a lot of cool videos put out. My favorite was the one by ImageGuy.com, which was really innovative. You have to love the videos that ImWithJoe.com puts out, so that’s basically a given. But so many these videos were a complete waste of time in my opinion. I never like to name names, but you’ll figure out exactly what I’m talking about if you have a look around.

The Net Fool’s BlogGears Promo Video
So basically, on account that I was somewhat forced into making a video… I decided just to have fun with it and post something entirely nonsensical. Let’s be honest, nobody is going to visit your website if you put out the same old video that nobody wants to see. I’m into the “dry humor“… and while I wish I had enough time to make it a bit funnier, I feel that it came out pretty solid in the end. If I can catch enough people browsing the videos off guard with my promo video… I’ve done my job well.

Check Out My BlogGears Video!

The video is called “The Net Fool - Make Me Rich” and is a 100% factually accurate chronicle of my blog. Okay, maybe that’s not true, but check it out. I’d love for your to comment on the video and tell me what you think. Also, “upping” the rating on it will definitely help me get a few more views… so any assistance is much appreciated.

-The Net Fool

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This is a sponsored post of the t3Leads.com network. The views expressed are my own, and have not been influenced by the promotional nature of the bid.

You all know what affiliate marketing is by now. Big advertisers pay big money for leads, and using programs like Market Leverage, NeverBlueAds and ClickBooth you can score big commissions. I know a lot of people that are affiliate marketers making $50,000+ every month just using their computers! It’s truly a lucrative business that pays well once you have your feet wet in the business.

I agreed to do this promotional review of the T3Leads network primarily because they are the running specialists for the finance niche of the market. They claim, as everyone else does, the highest pay per lead rates in the business… but being a niche focused marketing company they do have their advantages over more popular solutions such as those listed above. Truly a business dedicated to forming lasting business relationships, let’s have a look at the t3leads pay per lead program!

The T3Leads Website Design and Functionality
First things first, you know that I am a sucker for good looks… so let’s see how t3leads matches up with the best. On first glance, things look pretty decent. A nice flash banner, a few top products on the sidebar and a good description of what the website is. The only problem here is that the website really falls apart when you navigate away from the homepage.

Signing up is easy enough, and while they send you an email confirmation… I had a strange suspicion that me confirming the reception did absolutely nothing. The one good thing about the main portion of the website is that they have only a few places to go so as not to confuse anyone. There is a great contact page that can put you in touch with a representative from the get-go (before even registering), and a clear-cut FAQ. The primary website (non-members) gets a passing grade for good functionality, though it didn’t blow me away.

T3Leads clearly didn’t put a lot of effort into the members area. This thing is really all over the place, and everything is written twice… once in English and once in Russian, a trend that continues over to the forum board as well. Perhaps they are fixing this, as we company is new, but it’s a bit awkward right now. The member’s section as a whole takes some getting used to, and the functionality isn’t up to par. However, I think that the payment area is really nice… and you can organize it all pretty easily.

The T3Leads Offer Selection and Schematics
What I think is cool about t3leads that really sets them apart is that they give you a virtual army of websites to use in marketing. Here are a few examples: example 1, example 2, example 3. Point taken, the websites that they give you to market are very professional looking (save the ugly numbers on the end), and used correctly you could make a lot of money. Not only that, but all of the websites come with a list of keywords already included… so you know exactly what needs to be done with no research. These sites range from debt consolidation to home loans and everything in between. A nice addition is that they also offer the option for you to custom-make your own websites to pull in some revenue with an API of sorts to work the system a bit more effectively.

The system is a bit odd at first, but t3leads actually doesn’t operate like a standard affiliate marketing company. Instead of giving you the ads and everything where you just need to use a link to give business, t3leads gives you the entire website and let’s you market it as if it were your own with banners and creatives. This is a cool concept, but I think that it burns out a bit by the fact that you really have no clue what you are making, as the reporting system as a whole is pretty darn weak at this point in time. There is a nice way to track all your clicks each day, but it’s impossible to discern what is coming from where.

The T3Leads Support Line and Help
As I said in the opening remarks, they go ahead and give you all the contact information from the get-go. This is definitely not the place you want to go for good support, as you don’t get a personalized representative like you do with a mid or large size marketing firm. However, if you need support they seem readily available in a relatively bare (but new) forum and ticketing system.

My personal experience in talking with them has been pretty average, and that’s exactly what I would expect from a company the size of t3. However, it’s nothing to scoff at, as they will help you in the long run (maybe just not as fast as their competitors).

The Net Fool’s Final Call
Alright, after exploring the system at t3leads, my recommendation is to approach with caution as I give the network a 5/10 ranking. They have a pretty good system in place with giving you your own websites to market, but it is all pretty loosely assorted with an awkward members area and not a very good revenue reporting area. In addition, I’m a bit concerned about payment frequency. While they claim bi-weekly payments… which would be amazing… I have personally seen delays in my little time here.

This may be a solid option for those of you who are international and can’t seem to find a network to work with. There are 6 methods of payment, including popular methods like PayPal, Check and Bank wire, but the threshold is a high $100. My final call is that this might be a fun network to experiment with, but they are just too young to put any serious money into at this point in development. A nice start for a new company.

-The Net Fool

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It’s about that time again…
Time for some Link Love!

This week sure went by fast, and I did a lot in the way of marketing and networking using word of mouth. I was a featured speaker on the Vince Rowe radio show broadcasting on the CNN Network Thursday afternoon, and I’ll be sure to get you guys the podcast of that interview as soon as they put it out. That’s a pretty big audience right there, but I also did some blog-to-blog interviews with Joe from IMWithJoe.com (not up yet) and Max from MoneyBites.com. Definitely check out their blogs and tell them that Jim sent you!

I feel like a lot of great stuff is going out nowadays, in the few weeks before school starts up again, and there were a lot of awesome blog posts that got me thinking, commenting or just laughing. Let’s kick start a new week with a look back on some of the best posts from the week ending August 9th, 2008.

• Affiliate Confession - You Will Lose Money Starting in PPC
• Caroline Middlebrook - Is There Room For Another IM Blog?
• Internet Babel - Domain Flipping and Speculating: The Basics
• Enkay Blog - Why an “Advertise” Page is Important
• NeilsWeb - Still Can’t Make Money? Spam YouTube!

Awesome posts this week, and even one from the lost and found over at Internet Babel… a blog that completely dropped off the map. Caroline Middlebrook shares my belief that the making money online related niches aren’t over-saturated… that makes two of us! Enkay had a cool post on making your “Advertise” page (I’ve got one) and NeilsWeb hit us with an awesome marketing strategy. Finally, Affiliate Confession “confessed” a harsh reality that I continually claim here, PPC will put you into the red. I want to add a quick rant from LetsBitch.com on parking lots, just because it had me laughing.

Stock Market Update
Wow. This week was absolutely nuts in the U.S. stock exchanges, as things were literally soaring… ending the week with a 300+ point gain on the Dow Jones. The dollar rallied against the Euro (and others), the price of crude oil fell through the floor, and stocks rallied as a result! One of the more interesting trends as of late has been a HUGE reversal in the U.S. Dollar. Bets that had been considered “easy money” by going long on the Euro unwound as European banks started in with uneasy sentiment and downcast views. Compared to this, the U.S. Federal Reserve was quite dovish… and despite not raising the Federal Funds Rate, the Dollar changed course and headed north.

A bit amusing to me was the fact that stocks were up largely on the belief that the Fed might be raising rates on Tuesday. They didn’t. However, nobody seemed to care, and people kept pumping up the Dollar (up 3.3% on the week) and stocks followed suit! Crude oil was down almost 8% for the week, closing at $115.20 per barrel. I actually suffered this week, as I am holding about 40% in cash with my two stock holdings in Apple (NYSE: AAPL) and Deere & Co. (NYSE: DE). I’m considering a play on this low oil trade (Chesapeake Energy - CHK) and am also interested in Healthcare (Abbot Labs - ABT, Becton Dickinson - BDX) and Consumer Staples stocks.

Blogosphere
Did The Net Fool start a trend? It would seem to me that a LOT more blogs nowadays are putting out Sunday Link Love posts just like mine. Go on. Check it out for yourself! About 50% of the blogs I have visited over the past week have been doing weekly updates where they weren’t before. I’ve been a champion of these posts for some time now (this is the 19th consecutive week for me), and I think that other people have seen the effectiveness of a link run down and are catching on! I don’t want to blow the whistle just yet and call myself the white knight… but it’s something that had to be said before someone else takes credit for it.

Nothing major to report this week, so perhaps I’ll have to stir the pot once again (heehee). A lot of new projects are being launched to kick off the second fiscal quarter. I’m in the process of making some moves on my own so stay tuned for that. Not too many contests in the wake of some larger ones held last week. I did happen to sign up to Traffic Kahuna for a month, so I will let you guys know how that process goes.

The Week In Focus
This week, I will hopefully be launching a back to school contest of sorts. I’ve been a bit lazy gathering the prizes for the competition, but it will be happening so stay tuned. I ran a 500 Subscriber party where I gave away some apparel and advertising among other things to those of you that read the blog often, so congrats to the winners (I’ll be emailing you prizes today). In addition, I am planning on putting out another useful scheme to make money online. I know that you guys enjoyed my post this week on “bum marketing” articles for profit, so I’ll be giving you some more ways to riches every week.

I’m planning on starting in with some good ol’ fashioned video marketing this week, so I will be updating you all on my statistics progress and will get you the tips you need to succeed supposing that this plays out in my favor. In addition, I’m going to be selling off some assets in anticipation of school-related expenditures… my books need to be balanced (pardon the pun). We’re almost to 600 RSS subscribers here, so keep up the excellent work recruiting and spreading the word… every little bit counts!

Stay Bullish on the Net!
-The Net Fool

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