SanitySense

If you don’t know what a blog is, how can you create one and make money from it?

In this post I’m going to give you a general idea of what blogs are.

The definition of a blog on Wikipedia is:

A blog (a contraction of the term “Web log”) is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Let me put it in a simple way. A blog is a type of website composed in the form of a journal where ‘posts’ (or entries) are displayed in a reverse chronological order. The latest posts go on top of the page while the older ones go towards the bottom.

Blogs tend to have few things in common:

• A main content area with your latest posts.
• An archive with older posts.
• At least one sidebar.
• A way for people to leave comments.

Anyway, some blogs tend to deviate from these common features by adding new ones or removing some of those.

The front page of an average blog has up to 10 posts (Its up to you on how many posts to show on your front page). When a post gets older and disappears from the front page, it goes into the ‘Archives’. Every post written in a blog can be found in the archives.

Most blogs have at least one sidebar where you can put links to your recent posts, favorite posts, links to other blogs or ads. The sidebar remains the same on each page while the posts on the main content area move towards the bottom when new posts are added.

One of the most important feature that a blog has, is that users can leave comments at the end of each of your posts. Blogging is not a monologue but a conversation.  By reading and responding at the comments that your readers leave to you, you can receive feedback on each one of your posts and use those comments to improve your writing.

Some more information regarding blogs and their history can be found here:

• Wikipedia: Blogs

• Wordpress: Introduction to blogging.

On the next post I will talk about how to create a blog and what blogging platform you should use. You will see that the range of choices available to you is very wide.

By far, the best way to make money online is by having an website or a blog.

If you are just starting in the e-business world you should definitely create a blog because to my opinion its easier to do and it has a lot more advantages in monetizing it than a normal website. A blog is really search-engine-friendly (in e-money this is crucial) but the most important thing is that everyone with very basic internet and computer knowledge can do it. You don’t need to have any html knowledge, php knowledge or any other programming knowledge for that matter although having these is a big plus because you can use them to modify your blog.

Anyway I think that the most important thing in a blog is its content. Your only job, if you start a blog, is to write good content because the better your posts are, the more successful your blog will become.

But before you create your blog, you should decide the topic that you will write about. I really suggest that you chose a topic that you know a lot about. This way you can write your posts more easily and have quality content. You can create a blog on every topic possible and if you fill it with great content, you can dominate that niche and make a killing.

Here are the more popular blog topics that you can write about:

• Celebrities and Gossips.
• Funny.
• Online Money.
• Gadgets.
• Lifestyle.
• Movies.
• Politics.
• Sport.
• Business and Finance.
• Hobbies.

Some of these niches have a lot of players. That means that if your don’t offer your visitors something different and original, your blog will never succeed. For example there are thousand of blogs about celebrities but less then 1% of them succeed in making their blogs famous. Those that became famous don’t just write about celebrities and gossips, but they address to the readers in a certain way that makes them come back. This applies to all niches. Originality in the content of your blog is the key to success. Some of the niches like business and online money should be selected only if you know a lot about these topics. How can you write about making money online while you don’t make a dime or how can you write about business while you are studying art or have no idea on how a business is run. The only reason readers are going to read your blog is if they see you as an expert.

My advice would be to select a topic that you are comfortable with, a topic that you have some knowledge about. By combining your knowledge and a bit of research you can create great content and therefor a great blog.

Good Luck.

Today entrepreneurs are considered as heroes. They are people with visions, people who fight to improve the society and they make money in the progress.

The biggest entrepreneurs of our era are Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple), Phil Night (Nike), etc. Even if these guys might have different styles, they have one thing in common, they believe everything is possible. They see a business opportunity where others see failure.

If you want to become a self-made man, then you should learn everything you can about entrepreneurship. Every successful entrepreneur will say to you that the key to their success is hard work. Well, of course a good idea and a plan are needed, but then it all comes to putting time an effort to realize your dream.

Successful entrepreneurs have some characteristic in common. Here are some:

1. When they look the world around them, they focus on the ways to make it better and how to make money in the progress. And when they find a need that needs to be filled, start a business on it. They don’t wait others to fill that need. They are self-starters and they enjoy big challenges, it makes them stronger.

2. Quitting is not an option for them. Their desire for success is too big. And if they fail, they consider it just a temporary setback. They start thinking on how to fix their plan and get back on the road. Most successful business come only after some failures.

3. Creativity is in their blood. When they look around, they see the future, not the present. They picture a business evolving from the ground even if there’s nothing there. And with the help of hard work and never letting down they make that picture a reality.

4. Entrepreneurs are driven by success, they can’t imagine failing, in their mind they picture only winning. They are optimist people. They hate the idea to be working for somebody else. They don’t like having a boss and having to report to somebody else. They like to be in charge for their own destiny.

These were some of the main characteristics of entrepreneurs. If you find in yourself some of these qualities, good, if you don’t, build them. And now get off your butts and start making some money.

As you read in the last post, there are plenty of reasons why people like the idea of making money online. But what are the best ways to make money online? In this post I am going to mention you the main categories of online business. These are the most used and proved ways to make an online income.

1. Website or a blog. This is by far the best way to make money online. Even if creating a website may sound like a very difficult task to do, its not. Hosting companies provide you with a web site building software that you can use to create simple sites. Anyway my best advise it to create a blog. You can get one for free at blogger.com or wordpress.com

2. Affiliate. The affiliate business is very simple. Most of you don’t have a product to sell. And those who do have a product to sell, they don’t have enough marketing skills. In the affiliate business you make money by selling other people products. In return for making a sale, you earn a commission which in some case can be as high as 70% of the products prize. You can find products to promote at ClickBank, CJ, etc.

3. Freelance. If you have any programming, designing or writing skills, than this is for you. You can make huge amount of money by being a freelance. First you have to register to a freelance site. Some of the biggest out there are Elance and RentaCoder. There are plenty of others. After you register, you should look at the request that other people have and offer yourself. At first you should try to work for little money, till you increase you portfolio, then increase your prize too. If you became known enough, you can make a killing. Freelance is very profitable.

4. Surveys. Did you know that you can get paid to complete questionnaires? If you didn’t, you know now. Companies are willing to pay their costumers to know what they think about their products. You may have seen a lot of scams that promise you 25-100 USD per survey you complete. Well they are just scams. The average amount you are paid for a survey is $5 and you wont have the possibility to fill as many surveys as you like. If you register at enough companies, you can get as much as 20 surveys per day and that’s around $50 per day because you wont qualify for every survey you get. Let me mention some survey sites: GlobalTestMarket, Mysurvey, GlobalOpinionPanels, etc.

5. Get paid to sites. These are sites that pay you to do different types of things. You get paid to visit websites, read email, post in forums, play games etc. The most common are get paid to visit websites. There are hundreds of sites like these out there. Anyway don’t get to excited because you wont became rich visiting websites. They pay you 1c per website you visit(some pay less) and you wont get more that 10 websites to visit per day. Here you can find a lot of get paid to websites.

6. Investing. This is my favorite even if it’s the most dangerous. If you are good, you can become a millionaire by investing in the stock market, real estate or the forex market. Anyway you need a huge amount of knowledge and a lot of will because you cant became a successful investor overnight, after you have read an article whose title might have been “Investing for Dummies”. The best way to learn this is by going to the library and reading as many books as you can about economics, financial markets, accounting etc.

Well, these are the most profitable online business. We will discuss each of the ways I mentioned here separately in later posts. In the mean time, feel free to research around them.

As almost every internet user, you too love the idea of making money online. You like to create you own online business and generate income from it. There are plenty of reasons that people prefer to create an make money from an online business then from regular jobs. Let me name you some:

• The initial investment is nothing compared to an offline business. All you need is a domain, hosting and a template.  These do not cost more than $80. These are other types of online business that needs no initial investment at all.
• You are completely free to chose when and where to work. You can work at 2 pm or at 2 am. It doesn’t make any difference.
• The possible income is unlimited. If you have imagination and good will you can make more than $10.000 per day.
• You don’t have a boss to report too. No one is going to tell you what to do.
• All the earnings that your business generates will end in your pockets.
• You can take vacations anytime you want and go everywhere you want. If there’s an internet connection, you can run your business from anywhere in the world.
• You have a lot more time to spend with your family.
• The girl at your office (your wife because your office is at you home) wont sue you for sexual harassment.
• You can give some money to charities.

Now get to work and create you online business. Change you life for better.