Some bloggers like Shoemoney really need to take some writing classes

I frequently read some blogs and I am amazed to find how some very popular blogs are full with spelling errors, grammatical mistakes and without proper punctuation. I wonder sometimes if those bloggers ever took some English classes. That's how bad some of their writings are! Yet, visitors flock to these blogs and I am not sure if they don't notice the bad writing or they simply don't care.

I have to admit that English is not my strongest point. English isn't my first language. It isn't my second language. It isn't even my third language. It's my fourth language! In college, I had take twice English 101 because I ended up with a D the first time I took it. However, I know how to use a Spell Checker. I usually type my blog entries in Microsoft Word which automatically highlights grammar and spelling mistakes. Then, I copy them back into my blog. If you know how to copy and paste, you can certainly do this too!

Don't these bloggers know how to use a Spell Checker? Don't they take the time to re-read or even proofread what they wrote? Do they take their job seriously enough to try to present something decent? I suspect they simply don't care because there are enough people out there willing to read their garbage.

If you read Shoemoney's blog posts, you will find so many spelling and grammar errors, missing punctuation that you got to wonder if he's ever taken or passed any English classes. I sometimes get lost in some of his blog posts. If he is making as much money as he claim, he has got to enroll into a community college and take some writing classes for his readers' sake. But I bet he won't. Not as long as we are willing to read anything that he puts out there!

Cool Online Deals Website to Help You Save on Your Holidays Shopping

Here is a cool Best Online Deals website that works like a social bargain hunting service. Basically, users submit the shopping deals that they have found online. Other users get to rate those deals. Deals are sorted on the main page based on the community votes.

This digg-like website offers a way for bargain hunters to quickly find the best shopping deals based on the recommendation of the website members.

The website is DealShouter.com. Check it out.

Why most websites fail within the first year

Did you know that most websites will eventually close or get abandoned by their owners within the first year?
In a world where more and more people get connected to the internet, you may wonder why the vast majority of websites fail to reach a significant portion of the internet audience and get abandoned before they make any serious money.
The answer will not surprise you. It’s the lack of originality and creativity. It’s the lack of commitment from the website owners, be it time, effort or financial commitment.

Lack of Originality

One of the most serious mistakes that webmasters often make is that to think that because a particular website has succeeded, they can copy the same model and get a share of its business. Take for example myspace. Since myspace has become popular, a lot of people have tried to duplicate the success of myspace by launching social networking websites similar to it. What they have basically achieved is to get a clone of myspace without adding anything more to it. Now, why would a person want to join a social networking website that is in essence identical to myspace but without the crowd that makes myspace so attractive?

You can find plenty of free or paid scripts nowadays that offer the same features of almost any well-known and successful website. You need a script that would function like digg.com, flickr.com, photobucket.com, etc…? Just search the internet and you’ll find plenty of those scripts. But don’t make the mistake thinking that you can install this script on a website and expect it to be as popular as the initial pioneers. If there is no value-add, there is no compelling reason for anyone to join up a service that is essentially a clone of an already well-established and well-known website. You can find plenty of clones of popular web services that use off-the-shelf scripts but very few to no people visit them and they are essentially dead.

Therefore, stop thinking that you want to be a myspace-like, or digg-like, or any other website-like. Be original. There is nothing wrong with copying an idea but you must add to it. Better yet, you must find a unique idea, a revolutionary idea. And you’ll be on your way to earn lots of money on the internet.

Lack of Commitment

When webmasters start a website, they often underestimate the amount of work that is needed to make the website successful. One of the most challenging tasks is promoting your website, getting people to know about your website and getting decent ranking with search engines. There are other tasks that are also very demanding such as updating your website with new features, new content or fixing bugs, managing your website such as answering emails, keeping your visitors or customers happy so they may return, fighting off spammers, preventing fraud, etc…

The most pressing task when starting a website is promoting it. This requires a huge commitment that you are not likely to see the benefit immediately and that you would need to sustain for a long time. This commitment requires a lot of time and effort and a lot of financial resources.

As an example of the work ahead, you would need to contact other webmasters to exchange or buy links with (this is called link building and is a must to get good ranking from search engines which typically judge a website popularity by how many other websites links to it). You would need to write articles or hire writers to write about your website and submit these articles to press release websites or news-sharing websites. You would need to post or talk about your website wherever you can. You would need to think about any other way to let the word out about your website.

Some of the items listed above may result in an immediate spike of traffic that would die down after a few days and would need to be repeated over and over again. Others would not have an immediate impact (such as link building or other search engine optimization – SEO – techniques) and you are not likely to see any benefits for several weeks if not months.

You also can not do it on the cheap. You would have to spend money initially on your website even though you would not be earning much in return. If you don’t want to spend any money initially, chances are, unless you are extremely lucky, you will not be able to make it. Invest your initial funds wisely. Ask your fellow webmasters about what works and what does not work and spend your money accordingly. You can join a webmaster forum such as WebmasterGround.com to get a tips from other webmasters. Also, don’t spend all your money in one shot. Any initial success may be short-lived. Instead, start slowly, budget for the long term, and spend your money in a sustained fashion. Learn from your experience and allocate your money to promotion techniques that have proven successful. Don’t get too concerned or loose your patience if you don’t get any immediate return.

Sustained commitment is undeniably what makes or breaks a website. If you don’t have the patience to work hard, spend hard and see very little benefit as you go, your website will likely fail to take off as you will quickly loose motivation.

How much time, effort and money should you invest before you know that your idea will not turn into successful website? That’s the million-dollar question. My answer is if you give it your best (do everything that you can to promote it and spend as much money as you can afford) for a full year and your website fails to take off, it may be time to ditch it.

Earn Money Online Without Spending Your Own Money

A friend once asked me: "Is there a way to earn money online without spending your own money first?" My reply was "Absolutely. Can you write intelligently about any topic?"

Of course, I was referring to blogging. There is no wonder why blogging has gotten so popular these days. It allows people to write about what they like to talk about and at the same time, make money from it. And you don't have to spend any money to get started. Yes, that’s right. Not a single penny. Let me explain.

First, you don't have to an expert in any particular field. You just have to write interestingly enough to make people want to read your blog. It could be about your experience with anything, your hobbies or your personal opinions about a particular topic.

Starting a blog is easy and requires no fee. That's right. You don't have to buy a domain name or pay to host your website. You can create a free blog from many websites on the internet. The most popular ones are blogger.com, wordpress.com and livejournal.com. Just register with any of these services to create your blog. It’s free. Start making posts that are worthwhile reading. There is a huge audience out there and any topic that you could write about could be of interest to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.

After making a few posts, you would need to promote your blog to attract your reading audience. There are many ways to promote your blog without spending a single penny. Get your blog listed in web directories like dmoz.org, WebSorter.com, etc... Submit your blog entries to news sharing sites like Digg.com, Reddit.com and NowPubic.com. Publicize your blog in your myspace page and other social networking websites. Submit your blog feeds to aggregator sites like FeedBurner, Squidoo, Feedboy, Jordomedia, FeedBomb, ect...

There are many ways to make money from your blog. One of the ways is to add pay-per-click ads from services like Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network, AdBrite and many others. Typically, these pay-per-click ads are targeted to the topic of your blog. If you are blogging about student loans, the ads that will show on your blogs will most likely be about student loans. Every time a visitor on your blog clicks one of those ads, you will earn some money. How much you will earn per click will depend on the kind of ads that are displayed on your blog and how competitive and lucrative that those ads are to advertisers.

Other ways to monetize your blog would be to sell ad space directly to advertisers if your blog receives a significant viewership. To get advertisers, you can list your ad space for sale on AdBrite, AdEngage, AdSpace-Auctions Ad Marketplace, etc... If your blog has a decent Google PageRank (PageRank is an estimation from 0 to 10 of how important Google thinks your webpage is), you can also get paid by webmasters to have their links on your blog. Webmasters typically try to get as many links as possible to their websites in order to increase their website popularity in the eyes of the search engines. The higher your blog's Google PageRank is, the more valuable a link to your blog becomes, and the higher webmasters will be willing to pay for a link. To get webmasters to buy links from your blog, join webmaster forums such as Digitalpoint, Sitepoint or WebmasterGround and post in their marketplace section about your offers.

These are just a few ways to earn money from your blog. Remember, it costs nothing to start a blog. Write about something that you can make interesting enough for people to read. Promote your blog. Add ads to your blog. And you are on your way to earn money. How much money you can earn from your blog only depends on how much effort you want to put in it. The sky's the limit.

How to Achieve High Search Engine Ranking for your Keyword within 6 Months or Less

First, I want to say that I am by no means an expert in the field of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I started experimenting with achieving higher search engine rankings for my websites a few months ago. The results were quite surprising. I was able to make it to page 1 of Google search for a very competitive keyword.

As much as the SEO experts would like to make people believe that achieving good ranking in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) is a very difficult task that requires a lot of skills and expertise, I found that it was not exactly the case. It just takes a lot of work and anyone who has time in his hand can do it.

I am going to share the two most important things that you can do to achieve higher rankings within a few months. This is based on my experience and applying these two things have shown to be very effective in getting my websites listed on the first page of the major search engines for my targeted keywords.

Before trying to get the desired traffic from search engines, you must identify the keywords that you are targeting. Ask yourself this question: what search phrase would I type on a search engine to find a site similar to mine? There are also tools such as the Google AdWords Keyword Tool or the Overture Keyword Selector that you can use to get an idea of how popular your targeted keywords are (by looking at their search volumes) and also to refine your keywords selection. What you have identify a keyword or a set of keywords that you would like to target, you are ready to get started with the two most important things to achieve higher rankings.

The first thing that you must do is to make sure that the first 3 words of your webpage title contain your targeted keywords. This is essential. Search engines give a lot of weight to a webpage title. Since people have been known to stuff their title with keywords, search engines typically rely heavily on the first few words of the title and ignore or give less credit to subsequent words. Therefore, it will not help you much to have an extremely long title as only the first few words would make a difference. Also, make sure that you do repeat your keywords in your webpage content in order to strenghten relevancy at the eyes of the search engines.

The second thing that you must do is to try to get as many links as possible from other websites to your website with your targeted keywords as anchor text. An anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink. The more sites that link to you with these keywords, the more the search engines will attribute these keywords to your site. Make sure that you do get links from relevant sites and/or from high authority sites. Typically, webmasters look at the Google PageRank of any website to get an idea of how important Google thinks the webpage is. Get links from webpages with high Google PageRank as these links will be given more weight by Google. Note that the more competitive your keywords are, the more backlinks you would need to get.

It is certainly a huge effort to get as many backlinks as possible. You have to approach other webmasters to ask them to link to your site. You have to buy links. You have to exchange links. You have to track those links. And all that takes a considerable amount of time and you are likely not to see any payback for several months, which can be discouraging. If you do not want to go through the time and effort that it takes, you can hire link builders to do the job for you. Typically, link builders from India are relatively cheap and can provide you with hundreds of links to your website. You can post your link building needs on a freelance marketplace like Project4Hire.com and get several bids from people who offer link building services anywhere in the World.

As a conclusion, it is not rocket science to acheive high rankings with search engines for your keyword. The two most important things that you can do is to get a carefully-chosen title for your webpage and get as many websites as possible to link to your webpage with your targeted keywords as anchor text. Remember, you would need to get a lot of backlinks for competitive keywords are. Results are guaranteed. Within 6 months or less, you will see your website listed on the first page on the major search engines for your targeted keyword search. It's definitly not rocket science!

Ways to earn money on the internet if you don't have a website

I found out after visiting a few webmaster forums that they are a lot of people who do not have websites but who earn money providing services to the webmaster community.
Imagine that. These people don't have to worry about paying for web hosting, managing websites and dealing with issues related to maintaining websites. They just provide the services that webmasters need and can earn quite some money by doing this.

Here are a few ways that you can earn money if you don't have a website.

- (Manual) Directory Submissions
A lot of webmasters are looking for people to submit their links to as many web directories as possible. Typically, webmasters do not have too much time to submit their links to hundreds or thousands of web directories as they usually spend their time managing their websites.
You can provide your service to "manually" submit their links to hundreds or thousands of web directories for a small fee. Note that the word "manually" was put between quotes as most people who provide this service do not do the job by hand, one link at a time. Rather, they use tools to automatically submit the links to the web directories.
If you have the time and/or the right tool, you can easily earn around $35 per 500 directory submissions. This is the typical rate that I pay for the service.

- Link Building
This is pretty much similar to directory submissions but the difference is that the links may not necessarily go to web directories.
A webmaster may need x amount of "permanent" links from related webpages and again may not have the time or expertise needed to get these links.
This is where you can come in and earn some money. Your job would be to find webpages and ask their owners to link to your client's sites. You can do so by offering them link exchanges or somehow convincing them to add the links (good luck with that). I am not sure how the link builders do it but if you can figure out how to get a bunch of targeted webpages to link to your client's site, you can earn quite some money for each unique link.
Typically, webmasters would pay you more if you can get links from relevant websites that have a high Google PageRank (PR).

- Writing
If you can write, you will definitly find a huge number of potential web clients who are looking to add fresh content for their websites.
Webmasters are always looking for writers who can write articles, tutorials, or make blog posts related to their websites topics.
You can charge per word or you can charge for each article or blog post.
If you have expertise on a particular field (for example SEO, marketing, web design), then your services can become more valuable to a webmaster and you can charge higher fees.

- Paid forum posting and forum moderation
When a webmaster starts a new forum, he needs to populate his forum with a few threads and posts to jumpstart his online community. Visitors typically do not join and start posting on a forum unless they can see that the forum is active and has useful posts.
In order to get the threads and posts needed to show activity, webmasters hire forum posters. If you have the time, you can offer your service as a paid forum poster. The typical rate is $0.10/post but it could lower if the forum is an easy one to post or higher if the forum requires some expertise to post intelligently.
If you decide you want to be a paid poster, you should resist the temptation to copy threads from other forums and simply repost them on the new forum. It is the easier way to get the job done but if your client notices it, all your efforts will be wasted as you will probably not get paid and will tarnish your reputation.
Also, webmasters who manage large communities often do need moderators to keep their forum free of spam, to move threads to the proper sections, to keep discussions civil and to the topic, and other moderating tasks. If you are interested to become a moderator, contact the administrators of the forums of your choice. Most webmasters would be willing to compensate you for your efforts as a moderator.

These are just a few ways to earn money online that I could think of at the moment. There are many other ways to earn money online by providing services to webmasters.
You may want to visit the marketplace section of popular webmaster forums like digitalpoint.com, sitepoint.com, WebmasterGround's webmaster forum or check freelance marketplaces like project4hire.com to find work.

Make Money on the Internet

Just started this new blog. I will use it to discuss various ways on making money on the internet.
I learnt quite a few tricks online and found ways to earn some income from the internet.
If you have a lot of time to spend online, don't waste it on unuseful stuff. Chances are you can use that time online to make some money.