There are pros and cons to both ways. Obviously, the paid traffic generation methods cost money but on the positive side, they get you fast and often targeted results. On the other hand, the free traffic generation methods do not cost money but on the negative side, they are generally slower and may not produce much targeted traffic.

There is no silver bullet when it comes to traffic generation. Every method works to some extent, so you need to choose which ones suit you the best. But generally, traffic generation is a numbers game. This means the more you do it, the better results you get in the long run.

If you can afford it, it’s better to start promoting your website with paid traffic methods. This includes Google Adwords, Yahoo Search and MSN Adcenter. These three major search engines work roughly the same way. You design your advertisement according to the search engine’s specifications and specify certain parameters like the countries you want to advertise in and the dollar limit on advertising you want to spend in one day. Generally, you are billed for the number of clicks on your advertisement. Each click brings the searcher to your website where they are presented with your product. Some will buy and then you profit.

As you can tell, there is a danger of losing a lot of money in these paid advertising methods when lots of people click but no one buys. To reduce the possibility of this happening, there are two things to do. Firstly, put your long tail keywords into your advertisement. This ensures targeted visitors going to your website. A targeted visitor is one who has been looking for a solution to his problem that your product gives. Such a visitor to your website is much more likely to buy your product than a less targeted visitor.

Secondly, avoid advertising in certain countries known to have lots of browsers but not many buyers. Two of such countries are India and the Philippines. Chances are, you will get lots of clicks from these countries but few sales.

Besides text ads, you can also make image ads on the paid advertising networks of the search engines. Image advertisements consist of banners of certain sizes specified by the search engines. Image ads are not as popular as text ads so that makes it generally cheaper. But they work fine and are certainly worth a try.

The reason it is better to go for paid traffic generation methods first is because with paid advertising, you can get quick results. You also can determine which keywords produce good ROI. Once you have carried out paid advertising for a few weeks, you can switch to free advertising using the same keywords that have produced good results for you.

Free traffic generation methods will be the topic for the next article.

If you enjoy using the Internet socially there is certainly nothing stopping you from also starting a blog and using it to produce income. The great thing is that there are several legitimate work from home jobs that are worth considering and it cost little to nothing to put them to use.

Best of all, you can use WordPress along with free or some great low cost premium themes such as some of my favored themes offered by StudioPress, ShopperPress and DirectoryPress, all quality themes that can be used to help you develop a stream of income.

Let’s take a look at a few of these legitimate work from home job opportunities:

1. Auctioning products. You can earn some profit as early as tonight with highly popular auction sites like eBay and Yahoo! Auctions. Just look for an item you can sell, prepare a sales page, and wait for any of the 12 million people who visit auction sites on a daily basis to view and purchase what you have to offer. Do this on a grander scale and you will be able to discover the full earning potential of auction sites.

2. Become an affiliate. As an affiliate, you will be tasked to sell a merchant’s products. There are no membership fees or upfront costs required. Online affiliate programs will allow you to sell – and earn – based on your own ability to market products and services. You then earn a commission based on the sale of the product that was sold through your referral link. There are many companies offering affiliate programs. Just do an Internet search to find out your options.

3. Freelancing. Got a special skill you can extend to other people through the Internet? For example, can you ghostwrite for another person? Can you create software programs in accordance with their specifications? Can you prepare web graphics that they are sure to love? Render your service for a fee. You can try out Website like Rentacoder.com, Elance.com and Scriptlance.com to find an abundance of potential clients ready to pay you for assisting them with their projects.

4. Create Website and monetize them. You can develop niche-focused Website and enroll them under pay per click (PPC) programs like Google AdSense. PPC programs will send contextually-relevant ads to your web pages and you will get paid every time a visitor clicks on the link. If your Website becomes popular, you can sell advertising space as well.

These are just a fraction of the many Internet earning opportunities you can pursue. There are definitely more, and such is testament to how viable the web has become in being an earning avenue for people who wish to find legitimate work from home jobs.

Market research can be divided into two parts – finding a profitable niche and finding long tail keywords within that niche. The good news is that there are many free tools available to do this. Some of the best tools are provided by Google itself. So the first thing to do is sign up for an account with Google. Once you have done that, go to Google’s search-based keyword tool at www.google.com/sktool. Type in the words ‘buy, purchase, order, get’ (without quotation marks) into the search field. The sktool will list out 800 words or terms that contain these buying keywords together with other useful data like level of competition, searches per month etc. All you have to do is choose the term that you feel is most suitable for yourself, preferably one that has at least 2,500 searches per month.

Next, click on the icon that looks like a magnifying glass next to the search term that you have chosen. This will take you to Google Insights for Search, another free tool from Google at www.google.com/insights. It will automatically search the term that you have chosen and produce the relevant data at Google insights. Scroll down to the bottom part of the page and you will see other related search terms. Take note of all the related search terms that you find.

Now you would have about 10 buying keyword terms in a particular niche. This basically indicates that there are people searching for information to solve a problem or meet a need in this niche. Next, you should investigate further into how big a market this niche is and get more keyword ideas.

Go to amazon.com, ebay.com, magazines.com and clickbank.com. Put the main keyword of the niche into the search field and see if there are products that are listed in these websites within this niche. Chances are you will find products in all these websites pertaining to your niche. Briefly review some of the products for ideas – both keyword ideas and product ideas. The next step is to find long tail keywords.

To do this, go to Google’s external keyword tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. Type in your 10 keywords and it will generate a list of related keywords. Take note of the keyword phrases with at least 3 words in them (long tail keywords) and that produce at least 2,500 searches per month.

Now go to the Google search engine at www.google.com and type in the main keyword in quotation marks. As you are typing, Google will give you related search terms. Take note of the long tail keywords. Once you hit the search button, Google will list out all the websites related to your keyword (this is called the SERP or Search Engine Results Page). Take note of the number of websites listed (it is listed at the top right hand corner of the page). You are aiming for keywords with a maximum of 1,000,000 websites. If it is significantly higher than 1 million, then the keyword is too competitive. Do the same thing with each of the keywords that you have and choose those which have less than 1 million competing websites.

For each of the keywords you type into Google, look at the bottom of the SERP and you will find more suggested related keywords. Click on them and you will find even more keywords. Drill down into the keywords as deeply as you can until you find long tail keywords with less than 1 million competing websites.

If you have done your market research well enough, you will now have identified a niche with ready buyers and the long tail keywords (about 10 will do) they use to search in the search engine for information on a product to buy. The next step would be Product Research and Creation which will be covered in the next article.

First, you should register a domain name. Go to namecheap.com or godaddy.com. Choose one with your long tail keyword inside. If the exact long tail keyword has already been taken, try adding another word that makes it attractive, such as ‘best’, ‘tips’, ‘online’, ‘center’ etc. For example ‘organic farming’ can become ‘organicfarmingtips’.

As for the extension to choose, go for a .com if possible. If that has been taken for the domain name you want, take either a .net or .org. The next best option other than these three would be a .biz or .info. These are the common ones considered to be search engine friendly.

The reason why you should register a domain name now is that it takes 24-48 hours to propagate, and you will only be able to upload content into that domain after it has propagated. So by registering a domain name while you work on product creation, you save time.

The second thing you should do while creating your product is join relevant forums in your niche. Every niche has forums where people interested in their niche hang out. To find these forums, type the name of your niche followed by the word ‘forum’ (without quotes) at the end into Google’s search engine. So, for organic farming, it would be ‘organic farming forums’. Join at least 4 forums.

Joining a forum is easy. Just go to the sign up page and fill up the required fields. Every forum allows you to insert a signature. Here’s where you should put your website URL with some catchy statement. If your website has not been set up yet, you can add your signature later.

One feature to utilize in your signature is BB Codes. BB Codes is like html. For your signature you only need to know 2 BB Codes – the one for hyperlinking and the one for making your words bold. To hyperlink your words to your website URL, the opening BB Code is [url=http://www.yourdomain.com] and the closing BB Code is [/url]. For example, if you want to hyperlink the sentence, ‘Secret Tips to Organic Farming for Good Health’, type [url=http://www.yourdomain.com]Secret Tips to Organic Farming for Good Health[/url] in your signature column. Now anyone who clicks on that sentence will be directed to your website.

And if you want to bold your words, just add the bold BB Codes which are [b] and [/b] at the beginning and the end of the string of code above. So it would appear like this – [b][url=http://www.yourdomain.com]Secret Tips to Organic Farming for Good Health[/url][/b]. Most forums have BB Code on by default. But check just in case.

For more BB Codes, just Google it.

It’s important to join forums as soon as possible because it takes time to build relationships. So post anything you want into these forums everyday (take 30 minutes a day). If you aren’t very knowledgeable in that niche, just post intelligent questions. The more posts you make, the better your standing in the forum. The relationships you make in these forums will be very valuable to you when your product is ready.

Another important thing to do while at forums is to look for the most frequently asked questions and most common problems faced by the members in the forums. Take note of these because you want to include these into your product.

Now for product creation. The easiest way to create your product is to go to Amazon and type in the main keyword for your niche. Amazon will probably produce a list of books on that topic. Find one you like and look into the contents page. Copy the contents page and re-write the chapter titles the best you can. Also include the questions and problems that you found in the forums into the chapters.

The fastest way to produce your product is to outsource it. Go to elance.com or guru.com and post a job for a researcher to research the list of chapters you have compiled. This person only has to cut and paste information from various sources according to the chapters you give him. It should not take more than 2 or 3 days.

Once you get the research back, look for a writer to re-write the research materials into an ebook of 80 to 100 pages in length. This should take no longer than a week. You can find good writers from the Philippines who work at cheap rates. Be prepared to pay about $100 for the researcher and $200 for the writer.

So in about 10 days you should have your product ready. Now you need a designer to design your ebook cover and website. What to do from here onwards will be covered in the next article.

However, some surfers complain that many of the sites they have visited contain only ads and very little content. Most sites sell products, and any information one can get will be about the goods being sold. Many are becoming frustrated; even if the Internet contains a lot of information, sometimes it is difficult to find the information you need. One way to mitigate this growing frustration is to build a large directory of web sites that your visitors might enjoy. For example, if you are targeting visitors who want information about back aches, you can then create a web site directory full of links to similar sites.

As I have told you in the past I am Techless Terry and always looking for ideas that work great with WordPress. Recently I found a free WordPress directory theme bDirectoryPress, created by a great guy by the name of Mark Fail, who is also the creator of ShopperPress and other great WordPress themes. Mark also has premium themes but the free themes are great too! Since discovering DirectoryPress I have started building a couple of directories and have upgrraded to the premium theme for some extra features.

Anyway, if you want to check the DirectoryPress theme just CLICK HERE and if you decide the purchase the premium theme this tired old man will make a couple of dollars to put into my grandsons college fund. If you take advantage of the free DirectoryPress theme I will still be happy for you have taken my advice and are trying something new.

What are the advantages of creating this web site directory using WordPress? Will, if you have been reading this blog you already know that WordPress is great but here are a few more advantages:

1. Your visitors will save time searching for web sites they will enjoy.

If you can write descriptions to the sites in your directory, your visitors will have an overview of the sites they plan to visit. That way, they can zero in on the sites they need much faster.

2. Your visitors will bookmark your web site instead of the individual site they will visit.

The list in our Bookmarks begins to get cluttered once we add more and more sites. If surfers can have a “jumping board” where they can go to other sites, they will be saving that site. This will mean surfers going to that site again and again.

Your web site directory can be that “jumping board” to a particular niche. You will then be getting traffic from users looking for information on your niche.

3. You can monetize your directory.

You can design your web site such that ads from AdSense will blend naturally with your site. You can also include affiliate links in your directory. However, ensure that you do not overdo this, as surfers might think your directory contains only advertisements. Provide good content, such as descriptions of the listed sites, as mentioned above, and your visitors will often return to your site.

By creating a directory of web sites you do not only help your visitors save time searching for information, you also have that opportunity to earn some money from your site.

If you are still wondering what blog is, a blog is simply a special type of website. It has features that set it apart from other websites such as: the content entries (posts) are generally arranged in chronological order with the newest content at the top; reader comments are usually an important part of a blog; a subscription system called RSS is usually offered so readers know when the blog has been updated; and the posts are arranged into some type of archive system so readers can find information easily.  You can also set up a blog that looks like a typical website should you choose!

1. You don’t need any programming skills. You can use a free blogging platform like Blogger.com or WordPress.com, or a self-hosted blogging platform like WordPress.org/. With any of these you can have your first site up and running in a few hours and future blogs up within minutes and at no to little costs. Simply select a theme and start entering your information. If you want to make money with your blog it is not necessary to but you might want to get your own domain name, decide on a market niche, and focus your content to match that audience.

2. With a blog you can add content easily and often updating your site yourself is a cinch. Adding content to a blog is no more difficult that typing a Word document and hitting save. In the case of a blog, though, when you hit publish your information is immediately available to the whole internet community.

3. Search engines love blogs because they are looking for fresh content everyday. If you work at adding new content on a consistent basis Google and other search engines will reward you with free traffic.
4. Blogs can be used to build communities. Blogs are a great way to interact with your visitors. In fact you can do so many cool things with a blog that the really good ones make the visit so enjoyable people actually want to come back again. You can interact with your visitors by adding a place for them to post comments on your blog articles.
5. You can monetize blogs easily. Whether through Google Adsense, Yahoo! Publisher, or affiliate links, monetizing a blog is one of the easiest ways to begin making money online.
6. You can easily add free things such as polls that make it fun for others to see what people are voting on.

7. Do you like videos? You can add those that you make and relate directly to your business or the theme of your blog. If you do not know how to create a video you can go to You Tube and copy some simple code for free and place it in your blog.
8. You can sell products on your blog. This is so easy that anyone can do it as well. Start by placing a banner for your favorite affiliate program on the sidebar. Then add text link ads for more products you sell in the content of the blog articles themselves.

9. Do you operate an off line business? You can promote that business on the internet either locally or globally a great free way to advertise.

10. You can sell advertising to others promoting their business or products for them. Another huge revenue stream for top bloggers is selling advertising. Did you know you could earn from a few to thousands of dollars a month with pay per click advertising such as Google Adsense ads on your blog or promoting products and services listed on free sites such as Click Bank?
These are 10 top reasons to start a blog and there are many others!

Promoters are telling us that without leaving the comfort of our home we can make thousands of dollars per month by what is known as affiliate marketing. Not only that we can operate an affiliate marketing business while traveling the world. We become enticed and wonder just how true these claims are? Is affiliate marketing really the great business it has been made out to be?

I hate to be the barer of bad news but for most individuals that set out to get rich in 30 days on the internet the odds are not much better than winning the lottery. What is true though is that thousands of people are making an excellent living on the Internet and many of them are indeed making a lot of money.  The thing to remember though is that almost none of them were able to do it in the first 30 days.

For those that decide to enter into the world of affiliate marketing they need to be aware of the pitfalls. Perhaps the biggest pitfall is the hundreds of so called “Internet Gurus” that are trying to sell you on their get rich quick scheme. Most of these “Gurus” are making their money by picking your pocket and giving your very little in return. Don’t get we wrong, there are some really good programs out there such as PPCKahuna that will teach you how to make money on the Internet; the trick is to know which programs are legitimate. Like many others I spent a lot of money trying different programs before discovering PPC Kahuna. PPCKahuna teaches you how to make money and supplies the tools to do it. While this worked best for me, many other people have successfully build a successful affiliate marketing business on their own or by using systems that I may be totally unaware of.

Doing affiliate marketing with training and guidance or on your own, the beauty of affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to change careers to get started. You can keep your 40-hour a week job and start a business on the web. If you can just carve out a little bit of time to get started, and put some effort into it, what may start small can become an extra chunk of income each month without you having to find a second part-time job or take on more overtime at work.

One of the nice aspects of affiliate marketing is that you do not have to create a product or deal with customer service. Your job is to pre-sell a product and then move the customer onto the product sales page.

You can start out small, set up one Website and market just one product. Even if you do everything right, you won’t make thousands of dollars the first month. If you continue to promote, while adding valuable and interesting content to your site, you will begin to develop income.

With time you will market several affiliate programs on that Website as it grows and gets more visitors. With multiple products your affiliate commissions will grow.

The top affiliate marketers start out with one Website and expand to several more quite quickly, with some people actually owning dozens of websites, each focused on a specific niche and type of product. The more you earn, the more you can invest back into growing your affiliate marketing commissions, the more visitors you’ll get, and the more you’ll earn…it becomes a nice little circle of income that there is no reason you can’t take advantage of.

For two years I was throwing spaghetti at the wall trying to figure out what would stick. Unfortunately this is not the best way to make money. Fortunately I became a PPCKahuna Elite member and learned the truth and what the truth was is that what I was doing is a guaranteed way to fail.

In short, you can lose sight of your goals.  If you’ve decided that the best way to sell your products and earn you money is through PPC advertising, then what are you doing buying software to help you with list building?  You’re splitting your focus, and your business is hurting as a result.

If you’ve decided that PPC advertising is the way to go for your online business, then concentrate on that.  Learn as much as you can about PPC advertising, buy products to maximize your PPC campaign.  Don’t get distracted by all the other forms of advertising out there until you’ve given your PPC advertising campaign the attention it deserves.

I like most affiliate marketers was distracted by the sheer amount of advertising vehicles available.  List building one day, SEO the next, on to PPC and so forth.  We start out trying to understand our niche, get distracted by membership sites, and then that gets put on the back burner when we get this great email about how you can make a mint on Ebay.

All of this discussion begs the question:  what is your plan to make money online?   Out of all the different methods available, what do you think will work best for you? If you do decide that PPC advertising is the way to go, then make a commitment to do it as thoroughly as possible.  Then, when the next interesting news about a great new product comes your way, you need to stop, and evaluate whether or not it will help you meet the goals that you’ve set for yourself.  If it doesn’t, then no matter how interesting it is, walk away, because it will just distract you from your goals.

So How Does PPC Kahuna Come Into All of This? Once you’ve decided what your goals are, and if you’ve decided that PPC advertising is the way to go, then you need to find tools to help accomplish that goal.  And PPC Kahuna has a whole offering of tools to make your PPC advertising turn clicks in to money for you. I am not going to pull the wool over your eyes. The truth is if I can get you to make money by checking out PPC Kahuna and you like what you see and become a member we will both be making money. Sure sounds like a win-win proposition to me!

PPC Kahuna has all of the resources to take you through the ins and outs of PPC advertising.  It helps you get started by finding your niche, picking your products, and setting up your sites.  Then you’ll also have access to the resources you need to market to your niche, develop your PPC campaign, and how to manage that campaign once it starts. And once you’re established online and making money, PPC Kahuna can show you how to maximize your campaigns to increase your profit even more.

PPC Kahuna is unlike anything else available. It is an easy and comprehensive system that anyone can use including Techless Terry.  It is about making real money online. PPC Kahuna provides you with the tools and resources you need to make money online.  All you need to do is stay focused, and only spend time on things that will help you accomplish your goals.

As a user of PPCKahuna I strongly urge you to check it out for yourself. To check out PPC Kahuna Click Here. And the greatest thing is it is free to click and get some great ideas while you are doing it!

Probably the purest form of flipping domain names, is the purchase of a specific domain name as an investment. This is referred to as “Domaining” and it involves buying and holding a domain name because of a perception about future value. This often involves a short, targeted domain in the .com category. Who hasn’t wished that they had been the first to see the value of a domain like hotels.com or flowers.com?

The reported sale of Chinese.com in 2007 for more than $1 million, is no urban legend. It is one of the successes at the heart of the GeoDomaining niche where domains specific to an identifiable geographic location, nation or culture, are bought and sold.

Domaining is a very tricky business. It is important to keep in mind that in domaining, the value rests solely on the domain name itself. The investor has no intent to develop the domain name so there are no statistics about rank, traffic or revenue, as there may be when flipping a Website. At the heart of the investment strategy is how the domain name is monetized or has a value assigned to it.

As a result of this need to determine the value of the domain names that a “domainer” has pulled into their “portfolio,” an entire business niche for “domain appraisal” has sprung up. Put this term into a search engine, with the quotes, and the search will provide pages and pages of search results. Some of the sites will provide a few free appraisals before a fee is required but, depending on the domain, appraisal fees can range from around $15 to as much as $100 or more.

It should also be noted, for those interested in getting a domain appraised, that the service may need to be viewed as more of an art than a science. Think about home appraisals which are based on the home being compared to homes which recently sold in the area around the home. Domain appraisal is an attempt to compare the domain to ones that have sold within the business, niche, or category that might cover the domain.

An article at sitepoint.com reports that a researcher submitted the same domain to a number of domain appraisal services. The domain name was associated with a term used in the business of stock market trading. When completed, the several appraisals provided a range of values that ran from $200 to $160,000! This example serves to illustrate the speculative nature of flipping domain names and why it can be so very tricky to determine the value of your portfolio.

2. Take the main keyword from this topic and plug it into a keyword research tool.

3. Look at the search count. If it is about 30,000 per month, it’s a good niche. If it is below 30,000 searches, there is very little market and therefore it is not a good niche. If it is way above 30,000 searches, there is probably too much competition and therefore it is risky to enter this niche market.

That’s it. Based on those three steps, you are supposed to find a niche. What’s wrong with such a teaching?

Firstly, there is no research into the competition. No step is taken to discover how strong a competition you face in that niche.

Secondly, there is no research into long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are defined as keyword phrases of at least 4 words (the more words, the better). Every marketer knows the importance of long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords can lead you to lucrative sub-niches.

Thirdly, there is no research into the tendency of the searchers to buy. It’s not only a matter of whether the searchers have money or not. Some people in a particular niche market may have money but are not intending to buy anything.

So here’s how the gurus really do their niche and keyword research:

1. Examine your own interests, abilities, knowledge, experiences. Anything from these may be a potentially good niche to market to.

2. Identify what’s hot in the market i.e. what is currently the most talked-about thing, what’s buzzing or new in town. Is this a potential niche?

3. From the above two steps, identify potential niches. Then run these potential niches through these ‘filters’:

a. Are people in this niche ready to buy and not merely information seekers or looking for freebies? For example, ‘how to score an ‘A’ in your SAT examination’ would probably not be a very lucrative niche because it would interest only students who may not have the money to buy anything much.

b. Is there a problem that the people in this niche cannot solve themselves? Any niche involving technical expertise would nicely fit into this criteria. For example, ‘how to solve Windows Vista registry problems’ would likely be a good niche because very few people are technologically competent enough to deal with these problems.

c. Do the people in this niche have an urgent crisis that needs to be overcome? The more urgent the better. For example, ‘how to stop your teenager’s drug habit’ is an extremely urgent crisis that begs for answers.

d. Is there an ‘evergreen’ need in this niche that is not a just a fad? ‘How to improve your golf swing’ is an evergreen need compared to ‘strategies for World of Warcraft’ (World of Warcraft is a PC game). Once the fad for World of Warcraft is over, the market in this niche disappears.

Obviously, the more ‘yes’ answers you get to the above questions the more potentially profitable a niche is.

4. Once you have identified a potentially profitable niche based on the steps above, it is time to look for some long-tail keywords. These long-tail keywords will reveal some sub-niches which you can further profit from. For example, if you type in ‘golf swing’ into Wordtracker, you would get a whole list of related searches. Look for keyword phrases with four words or more. Some of them are ‘stack and tilt golf swing’, ‘biomechanics of golf swing’, ‘what is the proper weight distribution during the golf swing’ etc.

5. To find out how much competition there is in this niche, simply type in all the keywords you have into Google’s free keyword analysis tool. This tool will give you the estimated advertiser competition (which is the same as marketer competition), average search volume for the previous month and average monthly search volume. The great thing is that this tool also gives you synonyms for the keywords which means you get more keyword suggestions. You identify keywords with as little competition but as many searches as possible.

The steps above represent a much more complete way of niche discovery. You will not only find profitable niches but also the relevant keywords that go with these niches. By doing this you make a solid start in your niche marketing.