Play an Instrument or Have Knowledge of Anything? There's Money to Be Made on Youtube

One of the most rewarding ways you can make money online is to teach beginners something you know a lot about. You don't have to be some incredible expert, you just have to be good at something and have a youtube account. I use musical instruments as an example, but it could be anything from how to make a pineapple upside down cake to how to change an air filter. A lot of people make good money on youtube by utilizing some skill they have acquired and teaching it to random people who are eager to learn.

You only need a Youtube and Google Adsense account, and your first video to get started. Personally, I can play acoustic guitar and I focus on videos that I think would've helped me when I was first starting out.

Specifically, I like to post instructional videos of popular songs, but with simplified chords because something all beginners want is to be able to play some of their favorite songs.

Doesn't need to be guitar, anything that you believe could have been useful to yourself when you first started doing a particular skill or hobby.

In your youtube account navigate to your video manager and on each video there will be an option to monetize it, you can choose the pre-roll ads and the little pop-in ads.  Of course comply with the copyright laws, use descriptive tags, and make sure your headline is something you would search for.  Youtube will review the video and usually within a few hours approve it as long as there is no copyright problem.

If you want to promote the video find some related forums and use the video as your signature or just post it there if the forum allows.  The most important thing is to post a new instructional, at the very least, once a week.  You want subscribers to your channel, you want a following, so keep up with it.

For recording I just use an Ipad, but if you have deeper resources than me, use them, better quality videos have a better chance of becoming popular.  Speak very clear and be positive.

Wednesday Night Inspiration - A Story of Quitting a Job for All the Right Reasons

It's Wednesday night, and it is -1 degrees where I live.  I just wanted to write some encouraging words for the people that want to make working from home a reality.

First of all if you work at a big corporation and are absolutely miserable working there you owe it to yourself to make a change.  Awhile back I worked for a very large corporation.  Now I was just looking for a night job to go along with my 9-5 job which I happen to like.  So I fill out the application to basically just be a labor worker doing the physical tasks.  The problem was they liked my interview and said we will pay you a dollar more to work inside the store.

I'm like fine so I took the job.  So I started their mind numbing computer training and realized they wanted me to be a salesman on the floor.  I'm talking real selling, upselling, all that bs.  So I go to the supervisor and say "am I a salesman?", she said yeah.  Now they were paying me $8.50 an hour at this point.  So I asked her, "what's my commission?", she replies "we work on a scale where if everyone in your department reaches a certain quota there are cash bonuses".  Basically I could sell 20 products for the month and still receive $8.50 an hour.

This isn't fair of course and this is how corporations make billions because payroll is any company's biggest expense.  Of course the first video I had to watch for training was an anti-union video.  It's like this at many corporations, employees work their butts off to sell something and 100% of the profit stays in company hands.

Long story short, I asked the supervisor how in the world this is considered fair?  She said it's "team building".  And if your department happened to make the quota that month?  $50 extra on your paycheck, thanks for nothing.  So after I told her how absurd that was I just quit and walked out.

If this seems like a similar situation that you are in right now then make a damn change.  Start putting in the time it takes to get out of that situation.  Get up early, write a blog post, get through the day at work, come home write another blog post or do some surveys and make that extra cash.  Picture yourself getting out of that horrible cycle that so many people find themselves in.  Once you start putting in the work necessary you will start seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

Top 3 Ways to Get Referrals

The most lucrative way to make money from sites that are based around tasks or surveys or rewards, ala Cash Crate or InstaGC, is to rack up a bunch of referrals.

Referrals are people that sign up using your link.  You receive a percentage, usually 10-20% of everything they earn.  Basically they become your employees except you're not paying them, the company is.  This can be lucrative and it's basically the easiest way to make money because there's very little work involved for you.  Of course the methods I list below can also be used for actual affiliate sales if that's your thing.

1. Rent an Email List - No one wants to drop cash, but if you have a little dough to spend and you want to build up some referrals, Rent-a-List is really the way to go.  They send your pitch out to very targeted audiences and guarantee you a 40% click through rate, which is really good. This works particularly well for make money sites since there are tons of lists for this certain niche.  Their pricing is very fair (21 bucks for the lowest package), give it a try at least, it might be for you.

2. Forum Signatures - Being an active forum member and using your signature to get referrals is an amazingly effective practice.  There are many forums related to making money online.  If you actively participate and get well respected within the community people will be inclined to check out the stuff you promote in your signature.  Popular forums rank very well in google as well, so you also expose your promotions to much more traffic than you may think.

3. Start a Blog - A boring suggestion.  An obvious suggestion.  But it works.  The best advice I can give is NEVER give up.  Make a post every single day.  Give out some good advice.  Of course link your referral sites wherever you think they will receive the most exposure.  For more blogging advice and a little inspiration check out the 4 posts below I did earlier.

Never Run Out of Post Ideas by Fringe Blogging

Need a Flood of Traffic - Write a List - A Crazy Story of Success

Don't Neglect Other Types of Blog Posts

You Can Work from Home on the Internet

Never Run Out of Post Ideas by Fringe Blogging

"Fringe Blogging" is not a thing, I'm not making this a thing.  It's just a golf analogy that's been beaten to death, but hey it's the best I can do.

What I mean by fringe blogging is to look slightly outside your chosen niche for post ideas.  It is every blogger's worst nightmare, to run out of ideas for a post.  That's why it is important to fringe blog so to speak.  For example on this blog I've posted inspirational things because although it doesn't pertain to a particular way of making money, it is a very important to keep a positive attitude towards what you're trying to accomplish.  Otherwise you will stop working or think "I'll just take a few days off".

As I mentioned I used to run a mixed martial arts blog.  When I started doing it it was a fairly small niche, events would happen maybe twice a month.  So to keep the flow going I would make posts pertaining to other combat sports like boxing or K-1 kickboxing.  There were always a few readers who would make a snarky comment because it wasn't MMA related so to speak, but 99% of the readers loved those fringe posts and even thanked me for opening them up to another world.

It really is a simple idea that can be overlooked by beginning bloggers because it's not laser targeted to their niche.  Your niche is very important of course, but it pales in comparison to the number one goal; entertaining your readers.  So have a blog about movies?  Throw some TV or video game posts in there.  A blog about playing guitar?  Make a post about the banjo.  Etc. Etc.

Don't Neglect Other Types of Blog Posts

If you are starting a blog to work from home and make money then you should already know that researched content is everything. A lot of people will immediately think articles, articles, and more articles. This is partly true. Blog articles will help the most in determining your search engine ranking, but let me tell you a universal truth, they can be boring.

The last thing you want is for your loyal readers to be bored. Bored readers become non-readers. Now don't get me wrong, the majority of your blog should be good researched articles, but here are some suggestions to keep a good flow of posts going that intertwine with your articles and make your blog more entertaining.

-Videos - Look at other blogs in your niche and if they post a youtube video, grab the embed code and post it also, make sure the headline is different. In addition search youtube yourself for videos in your niche.

-Infographics - People love a good infographic, you can easily find one pertaining to your niche.

-Pic of the Day - If you have a blog about making money like this one, find a picture and superimpose an inspirational quote on it. Of course if you have a sports or entertainment blog well that's easy.

-Quote of the Day - Speaking of quotes. They are perfect for a nice quick blog post.

-Link Club - Start a link club in your niche, even if other blogs don't want to participate, just inform your readers of good links once a week.

-News Snippets - There is news in virtually ever niche. I'll be writing a post in the coming days about how to write a good news snippet.

-Events - If there is an upcoming event pertaining to your niche, let your readers know about it in a short blog post.

Thanks for reading and try some of these. You may find that it's easier to have a productive blog when you aren't stuck doing the same thing constantly.

Need a Flood of Traffic? Write a List - A Crazy Story of Success

When you start a blog and that's the way you would like to earn your work at home income there is just ONE hurdle you need to leap.  The traffic hurdle.  Now traffic from search engines is the most valuable traffic there is, but it takes awhile to get a steady stream.

If you're a true writer, writing a list might seem like a cop out or an easy dumbed-down version of writing. For the most part it kind of is, but sprinkling in a few can be very valuable.  

Lists are one of the most popular things on the internet, a ton more people will be inclined to read a list than a news piece or a normal article.  Lists are also more likely to go viral and bring in an amount of traffic you could never even dream of.  

Here's a short explanation of how one of my lists went viral awhile ago and brought in the most amount of traffic I ever witnessed.

-Submitted list to Fark.com

-Fark accepted the list, changed the headline slightly, and put it on their front page.

-Traffic is really spiking at this point, about 8k visits per hour.

-Nearly every blog in my niche picked up the article and linked to it.

-Stumbleupon users start stumbling the Fark link, which redirects to my link. 

-Sites that are essentially "link farms" in my niche pick it up.

-The yahoo blog in my niche picks it up.

Yahoo really sent it into the stratosphere and there I was glued to my adsense earnings and traffic stats. Final tally?  Over the next 3 days I generated over a million page views and made about $900 in adsense.  This all came about from writing a list in about an hour and a half.  

It was like a drinking binge, I was hungover, it was a rush.  It was like watching a slot machine winning for 3 days.  The exposure was invaluable as I received emails from more advertisers in the coming days and earned a little respect within my niche.  

Think of a list, write it, promote it to free sites like Fark, Digg, Reddit.  It happens all the time, it can be you the next time, just do it.

Find Out What People Want from Your Blog

This is a fantastic guest post over at Problogger by Sabina Stoiciu about how to find out exactly what your blog readers want from you.

Giving out free content is quite the gift, but it has to engage your readers so they'll keep coming back for more and tell their friends.  New readers are certainly valuable, but developing a loyal following of people that check your blog on a daily basis is the real key to success.  Here's a snippet:

5. Analyse engagement

The last point on our list (but definitely not one that should be neglected) is to analyse the engagement around your blog posts and around their reverberance in social media.

 To be more specific, take a look at the number of likes, shares and comments a post received directly on your blog, as well as on the social media channels where you shared it. Naturally, posts that sum up a lot of engagement have always proved themselves to be a hot topic for those engaging with them. Hence, why not consider exploring more of these topics that your readers were so keen on?

 These are some ideas on how to find out what your blog visitors are looking for. Remember, you can always test to see what works out best and let the results point you towards the direction worth following.

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