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Some people would say that making money online is easier than ever, while other will say the exact opposite, that making money online is harder than ever!

Which side is correct? There are clear arguments for each position. People who say it’s easy would point out sites like PayPerPost , which is getting more and more exposure everyday for its ability to generate money for low traffic blogs. If you register at PayPerPost, and get your blog approved, there are many opportunities which any site with any PR and Alexa Ranking could apply for. Granted, they may only be for $5 or $10, but it all adds up, and if you think that you are getting paid for your blog that has low traffic or even very very low, it’s not a bad deal. Of course, there’s many other ways to make money too, like Adsense or direct advertising.

And this is where the other side comes in. The other people would say to make money you need traffic, but today, there are so many websites that it is extremely hard to make more money from the internet. And if you think about it, it’s kind of true. There are almost 15 million blogs born everyday, and it is considered a slow down. BlogTalk made the analyze. This means that if you just came into the blogging scene, you have joined a group of 15 million people just like you, and this is only today. Tomorrow, another 15 million will join, etc…In fact, before you even entered, there were already hundreds of millions of blogs already running. If this isn’t competition, I don’t know what it is.

Of course, all these people don’t have the same goal, some will just want to share interesting stories while others will want to make money, but all of them want traffic.

So is making money online today harder or easier than ever? I will say that neither is right, it just depends on how you look at it and more specifically, how you actually deal with it. For example, there are numerous blogs out there that deal with technology, and if you’re going to be just another one of these blogs, it will be very hard to compete. Unless you enter the arena with a little twist, maybe you can talk about technology with an interesting style, maybe you can do it with your experience.

Another way to look at blogging is to enter a niche that interests you but that many people didn’t talk much about. For example, you can start a tutorial blogging in an area you are very skilled at. This would explain why there aren’t many blogs about it since not everyone has your skill, and your blog might interest a huge amount of people. In this way, you have a vast audience and little competition, and you might actually think, “Wow, making money online is easier than ever.”

If you are a regular internet user, you have probably made use of eBay at some point or another, or you have at least heard of people making money selling on eBay. By shopping on eBay, one is quick to realize those PowerSellers. Ever imagined how these people have over 10,000 items sold? And are yet selling on eBay hundreds of items at a time everyday? Yep, these people got a knack of it and know how it works and how to make money on eBay.
They aren’t rare as there are many PowerSellers in every possible category on eBay, each having their own niche. You can make it big in almost everything on eBay, selling make-up can be as profitable as selling jewelry. A common mistake beginner sellers do is to overlook at basic concepts as they want to get rich quick. If you want to succeed at selling on eBay, not only do you need a good plan, but patience is also a must, and always keep in mind that you are competing against other people. You probably guessed that you aren’t the only one selling on eBay, and every possible category has been already covered by someone, but remember that the internet is ever growing and that there is room for everyone.

-Take Clear and Clean Photographs
Most beginners do not give a lot of importance to the photography of the items they are selling, when it should be on their top priorities. Can there be any bigger turn off than an unclear, dark and grainy picture?

-Develop your feedback
When you start, what you want to do is gain trust with your buyers, so don’t start selling expensive items like expensive electronics when you only have 5 feedbacks.

-Start by selling a few household items
This is a good place to start increasing your feedback on eBay, and at the same time your experience. If you have used items that you don’t need and that are still in “okay” conditions, instead of throwing them away, sell them on eBay. Along with the feedback, you’ll get a feel of making money on eBay.

-Regularly research your market and new ones
Like affiliate marketing, selling on eBay is no different. There are markets that are hot and other that are not so hot. Finding and exploiting certain markets until they drain is a good way many use on eBay.

- Don’t Sell Overly Popular Items
Another newbie mistake is to just sell whatever everyone is doing because if everyone is doing, it must be good, right? Wrong. It’s not because you see thousands of similar items for sale that everyone is making money with them, they are trying, but what’s telling you they are succeeding on eBay? Use your common sense and your good judgment.

-Be professional in all matters
Consider selling on eBay like a real business and your buyers as clients, after all, that’s what they are. You need to be professional in everything, especially when are in contact with them. Always answer an inquiries on time and politely. If you are using phone contacts, use proper language and sound professional and organized. Talk to them as you would like a professional seller to talk to you.

-Don’t Sell Too Small or Too Big
Unless you just found a very profitable market, selling too big or too small is often a looser. If you are selling a $4 item, chances are shipping will cost as much or even more, would that make sense to you if you were the buyer to pay twice the price of an item? Selling anything less than $10 or $15 will always make customers think again when they see the shipping price. Another thing is do not sell too big. This time, not with the price, but the actual size of the item. Selling items that are hard to ship like heavy bulky equipments has never been a good seller.

As you may have wondered, these tips won’t make you the next eBay millionaire, but if you are beginning to sell on eBay, following these tips will make your journey on making money on eBay a little easier.

Forums are a great way to make money. 2 ways you can make money with a forum, you either use other peoples’ forums, or you create your own forum, or both.

If you are going to use other people’s forum, you will be better off using the big forums already established. Using big and very popular forums will make sure your time will be the best spent and you will get maximum exposure.

You might be asking yourself how you will find all these forums and how you will find out if they are popular. Here is an excellent resource that will save your hours and days of research. That site will not only rank all the forum by popularity, but you will also find out how many posts and members they have, along with a description of each forum. The best way to use these forums is through you forum signature, or as people call it, your sig. This is a great way for either traffic or for making money with affiliates. As you will also find here, making use of these forums intelligently by building your reputation with quality posts is the best way of success. Do not spam any of these forums, as the last thing you want is to get banned from these big boards. When browsing through the list of forums, pay attention if they allow use of HTML code. It is this HTML code in your forum signature that will make you money. Many forums have disabled HTML so people do not spam, but the vast majority of forums still have HTML enabled. You will also find many forums where you have to pay in order to be a member, or you have to pay to be allowed to access certain sections. You will have to use your judgment here to determine if it is worth paying for these. Keep in mind that if you join a group where people have paid to be a member, these are more serious readers and maybe worth your money. Try also to see if the owner of the forum is not profiting from its popularity to just make every member pay to join; if the previous members did not pay, this may make everything less valuable.

Just how much money can you make with forums or message boards? Earnersblog says he made $800 in one day. That was with Yahoo Answers Message Board. I believe yahoo does not allow promoting in their forums, but you can use the same method in other message boards. The experiment shows the potential.

You can read Part 2 on how to make money with your own message boards.

Let’s face it, more people are doing business online today than ever before. There’s more websites, more online companies, more online transactions and more online advertising. If you are thinking of going into the journey of making money online like all these people are doing nowadays, there’s one thing you should be wary about, and that it is, dependence.

Online opportunities are everywhere. You can become a freelancer and work with contracts, you can have a website with traffic to monetize it, you can start an online business and start getting customers, you can become an expert advertiser and start selling for affiliates, etc… In almost every field, there is a big player, a huge company that is so big that you could literally make your living with. One can think of Yahoo, Google, eBay, Betfair or ClickBank. Starting your journey with these companies in mind is a normal thing to do.

If you are an expert in the betting field, you can enjoy the benefits that Betfair can give to you, such as a wide variety of betting markets, better odds and betting against each other. If you are an SEO expert you can start a website and start attracting thousands of visitors. If you are a good marketer, then ClickBank can be a good solution for your affiliate products.

What you must do, on the other hand, is to expand your vision and think outside the box. If you have a website that is optimized for many keywords and gets an enormous chunk of your total traffic from Yahoo; everything is doing very well and you’re enjoying all the benefits that huge traffic can bring. What would you do if all of a sudden for some reason Yahoo decides to remove your site from their listings, or even worse, maybe it was a mistake from their part. Or let’s say you are an online company selling wholesale computer parts and have one main customer that accounts for 60% of all your sales, did you ever think what happened to your business if he changed supplier?

We all know diversification is necessary in any kind of business, but are we all practicing it? And more than that, are we practicing it soon enough? It should be in your top priorities to start diversifying your business as soon as possible. Catastrophes can happen at any time. Never rely on only one person or company, and do not push it too late. The earlier you start, the easier it is to make changes and learn new skills on the way.

A few examples come to mind. John Chow has a site where he monitors his monthly earnings. For his March earnings, had he only relied on Google Adsense like most people do, he would have made $1,129.60, but instead he made $8,545.25, that’s more than 7 times had he not diversified! Staying on the Adsense subject, Kumiko Suzuki also tracks her earnings. Recently, she has been banned from Adsense, but as you can still see, she’s still online and making money. Getting away from Adsense, Mike Perry also had a problem with a big player in the field. You can read his post here about Commision Junction.

When you start a website, your single challenge is to increase traffic. You probably already know this, and if you are just starting a website or starting a blog, increasing traffic is not really easy. There’s really 2 parts to a website, the content and traffic, and both take a good amount of time.

Increasing traffic is time consuming, and this is especially true if you want to increase traffic for free, which is what most beginning bloggers want to do.

There are many ways to increase traffic, and most of these methods are already known and popular, and guess what, they work! The problem with most bloggers who want to increase traffic for their blog is they are not using the traffic tips in an efficient way. Here’s what I mean. If you look around and search for traffic tips, you will without a doubt read that you have to comment on other people’s blog, or that you have to post on forums. You would be surprised at how well these methods work.

Yet, people still ask how to get traffic, or complain that it doesn’t bring enough visitors. Their problem is that they are not using these methods in an intelligent fashion. They count: Quantity>Quality. WRONG! Going on blogs and making comments such as, “Great post, I like it”, or “Interesting Blog”, in hopes that the readers will click on your name or URL doesn’t work. Why would anyone click or want to know more from someone who didn’t prove has anything intelligent to say. Same things on forum, there are thousands of topics everyday on which you can make a post. Instead of making the same old 2-3 word comments that don’t really contribute to anything, or even making 20 of those, you could take your time to construct a smart reply.

That single smart comment or post might not bring much at that time, but if you keep at it and do it consistently, you will slowly start getting noticed from the blog community or whatever forum you are on, and when you start gaining some credibility, then people will start clicking when you say something.

Unless you are willing to invest money in paid reviews or other forms of advertising, making use of already known working techniques for increasing traffic but only intelligently is the only way. Notice, this is the same thing as people who say: “Content is King”. The same principle works here: “Smart Comment Is King”.