How To Use Copyrighted Photos And Images On Your Blog

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It's been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Not sure how true this is but images and photos certainly improve the appearance of posts and blogs.

Sometimes however, without breaching copyright laws, it's hard to get the right image for a particular niche. There is, however, a way to have a choice of hundreds of thousands of copyright photos and images to use on your blogs for free.

What's more you could earn money as well.

The answer is the AllPosters affiliate program.

Many bloggers join AllPosters purely to use the photos and images available. But there is also the additional benefit of being able to make 20% commission on any orders you may get for photos, posters and other products.

AllPosters helps solve the problem of sourcing photos and images and has the added bonus of being able to make some extra money as well. This makes it an affiliate program worth considering.

In all honesty I doubt if you'll earn a mountain of commission but, as I often say, all profit is good profit - especially if it's a bit extra!

Webmasters Make $$$
Good luck,
Mike.

Give Away a Freebie And Make Money

A good way to make money is to give something away for free.

That sounds a contradiction at first but, along with the freebie, you'll need an affiliate program or product to tie in with whatever you are giving away.

An example of this going round is an advert that says they will tell you how to make money for free.

So you click and go to the blog, or whatever, and they glowingly write about how they have made a bundle of money. What's more they are willing to give you the full details absolutely free - all you need is an email address. They stress that you will never have to pay them a cent or a penny but, if you do make a lot of money, a donation would be appreciated. They will, however, never ask for this.

With nothing to lose you give your email address and you are taken to another page which gives you the full free report on how to make money.

In this example it turns out to be a 'guaranteed' roulette system - which you can test out by playing it for free.

Again with nothing to lose you decide to give it a go. Ah, but you'll need somewhere to play roulette. And this is where they make their money by giving something away for free.

They are affiliates for several online casinos and helpfully suggest that one of these is used to try out the roulette system.

What they are doing, in a round-about way, is simply promoting affiliate programs - by giving something away for free.

There are heaps of ways to give a freebie and tie it in with a money making opportunity.

In a way it's what a lot of blogs are doing without realising it. They provide information, pics, news or whatever (for free) and visitors click on other things which makes the blogger money.

Giving away freebies makes money!

Good luck,
Mike.

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30% Income For Doing Nothing

I was looking through some blog earnings stats and noticed that with my FriendFinder affiliate account 35% of the money I have made has come via other affiliates I have introduced.

I followed this up by looking at some other affiliate programs I have promoted and, sure enough, about 30% of the money made comes from the efforts of people I have introduced.

I think this is already sufficient to get the obvious message across i.e. if I hadn't have also promoted the programs to others my income would have been about 30% less.

It's so easy to get enthused about an affiliate program and go like mad to promote whatever the products / services are. However, thinking longer term, the best bet is to also promote the scheme to others as a way to make money.

Terms vary on differing affiliate programs but most offer about 10% of the earnings of any introductions. With a few calculations the potential of this can be realised.

There is a reality check though about introducing others into affiliate programs: The majority will do either none or very little business. This is a fact and the way of the world with most sales or even MLM.

So you don't get too excited when someone signs up under you but, there again, don't get too deflated when they don't make you any money.

It's a numbers game, like so much in sales. Just keep plodding away and you'll hit upon a few jewels who will make you money. You might even come across a real biggy who'll earn you a mountain of cash.

With affiliate programs think:

(1) sales of the product and
(2) introducing others.

There's plenty of money to go round, there are billions of people in the world. All you have to do is present what you have to offer to as many people as possible.

As I've said before: Contact some people and make some money but contact lots of people and make lots of money.

It all goes back to: traffic. The right traffic, in the right numbers makes money.

Good luck,
Mike.

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The World Of Tumble-Logs Such As Tumblr

In the previous post I talked about Posterous, the very easy to use Blog platform. Today I'll mention another similar website tumblr.com.

This is almost a cross between Twitter and a full blown blog.

It's easy to use and is built for quick blog posts, videos, photos, quotes and so on.

The advantage over Posterous is that it all looks more professional and there are dozens of templates to choose from.

One of the stalwarts of tumblr is Katy Perry, see photo, plus another couple of million people who have set up blogs on the site.

I dabbled in setting up a blog and it is a little more difficult than with Posterous but, once set up, posting is a piece of cake.

These sort of set-ups are now being known as tumble-logs, as opposed to blogs and are worth investigating.

It could be useful for promoting a full blown blog and generally getting known on the blogosphere. There is potential for the likes of tumblr, Posterous and indeed Twitter to be used as aids for making money.

Have a look at tumblr.com and see what you think.

Good luck,
Mike.

YouGov: Make extra money by completing surveys and polls for payment - genuine company.

The Easiest Place In The World To Set Up A Blog

Looking for the easiest place to blog from anywhere in the world?

I wasn't! But I did come across Posterous, which I hadn't heard of before.

It's somewhere you can blog by using emails from any email address that you have registered with them. You can use several if you wish.

It really is that simple - no HTML etc needed. You can send them text, photos, MP3's, documents and videos (both links and files) and that's it! Whatever you send will become a blog post.

Posterous will also, if you wish, automatically update your accounts at Facebook, Twitter, Flickr etc. with your latest post.

You can make your blog public or keep it private for friends and family.

Okay, this all sounds okay but there is one snag: the layout is none too special, no fancy stuff. It's very basic in appearance.

I set up a Posterous blog out of curiousity. And sure enough it was live in minutes and the two posts I have sent by email were on the blog within seconds.

I can see that there are ways where it could be of use. I'm not sure if I'll bother with it myself at the moment but, if I can find a way for it to work for me, then I might just continue.

See what you think.

Good luck,
Mike.

YouGov: Make extra money by completing surveys and polls for payment - genuine company.

Squidoo Money Making Update

I thought I'd do an update on Squidoo.

If I'm honest it's not going as well as I hoped in respect of making me money. That's not to say that there is anything wrong with Squidoo, it's a good site and there are benefits other than monetary.

I enjoy using the website, time permitting, but my major point of joining was to make money and this has been disappointing so far.

To earn commission the lenses (pages) you have made need to have a good Squidoo ranking. One that is under 2000. Now, as there are millions of lenses, it can be seen that to have one of the best 2000 is no easy task. I've done this and had several in the category but, through lack of time, the rankings have gradually dropped.

So what decides your ranking? Well it's another mysterious algorithm. From what I can see this is based on various things relative to the lens.

These 'things' include:

(a) Traffic - same old chestnut!
(b) Ratings stars - how other members rate your lenses
(c) Clicks Out - how many clicks are made to Google ads, Amazon, etc. etc.
(d) Goods Bought - have readers bought anything from, say, Amazon and eBay modules.
(e) Latest Updates - length of time since the lens was updated.
(f) Angel Blessings - some established members are called angels and they can bless lenses they think are exceptional. Blessings improve a lens ranking.

So there are quite a lot of things to constantly think about if you want to make money by having decent lens rankings.

It's not an easy money making ride and I feel it will take several months of continued effort to make anything worthwhile. Though you could just do it for the enjoyment and possible contacts you might make.

As I said earlier there are also other benefits to making lenses. They could, for example, be for your own products or affiliate programs or maybe to help drive traffic to your blog or website.

A few Squidoo lensmasters do claim to be making decent money but these appear, in the main, to be long established members.

To sum up Squidoo is a well run program and quite easy to use but getting regular, direct payments from Squidoo will take time and effort.

Good luck,
Mike.

A few of my Squidoo Lenses as examples: A Year In My Cornish Garden / Sidney Sock Goes Missing / Funny and Humorous Letters / Awful Jokes / Golf Jokes and Golf One Liners

Wonder Wheel For Michael Jackson Keywords

Have you been using the new Google Wonder Wheel to help find more keywords or other related searches?

I've only just come across this and have found it useful when writing articles and posts. All the more we can establish popular keywords and phrases and what is being searched the more successful our search engine optimisation.

Better seo brings better traffic, at least that's the theory.

To find the Wonder Wheel do a normal Google search (and remember the suggestions in the drop down box are also very useful as keywords) and on the results page at the top left you'll see 'Show options'. Click on this and the Wonder Wheel link is towards the bottom of the list shown.

The Wonder Wheel will show usually 6- 8 phrases associated with whatever you searched. The example below shows the current Wonder Wheel when searching for 'Michael Jackson'.


The 'Show options' list (to the left of the example above) also includes other helpful links to stuff you are searching for - which, again, may come in handy when writing your article or post.

Every little extra helps. The right keywords and phrases make the world of difference to attracting traffic from search engines - especially Google. And, of course, more traffic = more money.

Good luck,
Mike.

YouGov: Make extra money by completing surveys and polls for payment - genuine company.