How To Earn Extra Money

The truth of the matter is that, if all you're looking to do is make an extra couple hundred bucks per month on the Internet, it's NOT hard. On more than one occasion, I have spent about 90 minutes in front of a computer with friends, showing them by having them doing. By the end of that 90 minutes, they can have the basic shell of an online business set up.

So, what is the basic plan? Seriously, here's all you really have to do, and how to do it using nothing but FREE tools:

1). Create a Google account in order to get access to all their tools. If you have Gmail, then you already have a Google account.

2). Use the Google External Keyword Tool to find high average CPC Adwords keywords (do a Google search for the tool to find it - it's self-explanatory to use).

3). Create a Blogger blog (part of Google also), using several of the most commonly searched for, high average CPC (cost per click) keywords discovered in step 2 as your title and in your description and first post.

4). Edit your blog's template layout and ad Adsense blocks to the sidebar, header, footer, or between posts. During this process, you will create an Adsense account, which takes 2-3 business days to have it approved.

5). Also to your blog layout, add a Feedburner signup button. Feedburner is also a Google service, and provides a free way of building an email notification list. You MUST have an email list of some sort if you want long term profitability out of your new web site.

6). Create an account on EzineArticles.com (ok, NOT a Google service, but still free) and write an article about your topic, using some of the keyword phrases from step 2, and providing good info, and then create an author resource box that contains a keyword-specific link back to your new blog.

7). Rule 1: Update your blog daily with relevent, informative, up to date, keyword rich posts. This will help you start showing up in the Google SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) when people search for your keywords.

8). Rule 2: All blog posts are also articles that you should submit on ezinearticles.com. This will help build traffic.

If you're blogging about something that you really enjoy and that has sufficient search traffic, you will get to the $200/mo level in Google Adsense revenue in just a few months. Is it overnight? NO. That's why you'd better pick something you're passionate about, because you're going to get sick of it pretty quick otherwise.

This is not meant to be a comprehensive guide to making money blogging. It's meant to give you the overview. For a complete guide to doing this, you can snag a copy of my online guide to making money as a blogger by going to:

http://HowToEarnHQ.com/work/

Signing up there will give you access to the Blog Dollars guide, plus tons of other resources I have up for working from home.

To your success,

Jassen Bowman

This is a follow up to my previous post concerning keyword research and niche selection. In that post, I discussed how to do keyword research and find market opportunities on the Internet. It is well known that once you have selected a niche, built a web site, optimized it for the search engines, and added some content, that you cannot just sit back and relax. The importance of keeping live, fresh, and up to date content on your site on an ongoing basis is talked about ad nauseum in various Internet marketing circles. I wanted to provide a real life case study about this situation.

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As of this writing, I own the #7 spot on Google for the keyword phrase "rachael flatt". Rachael Flatt is the reigning U.S. ladies national silver medalist and reigning World Junior Champion in the sport of figure skating. Until this morning, I didn't even that I owned that coveted #7 spot because, quite frankly, I had never checked. Several weeks ago I put up a very, very basic fan site for her after meeting her in person at a figure skating competition. Her silver medal performance at the 2008 U.S. Nationals was a significant inspiration for me finally getting off my duff and starting to skate myself.

So, what made me check? Apparently, her agent did a Google search to see what was out there about her, and found my bare-bones fan site. She then contacted me about the possibility of creating a more expansive site to help promote Rachael in the figure skating sphere.

This led me to one of the very initial steps involved with any sort of online enterprise: keyword research. When it comes to Internet marketing, keyword research is a major component of several tasks that go by different names, such as "market research", "niche selection", and "search engine optimization." Keyword research is a very important aspect of each of these business building tasks, and is often the first place to start whenever a new idea emerges.

Why would I want to do keyword research for a FAN site? Quite honestly, it has to do with niche selection. There is an entire universe of athletes out there, and converting a basic fan site into a full blown project requires the knowledge ahead of time about whether that athlete has enough search traffic to warrant the effort. In addition, it's wise to know what other keywords relevant to the project need to be targeted for optimization.

Where does one start with keyword research? Personally, I use a very methodical approach, which has evolved over time as tools and technologies change. Here's my current keyword research checklist, verbatim out of my own playbook:

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