Paid Survey Success

I’ve been exploring ways to make money online outside of paid surveys and todays post is a tried and true money maker.  If you haven’t heard yet about Squidoo you should go and check it out because there are lots of people that have been making good money by authoring Squidoo lenses.  You probably won’t get rich, but it is another way to make some cash from the internet and it’s a good way to diversify your online income.  And if you’re just getting started making money online Squidoo is a great way to build confidence, get motivated and start learning about internet marketing.

One of the major reasons people give up on trying to make money online is they don’t have the patience required to market and establish a new blog.  As a consequence they lose their confidence, motivation and faith in their ability to make money online.

How Will Squidoo Help You Get Started With Internet Marketing?

Squidoo is a free platform that allows you to author what they call ‘lenses’.  These lenses are really just web pages and they have one big advantage over starting your own website.  The advantage is that Squidoo is already highly regarded by search engines which means it is much easier to get your lenses indexed.  This means you should start seeing traffic to your new lenses quickly which will be a big confidence booster and motivator.  There’s nothing like that first sale or seeing people view your site to boost your morale and motivation.

What makes Squidoo a good way for anyone to start making money online?

1. Once you create an account and get used to working with Squidoo you can create a lens in as little as 10-15 minutes.  Try doing that with a blog or website.

2. Squidoo will allow you to rank well in Google almost right away because the site has high authority and trust.  Getting your own site in the top 10 results in Google can be very difficult and requires hours or marketing work, but with Squidoo all that work has been done for you already.  By doing a little bit of keyword research you can get a highly rank lens page pretty quickly and easily.

3. Unlike other free web authoring sites Squidoo allows you to promote affiliate products.  You can put your own affiliate links into your lens and start making money from day 1 with Squidoo.  Some popular affiliate networks include Clickbank and Commission Junction.  Just find a product and build your lens around it.

4. Since the lenses are so quick and easy to set up Squidoo is a great place to experiment with different offers, layouts and ads to see what will convert for you.  You can use Squidoo to identify profitable niches before taking the time to build an entire website around them.

5. Along the lines of yesterdays post Squidoo is a good way to diversify your online income.  It gives you one more way to get some additional cash each month.

You can get started with Squidoo here

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You may have heard that diversification in the stock market is a good thing to reduce risk.  Well, the same thing applies to your online business.  The more ways you have set-up to make money the safer you’ll be.  That’s why I’ve started sharing additional ideas outside of paid surveys with you.  I want you to be able to make money in a variety of ways.  This not only makes your income safer, but it’s a lot more interesting too!

Yesterday I introduced you to the idea of freelance writing to make some extra money online.  I want to drill down on this idea a little bit today by focusing on just one of the websites I highlighted for you yesterday.  I’m going to give you some tips for using Associated Content to add to your online income fairly easily.

Associated Content is a website that pays their authors in two ways.  First, they will pay you an ongoing commission of $1.50 per 1000 views for every article you submit to them.  This is forever so the more you submit the more this passive income stream will grow.  I don’t know about you, but I love to keep getting paid forever for work I only have to do once.

The second way they pay is through direct payments to the article authors.  That’s right, they will pay you for your articles!  There is just one condition your article needs to meet; it must be original content written by you.  That’s it.  In my experience you can get paid anywhere from $3.53 to $7.50 per article.  Keep in mind I have only been writing for them for less than a month so these numbers could be higher or lower.

In the past two weeks I have had 4 articles accepted for a total of $19.43.  Not bad considering the articles were fairly short (400-500 words) and took me just a bit over an hour to write.  I am also getting commissions based on page views now and after 10 days the total there is a whopping $0.58!  I know not much at all, but keep in mind it is only 4 articles over 10 days.  Imagine 400 articles over the course of a year

There are several things I think you can do to maximize the amount of money you make with Associated content.

• Make your articles specific and focused, not general.  For example, it’s better to write about fancy blue widgets rather than just widgets.
• Write articles in batches.  Since you’re doing the research now it is easier to write 3-4 articles at a time while everything is fresh in your mind.
• When you submit articles you will be asked for optional information like images and reference links.  Include these and it seems like you’ll get paid more.
• If you haven’t already start participating in social sites like Digg and StumbleUpon.  Good articles submitted to these sites can get you thousands of page views.

Again, this is not something you can use to quit your day job, but it is one more thing you can do to make some extra money quickly and easily online.  Combined with other strategies like paid surveys and you’ll start to see your monthly earnings increasing.

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You already know paid surveys are a good way to make some money on the internet, but it isn’t the only way to make money online.  There are dozens of other ways besides paid surveys that you can use to make some extra cash.  Since it’s always a good idea to diversify your sources of income I want to introduce you to some of them.

One way that I use to make money online is freelance writing.  Did you know that there are hundreds of companies and websites that are always looking for people to do their writing for them?  The pay isn’t always great, but once you start to get established you can earn a substantial amout of money every month.  If you don’t believe me just take a look at what Chris Bibey has done with his writing skills at ChrisBlogging.com

You don’t have to be a Pulitzer prize winning writer either to make money this way.  All you need is an enjoyment of the writing process and the desire to make money doing it.  Website content is easy to write and the pay can range anywhere from $5 for a 500 word article to $50 or more for a 500 word article.

The key here is repeat work and not underpricing yourself.  Many freelance writers started out taking very low paying writing jobs that turned into repeat business for them at a much higher rate.  If you can deliver quality writing consistently you’ll find that your customers will keep coming back for more.  This gives you a steady stream of income and also allows you to command a higher price for your work in the future.

Here’s a short list of 5 freelance writing sites to get you started.  Remember, you don’t need to quit your job in the first month, but you can build a solid business through freelance writing.

Associated Content – This is where I started and while the pay isn’t great it is a start.  They will pay you anywhere from $3.53 (the lowest I made) to $10 (the highest I’ve heard) for your original articles.  Plus, you get an additional $1.50 for every 1000 page views your articles receive.  So, you not only get paid upfront, but you make continuing residual income.

Helium – Helium is another site that pays you a revenue share for the articles you publish there.  One nice feature of Helium is the Writers Marketplace where companies post their needs and they pay from $16 to $200 per article.  Go take a look, maybe there’s something already posted that you’re an expert on.  This is a great way to break into writing full time.

Review Stream – This site pays for reviews of darn near everything.  Anywhere from $0.40 to $2.00 per review.  You won’t get rich, but you can make a nice bit of extra money pretty easily.

I Freelance – This is a huge freelancing auction, not just for writers, but for all types of freelancers.  You bid on a project and if you win you get paid.  IFreelance is a good place to get started simply because of the sheer number of offers there.  Two downsides are you have to pay a monthly fee to bid, currently starting at $3.91 a month and when you start there you’ll have to bid low to win jobs.  Once you have a track record and a portfolio you can raise your bids and win more profitable jobs.

Online Writing Jobs  – Some higher paying jobs here, but mostly lower paying jobs.  Another good place to get your feet wet and find some longer term customers willing to pay you what you’re worth after you’ve proven yourself.

There are more sites like this around, but I don’t want to overwhelm you right now.  These will get you started and if you do a search on “freelance writing” you’ll turn up plenty of additional research and reading material.  The best advice I can give you now is just get out there and do it!

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