With unemployment stuck above 9% and the gap between the rich and the poor widening with each fiscal year, Americans are doing whatever they can to make money. Fortunately, a wonderful little tool called the Internet is making it easier than ever for budding entrepreneurs to get their start. If you want to make money in today’s broken economy without resorting to crime or selling your internal organs, all you need is a little creativity, patience and ingenuity. Although you might not end up as the next Mark Zuckerberg, you might make some cash – potentially, a lot of it. Here are 10 ways to get started.

1. Promote Products Online

Whether you create a website of your own, or use one of the countless website design tools or social media sites that have flooded the Internet, you can promote other peoples’ products to earn a piece of the profits. Think of a product or niche that truly interests you and come up with a unique idea, even if that niche is quite popular. A site does not have to be particularly complicated to generate sales. For example, this site on online payday loan lenders simply offers a few pieces of valuable finance related content and a simple “Need a Loan” call to action box.

2. Sell Items on eBay

If you’re like most Americans, odds are good that you have a lot of “useless junk” collecting dust in your attic, basement and garage. Just because you no longer have a use for these items doesn’t mean that others won’t. Using the power of the internet, you can liquidate these items into real cash. eBay continues to charge low fees to sellers, and services like PayPal make it easy to get your money securely and quickly.

3. Buy AND Sell Items on eBay

Once you get a feel for eBay’s economy, you may find yourself spotting good deals, especially when auctions are scheduled to end at off-hours (early in the workday, late at night, etc.). By understanding how much a particular item will normally sell for on eBay, you can start buying low and selling high. Just be sure to take factors such as fees and shipping costs into account when you’re calculating your profit margins. You can aim for large profits on fewer items or amp up your volume while accepting smaller margins, depending on how much time you’re willing to invest.

4. Play Diablo 3

Blizzard, the company responsible for the 10-million-subscriber online game World of Warcraft, will start selling the hotly anticipated Diablo III in early 2012. How could this make you money? The premise of Diablo is simple – you kill monsters and collect virtual “loot” such as armor and weapons. What’s different about Diablo III from previous installments is that it will feature a real-money, in-game auction house. In other words, you’ll be able to sell the virtual items you collect in the game for actual cash, with prices dictated entirely by demand. This should be a great way to get your gaming fix while making some dough on the side.

5. Drop Shipping

Drop shipping allows you to set up an online store in order to sell real, physical goods without keeping a single piece of inventory. How? As a drop shipper, you advertise and sell whatever products you like. When you receive an order, you’ll transfer it to the distributor or manufacturer, who will then send the item directly to your customer complete with packaging that makes the item look like it’s coming directly from you. Meanwhile, you receive a cut of the profits. Your only overhead is the maintenance of your own site, and any money you pump into advertising.

6. Participate in Online Surveys

They may be tedious, but online surveys and studies do result in an actual paycheck. Although it may be difficult to find steady “work” when using this method, you may get lucky and generate up to $100 for just an hour of time. Most surveys will pay somewhere in the range of $5 to $10, but if you’re just surfing the internet aimlessly anyways, you might as well get paid in the process.

7. Sell Your Photographs

With digital SLRs rapidly dropping in price and consumer-grade digital cameras exceeding 16 megapixels, the tools of the trade for amateur photographers are far cheaper than they used to be. If you enjoy taking pictures of anything from scenery to animals to people going through their daily routines, your photos could be worth plenty of money online. Websites like Shutterstock.com are available for photo submissions. If they accept your images, they’ll pay you about 25 cents each time one of their members downloads it. That can add up very quickly if you have a large photo library and high quality images.

8. Work as a Secret Shopper

Although it may sound too good to be true, many companies pay you to shop. The process is simple: you sign up with a secret shopping agency and go on an “undercover” shopping spree. After your consumerist jaunt, you’ll report back on your experience. Was the salesperson helpful? Was the food delicious? These are the types of questions you’ll answer as a secret shopper. This one falls more under the “occasional work” category than the “full-time living” one, unless you’re exceptionally lucky.

9. Sell Food on the Street

Sound lowbrow? It’s not. Food carts and food trucks are very much in style these days, and they can generate considerable profits for their owners if the food is good, the advertising is catchy and the locations are appropriate. Although you will need to take care of some initial concerns such as equipment, licensing and staffing, it’s possible to start very small while still making money. Something along the lines of a hot dog cart positioned outside of a popular local bar should give you some ideas.

10. Sell T-Shirts

People seem to love catchy, funny, novelty t-shirt no matter the quality of the economy. If you can come up with a few hilarious slogans and graphics, you could turn it into a business by contacting sites like CafePress.com. It’s also possible to sell t-shirts and other merchandise in person, especially if you live in a sports-minded college town where students will do just about anything to support their team.

There is one problem that has been bothering me the last couple years, I’ve done my best to ignore it but today it got the best of me. It’s all these search engine optimization gurus that find their clients, not by way of the search engines, but by way of e-mail spam and cold calling.

You send out an e-mail explaining to me that 3,600 people searched for my services last month. Well I am telling you that 11,100,000 people searched for SEO last month. By spending your time cold calling me and sending out spam emails you are missing out on 11,100,000 people who are looking for you.

Have you guys not noticed yet that most of the people you are calling do not want to talk to you, and most your emails go unanswered? 673,000 searched for search engine optimization last month, and if that keyword is too hard for you Atlanta search engine optimization got 1,900 searches last month.

Now according to your own math, if I can get one client for $1,800.00 per month, that will more than pay for your services every month. You guys go on to tell me that I will get at least one client per month from your services. I want you to notice the word at least
because this makes me believe it could be a lot more. Since you guys not do any web design evaluations for that price we’ll say that a nice looking site should be able to get at least 2 or 3 clients per month.

This means that if one client can get you $1,800.00 per month then three clients can get you $5,400.00 per month. The time you’re spending cold calling would be better spent doing exactly what you’re telling your clients they needs to be doing. If you take it a step further and find the 50 biggest cities in the United States and rank for those 50 cities you should be able to…well you get the idea.

Your math is correct, your problem is you are afraid to do what you are telling your clients they need to be doing.

I don’t believe your intentions are to do anybody wrong but here’s what’s going to happen. It’s going to take so much time to find new clients due to time spent begging that you’re not going to have the time to put into getting the clients site ranked.

My way you are already doing that. You are already ranking your website. You’ve already got the tools in place. You already know what you need to do.

Best of all it takes less effort to close a job because they found your site by way of the search engines. So they already know you know what you are doing.

And of course you do, because that is how you make your living.

Okay, I made a mess out of the whole $30,000.00 in 30 days, so I stopped posting here to try and straighten it out.

One of the first problems I ran into was that even though you don’t have to go to school to become a social media marketer, most people have no idea how to use the social media sites for marketing. This means either a lot of training or a lot of outsourcing.  We decided to go with outsourcing and started getting sloppy work right off the bat.

I knew right off that this was not what I was looking for.

I want something that can grow, make me lots of money, but not take up all my time.

So I am now back to where I started; finding the right niche.

Even though we had a niche that would work in sales, the business was unable to grow, because we didn’t have the manpower to handle the volume of orders.

So this means going back to the original idea and seeing if we can come up with something that doesn’t tie our time to our money.

Making money has never been a nicely paved road with white picket fences and flowers growing in a straight line while the children swing in their tires, at least not for me. It’s been a dark deserted unpaved road with potholes that force me to change directions.

But I guess if it was easy everyone would be doing it!

You see, with every decision we make there is a price to be paid.

We have to be willing to take risk and make sacrifices. When we start hitting potholes, and want to turnaround, to be successful we have to continue on. Even if it means fine tuning and tweaking our game plan as we go along.

Unlike everything else in our lives, the roadmap to wealth can’t be outsourced.

The idea is to work long hours and really hard in the beginning but to be able to continue to make the money but spend less time on the company as the project goes alone.

And there’s no way I can do that if I’m spending all my time training employees and trying to figure how to get the jobs done correctly and efficiently. Building wealth is a formula and not an ingredient. It’s a process that makes and creates millionaires. Events are byproducts of process. If you are looking for wealth then you have to look for the process.

Processes cannot be outsourced, because processes come from wisdom, personal growth, strength and ambience.

So here’s what I want to do;

I want to start by going by to the drawing board and look out how the work is being done and figure out a way to outsource the jobs efficiently.

The Thing about Outsourcing

Outsourcing gets talked about a lot these days and the reason I like outsourcing is because without outsourcing, I would be forced to hire new employees every time a new need came up.

Hiring new employees mean more computers, chairs, desks, phones, insurance, taxes, internet, power, training and the list goes on and on.

But then outsourcing is also a valuable tool for anyone looking to start his or her own

Business. When just getting started you can start outsource jobs from other companies, and only take on the jobs that fit your schedule and expertise.

What is Outsourcing?

Outsourcing is sending a project to a third party vendor or service provider to get the project done.

Outsourcing really started catching on in the 1990’s.

It’s a way to lower your cost but still get the work done. A company just starting out isn’t large enough to handle all the demands that are required of them. The idea is to outsource projects to experts in the field, so that we don’t have to hire on new employees, buy computers, chairs, insurance, training and everything else that goes along with hiring new employees.

On the other side of the coin we have outsources.

There are lots of people who are experts in their field and offer  their service to companies all over the world. This has allowed thousands of people to start their own business by becoming a company that specializes in certain outsourcing projects.

Outsourcing offers many advantages to companies that are looking for expertise in a certain field, as well as to people who are looking to use their knowledge to make a living as a contractor.

Benefits of Outsourcing

1. The ability to gain the knowledge and expertise from an industry professional. You are able to find a company that fits that particular project.
Being able to pick and choose the company you want to work with will ensures quality result in the end.

2. You know exactly what that project is going to cost you.

3. You save money on hiring a new employee for payroll, as well as the benefits.

4. Outsourcing frees up resources allowing for more concentration on the more important aspects of the business.

5. Outsourcing offers flexibility, because you don’t hire employees directly. It allows you to always have a provider on call without having to pay if there is no work to do.

6. You save money because you don’t have to hire someone every time a new project pops up.

As an Outsourcer;

1. You only have to take on projects that suit your needs. Take projects that excite you and you enjoy doing.

2. You are able to take on projects that fit your time line.

3. There is a lot of money to be made as an independent contractor.

4. You can start your own company by taking on outsourced jobs. This allows you to get your business set up and looking professional before you start taking on your own clients.

There is a lot of controversy over buying backlinks. Google for one really frowns on the practice because it makes their ranking system hard to administrate. Google even put the word out of they would be punishing people who buy links, but the fact is it’s really difficult to tell which links are natural and which are bought.

The truth of the matter is that Google is not the only search engine out there and a lot of webmasters are not trying to optimize their site for the search engines as much as they’re trying to make money with their websites. Quality back links can translate into money, a higher page rank, and more visitors; backlinks can generate traffic. If your purpose is to bring traffic, many of the sites that dropped after Google shifted its algorithm did not report a loss in traffic. So it is debatable whether it really hurts you to buy links or not.

It would also appear that buying links to be listed in a directory is not weighted as poorly as buying links from major site who id selling them. After all, you do want to be listed in the major directories under the relevant category.

So by buying backlinks you are able to add them quickly, it’s less time-consuming, you can build PageRank effectively, and it drives traffic to your website.

Of course there are an equal number of bad things that could happen, for example your website could get banned, de-indexed , links cost money, and there’s no guarantees of getting results.

At the end of the day it comes down to a personal decision whether you choose to buy links or not. Despite Google’s obvious dislike for the practice, many webmasters do use paid links as part of their marketing strategy.

Of course there’s also the budget, how much money do you have to spend on links? You need to include the timeframe in your budget estimates.

You want backlinks that are very visible on the page. Putting it near the top, highlighting it in some way, or paying for a featured link.

Your link also needs to be relevant to the content on your site.

You want to pay to get into a good neighborhood…. the page rank of the referrals will tell the story.

5 Ninja Tips for Creating Your Own Digital Product Quickly and Efficiently

According to the Cincinnati research agency AcuPoll, around 95 percent of all new products launched every year ultimately fail. That’s a pretty terrifying statement, especially for the fresh marketer about to make a significant investment into his/her newest product development. The most common reasons that marketers fear product creation are time and money. Good products should take a significant amount of both to be successful, right? Well, not always. Regardless of your niche, you can create a compelling product to help build your brand’s visibility, and even net a tidy profit.

Package the Resources You Already Have

If you have an existing website or blog, you can take some of the content that you have created in the past and organize it in a creative way. For example, some of your most popular content can be recorded in an instructional video. That way, you don’t need to fear duplicate content issues (if the new product will be published online as well). Also, with the Internet as clogged as it is, many people are more than happy to pay a few bucks for well organized content in a report or guide. To be successful with this strategy, it’s best to remember the following:

• The content you provide must be valuable (not sales driven or overly promotional).
• Whatever product you provide, it should be something unique, or at least rare.
• If you make a video by reading an old piece of content, consider taking the time to also prepare a slide show, rather than just using a static image.

If you’re getting plenty of link juice with the existing content (and don’t want to risk people accusing you of selling them free content), consider repurposing the product to serve a new but equally valuable purpose. As an example, a website page advertising toddler Halloween costumes can be repurposed to create a how-to guide full of toddler costume ideas. While this will require some time to rework the content, having the existing content helps cut down on writing or recording time for your product.

Outsource All or Part of the Product

This strategy works especially well if you are preparing an ebook or guide. Most of the time, you can outsource a great deal of writing to a copywriter, especially if your ebook is very data driven. For example, you might be writing a “guide to the solar system,” but you don’t need to spend time writing all of the statistics and technical information about planet compositions and mass. By giving a writer an outline of the information they need to gather, you can focus on writing the editorial sections that need your voice – then combine the two later.

In the same way, you can enlist a freelancer to help create an instructional video. So, you might hire a videographer to record the exercises for your fitness tape, edit the videos and add your voiceover. Before creating your product, outline areas that could potentially be outsourced and start shopping around. You might consider doing some smaller sections yourself if the outsourcing price tag is getting unmanageable.

Utilize PLR Content

There are a lot of misconceptions about PLR content – mainly that it is useless because it’s unoriginal content (which is true) and many people are likely already using it (also often true). Purchasing PLR content to build an entire website is probably not the best strategy from an SEO standpoint. However, PLR content can be used in many other ways, especially when creating a product.

1. If your product will be a password protected section of a website, you’re going to be using the robots.txt file to prevent this information from being indexed by search engines. So, there’s no need to worry about PLR content being penalized as duplicate or plagiarized content (at least by search engines). You should, however, rewrite some of the content to add your own voice and make the content “your own.”
2. PLR content can also be combined to create one massive ebook (once again not indexed by search engines) that you offer for sale on your website. Ebooks are especially prone to plagiarism, so it will be natural that some duplicate copies are floating around.
3. Perhaps the most powerful use of PLR content is not as a product, but in building an email list. You might purchase some PLR content and offer it for free to website visitors that sign up for your mailing list. You can then use this mailing list to advertise other products quickly.

Create an Interview With a Notable Figure

A great source of 100% unique and valuable content is in the form of interviews. However, keep in mind that most people won’t pay for an interview with a person they don’t recognize. One trick for landing a free interview with a recognizable figure in your niche is to set up an interview that deals with something they want to market.

For example, your interviewee might have just released a book or product and is more than happy to answer some questions related to his or her own product (nothing beats free marketing after all). Then, phrase your questions to have a double benefit (both explaining their product and giving your audience valuable general information) to make your interview seem less like an advertisement. Some examples of these types of questions are:

• What personal business ideals led to the development of your new product?
• What additional advice would you give to people that purchase your book?
• Do you have any favorite passages of your book?
• You mentioned in a recent article that (insert quote). Can you elaborate on that?

Record a Webinar or Seminar

If you have recorded any seminars or webinars that you gave in the past, you have a ready-made product that you can sell to people that weren’t able to attend. Many professional speakers always record their presentations for exactly this purpose. You might consider combining multiple recordings to create a set of valuable videos for your customers (or using the same PLR content mailing list strategy).

Avoid trying to sell other peoples’ webinars and seminars, however. Even if they are not selling it themselves, they might be angry to find that you are, and they could sue you. You might consider asking the speaker if they would be willing to let you sell the recording in exchange for a percentage of the profits. If you do, make sure that you get a positive response in writing and create a legal contract to avoid any future legal trouble.

With free (or at least cheap) routes to creating products, the yearly 95% failure rate on new products starts to look a great deal less intimidating. In the end, being a product ninja only takes a little creativity. If you’re worried that people will not be willing to pay for your product because it’s common information, you might need to invest heavier in your marketing efforts. With the right market timing and brand, you can sell almost anything. After all, we live in a world where it’s acceptable to pay $2.00 for a bottle of the same water you can get from your faucet. And when companies can sell something that people are accustomed to getting for fractions of a penny, chances are good that you’ll find a few people willing to buy your product as well.