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.

Other thoughts on a Cold Calling scripts. The idea is not to try and sell but rather to let them know who we are and what we have to offer. If they are interested then the conversion should be moved forward with their questions and your answers.

Hey Bob this is Gregg with SEO Gurus.  I hope you are doing well today.

I don’t want to waste your time so I’ll be quick, have you guys got a search engine optimization program going, or is it something you’ve considered?

The reason I ask is that for a limited time we are offering a discounted test campaign for local business owners, to see if search engine optimization could work for them. Most companies require a lengthy contract but right now we will do a onetime shot for $380.00, and if you want to continue it would be $380.00 per month, it’s usually $1,800 per month but in an effort to earn your business and show you what we can do we are running this special this week only.

Cold Calling Script

I am trying to put together some ideas for cold calling scripts and this is one of the many to come.

Hey Bob this is Sandra calling from SEO Gurus, Listen; real briefly , we are just shooting out free traffic reports to all the local biz owners on their websites, and I wanted to make sure I had your address correct so we could shoot one out to you, are you still at___________?

Okay great and what’s your web address Bob?

Awesome, you folks getting a lot of visitors?

Okay well maybe there’s something going on that’s keeping people from seeing your site… could be a number of things, usually it’s something small, no big deal… you are showing up on Google right?

Okay, well, we’ll check into it and let you know what’s going on.

Back to the reason for the cal…I’m going to go ahead and have them work up some stats on your site , and get that out to you… here in the next day or so…

Were there any particular questions you had that we could answer for you while we are at it?

Okay, I’ll make a note of that.

Bob is this the best time to reach you on the phone here in case they need to call and ask you any questions?

Okay great, well I let him know that, and if you don’t hear anything within a day or so from us that means there’s no issues and your site is running smooth, they won’t call unless there’s a reason for alarm or something you should know…and you should be getting your report within days, by the way do you have an email address we can send that to? It may get out to you quicker…

Great.

Thanks Bob! We’ll talk to you soon.

It’s all a numbers game

At the moment I know that if I get 1000 visitors per day, then I’ll get around about 3 leads per day. So…this means that if I’m able to drive 3,000 visitors per day to the website then I’m able to get approximately 10 leads per day.

If I am able to convert at 10% then this means that every 200 potential clients will convert into 20 clients.

Knowing this information allows me to look at the parts of the business that will allow me to improve and make more money.

Online Trends

There is a wide range of marketing research reports that document the growth and opportunities in local search. Below is a short summary:

• 97% of American internet users use the internet to shop of which 57% characterize their behavior as shop online, purchase offline (NPD Group)

• 90% of online commercial searches result in offline bricks and mortar purchases (proprietary research / comScore)

• 82% of local searchers follow up offline via an in-store visit, phone call or purchase (TMP / comScore)

• 80% of budgets are spent within 50 miles of the home (DMA / proprietary)

• 74% of internet users perform local searches (Kelsey Group)

• 73% of online activity is related to local content (Google)

• 66% of Americans use online local search, like Google local search

• 61% of local searches result in purchases (TMP / comScore)

• 54% of Americans have substituted the internet and local search for phone books (comScore networks)

• 35% of all searches are local (DM News)

• 25% of internet searches have a purely local, commercial focus (Kelsey-Bizrate)

As you can see there is a lot of potential with on and offline marketing to drive thousands if not millions of daily visitors to our websites.

Landing Page Optimization

First thing we need to understand is that our website should get better every single day. The Internet is ever-changing and it requires an hourly or even a minute by minute fine tuning of our website functionality, design, content, and look and feel. It’s about taking website visitors and turning them into customers. It’s not about what we like or don’t like, it’s about increasing sales. About understanding what website visitors actually do on our website.

It’s about understanding what our website visitors respond to and not necessarily what they want. It’s about testing and understanding, not guessing. Giving website visitors what they want and in return giving website owners a higher conversion rate.

Landing page optimization is about getting a competitive advantage over our competition. Well optimized landing pages can change your business overnight and turbocharge your marketing efforts.