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.

Christmas time can become a never-ending task. It can get to the point where you want to call your good friends and say, “Hey listen! Let’s not exchange presents this year!”

We know that if they give us something we will have to return their present with one of greater value, or we’re going to feel bad.

We are automatically obligated when somebody gives us something. There’s a sense of obligation to return the favor. Sometimes we do this for love or for fun. But many times we give gifts or do favors out of a sense of obligation. If I gave you a gift or did you a favor, would you feel you owed me something in return?

Most likely you would want to give me a gift or do me a favor in return, possibly to be nice, but mainly to get rid of the feeling of owing me something.

This is an unconscious filling, but quite strong.

Gift giving and favor swapping is what makes us human. It’s necessary for our very survival. If one person gives someone some food, shelter, money, a gift or even a favor, it will cause that person to fell indebted to the other person.

The only reason we are here now is because our ancestors shared their food and their skills an honored a network of obligations.
When we give someone a gift we trigger a feeling in them of being indebted to us. The only way to get rid of this feeling is to respond and return the gift or favor. Sometimes they will ignore these feelings, but these feelings will linger. It might even take a long time for them to act on the feeling. The neatest thing about this is that when the gift or favor is returned it is normally of a higher value.

If someone returns a gift a gift of lesser value it will leave them a feeling of an unpaid debt. So, in most cases they are going to give something of higher value than the original gift.

Some people did some research in 1976. They sent Christmas cards to total strangers and not only did they get a large number sending cards back to them, but these people (who were total strangers) continued to send Christmas cards many years after the experiment was over.

Think about it like this; say you are in a room with another person, as a team or working separately on creative task. After a while a guy comes in the room to tell you that you have a 10 min. break. The other person in the room ask, if he can leave during the break and the guy in charge says, yes.

A few minutes later this person returns with two cans of Coke. He opens one and hands the other one to you and says, I asked the guy if it was okay to bring soda in and he said yes, so I bought one for you too.

You open the soda and drink it.

The person in charge comes in the room and starts the creativity task again. A little while later the person in charge says he needs to take care of some stuff and everyone is free to go. When he leaves, the other person turns to you and ask, if you are interested in buying some raffle tickets. The person who sells the most tickets gets a prize, you say okay and buy three raffle tickets for five dollars.

You see they did this experiment.

If someone gave you a can of soda would you then reciprocate in buying raffle tickets if they asked you to? Half of the time Joe offers the soda. The other half he doesn’t. The results?

When Joe brings you a soda you’re twice as likely to purchase a raffle ticket as when Joe doesn’t bring you a soda. You feel that you have to buy the raffle ticket because he gave you a gift even though the raffle ticket cost a lot more than the soda.

The power of reciprocating has been well known to people who manage direct marketing campaigns.

For example, mailing unsolicited donations for a veterans group generated an average response rate of 18%. When the mailing campaign included personalized address labels, the donation almost doubled to 35%.

Marketers use this method to persuade you to perform some type of action, such as making a purchase, volunteering, or funding a project.

It is difficult to say no to a gift.

Let’s pretend you are on the local school board and I’m part of a group of parents that would like to get new playground equipment. We’ve heard that there are some extra funds left over this year in the school budget. The parent group has selected me to approach the school board and ask for $5000 of the fund balance for the playground equipment.

At the meeting, in which I’m making my request, I shock the rest of the parent group by asking for $7,500 not $5,000. You and the rest of the school board shake your heads and say, “No, we can’t possibly spend that much money on playground equipment.”

I looked disappointed and say we do have a reduced plan for $5,000. You ask to see the reduced plan and I walk out of the meeting with a $5000 project approved.

Let me explain what just happened.

When you said no to me it was like a gift to you when I accepted that no.

The result was that you were now indebted to me.

By me accepting your no you had to reciprocate with something. So when I offered the reduced plan for $5,000 you said yes. Because you were indebted to me for accepting the no.

The idea is to ask for a favor beyond what you need, that way when they say no you can with another favor that is more reasonable, and you end up with exactly what you wanted in the first place.

The warrior forum is a forum full of get rich quick marketing gurus. A couple years ago these guys decided that SEO is the perfect industry to get rich quick in.

Some of them started their own SEO businesses while others created and sold professionally written spam e-mails, professionally designed websites, basically everything you would need to run and build your very own SEO company.

That is everything except the knowledge and understanding of how the search engines work.

You see…get rich quick gurus don’t care about the end user. They only care about getting rich quick.

According to these get-rich-quick gurus like Frank Kern and the rest of the warrior forum members, they believe that small businesses are strapped with cash. Small businesses owners have tons of cash and they’re stupid.

Local SEO gurus have taken advantage of small business owners throughout the United States and probably throughout the world by selling a service that they know nothing about.

These guys are easy to find!

They are the ones sending out spam e-mails and calling our businesses throughout the day.

How does a search engine optimization company sell search engine optimization if they can’t optimize their own website?

So from now on this website will be about increasing website conversion, online marketing, website design, social media marketing, search engine optimization and local scams from these local search engine marketing companies.

This is continued from my local SEO post.

So, there are actually several ways that I could go about doing this; one being by state and or city another would be by industry.

The question is, if I was searching for an SEO business would I search for SEO Georgia, Peachtree SEO or custom homebuilder’s SEO. Most likely I would start with my city and work my way out.

But to build the strongest and best service for my clients I need to focus on an industry. By understanding one industry better than anyone else, it gives me the ability to offer a service to my clients like no one else has ever seen.

I want to totally dominate the industry, and I want everyone in the industry to know who I am.

By going by state I would be dealing with a lot of different types of businesses. I would have to spend too much time thinking about the best way to market each business as well as doing keyword research. And I would have to figure out what would and would not work for that particular industry as far as marketing goes.

However, if we are going by industry then we would need an industry that is not competing from one city to the next. Other words it would be difficult to do a website designer because a website designer can design a website from anywhere in the world. So I could only have one website designer as a client or else I would be competing against myself.

However, if I am building up a chain of local business as an authority in their area and then linking them together, using them to refer clients from one business to the next it could turn into a powerful network.

I am also able to split test ideas and designs across a network of sites. I need an industry that doesn’t compete across state lines and one client is able to pay what my services cost.

So let’s jump into an industry that we’ve seen the local SEO’s claiming is a good one. How about plastic surgery?

Its ten o’clock Tuesday morning and we are about to get started on our new local business adventure.

I am thinking on my feet here, but here’s what I am thinking.

Let’s build a website and set it up for people who are thinking about having plastic surgery.

I want this would be the go to place for people who are interested in either researching plastic surgeons, finding information on plastic surgery, or for that matter finding out anything they wanted to know about plastic surgery.The website needs to be amazing. It needs to be simple to use, light colors with whites and blue highlights.

I want it to include videos; document downloads, featured surgeons, etc.

I want the 50 states on the homepage. I want to be able to click a state and have an option for premier and preferred surgeons, but most of all it has to be super simple to use.

The website visitor needs to be able to interact with the website. This allows them to leave comments and for us, free content. The bigger the site, the more PR juice we are able to control and the more keywords we are able to rank for. But it has to be of the very best quality.

This website will support itself by running ads and selling featured listings. It will also link out to our main SEO and Website design sites for the plastic surgery industry.

Can anyone give me some tips for starting and maintaining a business blog?

I want to start a business blog for my online marketing company located in San Diego. I am not sure where to start and would greatly appreciate some help.

First – Have something to say. Your topics are meant to be insights that you want to share with your readership.

Pick a platform (it really *doesn’t* matter where you start a blog, but different platforms offer different levels of customization) then pick a branding/design that is in keeping with your company.

Develop a schedule. I blog mostly in the afternoon. It’s not hard and fast, but it works for me.

Then, once you have posted, tell people about it. Use Twitter, LI, Facebook, email, to share the blog posts with contacts and clients.

While I won’t go into the technical aspect of running a blog, I can tell you from a maintaining perspective.. you should make a blog writing schedule. This is to make sure you don’t fall off the truck and have your blog collect dust.

You should sign up to blog directories, RSS feeds, and participate in other blog promotions. Also, visit other people’s blogs and see what you like about theirs that you could incorporate into yours.

Make it fun.. don’t make it work

If what your target market spends time on the computer, blogging is a wonderful way to market. If your target market does not spend time on the computer, it is a waste of time.

My recommendation is that you read everything you can about blogging. What makes one blog successful for one person can be a failure for another person. It is important that you learn what will work for you. There are scores of sites in the blogosphere from which you can learn. I read Problogger.com and Copyblogger.com every day. They are just two of the many sites devoted to helping you blog.

Also, I know that you can learn from experience. I have spent 10 years marketing online. I know that there is no better way to learn than by experience. While you are researching and learning, go ahead and start your blog. Do not attempt to make it perfect.  The key is to never stop learning. Blog marketing is always evolving. The worst thing you can do is sit still.