fau shooting

fau shooting-An overnight shooting at the Boca Raton campus of Florida Atlantic University left one person injured. Police are still searching for the armed suspect. The unidentified man opened fire at University Village Apartments, a campus dormitory. The injured person is not an FAU student.

FAU remains on lockdown and Wednesday’s classes have been cancelled at the Boca Raton campus only. The university will remain on lockdown until the suspect is apprehended. Investigators say they have “good leads” on the suspect.

The shooting happened around 1:15 a.m. FAU officers were on the scene within 3 minutes of the 9-1-1 call.

fau shooting

Reuters Middle East Highlights April 30

Reuters Middle East Highlights 1330 GMT April 30-BAGHDAD - The death toll for U.S. troops in Iraq reached a seven month high in April, with the reported deaths of three more soldiers bringing the monthly toll to 47, the highest since last September.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have been engaged in intense fighting over the past month with Shi'ite militia fighters in Baghdad's tightly-packed Sadr City slum.

- - - -

CAIRO - Palestinian factions meeting in Cairo for talks with Egyptian security officials have agreed to an Egyptian proposal for a truce with Israel starting in the Gaza Strip, state news agency MENA said.

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JERUSALEM - Israeli troops were unable to identify Reuters News cameraman Fadel Shana as a journalist before they fired at him from a tank, the Israeli army said, citing the preliminary results of an investigation.

Shana died while filming on a road in central Gaza on April 16. Five other Palestinians also died in the attack.

- - - -

CAIRO - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, responding to unrest over low salaries and high food prices, proposed a salary increase of about 30 percent for public sector employees.

In a May Day speech to trade unionists, he told his government to find the extra revenue it will need to cover the cost, expected to be about 9 billion Egyptian pounds ($1.7 billion) above what it had planned in its draft 2008/9 budget.

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TEHRAN - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed as enemy propaganda criticism of the government for failing to rein in double-digit inflation and said it was tackling Iran's economic problems.

The Islamic Republic's highest authority also made clear Iran would not back down in a nuclear row with the West and said international sanctions had failed to harm the world's fourth-largest oil exporter.

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ANKARA - Turkey's parliament approved a long-awaited revision of a law criticised by the European Union for limiting free speech in the candidate country, but writers and activists say the reform does not go far enough.

The reform to article 301 of the penal code was approved with 250 votes for and 65 against amid fierce criticism from the nationalist opposition.

- - - -

ANKARA - Turkey's ruling AK Party said it will not seek more time to prepare its defence against a prosecutor's bid to close it for Islamist activities, in an apparent move to accelerate the court process.

The court case has triggered political instability and unsettled financial markets in Turkey and there had been speculation that the party would seek such an extension to the May 2 deadline to present its defence.

- - - -

NOUAKCHOTT - Mauritanian security forces captured eight suspected al Qaeda militants in an early morning sweep, including a hunted fugitive accused of killing four French tourists, officials said.

The Dec. 24 killing of the French tourists and a shooting attack against the Israeli embassy in Mauritania's capital Nouakchott in February raised fears of a rise in Islamic militant violence in the traditionally sleepy Saharan state.

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KHARTOUM - About 1,600 troops will join Darfur's U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission in June as part of plans to deploy 80 percent of the force by the end of the year, the head of the mission said.

Reuters Middle East Highlights 1330 GMT April 30

Grand Theft Auto 4 Cheats absolutely exposed

Grand Theft Auto 4 Cheats absolutely exposed -We now know the cheats for GTA 4 and how they are entered, which is different than previous GTA games. Check out the first cheat codes for GTA 4 absolutely exposed by CheatCC.com.



Grand Theft Auto 4 Cheats absolutely exposed

Hans Reiser Found blameworthy of Murder

Hans Reiser Found blameworthy of Murder-In October 2006, Hans Reiser, creator of the ReiserFS filesystem, was arrested under the suspicion of the murder of his wife, Nina, who had disappeared off the face of the earth after dropping their two children off at Hans' home. The two were divorced, and fighting a legal battle over ownership of the Namesys company and the custody of their children. Even though the body was never found, he has been declared guilty of first degree murder.

According to reports, the six-month trial culminated in a two and half day long deliberation. The prosecutors presented a "mountain" of circumstantial evidence, such as emails in which Reiser called his wife and her family "nazis", the fact he ripped out the carpeting and passenger seat of his car, and withdrew thousands of Dollars. In addition, traces of Nina's blood were found in Hans' home, and Hans did not help in the search after her disappearance.

Hans Reiser's defence pointed to the lack of direct evidence linking him to the disappearance, and that there were normal explanations for his behaviour after the disappearance. They also stated that since no body had been found, Nina might still be alive - although several people testified she would never leave her children.

Hans Reiser Found blameworthy of Murder

Marissa Tomei

Marissa Tomei - Open Undergarments






Marissa Tomei - Open Undergarments

Sean Bell Cops Not Guilty on All Counts

Sean Bell-Saying a lack of the witness credibility "eviscerated the people's case," Justice Arthur J. Cooperman returned a verdict of not guilty on all counts for three detectives charged in the shooting death of Sean Bell, who was gunned down outside Club Kalua 17 months ago in a hail of NYPD bullets on the eve of his wedding.

As reporters, protesters and onlookers were assembled outside State Supreme Court in Kew Gardens on Friday morning, PBA president Pat Lynch was the first to react to reporters, saying this "was a case where there is no winner and no losers, we still had a death that occurred... we still had officers who had to deal with that death." But Lynch said it sent a message to New York City police officers that says "you will get fairness" which was important to officers out on patrol because "there is never a script... we have to deal with circumstances as they come."

Calling for possible federal civil rights charges for the involved officers, Leroy Gadsden, of the Jamaica chapter of the NAACP, told WNBC Channel 4. "This is court is bankrupt when it comes to people of color."

In a prepared statement, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said "“There are no winners in a trial like this. An innocent man lost his life, a bride lost her groom, two daughters lost their father, and a mother and a father lost their son. No verdict could ever end the grief that those who knew and loved Sean Bell suffer. Judge Cooperman’s responsibility, however, was to decide the case based on the evidence presented in the courtroom. America is a nation of laws, and though not everyone will agree with the verdicts and opinions issued by the courts, we accept their authority. Today’s decision is no different. There will be opportunities for peaceful dissent and potentially for further legal recourse – those are the rights we enjoy in a democratic nation. We don’t expect violence or law-breaking, nor is there any place for it. We have come too far as society – and as a City – to be dragged back to those days.

“When I spoke with Nicole Paultre Bell on the steps of City Hall this week, I told her that while we can’t bring back the man that she was in love with, we can and will build and make things better. She replied ‘Yes, and make sure it doesn’t happen again,’ and I agreed, ‘Yes, that’s exactly what we have to do.’ All of us have a responsibility to improve our neighborhoods and our City, and we can only do that by working together, respecting each other, and doing everything possible to prevent future tragedies and injustices.”

A week into the trial, in "The Sean Bell Curveball For Cops on Trial," Sean Gardiner reported that many legal observers were puzzled by some of the strategies employed by prosecutors working for Queens DA Richard Brown.

"A week into the trial of three cops in the Sean Bell case, the prosecutors' theory that two of the cops were "acting in concert" when the bridegroom was gunned down in a hail of police bullets is striking a sour note with some observers.

For Judge Arthur Cooperman, who's hearing the case without a jury, to convict on the top counts of first- and second-degree manslaughter, he'd have to believe "that they planned it and they all had the same mind-set," says veteran defense attorney Marvyn Kornberg. "And that's ludicrous."

If anything, the prosecutors undercut their own theory during the first week of the trial by stressing the lack of planning by the accused officers' unit on the night of the shooting and the chaos that followed."

Bell was laid to rest on December 1, 2006 in service marked with both with great sadness and anger.

In "Guns Gone Wild," an examination of the frequency with which cops fire their weapons, and NYPD tactics in the wake of the Bell slaying, some observers questioned the efficacy of deploying details of detectives to stake out a two-bit strip club in Jamaica, Queens.

"Eugene O'Donnell, a former NYPD cop and prosecutor who is now a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, calls such initiatives "overpolicing." "What are these cops doing in a strip bar in Jamaica at four in the morning listening to trash talk?" O'Donnell says. "You've got alcohol and drugs being used and then you have cops bringing firearms and deadly force into the picture. So you have trouble. . . . We've got to stop overpolicing everything."

Sean Bell

greendimes

http://www.greendimes.com

Alia Sabur Becomes the Youngest College Professor

Alia Sabur Becomes the Youngest College Professor-
Alia Sabur, the child genius who was just 14 when she earned her bachelor's degree, is now the youngest college professor in history. The Guinness Book of World Records formally announced Alia Sabur of New York to be the youngest person to be a full-time professor.

Sabur was just 18 when she was hired on February 19 as faculty in the Department of Advanced Technology Fusion at Konkuk University in South Korea.

Alia Sabur Becomes the Youngest College Professor

Online Income Opportunities - How To Earn A Nice Living Online

Online Income Opportunities - How To Earn A Nice Living Online-If anyone had told me five or six years ago that I could create wealth online, using my computer and online income opportunities to work at home, I would have told them they were a hair’s breath away from mental incarceration.

Although I was fairly comfortable using a computer, my internet skills were just about up to sending and receiving email, and my marketing skills were virtually non-existant.

Would you believe I am actually doing it? I am now earning a nice living online working at home with my computer. However, it did not happen overnight… The more time I spent on the internet, the more the idea of creating wealth online began to appeal to me. I live on an island with just over 40,000 people and got extremely excited when I realised that by using the internet as an income source it is possible to sell to millions of people versus the forty thousand population of my island. Think about it, marketing on the internet allows you to reach millions with just a few keystrokes and mouse clicks. The whole world is your marketplace!

I bounced around the internet for a while, trying several income opportunities. Although I did make a few sales and signed up some affiliates, the money was definitely not rolling in. I did not fully understand that an online home based business is like any other business, you need to invest time, get educated in your niche and learn how and where to market if you want to earn the kind of income you desire to become successful.

Learning how to get visitors to your website so you could market to them is the highest priority of an online home business owner. The various resources and techniques that could help me to generate the traffic I needed to make my business successful were a mystery. Later I learned that targeted traffic is extremely important if you want to create wealth online. While you can have amazing sales copy and a wonderful product, if no one is able to find your website, becoming an online work at home success will be a dream, nothing more.

Working online over the years has taught me which affiliate programs can help you succeed when you start your own home based business. Through years of testing, a great deal of mistakes, and thousands of dollar later, I now make a great living working online. If I’d had someone to teach me what I needed to know about income opportunities and marketing them online, it would have made learning and earning easier and faster.

It is important to understand that it is not difficult to make money working at home, but the right techniques, income opportunities and traffic generating techniques are important if you want to earn money. You really can still earn a great deal of money working from home online, as long as you are ready to work hard and learn from mistakes as well as your successes.

You may be wondering how much you can expect to make when you have an online home business. Really, there is no limit. Some people are earning a few hundred a month while there are others make thousands each month with their online business. The amount you will be able to make is totally dependent on your ability to absorb knowledge and use that knowledge and the tools available to you to generate traffic to your website then sell your product.

Online Income Opportunities - How To Earn A Nice Living Online

Yoga Promotes A Healtheir Life

Yoga Promotes A Healtheir Life-What goes on in the body when you are doing your asanas? Most of us realize that yoga increases and maintains flexibility, strengthens muscles and increases one’s stamina. All forms of yoga invite the participant to attend to their breath and notice the inward quieting.

Most individuals who

participate sense a uniqueness in this movement form. Many of us are satisfied with just sensing

this, leaving an explanation of how it affects our bodies and spirit to the realm of the mystical.

Those who seek to understand how things work ask:

What effect does yoga have on one’s physicality? When one assumes and holds a yoga posture, this act

of stretching and bending at the joints facilitates feedback to the central nervous system. This is

done by means of beds of proprioceptive nerve endings located within the joints and muscles.

Proprioceptors provide information about position, direction and rate of movement as well as the

amount of muscle tension in a locality.

Yoga causes the central nervous system to respond with appropriate self-regulatory measures by

promoting proper bio- mechanical use.

Self-regulation and self-healing are the physiological responses of the living body. The central

nervous system takes the input from the proprioceptive nerve endings and by relaxing and tightening

muscles in an organized fashion allows one to hold that posture. Changing balance of any one portion

of the spine requires compensatory adjustments throughout it. Muscles respond automatically to

stimuli from the nervous system which controls and integrates the activity of the whole body.

Flexibility is the proper and full range of motion within the joints of the body. This is brought

about by the coordination of muscle tension and muscle relaxation via the nervous ystem.

Slowly moving into a proper postural stance and holding it provides for proprioceptive feedback that

allows the nervous system to coordinate muscle action. Stretching slowly protects muscle fibers and

their tendons from strain while resistance set up by holding the posture increases muscle strength.

Improved muscle strength and stretch provides stability, flexibility and protection to the joints.

Stimulating the proprioceptive system or massaging the nervous system is but one of yoga’s benefits.

The encouragement and development of proper structural alignment reduces strain on muscles,

ligaments, and tendons. Proper alignment allows for better functioning of the organ systems.

Structure determines function. If body cavities are distorted, so too are the contents within.

Distortion caused by poor posture changes the relationship of tissues within organs, leading to the

dysfunctioning of the system. Stress, a product of the distortion, reduces circulation throughout

the area.

By improving posture, yoga supports the proper functioning of internal organs by maintaining

structural integrity of these systems. Proper position and relaxation of tension improves

circulation. Nutrition to the whole system is encouraged by the fluctuating internal pressures

generated by the different asanas. This fluctuation in pressure enhances cellular diffusion and

osmosis.

Simply, motion is life! By moving us through bio-mechanically sound postures, yoga promotes a

healthier life. To say that yoga only affects us physically would be denying the larger reality of

our existence. However, it is the profound effect that it has on our physicality which frees us to

experience the depths of our existence.

Yoga Promotes A Healtheir Life

New Generation Carrier Network

New Generation Carrier Network-The fast growth of data traffic, especially the traffic from new network applications such as VoIP, P2P, IPTV, etc., makes people not doubt that the data traffic has become dominating in today’s network.

Although traditional voice traffic is still one of major revenue sources for those incumbent network service carriers. They are seeking a way to convert those cheap IP traffic into a big amount cash flow by bringing in various types of service. Such a data traffic evolution also causes the evolution of the carrier networks from the past voice-oriented network architecture to today’s data-oriented network architecture. This evolution mainly manifests in following three aspects.

Huge amount of fibre capacity deployment
When talking about today’s telecommunication networks, nobody will forget to mention fibre communications. As a communication medium, fibre brings a revolution of human communications to carry a huge amount of capacity in a thumb-sized fibre cable. From the initial single wavelength per fibre to today’s multiple wavelengths per fibre WDM technique, optical communications is evolving towards being faster and cheaper. Presently, the most of advanced fibre communication technique based on wavelength division multiplexing has been able to carry more than 100 wavelengths per fibre and each wavelength carries up to 40 Gb/s capacity in a commercially-available system. With more hardware technical breakthrough, people are attempting to further increase the number of wavelength to up to 1000 and the capacity per wavelength up to 100 Gb/s. In the near future, it can be foreseen that each fibre will be more efficiently utilized.

Fibre communication techniques have been widely deployed today’s long-haul backbone transport networks and metro area networks. This technique is now penetrating the access networks based on so-called Fibre To The Home (FTTH) technology, hoping to allow each home to be cheaply connected by a fibre, so as to provide a huge amount capacity to support the future multimedia triple-play services such as IPTV, VoIP, Internet game, etc. It can be expected that in the future fibres will be ubiquitous ranging from a backbone network, a community network, to every home, and the bandwidth will not be a stressed constraint to continue annoying users any more.

Slimmer network layer architecture
Besides the huge increment of network capacity, we are also seeing that the network layer architecture of the today’s network becomes slimmer and slimmer. Such a change again can be attributed to the traffic change in the today’s network. Since the data traffic has dominated today’s communication networks, the traditional network layer architecture that was designed for the past voice-traffic can not efficiently fit today’s data traffic. A more effective layer architecture is necessary to efficiently carry today’s data traffic.

The most traditional network layer architecture contains at least four layers to include (1) optical WDM layer, (2) SDH/SONET layer, (3) ATM, and (4) IP/MPLS layer. Viewing the super-high control overhead of the ATM layer, i.e., each ATM cell has a 10% of control overhead, which wastes the network capacity greatly, it is attractive and reasonable to remove such a layer to directly transport IP traffic over SDH/SONET layer. This technique is called IP over SDH/SONET. Nonetheless, the removal of the ATM layer can lose some functionalities as well, which for example include the support of quality of service, the function of establishing virtual paths or virtual circuits in the network. These lost functions need to be filled by some layer(s) either IP or MPLS layer. According to today’s network technique, it seems that MPLS layer has taken over all the functionalities that were supported by the ATM layer.

Also, current dominating network traffic is IP data traffic, while the SDH/SONET is a network layer that was designed to specifically support the past voice traffic, which has a strict constraint on time delay, so it seems also not necessary for such a network layer to exist in the modern carrier network for efficiency. Thus, to further eliminate the SDH/SONET layer, another slimmer network layer architecture IP over WDM was introduced recently. In this layer architecture, the functionalities supported by the old SDH/SONET layer have to be shifted to other layers, either up to the MPLS layer or down to the optical layer. These functionalities mainly involve the network protection and restoration capability. Now this capability has been proposed to be realized by either the MPLS layer or the optical layer.

Adding intelligence to carrier networks
With the introduction of the concept of Generalized Multiprotocol Label Wwitching (GMPLS), today’s network control system has also incurred a huge evolution, changing from the traditional centralized TMN or SNMP system to a more general distributed control system. GMPLS technique is versatile enough to support almost all the network layers using a common set of network control protocols. The techniques are mainly realized based on a generalized concept called generalized label, which is modelled to cover various types of capacity unit ranging from a single MPLS label, to a SDH/SONET time, to a wavelength, to a wavelength band, or even to an entire fibre. Such a generalized technique also makes the network control so easy to allow different network layers to communicate with each other so as to achieve better network capacity utilization and serve some traffic engineering purpose. Moreover, the GMPLS control technique brings much intelligence to today’s networks, which are mainly reflected in the aspects such as crossing-layer traffic engineering, crossing-layer network recovery, etc. In addition, the distribution of the network control system also enables the control system more robust to survive the failure of a bottleneck central controller in the old day’s control system.

Summary
In contrast to the past voice-oriented network implementation, today’s networks can efficiently support IP services while providing a huge amount of capacity in the most scalable and flexible way. They are also much intelligent to handle end-to-end service provisioning, quality of service, and network failure recovery. Meanwhile, the slimmer network layer architecture also helps the today’s networks grow faster but cheaper.

New Generation Carrier Network

The REAL Secrets To Building A High-Profit Infopreneur Business

The REAL Secrets To Building A High-Profit Infopreneur Business-I’m going to share the exact steps, thinking and process planning that goes on behind the scenes whenever an infopreneur launches a new product - so you too can use it to plan a project, create your own information product and start profiting from it.

It’s all done by tapping the very same resources anyone has access to on the Internet - all that’s needed is knowledge about how it works.

STEP #1 - CHOOSING THE RIGHT TOPIC

Niche research can be a tough task. You’ve probably heard it said that the best way to find a hot selling product is to look for a problem many people are facing, and then offer a solution.

One of the best ways to do this is through online forums, especially busy ones.

It’s hard to detail the best way to conduct such research. Visit the forum. Look for ‘hot’ threads - discussion topics that have a huge number of page views. As a rule of thumb, if a discussion has over 400 views in a day, or over 1,000 views in 3 days, it’s likely to have potential.

As you gain experience in a niche, you might even latch on potentially viable topics simply by seeing the title of the post and studying the nature of the responses other members offer.

When you see the same (or similar) questions being asked on the forum, instead of getting annoyed, see if there’s an opportunity you can tap. Study the nature of the discussion each time around - and see if any questions are common, if any issues keep cropping up regularly.

STEP #2 - PLANNING OUT YOUR PRODUCT

At its core, an information product is judged by one thing, and one thing alone - the quality and usefulness of the information inside it. Not by the fancy packaging, not by the method of delivery, not by the fancy graphics or glitzy programming… but by the stuff it offers.

And that’s good news - for you

If you have useful information, insider tips, practical experience or extensive knowledge about the topic under discussion, you probably have the kernel of your information product.

And even if you don’t have it, but know WHERE to find the information, you’re on the right track! Before taking the next step, think about the topics, questions, issues, problems cropping up in the discussion.

This entire process shouldn’t take too long, especially when you’re planning a short report. For a full-fledged ebook or ecourse, this process might take a bit longer - but still not more than an hour, tops. After all, all the research material is right there in the forum, within the discussions that attracted your interest in the niche!

STEP #3 - CREATING THE PRODUCT

This part is as easy or as difficult as you make it out to be. You could write a report yourself, or might find it easier to dictate and have it transcribed (or even offered as an audio product), or ghostwritten by someone else for a fee.

If you aren’t writing from personal knowledge or experience, you might spend some time doing research and reading, online or in your local library. How long you take to do it depends on your expertise, knowledge and depth of material you expect to share in your product.

STEP #4 - GETTING FEEDBACK - AND TESTIMONIALS

One of the coolest things about forums is the amazing folks who will review your creation, offer constructive and extremely valuable feedback, and quickly give you lovely testimonials (if they are happy with what you’ve created) that you can use on your sales letter.

Ask for suggestions and critiques of just about anything - headline, sales letter, graphics, product - and you’ll get willing, useful and very insightful responses.

One word of caution, if you’ve never done this before… be very specific about what you’re looking for, and by when. There have been many times, early on, where I’ve only ended up giving away samples of my ebooks with little to show in return - because I wasn’t clear about ‘end points’

STEP #5 - CREATING YOUR SALES LETTER AND PROCESS

The nice thing about this approach is that the sales letter practically writes itself! While you’re researching your material, you’ll already know your prospect’s hot buttons… their biggest worries, toughest problems, most difficult hurdles. If you address them in your sales letter, it’s sure to convert enough of them into buyers.

The major issues in the discussion thread will become your copy bullets. The biggest 3 or 4 things will go into your headline. The problem becomes your lead-in to the sales letter. All that’s left is to throw in the price, guarantee and sprinkle in testimonials - and you’re done!

If you want to do this even better, include an opt-in form and create a multi-part autoresponder sequence or a PDF booklet that offers a sample of your information.

Then, set up your payment processor to accept credit cards, test out the entire process, and you’re ready to roll.

STEP #6 - START SELLING YOUR INFORMATION PRODUCT

If you have a list (subscribers, clients, previous buyers), you could launch the report to them first. It’s always nice to get a few quick sales under your belt - and it validates your decision to pick that niche to go after.

It also gives you a chance to test the sales letter and process, fix any major glitches. What’s worse than having a non-converting sales page is driving a huge flood of traffic to it!

Once you’re reasonably satisfied with your sales conversions, it’s time to ramp things up - and offer your finished info-product to the audience that’s most likely to snap it up… the forum audience that first pointed you in the right direction!

STEP #7 - RAMP IT UP

Once you’ve got a HIT, run with it! Try all the marketing tactics you know. Test everything and see what works best. Keep trying and growing.

Joint ventures are a great way to extend the reach of a hot product. So are exclusive affiliate promotions - pick the big players in your niche and invite them to help you promote.

What’s GREAT about using this technique?

Just this… if you’re willing to work fast and furious, you can have your product ready, tested and validated, all within 24 hours!

With this speed, you can test 3, 4 or even more products EVERY WEEK! Just imagine - you can CRUSH any competition who will take weeks, if not months, to get this far.

The REAL Secrets To Building A High-Profit Infopreneur Business

How to Make Money From Your Blog

How to Make Money From Your Blog-

did it?

This article is seriously long (over 7300 words), but you’re sure to get your money’s worth (hehehe). I’ll even share some specifics. If you don’t have time to read it now, feel free to bookmark it or print it out for later.

Do you actually want to monetize your blog?

Some people have strong personal feelings with respect to making money from their blogs. If you think commercializing your blog is evil, immoral, unethical, uncool, lame, greedy, obnoxious, or anything along those lines, then don’t commercialize it.

If you have mixed feelings about monetizing your blog, then sort out those feelings first. If you think monetizing your site is wonderful, fine. If you think it’s evil, fine. But make up your mind before you seriously consider starting down this path. If you want to succeed, you must be congruent. Generating income from your blog is challenging enough — you don’t want to be dealing with self-sabotage at the same time. It should feel genuinely good to earn income from your blog — you should be driven by a healthy ambition to succeed. If your blog provides genuine value, you fully deserve to earn income from it. If, however, you find yourself full of doubts over whether this is the right path for you, you might find this article helpful: How Selfish Are You? It’s about balancing your needs with the needs of others.

If you do decide to generate income from your blog, then don’t be shy about it. If you’re going to put up ads, then really put up ads. Don’t just stick a puny little ad square in a remote corner somewhere. If you’re going to request donations, then really request donations. Don’t put up a barely visible “Donate” link and pray for the best. If you’re going to sell products, then really sell them. Create or acquire the best quality products you can, and give your visitors compelling reasons to buy. If you’re going to do this, then fully commit to it. Don’t take a half-assed approach. Either be full-assed or no-assed.

You can reasonably expect that when you begin commercializing a free site, some people will complain, depending on how you do it. I launched this site in October 2004, and I began putting Google Adsense ads on the site in February 2005. There were some complaints, but I expected that — it was really no big deal. Less than 1 in 5,000 visitors actually sent me negative feedback. Most people who sent feedback were surprisingly supportive. Most of the complaints died off within a few weeks, and the site began generating income almost immediately, although it was pretty low — a whopping $53 the first month. If you’d like to see some month-by-month specifics, I posted my 2005 Adsense revenue figures earlier this year. Adsense is still my single best source of revenue for this site, although it’s certainly not my only source. More on that later…

Can you make a decent income online?

Yes, absolutely. At the very least, a high five-figure annual income is certainly an attainable goal for an individual working full-time from home. I’m making a healthy income from StevePavlina.com, and the site is only 19 months old… barely a toddler. If you have a day job, it will take longer to generate a livable income, but it can still be done part-time if you’re willing to devote a lot of your spare time to it. I’ve always done it full-time.

Can most people do it?

No, they can’t. I hope it doesn’t shock you to see a personal development web site use the dreaded C-word. But I happen to agree with those who say that 99% of people who try to generate serious income from their blogs will fail. The tagline for this site is “Personal Development for Smart People.” And unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your outlook), smart people are a minority on this planet. So while most people can’t make a living this way, I would say that most smart people can. How do you know whether or not you qualify as smart? Here’s a good rule of thumb: If you have to ask the question, you aren’t.

This kind of 99-1 ratio isn’t unique to blogging though. You’ll see it in any field with relatively low barriers to entry. What percentage of wannabe actors, musicians, or athletes ever make enough money from their passions to support themselves? It doesn’t take much effort to start a blog these days — almost anyone can do it. Talent counts for something, and the talent that matters in blogging is intelligence. But that just gets you in the door. You need to specifically apply your intelligence to one particular talent. And the best words I can think of to describe that particular talent are: web savvy.

If you are very web savvy, or if you can learn to become very web savvy, then you have an excellent shot of making enough money from your blog to cover all your living expenses… and then some. But if becoming truly web savvy is more than your gray matter can handle, then I’ll offer this advice: Don’t quit your day job.

Web savvy

What do I mean by web savvy? You don’t need to be a programmer, but you need a decent functional understanding of a variety of web technologies. What technologies are “key” will depend on the nature of your blog and your means of monetization. But generally speaking I’d list these elements as significant:

• blog publishing software
• HTML/CSS
• blog comments (and comment spam)
• RSS/syndication
• feed aggregators
• pings
• trackbacks
• full vs. partial feeds
• blog carnivals (for kick-starting your blog’s traffic)
• search engines
• search engine optimization (SEO)
• page rank
• social bookmarking
• tagging
• contextual advertising
• affiliate programs
• traffic statistics
• email

Optional: podcasting, instant messaging, PHP or other web scripting languages.

I’m sure I missed a few due to familiarity blindness. If scanning such a list makes your head spin, I wouldn’t recommend trying to make a full-time living from blogging just yet. Certainly you can still blog, but you’ll be at a serious disadvantage compared to someone who’s more web savvy, so don’t expect to achieve stellar results until you expand your knowledge base.

If you want to sell downloadable products such as ebooks, then you can add e-commerce, SSL, digital delivery, fraud prevention, and online databases to the list. Again, you don’t need to be a programmer; you just need a basic understanding of these technologies. Even if you hire someone else to handle the low-level implementation, it’s important to know what you’re getting into. You need to be able to trust your strategic decisions, and you won’t be able to do that if you’re a General who doesn’t know what a gun is.

A lack of understanding is a major cause of failure in the realm of online income generation. For example, if you’re clueless about search engine optimization (SEO), you’ll probably cripple your search engine rankings compared to someone who understands SEO well. But you can’t consider each technology in isolation. You need to understand the connections and trade-offs between them. Monetizing a blog is a balancing act. You may need to balance the needs of yourself, your visitors, search engines, those who link to you, social bookmarking sites, advertisers, affiliate programs, and others. Seemingly minor decisions like what to title a web page are significant. In coming up with the title of this article, I have to take all of these potential viewers into consideration. I want a title that is attractive to human visitors, drives reasonable search engine traffic, yields relevant contextual ads, fits the theme of the site, and encourages linking and social bookmarking. And most importantly I want each article to provide genuine value to my visitors. I do my best to create titles for my articles that balance these various needs. Often that means abandoning cutesy or clever titles in favor of direct and comprehensible ones. It’s little skills like these that help drive sustainable traffic growth month after month. Missing out on just this one skill is enough to cripple your traffic. And there are dozens of these types of skills that require web savvy to understand, respect, and apply.

This sort of knowledge is what separates the 1% from the 99%. Both groups may work just as hard, but the 1% is getting much better results for their efforts. It normally doesn’t take me more than 60 seconds to title an article, but a lot of experience goes into those 60 seconds. You really just have to learn these ideas once; after that you can apply them routinely.

Whenever you come across a significant web technology you don’t understand, look it up on Google or Wikipedia, and dive into it long enough to acquire a basic understanding of it. To make money from blogging it’s important to be something of a jack of all trades. Maybe you’ve heard the expression, “A jack of all trades is a master of none.” That may be true, but you don’t need to master any of these technologies — you just have to be good enough to use them. It’s the difference between being able to drive a car vs. becoming an auto mechanic. Strive to achieve functional knowledge, and then move on to something else. Even though I’m an experienced programmer, I don’t know how many web technologies actually work. I don’t really care. I can still use them to generate results. In the time it would take me to fully understand one new technology, I can achieve sufficient functional knowledge to apply several of them.

Thriving on change

Your greatest risk isn’t that you’ll make mistakes that will cost you. Your greatest risk is that you’ll miss opportunities. You need an entrepreneurial mindset, not an employee mindset. Don’t be too concerned with the risk of loss — be more concerned with the risk of missed gains. It’s what you don’t know and what you don’t do that will hurt you the worst. Blogging is cheap. Your expenses and financial risk should be minimal. Your real concern should be missing opportunities that would have made you money very easily. You need to develop antennae that can listen out for new opportunities. I highly recommend subscribing to Darren Rowse’s www.blogger.com blog — Darren is great at uncovering new income-generating opportunities for bloggers.

The blogosphere changes rapidly, and change creates opportunity. It takes some brains to decipher these opportunities and to take advantage of them before they disappear. If you hesitate to capitalize on something new and exciting, you may simply miss out. Many opportunities are temporary. And every day you don’t implement them, you’re losing money you could have earned. And you’re also missing opportunities to build traffic, grow your audience, and benefit more people.

I used to get annoyed by the rapid rate of change of web technologies. It’s even more rapid than what I saw when I worked in the computer gaming industry. And the rate of change is accelerating. Almost every week now I learn about some fascinating new web service or idea that could potentially lead to big changes down the road. Making sense of them is a full-time job in itself. But I learned to love this insane pace. If I’m confused then everyone else is probably confused too. And people who only do this part-time will be very confused. If they aren’t confused, then they aren’t keeping up. So if I can be just a little bit faster and understand these technologies just a little bit sooner, then I can capitalize on some serious opportunities before the barriers to entry become too high. Even though confusion is uncomfortable, it’s really a good thing for a web entrepreneur. This is what creates the space for a college student to earn $1,000,000 online in just a few months with a clever idea. Remember this isn’t a zero-sum game. Don’t let someone else’s success make you feel diminished or jealous. Let it inspire you instead.

What’s your overall income-generation strategy?

I don’t want to insult anyone, but most people are utterly clueless when it comes to generating income from their blogs. They slap things together haphazardly with no rhyme or reason and hope to generate lots of money. While I’m a strong advocate of the ready-fire-aim approach, that strategy does require that you eventually aim. Ready-fire-fire-fire-fire will just create a mess.

Take a moment to articulate a basic income-generating strategy for your site. If you aren’t good at strategy, then just come up with a general philosophy for how you’re going to generate income. You don’t need a full business plan, just a description of how you plan to get from $0 per month to whatever your income goal is. An initial target goal I used when I first started this site was $3000 per month. It’s a somewhat arbitrary figure, but I knew if I could reach $3000 per month, I could certainly push it higher, and $3000 is enough income that it’s going to make a meaningful difference in my finances. I reached that level 15 months after launching the site (in December 2005). And since then it’s continued to increase nicely. Blogging income is actually quite easy to maintain. It’s a lot more secure than a regular job. No one can fire me, and if one source of income dries up, I can always add new ones. We’ll address multiple streams of income soon…

Are you going to generate income from advertising, affiliate commissions, product sales, donations, or something else? Maybe you want a combination of these things. However you decide to generate income, put your basic strategy down in writing. I took 15 minutes to create a half-page summary of my monetization strategy. I only update it about once a year and review it once a month. This isn’t difficult, but it helps me stay focused on where I’m headed. It also allows me to say no to opportunities that are inconsistent with my plan.

Refer to your monetization strategy (or philosophy) when you need to make design decisions for your web site. Although you may have multiple streams of income, decide which type of income will be your primary source, and design your site around that. Do you need to funnel people towards an order form, or will you place ads all over the site? Different monetization strategies suggest different design approaches. Think about what specific action you want your visitors to eventually take that will generate income for you, and design your site accordingly.

When devising your income strategy, feel free to cheat. Don’t re-invent the wheel. Copy someone else’s strategy that you’re convinced would work for you too. Do NOT copy anyone’s content or site layout (that’s copyright infringement), but take note of how they’re making money. I decided to monetize this site with advertising and affiliate income after researching how various successful bloggers generated income. Later I added donations as well. This is an effective combo.

Traffic, traffic, traffic

Assuming you feel qualified to take on the challenge of generating income from blogging (and I haven’t scared you away yet), the three most important things you need to monetize your blog are traffic, traffic, and traffic.

Just to throw out some figures, last month (April 2006), this site received over 1.1 million visitors and over 2.4 million page views. That’s almost triple what it was just six months ago.

Why is traffic so important? Because for most methods of online income generation, your income is a function of traffic. If you double your traffic, you’ll probably double your income (assuming your visitor demographics remain fairly consistent). You can screw almost everything else up, but if you can generate serious traffic, it’s really hard to fail. With sufficient traffic the realistic worst case is that you’ll eventually be able to monetize your web site via trial and error (as long as you keep those visitors coming).

When I first launched this blog, I knew that traffic building was going to be my biggest challenge. All of my plans hinged on my ability to build traffic. If I couldn’t build traffic, it was going to be very difficult to succeed. So I didn’t even try to monetize my site for the first several months. I just focused on traffic building. Even after 19 months, traffic building is still the most important part of my monetization plan. For my current traffic levels, I know I’m undermonetizing my site, but that’s OK. Right now it’s more important to me to keep growing the site, and I’m optimizing the income generation as I go along.

Traffic is the primary fuel of online income generation. More visitors means more ad clicks, more product sales, more affiliate sales, more donations, more consulting leads, and more of whatever else that generates income for you. And it also means you’re helping more and more people.

With respect to traffic, you should know that in many respects, the rich do get richer. High traffic leads to even more traffic-building opportunities that just aren’t accessible for low-traffic sites. On average at least 20 bloggers add new links to my site every day, my articles can easily surge to the top of social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, and I’m getting more frequent requests for radio interviews. Earlier this year I was featured in USA Today and in Self Magazine, which collectively have millions of readers. Journalists are finding me by doing Google searches on topics I’ve written about. These opportunities were not available to me when I was first starting out. Popular sites have a serious advantage. The more traffic you have, the more you can attract.

If you’re intelligent and web savvy, you should also be able to eventually build a high-traffic web site. And you’ll be able to leverage that traffic to build even more traffic.

How to build traffic

Now if traffic is so crucial, how do you build it up to significant levels if you’re starting from rock bottom?

I’ve already written a lengthy article on this topic, so I’ll refer you there: How to Build a High Traffic Web Site (or Blog). If you don’t have time to read it now, feel free to bookmark it or print it out for later. That article covers my general philosophy of traffic-building, which centers on creating content that provides genuine value to your visitors. No games or gimmicks.

There is one other important traffic-building tip I’ll provide here though.

Blog Carnivals. Take full advantage of blog carnivals when you’re just starting out (click the previous link and read the FAQ there to learn what carnivals are if you don’t already know). Periodically submit your best blog posts to the appropriate carnivals for your niche. Carnivals are easy ways to get links and traffic, and best of all, they’re free. Submitting only takes minutes if you use a multi-carnvival submission form. Do NOT spam the carnivals with irrelevant material — only submit to the carnivals that are a match for your content.

In my early traffic-building days, I’d do carnivals submissions once a week, and it helped a great deal in going from nothing to about 50,000 visitors per month. You still have to produce great content, but carnivals give you a free shot at marketing your unknown blog. Free marketing is precisely the kind of opportunity you don’t want to miss. Carnivals are like an open-mic night at a comedy club — they give amateurs a chance to show off their stuff. I still submit to certain carnivals every once in a while, but now my traffic is so high that relatively speaking, they don’t make much difference anymore. Just to increase my traffic by 1% in a month, I need 11,000 new visitors, and even the best carnivals don’t push that much traffic. But you can pick up dozens or even hundreds of new subscribers from each round of carnival submissions, so it’s a great place to start. Plus it’s very easy.

If your traffic isn’t growing month after month, does it mean you’re doing something wrong? Most likely you aren’t doing enough things right. Again, making mistakes is not the issue. Missing opportunities is.

Will putting ads on your site hurt your traffic?

Here’s a common fear I hear from people who are considering monetizing their web sites:

Putting ads on my site will cripple my traffic. The ads will drive people away, and they’ll never come back.

Well, in my experience this is absolutely, positively, and otherwise completely and totally… FALSE. It’s just not true. Guess what happened to my traffic when I put ads on my site. Nothing. Guess what happened to my traffic when I put up more ads and donation links. Nothing. I could detect no net effect on my traffic whatsoever. Traffic continued increasing at the same rate it did before there were ads on my site. In fact, it might have even helped me a little, since some bloggers actually linked to my site just to point out that they didn’t like my ad layout. I’ll leave it up to you to form your own theories about this. It’s probably because there’s so much advertising online already that even though some people will complain when a free site puts up ads, if they value the content, they’ll still come back, regardless of what they say publicly.

Most mature people understand it’s reasonable for a blogger to earn income from his/her work. I think I’m lucky in that my audience tends to be very mature — immature people generally aren’t interested in personal development. To create an article like this takes serious effort, not to mention the hard-earned experience that’s required to write it. This article alone took me over 15 hours of writing and editing. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to earn an income from such work. If you get no value from it, you don’t pay anything. What could be more fair than that? The more income this blog generates, the more I can put into it. For example, I used some of the income to buy podcasting equipment and added a podcast to the site. I’ve recorded 13 episodes so far. The podcasts are all ad-free. I’m also planning to add some additional services to this site in the years ahead. More income = better service.

At the time of this writing, my site is very ad-heavy. Some people point this out to me as if I’m not aware of it: “You know, Steve. Your web site seems to contain an awful lot of ads.” Of course I’m aware of it. I’m the one who put the ads there. There’s a reason I have this configuration of ads. They’re effective! People keep clicking on them. If they weren’t effective, I’d remove them right away and try something else.

I do avoid putting up ads that I personally find annoying when I see them on other sites, including pop-ups and interstitials (stuff that flies across your screen). Even though they’d make me more money, in my opinion they degrade the visitor experience too much.

I also provide two ad-free outlets, so if you really don’t like ads, you can actually read my content without ads. First, I provide a full-text RSS feed, and at least for now it’s ad-free. I do, however, include a donation request in the bottom of my feeds.

If you want to see some actual traffic data, take a look at the 2005 traffic growth chart. I first put ads on the site in February 2005, and although the chart doesn’t cover pre-February traffic growth, the growth rate was very similar before then. For an independent source, you can also look at my traffic chart on Alexa. You can select different Range options to go further back in time.

Multiple streams of income

You don’t need to put all your eggs in one basket. Think multiple streams of income. On this site I actually have six different streams of income. Can you count them all? Here’s a list:

1. Google Adsense ads (pay per click and pay per impression advertising)
2. Donations (via PayPal or snail mail — yes, some people do mail a check)
3. Text Link Ads (sold for a fixed amount per month)
4. Chitika eMiniMalls ads (pay per click)
5. Affiliate programs like Amazon and LinkShare (commission on products sold, mostly books)
6. Advertising sold to individual advertisers (three-month campaigns or longer).

Note: If you’re reading this article a while after its original publication date, then this list is likely to change. I frequently experiment with different streams.

Adsense is my biggest single source of income, but some of the others do pretty well too. Every stream generates more than $100/month.

My second biggest income stream is actually donations. My average donation is about $10, and I’ve received a number of $100 donations too. It only took me about an hour to set this up via PayPal. So even if your content is free like mine, give your visitors a means to voluntarily contribute if they wish. It’s win-win. I’m very grateful for the visitor support. It’s a nice form of feedback too, since I notice that certain articles produced a surge in donations — this tells me I’m hitting the mark and giving people genuine value.

These aren’t my only streams of income though. I’ve been earning income online since 1995. With my computer games business, I have direct sales, royalty income, some advertising income, affiliate income, and donations (from the free articles). And if you throw in my wife’s streams of income, it gets really ridiculous: advertising, direct book sales, book sales through distributors, web consulting, affiliate income, more Adsense income, and probably a few sources I forgot. Suffice it to say we receive a lot of paychecks. Some of them are small, but they add up. It’s also extremely low risk — if one source of income dries up, we just expand existing sources or create new ones. I encourage you to think of your blog as a potential outlet for multiple streams of income too.

Automated income

With the exception of #6, all of these income sources are fully automated. I don’t have to do anything to maintain them except deposit checks, and in most cases I don’t even have to do that because the money is automatically deposited to my bank account.

I love automated income. With this blog I currently have no sales, no employees, no products, no inventory, no credit card processing, no fraud, and no customers. And yet I’m still able to generate a reasonable (and growing) income.

Why get a regular job and trade your time for money when you can let technology do all that work for you? Imagine how it would feel to wake up each morning, go to your computer, and check how much money you made while you were sleeping. It’s a really nice situation to be in.

Blogging software and hardware

I use WordPress for this blog, and I highly recommend it. Wordpress has lots of features and a solid interface. And you can’t beat its price — free.

The rest of this site is custom-coded HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL. I’m a programmer, so I coded it all myself. I could have just as easily used an existing template, but I wanted a simple straightforward design for this site, and I wanted the look of the blog to match the rest of the site. Plus I use PHP and MySQL to do some creative things outside the blog, like the Million Dollar Experiment.

I don’t recommend using a hosted service like Blogger if you want to seriously monetize your blog. You don’t get enough control. If you don’t have your own URL, you’re tying yourself to a service you don’t own and building up someone else’s asset. You want to build page rank and links for your own URL, not someone else’s. Plus you want sufficient control over the layout and design of your site, so you can jump on any opportunities that require low-level changes. If you use a hosted blog, you’re at the mercy of the hosting service, and that puts the future of any income streams you create with them at risk. It’s a bit more work up front to self-host, but it’s less risky in the long run.

Web hosting is cheap, and there are plenty of good hosts to choose from. I recommend Pair.com for a starter hosting account. They aren’t the cheapest, but they’re very reliable and have decent support. I know many online businesses that host with them, and my wife refers most of her clients there.

As your traffic grows you may need to upgrade to a dedicated server or a virtual private server (VPS). This web site is hosted by ServInt. I’ve hosted this site with them since day one, and they’ve been a truly awesome host. What I like most about them is that they have a smooth upgrade path as my traffic keeps growing. I’ve gone through several upgrades with them already, and all have been seamless. The nice thing about having your own server is that you can put as many sites on it as the server can handle. I have several sites running on my server, and it doesn’t cost me any additional hosting fees to add another site.

Comments or no comments

When I began this blog, I started out with comments enabled. As traffic grew, so did the level of commenting. Some days there were more than 100 comments. I noticed I was spending more and more time managing comments, and I began to question whether it was worth the effort. It became clear that with continued traffic growth, I was going to have to change my approach or die in comment hell. The personal development topics I write about can easily generate lots of questions and discussion. Just imagine how many follow-up questions an article like this could generate. With tens of thousands of readers, it would be insane. Also, nuking comment spam was chewing up more and more of my time as well.

But after looking through my stats, I soon realized that only a tiny fraction of visitors ever look at comments at all, and an even smaller fraction ever post a comment (well below 1% of total visitors). That made my decision a lot easier, and in October 2005, I turned blog comments off. In retrospect that was one of my best decisions. I wish I had done it sooner.

If you’d like to read the full details of how I came to this decision, I’ve written about it previously: Blog Comments and More on Blog Comments.

Do you need comments to build traffic? Obviously not. Just like when I put up ads, I saw no decline in traffic when I turned off comments. In fact, I think it actually helped me. Although I turned off comments, I kept trackbacks enabled, so I started getting more trackbacks. If people wanted to publicly comment on something I’d written, they had to do so on their own blogs and post a link. So turning off comments didn’t kill the discussion — it just took it off site. The volume of trackbacks is far more reasonable, and I can easily keep up with it. I even pop onto other people’s sites and post comments now and then, but I don’t feel obligated to participate because the discussion isn’t on my own site.

I realize people have very strong feelings about blog comments and community building. Many people hold the opinion that a blog without comments just isn’t a blog. Personally I think that’s utter nonsense — the data just doesn’t support it. The vast majority of blog readers neither read nor post comments. Only a very tiny and very vocal group even care about comments. Some bloggers say that having comments helps build traffic, but I saw no evidence of that. In fact, I think it’s just the opposite. Managing comments detracts from writing new posts, and it’s far better to get a trackback and a link from someone else’s blog vs. a comment on your own blog. As long-term readers of my blog know, when faced with ambiguity, my preference is to try both alternatives and compare real results with real results. After doing that my conclusion is this: No comment.

Now if you want to support comments for non-traffic-building reasons like socializing or making new contacts, I say go for it. Just don’t assume that comments are necessary or even helpful in building traffic unless you directly test this assumption yourself.

Build a complete web site, not just a blog

Don’t limit your web site to just a blog. Feel free to build it out. Although most of my traffic goes straight to this blog, there’s a whole site built around it. For example, the home page of this site presents an overview of all the sections of the site, including the blog, article section, audio content, etc. A lot of people still don’t know what a blog is, so if your whole site is your blog, those people may be a little confused.

Testing and optimization

In the beginning you won’t know which potential streams of income will work best for you. So try everything that’s reasonable for you. If you learn about a new potential income stream, test it for a month or two, and measure the results for yourself. Feel free to cut streams that just aren’t working for you, and put more effort into optimizing those streams that show real promise.

A few months ago, I signed up for an account with Text Link Ads. It took about 20 minutes. They sell small text ads on my site, split the revenue with me 50-50, and deposit my earnings directly into my PayPal account. This month I’ll make around $600 from them, possibly more if they sell some new ads during the month. And it’s totally passive. If I never tried this, I’d miss out on this easy extra income.

For many months I’ve been tweaking the Adsense ads on this site. I tried different colors, sizes, layouts, etc. I continue to experiment now and then, but I have a hard time beating the current layout. It works very well for me. Adsense doesn’t allow publishers to reveal specific CPM and CTR data, but mine are definitely above par. They started out in the gutter though. You can easily double or triple your Adsense revenue by converting a poor layout into a better one. This is the main reason why during my first year of income, my traffic grew at 20% per month, but my income grew at 50% per month. Frequent testing and optimization had a major positive impact. Many of my tests failed, and some even made my income go down, but I’m glad I did all that testing. If I didn’t then my Adsense income would only be a fraction of what it is now.

It’s cheap to experiment. Every new advertising or affiliate service I’ve tried so far has been free to sign up. Often I can add a new income stream in less than an hour and then wait a month to see how it does. If it flops then at least I learned something. If it does well, wonderful. As a blogger who wants to generate income, you should always be experimenting with new income streams. If you haven’t tried anything new in six months, you’re almost certainly missing some golden opportunities. Every blog is different, so you need to test things for yourself to see what works for you. Failure is impossible here — you either succeed, or you learn something.

Pick your niche, but make sure it isn’t too small

Pick a niche for your blog where you have some significant expertise, but make sure it’s a big enough niche that you can build significant traffic. My wife runs a popular vegan web site. She does pretty well within her niche, but it’s just not a very big niche. On the other hand, my topic of personal development has much broader appeal. Potentially anyone can be interested in improving themselves, and I have the flexibility to write about topics like productivity, self-discipline, relationships, spirituality, health, and more. It’s all relevant to personal development.

Pick a niche that you’re passionate about. I’ve written 400+ articles so far, and I still feel like I’m just getting started. I’m not feeling burnt out at all. I chose to build a personal development site because I’m very knowledgeable, experienced, and passionate about this subject. I couldn’t imagine a better topic for me to write about.

Don’t pick a niche just because you think it will make you money. I see many bloggers try to do that, and it’s almost invariably a recipe for failure. Think about what you love most, and then find a way to make your topic appealing to a massive global audience. Consider what will provide genuine value to your visitors. It’s all about what you can give.

A broad enough topic creates more potential advertising partners. If I keep writing on the same subtopic over and over, I may exhaust the supply of advertisers and hit an income ceiling. But by writing on many different topics under the same umbrella, I widen the field of potential advertisers. And I expand the appeal of my site at the same time.

Make it clear to your visitors what your blog/site is about. Often I visit a blog with a clever title and tagline that reveals nothing about the site’s contents. In that case I generally assume it’s just a personal journal and move on. I love to be clever too, but I’ve found that clarity yields better results than cleverness.

Posting frequency and length

Bloggers have different opinions about the right posting length and frequency. Some bloggers say it’s best to write short (250-750 word) entries and post 20x per week or more. I’ve seen that strategy work for some, but I decided to do pretty much the opposite. I usually aim for about 3-5 posts per week, but my posts are much longer (typically 1000-2000 words, sometimes longer than 5000 words, including the monster you’re reading right now). That’s because rather than throwing out lots of short tips, I prefer to write more exhaustive, in-depth articles. I find that deeper articles are better at generating links and referrals and building traffic. It’s true that fewer people will take the time to read them, but those that do will enjoy some serious take-away value. I don’t believe in creating disposable content just to increase page views and ad impressions. If I’m not truly helping my visitors, I’m wasting their time.

Posting frequency and length

Bloggers have different opinions about the right posting length and frequency. Some bloggers say it’s best to write short (250-750 word) entries and post 20x per week or more. I’ve seen that strategy work for some, but I decided to do pretty much the opposite. I usually aim for about 3-5 posts per week, but my posts are much longer (typically 1000-2000 words, sometimes longer than 5000 words, including the monster you’re reading right now). That’s because rather than throwing out lots of short tips, I prefer to write more exhaustive, in-depth articles. I find that deeper articles are better at generating links and referrals and building traffic. It’s true that fewer people will take the time to read them, but those that do will enjoy some serious take-away value. I don’t believe in creating disposable content just to increase page views and ad impressions. If I’m not truly helping my visitors, I’m wasting their time.

Expenses

Blogging is dirt cheap.

I don’t spend money on advertising or promotion, so my marketing expenses are nil. Essentially my content is my marketing. If you like this article, you’ll probably find many more gems in the archives.

My only real expenses for this site are the hosting (I currently pay $149/month for the web server and bandwidth) and the domain name renewal ($9/year). Nearly all of the income this site generates is profit. This trickles down to my personal income, so of course it’s subject to income tax. But the actual business expenses are minimal.

The reason I pay so much for hosting is simply due to my traffic. If my traffic were much lower, I could run this site on a cheap shared hosting account. A database-driven blog can be a real resource hog at high traffic levels. The same goes for online forums. As traffic continues to increase, my hosting bill will go up too, but it will still be a tiny fraction of total income.

Perks

Depending on the nature of your blog, you may be able to enjoy some nice perks as your traffic grows. Almost every week I get free personal development books in the mail (for potential review on this site). Sometimes the author will send it directly; other times the publisher will ship me a batch of books. I also receive CDs, DVDs, and other personal development products. It’s hard to keep up sometimes (I have a queue of about two dozen books right now), but I am a voracious consumer of such products, so I do plow through them as fast as I can. When something strikes me as worthy of mention, I do indeed write up a review to share it with my visitors. I have very high standards though, so I review less than 10% of what I receive. I’ve read over 700 books in this field and listened to dozens of audio programs, so I’m pretty good at filtering out the fluff. As I’m sure you can imagine, there’s a great deal of self-help fluff out there.

My criteria for reviewing a product on this site is that it has to be original, compelling, and profound. If it doesn’t meet these criteria, I don’t review it, even if there’s a generous affiliate program. I’m not going to risk abusing my relationship with my visitors just to make a quick buck. Making money is not my main motivation for running this site. My main motivation is to grow and to help others grow, so that always comes first.

Your blog can also gain you access to certain events. A high-traffic blog becomes a potential media outlet, so you can actually think of yourself as a member of the press, which indeed you are. In a few days, my wife and I will be attending a three-day seminar via a free press pass. The regular price for these tickets is $500 per person. I’ll be posting a full review of the seminar next week. I’ve been to this particular seminar in 2004, so I already have high expectations for it. Dr. Wayne Dyer will be the keynote speaker.

I’m also using the popularity of this blog to set up interviews with people I’ve always wanted to learn more about. This is beautifully win-win because it creates value for me, my audience, and the person being interviewed. Recently I posted an exclusive interview with multi-millionaire Marc Allen as well as a review of his latest book, and I’m lining up other interviews as well. It isn’t hard to convince someone to do an interview in exchange for so much free exposure.

Motivation

I don’t think you’ll get very far if money is your #1 motivation for blogging. You have to be driven by something much deeper. Money is just frosting. It’s the cake underneath that matters. My cake is that I absolutely love personal development – not the phony “fast and easy” junk you see on infomercials, but real growth that makes us better human beings. That’s my passion. Pouring money on top of it just adds more fuel to the fire, but the fire is still there with or without the money.

What’s your passion? What would you blog about if you were already set for life?

Blogging lifestyle

Perhaps the best part of generating income from blogging is the freedom it brings. I work from home and set my own hours. I write whenever I’m inspired to write (which for me is quite often). Plus I get to spend my time doing what I love most — working on personal growth and helping others do the same. There’s nothing I’d rather do than this.

Perhaps it’s true that 99 out of 100 people can’t make a decent living from blogging yet. But maybe you’re among the 1 in 100 who can.

On the other hand, I can offer you a good alternative to recommend if you don’t have the technical skills to build a high-traffic, income-generating blog. Check out Build Your Own Successful Online Business for details.

How to Make Money From Your Blog

Make Money Writing Short Articles Without Having A Website

Make Money Writing Short Articles Without Having A Website-I bet you don't think you can make money writing short articles. Well, you can and you don't even need a website or auto responder.

Basic equipment needed:

1. computer- either laptop or desktop
2. Microsoft Word or equivalent
3. Internet connection

That is it. Do you have these items? Most people do. If yes, you are on your way to making money writing short articles.

The real key to success and making money is that you need to be consistent. You need to write multiple articles every day!

Each article should be between 350 and 500 words. No need to be fancy and use big words. Be yourself and write from the heart.Each and every one of us has special and unique talents. We have hobbies and special interests that we could write about.

You might have the ability to write about baking or raising dogs. Write about what you care about. It is very difficult to write an article about something that you have only a passing interest in. Your goal is to offer to your readers some interesting information on a subject that they might not have access to themselves.

This next section is critical because it is how you will be earning money.

Go to ClickBank or Commission Junction and open an account with each. Once signed up visit their sites and and select a few (2-3 products) that are related to the subject matter of your article. Look at the stats shown carefully. There is a wealth of information relating to the amount of commission, returns and an overall rating.

Write multiple articles every day related to the products that you have picked. This sounds very difficult but really isn't.Do more writing than thinking. You can waste large amounts of time thinking about what you are going to write. You will be totally surprised what appears on paper when you just write. All articles won't be first class and perfect but all should be writtwen from the heart. If your article helped someone understand something a little better or learn something new you have accomplished what you set out to do.

Never copy another author's work. It is illegal and carries serious penalties! If you care enough to put your name on an article make sure it is original.

Your goal is to submit your articles to as many of the largest article directories as possible. Always remember to add a author's resource box. This is information about you written, in the third person, as if someone else was writing about you. Always include multiple affiliate links to the product you are promoting.

This system takes a while to put in place. After a few weeks you may see a measure of profit. The majority of revenue will come within 6-12 months.

Keep the pipeline full of articles and you will profit in the long run!

Ray Caran has owned and operated a multitude of businesses over the years. He has been writting articles since 1997.

Courtesy Ray Caran

Make Money Writing Short Articles Without Having A Website

What Role Of Shopping Cart In Your Online Business?

What Role Of Shopping Cart In Your Online Business?-E-commerce is increasing day by day very surplusly. You may see these shopping carts on most of the sites you visit. They play a vital role in improving your business. It has become one of the essential part of a website.

These ecommerce stores are creating markets of never-ending choice where consumers can get exactly what they want. Since there has been so many advances to the internet, it has made it very easy to make money online. This improvement has been seen because of the simplicity of using the internet and the increase in customer base.

There are many businesses, which are providing support to these online shopping carts. The only challenging thing is finding a suitable website, which can offer a continuous support to the up coming shopping carts. They must be in such a way that, the consumer must get a good impact at the first visit itself.

Shopping cart is very essential for ecommerce solutions. Without a shopping cart, you are hindering your buyer from purchasing everything that they may purchase. Selecting the correct cart to match your business is decisive. There are so many different carts available and all of them do different things in different ways. Some function as a mere gateway between a customer and a business to purchase goods. Some only handle small amounts of products. In this case, if you have a large customer sales base you may want to purchase a cart that can handle that many sales or more in case the business grows.

Search on the internet for some professional website template at an affordable price and customize it to suit your need. Creating an organized feel to your website by standardizing the look of each page, is the important thing to establish a brand, create trust in the consumer, and encourage them to fill up that shopping cart. It is also important to modify the look and content of the website. There must be a secure shopping in your site, with out a secure shopping an e-commerce site is incomplete.

At last, you must know that customer satisfaction is tied to your bottom line. Consider it the cost of doing business. You don’t have to sell a job on to potential customers, these online business advertiser’s will benefit from this type of ecommerce advertising. Your job is just to display the advert to your visitors.

Many e-commerce based sites are coming up today. Some are very secure and some are not. For a secure shopping online and to find out more information about e-commerce click the link below.
What Role Of Shopping Cart In Your Online Business?

Make Money Online - Is It Possible

Make Money Online - Is It Possible-If you want to make money online, than you will first have to defeat that negative voice in the back of your head that says it isn’t really possible.

I can tell you firsthand it is possible and I am living proof that anyone with a little persistance and effort can crack the code and make money online.

Now if you would have asked me that question several years ago, I probably would have had said “I am not sure”.

But today I can definately say that is possible for you, but first you have to get your mind in the right place. In a positive place. Instead of being a doom and gloom type of person, you have to look at every step you take wether good or bad and learn from them.

I am not going to pull your chains and tell you that you are going to get rich overnite, because making money on the internet can take weeks or even months to set yourself up for success. But all of the investing and effort that you apply now will pay off later as long as you are’nt one of these many people that join a make money program and than give up when they don’t see overnite wealth!

As a society we want everything to be done for us and in the blink of an eye. Answer me this question; “If you knew that in one year if followed certain steps you would be financially well off, would you pursue the steps or just say no thanks?

My guess is that financial independence would be a strong motivator for you. Guess what, it is the motivating factor for everyone that wants to make money online. The difference between you and the other guy is your desire and perseverance.

You may have to deal with family and friends along the way that tell you that you will never make money and your time is wastaed because all money making programs are scams or rippoff’s! I am telling you that this is what I dealt with when I first came online, but now that I am cranking out money from my online business those people are the first ones to help me spend it! So don’t get caught up in all of that negative crap!

Even when it feels like your online business moves two steps back if you keep at it, your business will jump forward and you will make money online.

Make Money Online - Is It Possible

Affiliate Programs Over Ad Networks

Affiliate Programs Over Ad Networks-Many blogs and websites rely on Google Adsense or other advertising services to make money off of their viewers. A lot of people don’t realize how much more money they could be making if they found a few affiliate programs related to their site and marketed them directly.

Affiliate programs usually give a portion of the sale to the affiliate that referred the buyer. So, instead of making a couple pennies per click, you can be making dollars per click.

Ad networks display relevant ads according to the content on your page and stop there. Most affiliate managers will work with you in order to promote their product. They will give you helpful tips on how to entice your readers to click and purchase the product without sounding overbearing. This seamless approach of intertwining content and sales has been proven to be more effective than “optimizing ad placement”.

A few tips for choosing an affiliate program:

1. Find one that isn’t being marketed like crazy. If you’ve seen a ton of ads for something, the chances of you finding people that haven’t seen the product are slimmer.

2. Commission Structure: Most affiliate programs offer a decent commission for making a sale. Some huge corporations have so many affiliates they don’t need to offer good commissions, try and stay away from them. If the product is a subscription, some programs will offer residual commission based on how long the consumer keeps the subscription.

3. Take a look at the marketing resources they offer. Also, start a relationship with the affiliate manager. Ask them if they can have a look at your website/blog and see if they can recommend any marketing techniques. Also, see how responsive they are to your inquiries.

Genius Affiliate Programs, http://geniusaffiliateprograms.com/ allows webmasters, bloggers, etc, to not only find affiliate programs that suit their content, but allows them to talk about and review the affiliate programs too. By communicating with others trying to promote the program everyone can share tips and strategies on what does and does not work.

Affiliate Programs Over Ad Networks

3 Essential Tools For The Affiliate Marketer

3 Essential Tools For The Affiliate Marketer-Although affiliate marketing is touted as one of the easiest and most effective ways to earn money online, it is not as easy as it sounds. The wise affiliate marketer plans every action and executes it the best way he can.

He should also maximize the potential to earn by using the right tools. Below are the top three necessary tools for a successful affiliate marketing business.

Important Tool #1: Your Own Website

The most important and indispensable tool in Affiliate Marketing is your own website. The first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking website. Your website is the jump off point of all your marketing efforts. Thus, you must first build (or get someone else to build for you) a user-friendly website, which will appeal to your prospects and encourage them to click on the links to the products and service you are promoting, and make a purchase.

Most web users go online to look for information, not necessarily to go and buy something. Above all else, make your website full of original, relevant and useful content. People will love articles that are appealing and helpful. Keep in mind that content is still king, and good quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking. By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, making you a more trustworthy endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good reputation is a good step in building up a loyal customer base.

Important Tool #2: Incentives

Competition is extremely tight in the internet world, and although competition is a good thing (it does help to establish a market). You must always be one-step ahead of your rivals to ensure that you capture a significant share of your target market. Therefore, you must use every possible means to encourage people not only to visit your site but also to click and proceed to the websites of the products and services you are promoting. Building an opt-in email list is one of the best ways to gather prospects. Offer a newsletter or an e-zine. Better yet, offer incentives to your prospects to encourage them to subscribe to your newsletters. You can present free softwares, videos, access to exclusive services, and other freebies that will be helpful to your prospects.

Important Tool #3: Link Popularity

The importance of driving highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be emphasized enough. The all-important web traffic is at the top of the list. Attracting people to your site should be the first step you should carry out. Do everything to achieve a high search engine ranking. Link Popularity is one of the factors that search engines use to determine search engine rankings. Therefore, to enhance your link popularity, you must launch an aggressive reciprocal link campaign.

One of the best ways to do this – at no cost at all – is by submitting articles, with your website’s link at the resource box, to e-zines and free article sites. You will not only gain exposure, you will also have the opportunity to advertise for free, just include a link back to your site. The more sites you submit your articles to, the better your link popularity is. Make your articles original, relevant and useful so that more websites will pick it up and post it.

These are just three tools that an affiliate marketer can use to maximize earning potential. The possibilities are endless and are limited only by your imagination, creativity, resourcefulness and determination. You can always explore other ideas and adapt other strategies, which you think might help you become a high rolling affiliate marketer.

3 Essential Tools For The Affiliate Marketer