101 ways to make money online (continue 4)

Big bucks

76. While most webmasters use PPC to refer to Pay Per Click old timers use it jokingly to refer to P*rn (where *=o), Pills and Casinos. Those are probably the three biggest money areas on the net and have probably made more millionaires than any others. But they are very competitive and are difficult markets to er, penetrate. However, there are lots of legal, legitimate opportunities here some of which I’ll expand on in due course.

Arbitrage/brokerage

77. Example of a pure arbitrage opportunity: For a while buying traffic via Google Adwords and sending that traffic to pages of little content and Google Adsense ads generated reasonable profits when done astutely. Sure, Adwords and Adsense are two sites of the same coin. But I did say you needed to be astute to recognise where the opportunities were and you need to test, test, test. There are still lots of contextual arbitrage opportunities about. Especially when you work across programs (e.g., buy traffic from MSN, sell to Yahoo).

78. There are a lot of arbitrage opportunities in the finance world as discussed below but if economics and finance talk bores you to death, there’s sports arbitrage. Different online bookmakers may offer different odds on a sporting event. By taking the better odds at each bookie you could come out ahead irrespective of the actual outcome of the event. If you’re really clever you could make a program to do this for you. Why don’t the bookies adjust their odds based on what their competitors are offering? Because they have to balance their own books. Their prices are decided based on how their own punters are betting.

79. Hosting: You don’t need to buy a lot of server hardware to provide a web hosting service. Many big hosting companies allow “reseller” accounts where you sell hosting plans to customers and the hosting company will host them all for you under your Reseller account umbrella. You get to charge customers as much as you want. Some Resellers provide value added services and charge more for these. At places like WHT you’ll find that resellers sometimes sell their customers as a “bundle” i.e., you can pay some money to buy a reseller “business”.

80. Related to the above is free hosting where you provide small website owners free hosting and in exchange you serve ads to all their pages to make the revenue to pay the hosting company and yourself. Early pioneers of this model are well known names like Geocities and Angelfire.

81. Being a broker can be done in a thousand different ways. There are some entrepreneurs making healthy profits just by bidding for projects on places like elance and guru (and others) and farming them out to a bank of writers/programmers they use on a regular basis.

Finance

82. Trading from home is really catching on in many parts of the world. You don’t need to be an expert on stocks & shares. You can trade on commodities, currencies, lots more. Trading futures allows you to leverage even small $100 amounts of capital into huge fortunes (or bankruptcy).

83. Gambling is a far cry from trading futures but a route to riches for many. No, not the traditional horse racing type of gambling where the only long term winner is the bookmaker. I’m talking gambling against other gamblers, I’m talking the numerous ways of gambling online (search). And there are a million books and ebooks that claim to “teach you how to win”.

84. HYIP, or High Yield Investment Programs are just what they say on the tin. They are also highly risky. You invests your money and you takes a chance, but some pay as much as 100% per day. How do they do it? A very few are putting your money into investments with even better rates of return. Others are simply going to keep paying out the first few customers with investments collected from later ones…. and then they go bust. Pyramid style. Maybe the ones who make the money are the ones who get in early… or actually start HYIP programs.

eBay/Amazon etc.

85. What’s it with eBay? You just can’t get away from them. Their bulk “dictionary purchase” of ad terms from the Google Adwords/Adsense system means you find ads for eBay no matter what you’re looking for, even if it’s for toenail clippings or dead pets. Whatever the reason for their success you can join the bandwagon and sell your rubbish on eBay and convert a garage of old junk to hard cash.

86. And when you’ve acquired a fair amount of experience with selling your own rubbish, start selling others’ rubbish. How to get your hands on enough trash? Place an ad in your local paper to do house clearances, or just buy stock from wholesalers in – yes, you guessed it – eBay itself. You can get anything from unused toasters to umbilical cord containers. A lot of ebay sellers are actually shopkeepers; they buy stock new from wholesalers and sell them in eBay instead of a physical bricks and mortar shop… and make a healthy living doing so.

87. You’ve now got a lot of experience buying and selling in eBay. It’s time to write a book or ebook on how to use ebay to generate millions. It doesn’t matter that you haven’t made millions yourself. People still buy these books even if it’s just to learn their way about ebay which can be quite daunting for some. And you can sell it on … you guessed!

88. Don’t fancy writing? Then set yourself up as an eBay assistant. eBay itself will send you people who need help with their complicated system. And you can charge them a commission.

89. Alternatively, setup a shop to accept goods from those who can’t list them themselves. Yes, a physical shop. There are lots of them springing up all in big cities. The operation is simple. You take something in from somebody, sell it on ebay and retain a percentage for all your efforts.

90. Think building an ebay business is too much like building a normal business? If you’ve got the capital you can take the easy route. A lot of ebay “shop” (businesses) come up for sale in site-for-sale forums and with business brokers. The ebay username and feedback generally accompanies the business so you continue to benefit from accumulated goodwill (though the “transfer” is something that eBay may not approve of).

91. Opportunities to make money in eBay are limited only by your imagination. There’s money in everything from making connections (putting people in touch with other people) to coming up with or commissioning software to make the average ebayer’s life simpler or more productive (thousands of such programs already exist). There’s even a business model involving just searching for and finding items that have been misspelt in the listings.

92. It’s not just eBay. Any merchant big enough or third party affiliate manager program – from Commission Junction to Clickbank – has opportunities. For example, you can create an Amazon affiliate site.

Others

93. Set up a proxy (example). People seem to want to surf at work AND access sites their IT system blocks them from viewing. A proxy allows them to get around that restriction. Some proxy services get by just on the advertising (as it’s easy to get enormous page views in the proxy business). A very good one will even have people paying a few dollars each. There are several ways to monetise a proxy.

94. Enjoy networking? Social networking Web 2.0 style? Make money with it. If you build up sufficient reputation in places like Digg people will start approaching you to start some buzz on their company or their new product. At one point Netscape offered  top “Diggers” a sweetener os $1,000 to move over to their competing service.

95. Selling databases of parts/directory listings/modified or value added DMOZ data/ email lists. The DMOZ directory is a massive directory put together by volunteer editors. And they give away their content for free. Kind of. You can download their database and combine it with other information – like phone number and postcode from Yellow pages-  to add value / enhance those listings. You could then sell the enhanced product.

96. Find jobs for your friends. An easy way into the personal recruitment business. Know a friend who’s just right for a particular job? Make the connection between friend and employer and you could get up to $5,000 for a few hours work.

97. Get paid for your unused computer cycles. Is your computer sometimes on while you aren’t actually sitting at it? Then it’s using electricity but not performing “work”. Joining a distributed computing group like SETI lets you use that computing power to help reach some worthy/unworthy goal. However, you can also use those cycles to earn money by selling them to companies who have large computing tasks then can’t do completely in-house.

98. Take the cap around: Do something nice. Provide some information that helps someone, perhaps someone grieving for a lost partner. Or info on how to volunteer to help orphans in Africa, or find an internship. Make it useful. Or just make it very funny. Then stick a donation button on there for people to support your work. You’ll be surprised at how well a donation button works on the right type of site. No, it won’t work on this page – or any page promising to make you a millionaire.

99. Start an article directory. Giving away free articles (with embedded links) is one way for webmasters to build incoming links to their sites. For other webmasters these free articles are a great way to fill out their otherwise bare sites. Be the middleman. Popular article directories make a lot of money from the contextual ads they post on all the free articles they are displaying on their site.

100. Start a content site: The most common way webmasters earn money is probably contextual programs like YPN and Adsonar. But mainly Adsense. It’s simple, quick, doesn’t involve any complicated new skills. You simply put up a website with useful/informative content and some Google provided code, get a few links to the page and wait. Traffic will start flowing to it. The volume would depend on the topic and quality of content. Visitors would see ads served by Google and related to the content of the page. Each time they click on an ad you get anywhere from a few cents to several dollars. I personally know at least 20 webmasters who earn in excess of $10,000 per month this way. There are thousands of others.

The 101st method is my personal favourite because I find it hilarious:

There was this bloke who bought an email list of one million email addresses. He sent half of them a stock tip that a certain stock was going up, the other half got the same message predicting that the stock would go down. 50% of them saw him proved right. He ignored the rest and split this 50% into two groups. Half got an email with another up prediction and the other half got the same email with a down prediction. He rinsed and repeated a few times till he was left with about 15,000 people who saw him get it right several times in a row. They were obviously very impressed. He then invited them to pay $5,000 each for a seminar with him on picking stocks!

CONCLUSION

I make a healthy living online, and with multiple income streams (no I won’t tell you how much. Remember, I’m not trying to sell you anything). I put this article together originally because friends and family kept harassing me to show them what I did for a living so they could do it too. I collected some of the ideas for things I had done myself, got some more from the thousands of site-for-sale threads (and detailed conversations I’ve had with those sellers), and threw some more obscure/zany ones in here for good measure.

May money just flow to you. If finances are tight right now, take heart – money happens, it’s easier than you think. I feel very privileged to live in these interesting times, times full of opportunity, times where I’ve been able to give up my day job, work at my leisure, enjoy my kids growing up, retire decades earlier than I normally would, and spend time writing this drivel instead of running the usual rat race. God bless the Internet and Good Luck. You CAN do it.

101 ways to make money online (continue 3)

It smells

No, I’m not endorsing any of the plans in this section but this article wouldn’t be complete without mentioning these unmentionables.

65. Has someone has violated your online rights? Perhaps they don’t have a privacy page on their site as required by law. Or haven’t made their site disabled friendly (illegal in some parts of the world). Sue them. Particularly if you can get one of those no win-no fee vultures to act for you. A guy called André-Tascha Lammé kept getting calls from salesmen selling him stuff. He sued them in the Sacramento, CA, small claims court (easy to do). Guess what? Apparently the law in the US awards you $500 each time a telesales person makes an unwanted call to you. Lammé walked away with $6,000. What’s the law where you are?

66. They haven’t violated your rights? Sue them anyway. Why do you think so many people sue Google on the most unlikely pretexts: giving them incorrect results, showing anti-Christian sites in the results, having advertising, being racist, not being racist? Find something unusual enough to sue them about and some dumb tabloid editor somewhere will pay you for an interview. Even if they don’t you’ll generate publicity, get column inches, get people to your site…Ka-Ching.

Or be the scum that sue companies for small amounts just because it’s be cheaper for them to settle than defend. Even if the grounds for the case are petty and silly.

67. Sell photographs: Live in a big city? Hang around at celebrity watering holes, click some photos. There’s always someone online willing to pay for interesting ones – there are sites specifically for the buying/selling of photos like these. Get “lucky” and click the UN Secretary General picking up a hooker and you can buy that dream home in the Bahamas quicker than he can say United Nations Secretary General. Find Paris Hilton in another compromising video and…. you can buy Bill Gates. More mundane photos will get you money in places like these: 1, 2, 3.
68. Perform domain hunting services for businesses and then send bill them (even if they’ve never heard of you). Some businesses will pay up. A 0.01% success out of a million could be worth $100,000 (at a modest $10 each). For example, you could setup a program to extract company names from a Yellowpages database, run them through a misspelling generator and automail each company a list of domains you’ve identified that it would be in their interest to register as these are very similar to their company name. That’s a service, right? The UK authorities have been clamping down on a lot of these operators… but that’s only the UK based ones!

69. Exploit people’s soppiness. Once upon a time there was a site with lots of lovely pictures of a beautiful little bunny who was very, very happy. And his owner loved him very much. But he needed money so he asked for money on the site and promised that if he did not reach his target he’d eat the bunny. He provided graphic recipes with bunny dish mock-up pictures. Donations followed, fast and swift.

70. Relationship Marketing: Who said relationship marketing was about companies building relationships with their customers? It’s about marketing to relatives. About pimping products to your friends. Whatever the “network marketing” opportunities there ever were offline – from Amway to selling water filters – there’s always a lot of stuff you can “personally recommend” to your friends online. People who don’t open junk mail will open mail from you, because they trust you! And you can get paid for endorsing all manner of rubbish. (Till you lose all your friends, of course)

71. Become a volunteer editor in places like DMOZ and then take bribes to list sites. Is it illegal? In many parts of the world it probably is not, and so it does happen a fair bit. But, the less said about this bribery the better..

72. Petitions: People are constantly petitioning their bosses, their politicians, the rest of the world. Some of those petitioners pay for people to join their cause. Signing up again and again and again has proven lucrative for some, particularly those who know how to proxify their IPs (what is a proxy?).

73. Email SPAM. Nobody likes it, it’s illegal in some countries, ISPs get very upset, recipients get even more upset but no list of how people make money online can be complete without a mention of this. What do you sell when you spam? Have a look at what type of spam YOU are getting, it will likely give you an idea of what pays. And the stock tips that seem to “accidentally” land in your inbox. But that’s about all the help I’m giving you on the subject.

74. (But wherever there’s a big problem there’s an opportunity: Run an free email service like Hotmail etc., but with a good SPAM filtering system. High startup costs, sure, but if you get enough people signing up you could be worth a few million very quickly. Google tried this with gmail and got about 4% of the market without advertising the service at all; accounts were given by invitation only)

75. Start a HYIP and do a runner. See page 5 for more details on what this is.

101 ways to make money online (continue 2)

Work, but not as you know it

52. Affiliate programs can be great fun and very lucrative. The trick is learning to generate traffic, funnelling it to your merchant and hiring expensive accountants to handle your massive tax returns. It has made more millionaires than you’d believe and I’ve personally met many of them. I hope to write a lot more about making money from affiliate programs in the months to come.

53. But if fine-tuning ad CTRs and monitoring ROI is too much like hard work … be your own affiliate customer. Credit card companies, mortgage companies etc., pay anywhere upto $100 per form filled on their site (per valid lead). Go apply for some credit cards and mortgages BUT do them through your own affiliate links and make a few hundred dollars per day. Sign up in as an affiliate in your wife/husband/dad’s name to get around the occasional restriction that applications in the affiliate’s own name don’t generate the commission.

Pure fun

54. Like playing computer games? There’s money in gaming. Top players get paid handsomely for participating in tournaments, attending gaming fests and endorsing products. OK, Tiger Woods does make more but does he have as much fun? I mean, have you ever seen him happy? Like deliriously happy … and shouting for joy? No. Because his golf club don’t have no buttons. But it’s not just for big hitters. Anybody can make a few hundred bucks a week.

55. MMORPG, or multi-player online role playing games are virtual worlds where otherwise sane humans lose all perspective and all sense of reality. Or they pretend they do. They spend money on invisibility cloaks, virtual machine guns, characters and even virtual money! It’s hard to explain how it works but Be The Seller, there’s a thriving economy there worth millions of dollars every year. Whether it’s WoW or SecondLife.

56. Adult entertainment: Like dressing up kinky? Do it front of a webcam and adult webcam sites will pay you. (John Prescott need not apply.) Like chatting dirty? Are you a balding man who likes pretending to be an 18 year old blond, female model? The online equivalent of the premium rate phone lines is where you can earn money all day just having fun. I won’t provide links – use a search engine and find them yourself.

57. Or get paid for promoting other adult sites. This is like other affiliate programs except that you get to give away stuff on your site (usually cut-down/lower quality versions of videos and pics) for free. These entice visitors to click through for the larger resolution version which requires a small subscription. So, free content for you and – if you can get enough visitors to click through and subscribe – a healthy commission cheque at the end of the month.

58. Mystery shopping: Shopping on behalf of firms to see how staff on the floor are treating customers. Buy products, have holidays, eat at restaurants and have the tabs all picked up by your employers… as long as you provide them some feedback on what the service is like in-store. There are worse ways to earn a living. Some sceptics say they have fun but don’t earn a great deal. Others disagree.

59. Spend your time entering competitions. Despite the name “competitions” rarely require skill, they are nothing but glorified lotteries/ sweepstakes. The most challenging question they are likely to ask you is, “What’s 1+1?” Try searches like “competition entry” and “win a prize“.

60. Or enter contests of skill. Good at SEO? There seem to be a lot of SEO competitions around. Good for nothing? I tried Google on a search for Good for nothing competitions and I get a lot of results. Weed out 99% as junk, and you should still have some good ‘uns there. Good at taking or editing videos and have a good idea? Video sites like metacafe pay you if your video is popular enough (this guy made $100K).

61. Good at poker? You can make a living from playing it all day long (or go broke).

Like surfing?

62. Become an estate agent. Not a real one; in places like the US that’s too much effort. No, you can act for buyers without all that formality by being a buying agent. Clients have a clear idea of what they want but you have the time to keep hitting rightmove -or wherever your local listings are - to find them that special property. In the UK “buying agents” charge 1-3% of the property value.

63. Concierge services: If you know the exact type of bra you want but can’t find it would you pay someone a few dollars to find it for you? You’d be surprised how many busy people would.  Whether it’s a list for the supermarket delivery or a bathroom tap unavailable locally – for some people the hour or two hunting is not worth the $10 you’d charge. Maintain preferences for your signed up customers – so they can tell you to order “milk” without having to specify semi-skimmed, 2 litre, cardboard packing etc. – and close relationships with local businesses and even I’d sign up. Example

64. Be a researcher. At places like answers.com people pay for you to go research an answer to questions they don’t have time to answer themselves. Like, “How do I choose an SLR camera?” and “What’s the name of the theme song to the TV program A Bit of Fry and Laurie?” Note: Google has now closed the answers.google.com service but if you’re that good at hunting things out you’ll find that there are other places where people pay for answers. And, I’m not just talking paid homework help.

101 Ways to make money online (continue)

Actual work

22. Several jobs exist on a pay per hour basis but the better paid ones are probably contract jobs. Some examples of both: Copywriting; proofreading of web content/ebooks/newsletters etc. (elance, guru, rentacoder, graphicdesign, more).

23. Email or phone answering: Be one of the first line support staff manning a company’s phone or email answering service. Filter out the easy questions by pointing the user to relevant sections of his manual and escalate those that seem genuine problems. You are saving the company’s engineers’ time and providing a valuable service – that they pay for. A variation of this is chat help where you actually sit at your PC and text chat to users who’ve reached a firm’s website and clicked the help button. Sometimes a bit of training is involved.

24. Good at web design, HTML, CSS? Create designs (templates) and flog them. You can sell each one multiple times to webmasters who don’t have the time or patience to get familiar with the intricacies and quirks.

25. Monitoring Wikipedia/ forums/ blogs for mentions of a particular name, brand etc. A recent expose showed that several Wikipedia entries were being manipulated by a US political party who had several stooges signed up for just this purpose. Wouldn’t their opponents want to know each time they’re manipulating some facts? Find someone who needs some news “managed” or needs to know when news is being “managed” and get paid for it. You need to be “proactive” as these jobs aren’t “advertised” but the fact that they aren’t advertised means that others don’t know about them, you have an advantage. And there are opportunities in almost every language.

26. Directories: start one. Webmasters pay to be listed in your directory. The better your directory the more you can demand. Niche, hand compiled directories are a million times better than the SERPs dross and both companies and users know that.

27. Filling in surveys. True, there are a lot of duds around but there are still some programs that pay you for doing mind-numbingly dull tasks like filling in surveys. If you aren’t fussed about privacy and are willing to disclose all your personal details (or fictional personal details) there’s usually someone willing to pay you, From YouGov to Ciao. This – and some of the next few – are called IFW or Incentivised Freebie Websites, more here.

28. Get paid to read email. Why would companies pay for that? Plenty of reasons, not least that a human eye can spot SPAM that even the best program doesn’t catch. Even the best anti-spam program has some false positives and some companies can’t afford to have any.

29. Do other filtering. There are people who’ll pay money to have you filter through those millions of ebay listings to find them the specific objects/ curios/ stock/ book that they really, really need. Another filtering idea: Businessmen looking to buy sites regularly visit the Site Buying/Selling forums and trawl through thousands of listings a week. Get talking to one or two of them, offer to get familiar with what they are looking for and to do the looking for them.

30. The web has allowed easy access to industrial quantities of free stuff. For example, in 2007, a major manufacturer of cricket bats had a problem. Cricket bats can’t have knots in them so most of the wood from the willow tree has to be discarded as scrap. Not a few bin bags full but 70 tons. Per week. Yes, lorry loads per day! Free. They listed it on the eastex.org.uk site. Opportunity: Find a company that sells bark mulch for gardens. Find out how much they are paying to buy wood. Offer them 70 tons of fine willow a week at 50% of their current costs provided they pick it up themselves. Or contact manufacturers of chipboard/cat litter/use-your-imagination. OK, eastex may not still have that particular opportunity… but there are others. And on other sites.

31. CPA = Cost per Action. Apart from filling in surveys people pay for all kinds of other things. Like clicking on links (though you may want to check that you’re not participating in click fraud).

32. Posting in Forums: Like hanging out in forums and chatting to other people? Owners of new forums have a problem. If there aren’t a lot of conversations going then people don’t stop to talk. So they get the chat flowing by paying for posts. So, jump in, start chatting and get paid.

33. Do something silly. The milliondollarhomepage guy got famous for selling worthless pixels on his page. But, because he was in the news/having his 15 minutes of fame people focused on that and paid money for what they would normally have realised was fairly worthless links. Yes, people are stupid. ClickHereYouIdiot. But some of these “stupid” people are millionaires today.

34. Do something more useful and less silly. Find a need in a niche and fill it. People complaining in forums about how they can’t find replacement parts for a certain type of car? Find someone who’ll make it and be the broker. People complaining about limitations in a particular niche software? Find a programmer to design a solution and start selling it.

35. Have expertise in a particular subject? Write regularly on that subject and give away your knowledge for free. People will bookmark your blog and visit regularly. The money is in allowing companies to advertise their products and services to your very eager audience. There are third parties like payperpost, blogvertise, creamaid, Blogitive, reviewme, loudlaunch etc., who handle the finding of advertisers.

36. Don’t have expertise in a particular subject? That doesn’t stop bloggers. Some of them blog on the most mundane things – from what they had for breakfast to how they spent their day. And still the advertisers come. So, don’t blog to demonstrate your expertise. Blog to demonstrate your camera obsession and show all the stupid pictures you take everyday. Or blog about breastfeeding your kids.

37. Join the myspace bandwagon, build up a lot of “friends” and bulletin advertise (what?!) the hell out of them. Send them to pages where you promote affiliate programs and you could walk away with five figures every month. There are people who make a lot more.

38. Or use tools like myspace to promote your offline activities – like the music you create. The Arctic Monkeys were record label/ talent scout/ music agent free.

39. Sell trinkets to myspace users. They love them. Especially shiny ones. Myspace backgrounds, templates, animations, scripts, icons and other “myspace resources” are a multimillion dollar industry.

40. Writing a newsletter. Building a mailing list is a long term plan and it pays dividends but don’t expect immediate results. If your newsletter is good and you promote it well you can collect hundreds of thousands of subscribers (who all get the newsletter for completely free). The more subscribers you have on your list the more advertisers pay to feature in your newsletter.

41. Find something that won’t sell, let your imagination run wild. Be willing to think the most outrageous thoughts, the most impossible items to sell. Who would have guessed there’d be an active market for urine. Yes, that stuff you flush away. No, I’m not taking the … mikey. Start selling your outrageous item and you may find that a market already exists. You can also sell your hair, your blood, your eggs, breast milk and body parts… and rent your uterus.

42. Build a community. While some webmasters see lower returns from forum-type sites it’s probably because they’re using contextual programs like Adsense. One of the biggest webmaster communities (forum) is free to join and free to use though it’s very busy, uses massive bandwidth, and costs its owner a bomb. Yet, he makes a very profitable income from organising conferences/tradeshows. His “community” ensures every one is a sell-out.

43. Be a link monkey. Webmasters want people to link to them. It makes them feel loved. And it helps them rank higher with search engines. But they don’t have the time to go begging. You do that for them and get paid per link. If you’re smart you’ll find shortcuts and charge people a lot of money for identifying and approaching possible link “partners”.

44. Related to the link idea above – start a directory submission service. There are lots of directories around like the ODP. Many take free submissions but you have to do these by hand. When you’re familiar with the submission process at a few of the top ones it takes you a lot less time to make submissions. Webmasters have to register, wait for a reply, jump through other hoops etc. They’d rather outsource it to someone who can do it faster and has the time.

45. Another flavour of link-building: Dropping mention of your client’s site in forums, blog comments etc. Yes, clients pay for it. There are spamming ways of doing it and some more decent ways. If you can make relevant posts, posts that contribute to the discussion, and provide only those links that are beneficial to that thread, you’ll be in high demand with webmasters looking to spread the word about their good content. For example, if you genuinely feel that this list of 101 ways to make money is the dog’s testicles – and you participate a lot in webmaster forums – you’re bound to come across threads where dropping a link would help your forum mates. Some website owners pay for that.

46. Press release websites often need people to screen user submitted releases for profanity etc., before running the “news”. Well known blogs often require the same kind of vetting service for user submitted comments to blog articles. Niche directories that take automated submissions need to prevent against SPAM so could use a human review of each submission. There are numerous such opportunities. Spamming site owners with offers of your service may not get you anywhere. The key is to identify a site that looks like it could use this service and make a personal approach.

47. Write an ebook. It’s as easy as falling off a chair. Know something about something? Whether it’s about growing cabbages, writing PERL, plucking nose hair or being a good cop – if you’re a good marketer, or pay a good marketer, you can probably sell a few thousand copies of your ebook. People pay online and download it, no publisher, printer, book shop or other cumbersome details to worry about. In fact, you don’t even need to do the selling. “Affiliates” do it for you (on commission). And, there are ebooks telling you how you can write and sell … ebooks!

48. Become an expert in a particular niche, perhaps affiliate programs for kids’ products, or mailing list services ..and charge for your advice either at online webinars … or even at local business events. The great news is that this is the internet and becoming an expert in a niche often requires nothing more than spending lots of time (online) reading and absorbing. No school to attend, no fees to pay.

49. Data sorting and other mundane jobs usually pay by the hour. This is the online version of envelope stuffing except that there really are opportunities to do these jobs online. It’s a matter of looking in the right places and avoiding all those scammers looking to part you from your money by asking for upfront fees.

50. Good at graphic design? Design and offer logos and icons downloadable for free (and without watermark on payment of a fee). Good icons sell for several hundred dollars a set. And each set can be sold again and again.

51. Create an award and some fancy logos to go with it. The more credible they look the better. Award them to websites you like … provided they pay you an “admin” fee every year to continue using the logo. Giving awards used to be a useful way to get backlinks. But when people’s egos are sufficiently stroked they’ll pay to continue boasting about how good the “rest of the world” thinks they are.

101 Ways to make money online

Disclaimers

There’s no catch and I’m not trying to sell you an ebook. Or anything (read about conmen who do). I’m not even signing you up for a newsletter. This list was put together more as a laugh. It may change your life. Or it may annoy you enormously because of its er, brevity. I hope it does both.

Some ideas here are nice and have halos, others smell of dog urine … but all these methods allegedly generate lotso dosho, and every single one is legal at least somewhere. There’s overlap in everything so some ideas may be repeated (and some may not be covered at all) but I’m still maintaining there are 101 ways to make money online, partly because it makes a good headline. No, solely because it makes a good headline. It sucked YOU in, didn’t it?

No, you won’t get anything for nothing but there are a lot of things you can get for nearly nothing. Like getting to pick holes in my list. Go ahead. Pick holes and then link back here to show people how stupid I am.

I’ve put together a lot of these ideas from thousands of hours discussing businesses for sale with their owners. They’ve shared with me how their businesses operate, how they make money online, how they built their businesses up etc. They’ve given me access to their traffic stats, their earnings and accounts and tax figures. Many even gave me access to their Adsense or other “main earner” accounts. Some of those businesses were so irresistible that I bought them. And sold them. And bought others. It’s a game. I love it.

Most of these business ideas can be run from anywhere in the world, even the United States, Australia and other non-English speaking countries. For consistency sake all figures are quoted in US dollars.

Each method is summarised in a single small para so appreciate it’s not the complete unabridged version. And, no, I haven’t tried each one so out of the 101 business models to make money online 102 may be completely dud. But, I do intend expanding – in due course – on some of the money-making ideas that worked for me.

More disclaimers will come when people sue me (suing can make you money, see #66)

Finding business ideas:

1. Spend all day browsing Site For Sale forums (like the list we have here) for the myriad ways people earn money online. People looking to sell their sites actually tell you how they make money! Pick one that suits you. Research it a bit, and away and start your own business. Or use a search engine to find ways to make money online. It seems to be so easy that it’s almost impossible to find someone who doesn’t know how to do it. (But why stop at one search engine (SE)? Most people get to less than 1% of the top qualify info they’re seeking because they use just one SE like Google, don’t have the vaguest of ideas of the advanced search features available, and don’t know the benefits to be had using specialised SEs, local SEs etc. )

2. Bundle the two above to tell other people how to make money online. They always want to know. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know yourself, you can still charge them for it. I obviously don’t have a clue as I’m giving it all away. You can now ignore everything else I say. But don’t go spending money on internet cons promising to make you a millionaire and here’s how to spot them.

3. Be more inventive with your search. Look for small business franchise newsletters. Or for home jobs in your particular niche or hobby. (And check point #2 above for those specialised SEs). You can also go through the appropriate DMOZ categories (examples: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12)

But using “search” is just the start of the game. There are simply so, so many ways. We hope you hang around to find out.

4. Like the guy you can pay to stick a message in a bottle for you and throw it into the sea. He’s made tens of thousands of dollars already. And there are several others like him in all parts of the world. Do you live near a sea or river? Or join the cleanup of those bottles and get your council to contribute.

Domains

5. The dot com gold rush made many millionaires but there’s still plenty of money in domain real estate and still some good catches available. A good dot com may be difficult to find now. But there are a lot of gTLDs and ccTLDs from the .info to .eu to .tv to .co.in and they all present opportunities being discussed in several good forums. Put your thinking hat on, buy a famous word domain for a few dollars and put it up on the domain selling sites.

6. Lost your thinking hat? Hang out at SEDO. DNForurms, Afternics and other places where domains are bought and sold. Provided you learn enough about the market to recognise bargains you could make a living from just buying existing domains and reselling them.

7. If you’re smart you’ll run dictionary checks against available domain names and auto-check them against search volumes (using OST, Wordtracker etc.) for that term and Pay Per Click (PPC) rates in the major ad networks (example) to work out which ones are likely to be more profitable. If you can pick up the domain for a profitable term that’s searched for often you can use a domain parking program. Or post a little bit of relevant content and get a link or two … and the search engines will start sending you traffic. If the phrase people are typing in coincides exactly with your domain name it gives you a great head start with SEs.

8. If you’re smart AND a linguist you’d be doing that in multiple languages. And not paying for any domain till you’ve tried it free for five days to see if it does indeed get any type-in traffic (and how well that traffic converts). After you’ve tried it for five days and dropped it there’s nothing to stop you immediately picking it up again for another five day trial. Strange, but true. It’s not kiting, it’s legal.

9. Misspellings. Massive opportunities still exist in the misspelling/typo market. People trying to get elsewhere land on your site instead … and you sell them stuff (or use the domain parking idea). Some even tempt fate by making PPC opportunties out of typosquatting on trademarks. Finding typos has never been easier. There are many tools that will find misspellings for you. How easy can it get?

10. Domain parking and type-in traffic: People sometimes guess at URLs. If they want a plumber they may try plumber.com though they’ve never used that site themselves. Find terms that people may be typing in (I will provide a detailed guide to this when I get a chance), buy the domain and populate it with ads. There are several ad programs to monetise your parked domains. Or combine this with the previous idea to buy plummer.com or similar typo domains to make money online.

11. Drop catches. People sometimes forget to renew their domains and these expire. Picking them up will give you some remnant traffic from sites that link to this domain/people who’ve bookmarked it etc. In some cases the traffic can be pretty high. Provided you’re fast enough to replace the copyrighted content that was there with something else you can make quite a profitable business from doing nothing else but this.

12. A variation on the above. Sell the domain back to the previous owners. Note that you may want to tread carefully and get familiar with the rules for that TLD before you start sending off ransom notes. For example, with ICANN (domains that end in .com, for example) the moment you send the previous owners an email saying you’ve got their domain and you’ll give it back for $10K… you’ve lost. It can’t look like a ransom demand. Be reasonable and read the small print of the UDRP. No UDRP required if you’re sitting hostage on myspace.com/theircompanyname or the equivalent at blogger, mybloglog, or other big destinations. LOL, watch them kick themselves and sack their web advisors who told them about taking the “dot info” but omitted to mention the importance of protecting the brand by owning the associated myspace directory (and others)! And it costs you nothing!

13. Run a domain management service. Hundreds of thousands of webmasters (or more) have a large portfolio of domains. A lot of them would like the boring bit taken out of their domain management. You can run their DNSes or just a service reminding them when each domain comes up for renewal. Or an automated monitoring service to tell them when one of their domains/sites is inaccessible.

14. Start a directory to list domains for sale. That’s what people like SEDO do. You can get money just for allowing domains to be listed in your directory.

15. If you’re running a service putting buyers and sellers of domains/sites in touch with one another you could get money for add on services (like providing escrow facilities). For ideas have a look at what existing domain intermediaries offer.

16. Run a domain research service. Wonder what happens when a manufacturer is looking to name a new model car? Or starting a new range of clothing? They need trademark and patent research but now they also need some domain research. Which of the literally thousands of combinations and misspellings (+ <brandname>sucks.com) are taken and which do they need to buy? With a few of the free domain tools discussed on this page and one or two more – like free DNS tools – and a little time you could provide them a service they’d pay a lot of money for.

17. Start your own country: Whoa! yes, you’re reading it right. If you’ve heard of Sealand (what is Sealand) you’ll know that starting your own country is not that far fetched. Once you have your own WhackyCountry you can apply for a .wc (yuk) TLD. Sell millions of domains. Keep some for yourself. Ever wanted a Google.___?

18. Perform domain services for businesses and then send them a proforma (even if they’ve never heard of you). Explain that it’s free this time but you’ll gladly keep acting for them for a small fee. For example, there are thousands of big businesses whose half-wit webmasters/ developers didn’t put in a redirect from the non-www to the www versions of their sites (or vice-versa). One entrepreneur made a few thousands just from pointing out to businesses how they were losing hundreds of customers every year who were landing on http://xxx-companyname.com and finding nothing there.

I’ll talk about domain opportunities some more on this page when I get a chance.

Buying and selling internet businesses

19. Many sites runs on “auto-pilot”. A common price these sell for in site-for-sale forums is 12-24 months’ worth of net earnings (silly price, but it’s true). Provided you don’t mess the site up you can recover your capital in as little as 12 months and then … sell the site to recover your capital again. Double your capital every year. 100% return. Sack your stockbrokers. It really is a crazy world!

20. Site flipping doesn’t require as much capital and expertise as many people believe. Like property flipping, you buy one that needs a bit of TLC. Do it up, then sell it on for a whacking great profit. And, the beauty is you never have to deal with tenants!

21. How about cornering a little market? There are DMOZ categories with grandfathered sites (sites that have been listed for many years) which aren’t being updated. If you can pick up a few sites in the same category and merge their content suddenly you “own” that niche. That opens a lot of possibilities.

The rest of the 101 to come later.

Starting a Business

Steps to Starting Your Business

1. Create your business plan

Believe it or not, part of planning your plan is planning what you’ll do with it. No, we haven’t gone crazy–at least not yet. A business plan can be used for several things, from monitoring your company’s progress toward goals to enticing key employees to join your firm. Deciding how you intend to use yours is an important part of preparing to write it.

• Do you intend to use your plan to help you raise money? In that case, you’ll have to focus very carefully on the executive summary, the management, and marketing and financial aspects. You’ll need to have a clearly focused vision of how your company is going to make money. If you’re looking for a bank loan, you’ll need to stress your ability to generate sufficient cash flow to service loans. Equity investors, especially venture capitalists, must be shown how they can cash out of your company and generate a rate of return they’ll find acceptable.

• Do you intend to use your plan to attract talented employees? Then you’ll want to emphasize such things as stock options and other aspects of compensation as well as location, work environment, corporate culture and opportunities for growth and advancement.

• Do you anticipate showing your plan to suppliers to demonstrate that you’re a worthy customer? A solid business plan may convince a supplier of some precious commodity to favor you over your rivals. It may also help you arrange supplier credit. You may want to stress your blue-ribbon customer list and spotless record of repaying trade debts in this plan.

Assessing Your Company’s Potential
For most of us, unfortunately, our desires about where we would like to go aren’t as important as our businesses’ ability to take us there. Put another way, if you choose the wrong business, you’re going nowhere.

Luckily, one of the most valuable uses of a business plan is to help you decide whether the venture you have your heart set on is really likely to fulfill your dreams. Many, many business ideas never make it past the planning stage because their would-be founders, as part of a logical and coherent planning process, test their assumptions and find them wanting.

Test your idea against at least two variables. First, financial, to make sure this business makes economic sense. Second, lifestyle, because who wants a successful business that they hate?

Answer the following questions to help you outline your company’s potential. There are no wrong answers. The objective is simply to help you decide how well your proposed venture is likely to match up with your goals and objectives.

Financial:

1. What initial investment will the business require?
2. How much control are you willing to relinquish to investors?
3. When will the business turn a profit?
4. When can investors, including you, expect a return on their money?
5. What are the projected profits of the business over time?
6. Will you be able to devote yourself full time to the business, financially?
7. What kind of salary or profit distribution can you expect to take home?
8. What are the chances the business will fail?
9. What will happen if it does?

Lifestyle:

1. Where are you going to live?
2. What kind of work are you going to be doing?
3. How many hours will you be working?
4. Will you be able to take vacations?
5. What happens if you get sick?
6. Will you earn enough to maintain your lifestyle?
7. Does your family understand and agree with the sacrifices you envision.

2. Get Startup Financing

Building A Financial Budget

For many small-business owners, the process of budgeting is limited to figuring out where to get the cash to meet next week’s payroll. There are so many financial fires to put out in a given week that it’s hard to find the time to do any short- or long-range financial planning. But failing to plan financially might mean that you are unknowingly planning to fail.

Business budgeting is one of the most powerful financial tools available to any small-business owner. Put simply, maintaining a good short- and long-range financial plan enables you to control your cash flow instead of having it control you.

The most effective financial budget includes both a short-range month-to-month plan for at least a calendar year and a quarter-to-quarter long-range plan you use for financial statement reporting. It should be prepared during the two months preceding the fiscal year-end to allow ample time for sufficient information-gathering.

The long-range plan should cover a period of at least three years (some go up to five years) on a quarterly basis, or even an annual basis. The long-term budget should be updated when the short-range plan is prepared.

While some owners prefer to leave the one-year budget unchanged for the year for which it provides projections, others adjust the budget during the year based on certain financial occurrences, such as an unplanned equipment purchase or a larger-than-expected upward sales trend. Using the budget as an ongoing planning tool during a given year certainly is recommended. However, here is a word to the wise: Financial budgeting is vital, but it is important to avoid getting so caught up in the budget process that you forget to keep doing business.

What Do You Budget?
Many financial budgets provide a plan only for the income statement; however, it is important to budget both the income statement and balance sheet. This enables you to consider potential cash flow needs for your entire operation, not just as they pertain to income and expenses. For instance, if you had already been in business for a couple of years and were adding a new product line, you would need to consider the impact of inventory purchases on cash flow.

Budgeting the income statement only also doesn’t allow a full analysis of potential capital expenditures on your financial picture. For instance, if you are planning to purchase real estate for your operation, you need to budget the effect the debt service will have on cash flow. In the future, a budget can also help you determine the potential effects of expanding your facilities and the resulting higher rent payments or debt service.

How Do You Budget?
In the start-up phase, you will have to make reasonable assumptions about your business in establishing your budget. You will need to ask questions such as:

• How much can be sold in year one?
• How much will sales grow in the following years?
• How will the products and/or services you are selling be priced?
• How much will it cost to produce your product? How much inventory will you need?
• What will your operating expenses be?
• How many employees will you need? How much will you pay them? How much will you pay yourself? What benefits will you offer? What will your payroll and unemployment taxes be?
• What will the income tax rate be? Will your business be an S corporation or a C corporation?
• What will your facilities needs be? How much will it cost you in rent or debt service for these facilities?
• What equipment will be needed to start the business? How much will it cost? Will there be additional equipment needs in subsequent years?
• What payment terms will you offer customers if you will sell on credit? What payment terms will your suppliers give you?
• How much will you need to borrow? What will the collateral be? What will the interest rate be?

As for the actual preparation of the budget, you can create it manually or with the budgeting function that comes with most bookkeeping software packages. You can also purchase separate budgeting software such as Quicken or WinFast.

Yes, this seems like a lot of information to forecast. But it is not as cumbersome as it looks. The first step is to set up a plan for the following year on a month-to-month basis. Starting with the first month, establish specific budgeted dollar levels for each category of the budget. The sales numbers will be critical since they will be used to compute gross profit margin and will help determine operating expenses, as well as the accounts receivable and inventory levels necessary to support the business. In determining how much of your product or service you can sell, study the market in which you will operate, your competition, potential demand that you might already have seen, and economic conditions. For cost of goods sold, you will need to calculate the actual costs associated with producing each item on a percentage basis.

For operating expenses, consider items such as advertising, auto, depreciation, insurance, etc. Then factor in a tax rate based on actual business tax rates that you can obtain from your accountant. On the balance sheet, break down inventory by category. For instance, a clothing manufacturer has raw materials, work-in-process and finished goods. For inventory, accounts receivable and accounts payable, you will figure the total amounts based on a projected number of days on hand.

Consider each specific item in fixed assets broken out for real estate, equipment, investments, etc. If your new business requires a franchise fee or copyrights or patents, this will be reflected as an intangible asset. On the liability side, break down each bank loan separately. Do the same for the stockholders’ equity-common stock, preferred stock, paid-in-capital, treasury stock and retained earnings.

Do this for each month for the first 12 months. Then, prepare the quarter-to-quarter budgets for years two and three. For the first year’s budget, you will want to consider seasonality factors. For example, most retailers experience heavy sales from October to December. If your business will be highly seasonal, you will have wide-ranging changes in cash flow needs. For this reason, you will want to consider seasonality in the budget rather than take your annual projected year-one sales level and divide by 12.

As for the process, you will need to prepare the income statement budgets first, then balance sheet, then cash flow. You will need to know the net income figure before you can prepare a pro forma balance sheet because the profit number must be plugged into retained earnings. And for the cash flow projection, you will need both income statement and balance sheet numbers.

No matter whether you will budget manually or using software, it is advisable to seek input from your CPA in preparing your initial budget. His or her role will depend on the internal resources available to you and your background in finance. You may want to hire your CPA to prepare the financial plan for you, or you may simply involve him or her in an advisory role. Regardless of the level of involvement, your CPA’s input will prove invaluable in providing an independent review of your short- and long-term financial plan. In future years, your monthly financial statements and accountant-prepared year-end statements will be very useful in preparing a budget.

3. Best Office Space for you

Choose A Location For Your Business

Where should you locate your business? One expert will tell you location is absolutely vital to your company’s success; another will argue that it really doesn’t matter where you are-and they’re both right. How important location is for your new company depends on the type of business, the facilities and other resources you need, as well as where your customers are.

If you’re in retailing or if you manufacture a product and distribution is a critical element of your overall operation, then geographical location is extremely important. If your business is information- or service-related, the actual location takes a back seat to whether or not the facility itself can meet your needs.

Regardless of the nature of your business, before you start shopping for space, you need to have a clear picture of what you must have, what you’d like to have, what you absolutely won’t tolerate and how much you’re able to pay. Developing that picture can be a time-consuming process that is both exciting and tedious, but it’s essential that you give it the attention it deserves. While many start-up mistakes can be corrected later on, a poor choice of location is difficult-and sometimes impossible-to repair.

Types Of Locations
The type of location you choose depends largely on the type of business you’re in, but there are enough mixed-use areas and creative applications of space that you should give some thought to each type before making a final decision. For example, business parks and office buildings typically have retail space so they can attract the restaurants and stores that business tenants want nearby. Shopping centers are often home to an assortment of professional services-medical, legal, accounting, insurance, etc.-as well as retailers. It’s entirely possible some version of nontraditional space will work for you, so use your imagination.

1. Homebased: This is perhaps the trendiest location for a business these days, and many entrepreneurs start at home, then move into commercial space as their business grows. Others start at home with no thought or intention of ever moving. You can run a homebased business from an office in a spare bedroom, the basement, the attic-even the kitchen table. On the plus side, you don’t need to worry about negotiating leases, coming up with substantial deposits or commuting. On the downside, your room for physical growth is limited and you may find accommodating employees or meetings with clients a challenge.

2. Retail: Retail space comes in a variety of shapes and sizes and may be located in enclosed malls, strip shopping centers, free-standing buildings, downtown shopping districts or mixed-use facilities. You’ll also find retail space in airports and other transportation facilities, hotel lobbies, sports stadiums, and a variety of temporary or special event venues.

3. Mobile: Whether you’re selling to the general public or other businesses, if you have a product or service that you take to your customers, your ideal location may be a car, van or truck.

4. Commercial: Commercial space includes even more options than retail. Commercial office buildings and business parks offer traditional office space geared to businesses that do not require a significant amount of pedestrian or automobile traffic for sales. You’ll find commercial office space in downtown business districts, business parks, and sometimes interspersed among suburban retail facilities. One office option to consider is an executive suite, where the landlord provides receptionist and secretarial services, faxing, photocopying, conference rooms and other support services as part of the space package. Executive suites help you project the image of a professional operation at a more affordable cost than a traditional office and can be found in most commercial office areas. Some executive suites even rent their facilities by the hour to homebased businesses or out-of-towners who need temporary office space.

5. Industrial: If your business involves manufacturing or heavy distribution, you’ll need a plant or warehouse facility. Light industrial parks typically attract smaller manufacturers in nonpolluting industries as well as companies that need showrooms in addition to manufacturing facilities. Heavy industrial areas tend to be older and poorly planned and usually offer rail and/or water port access. Though industrial parks are generally newer and often have better infrastructures, you may also want to consider any free-standing commercial building that meets your needs and is adequately zoned.

4. Legal Issues

Getting Your Startup Paperwork in Order

Entrepreneurs aren’t known for being lazy, but most entrepreneurs I know are notoriously lazy about doing legal paperwork. But there’s no place for laziness when it comes to getting licenses and permits for your business. It might seem like an insignificant detail or a waste of money, but it’s necessary. This article provides some information on the types of licenses and permits that small businesses need and how to go about getting them cost-effectively.

The majority of small businesses in operation today are required to have one or more permits to ensure that they meet government-mandated guidelines for safety, soundness and tax. Generally, there are licenses and permits that you need to be aware of on the federal, state and local levels.

Federal Registrations and Licenses

Small businesses typically don’t have to worry about safety and soundness licenses on the federal level, but every business should be aware of federal tax registrations. The first tax registration is the application for an Employer Identification Number. This is done on Form SS-4, found on the IRS’s website, and should be filed by every business. If you’re a sole proprietorship, you can use your social security number instead of getting an Employer Identification Number; however, this is not advisable if you want to keep your personal and business affairs separate. If you like the idea of separating business and personal but are concerned about the impact this separation will have on your taxes, consider incorporating as an S corporation, which will allow you to flow certain business losses to your personal income. You can learn more about how to register as an S corporation and how this varies from other forms of incorporation here. If you decide to register as an S corporation, you’ll need to file Form 2553 with the IRS.

State Registrations and Licenses

Besides the licensing of professional occupations such as doctors and lawyers, many states require licenses for people such as hairdressers, mechanics, private investigators, real estate agents, tax preparers and more. Since the list changes across the different states, you’ll need to check with the state you live in to find out the specific requirements. If you have the funds to consult with an attorney, this is the safest course of action. The least expensive way to get this information is to check with your local SCORE chapter or local SBDC, since the individuals who work in these offices will have guidebooks on licensing for your state. For example, the Pioneer Institute has produced a detailed guidebook on licensing procedures and regulations for small-business owners in Boston. It’s useful to read through this free guidebook to get a sense of the types of regulations and permits you might need, particularly if you’re starting one of the following types of businesses: day-care center, barber shop, beauty salon, caterer, cleaning service, sewing shop, shoe repair, flower shop, livery, small grocery store, street vendor or TV repair shop.

Some permits are registered under the name of the business, while others, such as permits for hairdressers or accountants, place obligations on the individual entrepreneur to register in his or her name. Generally, permits for the individual are needed for occupations and trades that require specific skills, examinations or ethical guidelines that are linked to the individual providing the services-such as standardized testing for accountants or proof of training for doctors. Keep in mind that both individual and business licenses expire and may require retesting before renewal is allowed.

State tax registration is another issue you’ll have to make arrangements for, unless you live in one of the few states that don’t assess income taxes. Otherwise, you’ll need to register under your state’s income tax laws. Check the website for your state’s Treasury Department or Department of Revenue for details and forms for doing this.

If your business needs employees, your state’s Labor Department can grant you the appropriate registration as an employer. Generally, if you use a payroll company to process checks to employees, this registration is provided. Even if you do your own payroll, once you file a tax return, your state’s Labor Department will usually send you a form.

Local Licenses and Permits

Although usually not a huge concern, local taxes can be thorns in your side when you’re trying to start a company, particularly if you don’t address them right away. The city or town may leverage property taxes on the equipment and other assets that your business owns. Some cities charge taxes on inventory, gross receipts and income. Be careful about avoiding these taxes by claiming ignorance. You may be liable for back taxes.

In addition to the Department of Revenue, there are other departments on a local level that grant licenses, including:

• The Health Department: If your business is a restaurant, catering service or other establishment that provides food preparation or sales, you’ll need to be licensed through your local Health Department.
• The police or fire department: If your business attracts large amounts of people, you may need to obtain a license from the local police or fire department.
• The building and safety department: Renovation of any kind almost always requires a permit that states you’re complying with local building ordinances and codes.

There’s no doubt it’s cumbersome to track down all the relevant licenses and permits you may need for your business. Despite my advice, I know that most of the entrepreneurs reading this column will sidestep the licensing process and consciously take on the risk of having to pay back taxes or penalty fees for noncompliance. I suppose that’s better than ignoring licensing because of laziness.

Sources:The Small Business Encyclopedia, Business Plans Made Easy, Start Your Own Business and Entrepreneur magazine.

What Is Blog

A blog (a contraction of the term “Web log“) is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual ^[1], with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketches (sketchblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting), which are part of a wider network of social media. Micro-blogging is another type of blogging, one which consists of blogs with very short posts. As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs.^[2] With the advent of video blogging, the word blog has taken on an even looser meaning — that of any bit of media wherein the subject expresses his opinion or simply talks about something.

10 Unusual Ways to Advertise

Media fragmentation is accelerating. Mass media is losing its mass. The Grammy Awards and Winter Olympics were once regarded by advertisers as vast oceans of interested viewers. This year America yawned and ignored these events completely; too much to do, too little time.

To advertise effectively today, you must abandon the old-school idea of “reaching the masses.” The famous ad man Morris Hite, who was known for his good-ol’-boy approach to advertising, said it best when he quipped, “There is no such thing as national advertising. All advertising is local and personal. It’s one man or woman reading one newspaper in the kitchen or watching TV in the den.”

The key to effective advertising today is to focus on the individual.

Here are some low-cost ways to do it:

• Door-hangers on doorknobs. If your target is geographically defined, such as a day care or grocery store, print a specific offer on door-hangers and place them on doorknobs in your area. This method will produce results in direct proportion to the strength of your offer. For example: “Professional day care for your little ones” is less likely to trigger people’s interest in your day care than “Put your little ones in the care of someone you trust. Our professional day care services are available Monday through Friday.” “Big enough to serve you, small enough to know you,” is less likely to create new shoppers than “Let us wash your car for free while you shop. 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. every Saturday at Super Foods.”
• Flyers under windshield wipers. If you need to reach the drivers of pickup trucks, what better way than to send your doorknob-hanging team into parking lots with flyers to put under windshield wipers? Yes, they may get run out of the mall parking lot by that security guard in the golf cart, and don’t be surprised if some lonely soul with nothing better to do calls you to complain, but the results are definitely worth it.
• Purchased word-of-mouth. Hire someone to be a walking ad and ride up and down in the elevators of tall buildings, stand at bus stops, wait at train stations, hang around in coffee shops and strike up conversations with strangers. “Have you tried that new deli over on 4th street? It’s awesome.” Sounds nuts, I know, but it works.
• Virtual showroom. Build a website to serve as a virtual showroom. It’s one of the best advertisements there is. Use it when people call to ask details about your company, your products or your services. “Are you sitting in front of a computer? Good.” Most people will be, or can easily walk across the room to one. “Now go to Blahblah.com. Yeah, that’s me, there on the right. Now click the button that says ‘Equipment.’ See that second photo?…” Think of this website as a place where you sit down to talk with interested prospects. Make sure the virtual showroom is equipped with all the same tools and props as your physical showroom. You’ll be shocked what it does for the conversion rate of inquiries.
• Nighttime silhouettes. You’ve probably never seen one, but that’s all the more reason you should do it. Nobody else in your town has seen one either. First, locate a windowless wall at least three stories tall in a part of town that has lots of traffic at night, especially foot traffic. Then arrange with the owner of that building–and the building across the street–to let you install a logo projector. They’re unbelievably effective. And in the long run, cheap. In some situations you can even use an old slide projector to achieve the desired effect.
• T-shirts and vests. My rather successful little ad firm, with its 41 offices worldwide, was launched in 1980 with a t-shirt advertising a telephone thought-for-the-day on an answering machine. “Take a Break in Your Day. Dial Daybreak. 258-7700.” I could only afford one such printed t-shirt. I wore it a lot.
• Hand stamps. Someone I know recently attended a ticketed event that required a hand-stamp for readmission. The hand-stamp was a delightful little mini-ad for one of the sponsors. Can you imagine a better advertising vehicle for creating personal identification with a brand? There’s something about looking down at your own hand and seeing a brand image that’s part of you for the evening and knowing that the image has value. You’re having fun, the brand is there, and it’s part of you. The ink might wash off, but the impression it makes on the mind doesn’t fade so quickly.
• Publicity stunt. Nothing is quite so powerful as a publicity stunt that seizes the public’s attention. But be careful; nothing is quite so pathetic as a thinly disguised grab at free advertising. Going for inclusion in the Guinness Book of World Records requires a lot of work, but holding a world record has tremendous value. One fellow recently dropped a golf ball at the edge of Mongolia, then whacked it 1,234 miles all the way to the other side. The journey required 12,170 swings of the club, 90 days and 510 lost balls. He was interviewed on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Today Show, CNN, CNN International, CTV, ESPN Cold Pizza, and PGA Tour Sunday. Articles were published about him in The New York Times, the Times of London, and the AP issued a worldwide story about the exploit. Outside Magazine featured him as one of the 25 Coolest People Now, the Men’s Journal put him in their Hall of Fame, National Public Radio interviewed him, and several European radio networks jumped on the bandwagon. Not a bad ROI on a 90-day investment, wouldn’t you agree?
• Self-publish a book. Nothing screams “expert” quite so loudly as a book written about a subject. You simply can’t imagine the power of your name on the cover of a book. It’s an advertisement for your company that’ll last forever. So write a book that proves you’re an expert, get an ISBN number, register it with the Library of Congress, pay a printer to print your book, then sell it on Amazon.com. You might only sell a few copies online, but the copies you give away in your town will make you a fortune. You won’t make money on the book. You’ll make it because of the book.
• Spray-painted signs. In the early 1970s “Hamp Baker says Drive with Care” was spray-painted on car hoods salvaged from crumpled automobiles, then those hoods were tied with bailing wire to barbed-wire fences along roadsides here and there. Nobody in Oklahoma knew who Hamp Baker was, but his name was soon a household word. When he later ran for public office, he won by a landslide.

You may have noticed that each of the items on this list requires a certain amount of creative energy. There’s no salesman you can call to place your order for these highly effective methods of advertising, but if you’re willing to spend a little time to make a lot of money, pick two or three action items from the list above, then get to work.

And prepare to be amazed.