Summary: Link baiting means creating content that naturally attracts links. This post shares 3 effective techniques for creating link bait content.

This is a guest post by Andreas Horch.

Many Internet marketers speak endlessly about the best ways to create links. It is often said by most of these people that the best way to build links is to create a good, competitive and quality content regularly, aiming to constantly maintain a level of uniqueness.

Though promising, this method has one loophole: Even the best content relies heavily on external factors. Simply said, quality content alone does not get you any attention; it still needs other sites to link to it.

This method is not at all appealing as it seems to be. There should be better ways of enticing other webmasters to your site and eventually link to your content.

Link building generally takes a lot of time when you only rely on getting links through regular content you publish on your website and if you don't post something innovative that would almost win you the Nobel prize you may wait in vain for even a single link, because of the vast amount of content and information published on the Internet every second.

However, there is a way where you can "lure" webmasters to link to your site. This is what is commonly known as "Link Bait." Link baiting strategies are growing in popularity, especially with the vast amount of content and information on the Internet. Here are 3 effective content techniques that you can use to do this strategy properly.

1. Write an article reviewing or comparing services or products of companies or individuals and publish it on your site

Companies just can't resist the idea of free publicity, in whatever medium or channel. Try to give emphasis in creating content that promotes these companies, and you'll eventually see some or even all of these companies linking back to your site from their own.

Do not just go about and post anything for the company without proper preparation though. You have to let the companies of the products or services that you are reviewing know about what you will do for them. Give them a set of questions for them to answer and to serve as your reference when you write the article.

If you become an expert in this format over time, you can now start giving out "seals of approval" and having those seals would mean that you reviewed or ranked the company under your most scrutinizing eyes.

2. Catch the reader's interest using a well documented controversy

A controversy always sparks intrigue to whoever hears it. Likewise, in the world of the Internet, a controversy can also be used to create disputes and thus gaining better exposure. If you have something interesting to say, webmasters would most likely link back to your site. The recent controversy about the "4G iPhone" that was written by Gizmodo literally rake lots of exposure and thus created numerous back links to their site.

Go ahead and speak up information or words that can bring you well out of the comfort zone. From an SEO's point of view, stirring up controversies is a better exposure and may be effective link bait.

3. Get ahead and be the very first to report a particular news or story in your industry

Any breaking news can give a critical impact especially if you are the first one who's going to tell the story. Anybody who is into SEO would strongly agree with you. Just one word of advice: Report news that would have been reported by others within your industry. You can definitely find other members of your industry that would get interested and would automatically link to your site.

Blogs can also be a regular medium for any news. It is a form of media after all; just don't forget that you are doing this partly for the links that you will receive in return for the effort.

The best thing about link bait content is that it is well supported by Google. So you don't have to restrain your own creativity, and enjoy creating good content by setting a goal of getting links for each and every article that you provide in your website.

About the author: Andreas Horch is a professional search engine marketing consultant with over 10 years experience in the Internet marketing industry and CEO Linknami.com, which offers link building and blog advertising tools for individuals and small businesses.

If you are interested in writing a guest post to Zemalf.com, go ahead and contact me. Check the guest post guidelines for more information.

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
3 Tips for Writing Effective Link Bait Content

1. 4 Tips to Turn Your Blog into an Income Stream with Content
2. Is Content Really King?
3. Getting Started with Writing and Marketing eBooks

Summary: Quick tips, resources and links for choosing a best possible time for a webinar or teleseminar with participants from all over the world.

Scheduling a webinar or teleseminar

Arranging a webinar or teleseminar is easy, since you don't need expensive tools for it anymore. However, finding a suitable time when there are participants from all over the world is not that simple.

On this post I show you quick and easy way to both finding the best time for the webinar and informing the time of the webinar to the participants with cool link that shows different time zones.

In this post:

• examples of choosing a time for a global webinar or teleseminar.
• a quick tool to find the most suitable time for your webinar or meeting.
• a link builder you can use to generate a link to be sent to the participants so they can check their local time for the webinar.

How to schedule a global webinar

Use a World Clock Meeting Planner for finding suitable times. You can use the tool for any meeting, but it is meant for easily comparing different timezones.

• Meeting planner for up to 4 cities
• Example cities: Los Angeles (137) - New York (179) - London (136) - Sydney (240)
• For an audience in US-UK-Australia, the most suitable times for a webinar is 1500-1600 EST (not a night time for anyone)

• Meeting planner for 6 cities (advanced)
• Example cities: Bangalore (438) - London (136) - Los Angeles (137) - Manila (145) - New York (179) - Sydney (240)
• When you add India and Philippines to the US-UK-Australia mix, there is no suitable time for everyone (it will be middle of the night for someone)

Always record your webinar, as everyone who want, can't make it to your webinar, no matter how you schedule it.

Informing the time

Even the best webinar service providers fail at delivering localized time for the participants. You can do better, and send them a link like this, modifying the values for date, time and your time zone.

The link will look like this: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=7&month=7&year=2010&hour=15&min=0&sec=0&p1=179

• You can modify the values as needed.
• Go to the site to do that, or modify them by hand, or
• if you're real ninja, make a script that generates a link based on an event you have set.

The variables are:

• day = day, no preceding 0, e.g. 7 = 7, not 07
• month = month, no preceding 0, e.g. 7 = 7, not 07
• year = year, 4 digits, e.g. 2010
• hours = hour, 24H format, e.g. not 5PM, but 17
• min = minutes, e.g. 0
• sec = seconds, e.g. 0
• p1 = timezone (see below for common ones)

Click here to check what the page looks like: 7th of July 2010, 3PM EST.

Find the time zone codes and cities

http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/

• PST – Pacific Standard Time, Los Angeles (UTC -0800) = 137
• MST - US Mountain Time, Denver (UTC -0700 = 75
• CST - US Central Time, Chicago (UTC -0600) = 64
• EST – Eastern Standard Time, New York (UTC -0500) = 179
• GMT – Greenwich Mean Time, London (UTC +0000) = 136
• CET – Central European Time, Madrid (UTC +0100) = 195
• EET - Eastern European Time, Athens (UTC +0200) = 26
• EDT – Eastern Daylight Time, Sydney (UTC +1100) = 240

The system automatically shows Daylight Saving Time (DST) for each city. For example, Helsinki in Finland is always 101, but the time is different whether DST is active or not (UTC does not adjust to DST):

• Summer Time / DST: EEST - Eestern European Summer Time, Helsinki (UTC+0300) = 101
• EST - Eestern European Summer Time, Helsinki (UTC+0200) = 101

Interestingly, the service has a huge selection of cities in their database, not just big, major cities in each time zone. Even the tiny Tampere, Finland (1393). This means that you will find pretty much any city that you need from there (and at least you'll find the nearest "bigger city").

Summary

• Use the time World Clock Meeting Planner to plan a schedule global webinars.
• Find the best possible time by choosing 4 timezones & cities you expect to get webinar participants from.
• Choose the time based on the audience's timezones, not your own (unless they are the same)
• Always record the webinar for later use

Comments? Feedback?

• What tools you use for webinars?
• What's your method for finding the best possible time for a webinar?

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
How to choose a time for a global webinar

Summary: They said I should be creating a product and have something to sell. They told me what to do and how to do it. But they didn't prepare me for the self-doubt.

Too long I've been in the shadows. I want to create a product. I want to have something to sell. I have thousand and one ideas, and it took me years to figure this **** out. I have narrowed the list of ideas into one. The mother of all ideas. And I will turn that idea into one helluva product.

The product will suck

What if I get it all wrong. What if the product will suck. I think I know this stuff, but I maybe don't. Maybe I should research some more to make sure I get it right. Yes, I'm gonna make it perfect before I let anyone else to see it. It has to be right.

Or maybe I'm just not good enough to do this. How can I build a personal brand and establish myself as an expert when EVERYONE knows my first product sucked?

Yes, the others are way better at this than I am. Their products are great. I'm sure their first products were awesome too. That's why they have succeeded. It's not like they have created anything that sucked.

No-one will buy it

Well, maybe I still do it, you know, just to try it. Maybe it won't suck that bad. But what if no-one will buy it?

I've put my heart and soul into this and then no-one will buy it. Again, nothing happens. I will be crushed. I'll be the guy who made a product no-one bought.

Hmm, perhaps it's better if I don't create this product at all. After all, it will suck ass and no-one will buy it anyway.

Those who buy it, will hate it

There's no chance in hell I'm going to create a product that will suck and no-one will buy it. Or maybe someone will buy it. And they will see how bad it is and they will hate it. They will ask for refunds and I'm sure I'll mess those too. I've flunked before and I'll do it again.

They will unsubscribe from my blog, leave my mailing list, unfollow me on Twitter and tell all their friends how much they hated my product. I'll be ruined. I won't be able to create and publish anything, ever again.

Maybe I should work on that other idea I had...

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
They laughed when I said I want to create a product

1. How I (Nearly) Created My First Product in 3 Days
2. Bad reviews – Should you publish them or not?
3. 3 Ways to Earn Money Through Internet

Summary: Part of building an Internet business is learning how to do it. This guest post highlights the importance of knowing your own learning style.

This is a guest post by Lena Morrish and Dima Nikolayenko (with some tweaks by Antti). If you are interested in writing a guest post here on Zemalf.com, go ahead and contact me.

In case you haven’t noticed, starting an online business is just like getting a whole new education! You should be proud of yourself for having taken a chance on a new venture in life. You had to learn a lot about how to build your own website and how to use your Internet marketing tools. Now that you are up and running, you may want to consider further enhancing your knowledge about how to run your business.

Read the manual

If you haven’t already done so, you should extensively go through all of the training materials provided by your web host. By now you are familiar with the terms and concepts that probably once blew a circuit in your mind to take your business to the next level. Many web packages come with really good tutorials that will take you deeper into the layers of your website and its many capabilities.

Once you have gotten as far as you can with the material provided by your web host, it is time to consider stepping out into the world of more formalized training. By formalized, we don’t mean that you have to start taking expensive trips across the country and paying for weekend retreats. While that can be beneficial to those who can afford it, they are by no means necessary.

Nor are we talking about investing a lot of money in books or DVDs. If you are like many others, you probably already have too many unread books on your shelves. What we are talking about is much easier than having to take a risk by spending money.

Free Internet marketing courses and other resources

In the Internet marketing world of today, there are plenty of free resources online, from video and audio tutorials, to hundreds – if not thousands – of articles that give you advice on running a successful business from the ground up. There are also free Internet marketing courses – ones that you can take just by signing up for them with your email address. We strongly urge that you take advantage of these free resources.

Another good resource for learning more about your Internet business is through affiliate marketing programs. Many of these affiliates are very eager to share with you, as it not only benefits them financially by having you affiliate, but it also benefits them to hear about your experiences. Sharing experiences is one of the best ways to learn about running a business because it gets people talking and thinking about new ways to solve old problems.

Know thy learning style

If you have felt hesitant about learning more because you can’t seem to find anything that really makes sense to you, then you should consider your learning style. Maybe you have heard about the differences among those who learn by doing, those who learn by hearing, and those who learn by seeing. Each of these types would require a different type of tutorial. If you don’t know which one you are, there are plenty of free quizzes online to help you determine which style would best suit you.

After you have determined your learning style, go back and see what resources are available to you and give learning something new another try. Once you find the right style of educational material for yourself, you’ll see how much fun increasing your business knowledge really is. And not only that, but you’ll also see how much fun increasing your profits with your new knowledge is!

Lena Morrish and Dima Nikolayenko are the owners of www.InternetBusinessBTS.com, a successful Internet business designed to help other people succeed as well. On their site they offer you free information about all aspects of building a home Internet business. There you can find answers to all your questions such as 'How can I make my website?', 'How can I use marketing tools?', and many other. Come by and see how they have helped people just like you create the Bridge to Success!

If you are interested in writing a guest post to Zemalf.com, go ahead and contact me. Check the guest post guidelines for more information.

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Learning How to Build Your Own Website Teaches You More Than Just That!

1. You Don’t Have To Be a Web Designer to Build a Website
2. Build a Personal Brand You Can Be Proud Of
3. 3 Ways to Earn Money Through Internet

There are many ways to do marketing, Internet business and even blogging. For me, some ways resonate a lot more than the others. And I've noticed I respond to certain kind of marketing a lot better than I do for something else. So perhaps there's something to learn here.

Taking

Do you write blog posts only to get people to your blog and maybe down the line, buy some of your stuff. Or things you promote products of others via affiliate marketing?

Are you hoarding Twitter followers by mass-following people you don't know and hoping they follow you back? Are you trying to get a lot of followers so you could get money from sponsored Tweets? Or drive people to your blog to buy your stuff?

Are you linking and endorsing certain product because their affiliate product pays better (or because they have an affiliate program in the first place and the other company/product doesn't)? Are you aware of free alternatives to the paid products you promote, but refuse linking to them to keep people paying you?

Do you send emails to your list ONLY to make money? Is every mail you send an affiliate product to a product you never even tried yourself, but it does pay a fat commission? Or maybe you actually promote products that are good, but that's all you do.

You do Internet marketing because you want to make money. You want to take their money. You want my money. You're a taker. And I don't like you very much.

Don't get me wrong, it's OK to pursue the entrepreneurial dream. It's OK to make money, but the paradigm shift is here, the way you're selling is changing. Or if you're not changing, you should.

Giving

When was the last time you gave something without expecting anything in return? When was the last time you helped someone? Could you be an unconventional giver?

When was the last time you added something to your blog, or send to your email list, that didn't sell anything. Even indirectly?

And no, sending out free giveaways of an affiliate product does not count...

You know - just give.

Have you sent an honest tip, link or suggestion to your email list or made a post to your blog sending people to a great source of information, just because you think that way? Without affiliate link, or expecting that person to "share the love" and link back?

Do you understand how much TRUST you build doing that?

Helping

How about asking your subscribers what they need help with? Or what do they want to know? Or maybe look into other blogs, Twitter, other social networking sites and search for what people are struggling with...

And then help them, write blog posts, eBooks, make videos and answer their emails. Just help. Give it away for free. No follow-up post the next day to buy your shit. No up-sell one time offer, or even an email opt-in.

Maybe, just maybe you could feel great for doing just that. Wouldn't that be an awesome way to build your personal brand?

Wouldn't it be great if people, when you finally have something for sell, would come and say that they would love to buy and support you for all that you've done for them before?

...Will Set You Free

You have given stuff away for free. You've helped people without expecting anything in return. But now you decided it is time to start selling your own product or service...

Some would say, why you are NOW asking for money? Why are you not giving it to us for free like you used to do? But most will understand, and you keep the trust you've built through power of free, and some will buy.

But you don't stop there. You will continue, you'll continue giving away free stuff, helping people, healing the world. And you'll keep growing your business, selling more while at it. Helping even more people.

You are very honest about it, you're trying to make a living, just like the guy or gal next to you. And you can be very honest that you're in it to make money, get rich even, but deep down you know that you are in it to help.

And that, my friend, makes you truly awesome.

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Give it away for free

1. 3 Ways to Earn Money Through Internet
2. Learn from the Internet Marketer Masters for Free
3. Affiliate Marketing Explained

I've written about the challenges that non-native english blogger faces, but that is nothing compared to the confusion that surrounds the U.S. taxation system. Seems that no-one has clarified the issue once and for all, and thus everyone is guessing. I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice, so proceed with extreme caution, but here's is how I understand it.

DISCLAIMER

I am not a lawyer. Do not take this as any kind of legal advice. This is but my understanding based on information I've found online. Heck, I don't even know if this disclaimer has any validity, because I am not a lawyer, so you should take a notice of that and consult someone who actually knows their taxes, OK?

Non-U.S. Business with No U.S. Activities

Here's a quick guide explaining why most non-U.S. affiliate marketers are not subject to tax withholding in the U.S., hopefully clarifying what we "foreigners" need to know about the U.S. taxation.

This applies to people like me,

• who are not U.S. citizens,
• do not live in the U.S. and
• do not have any employees or equipment in the U.S.

In other words, all my business is done and sourced from where I work (and also happen to live). In my case, Finland. I have a Non-U.S. business with No U.S. activities. If I would have some U.S. Activities, it would be different.

I don't have any U.S. activities, because

• I don't have any employees in the U.S.
• I don't own any equipment in the U.S.

In fact, like many other Internet and affiliate marketers, I don't have any employees and pretty much the only equipment I own is my own computer. Isn't Internet business amazing :)

U.S. Activity and Web Hosting?

Having or not having employees is probably pretty clear to you as well. But owning equipment in the U.S. on the other hand, might sound tricky as many of us have blogs and websites, sitting on web servers in the U.S., right? Well, at least I don't OWN the server...

And unless you have specifically BOUGHT a server that is run in the U.S., you do not own the web server. Hosting websites on a U.S. web hosting service is not owning U.S. equipment. Thus, renting a shared hosting (or even virtual private server) from U.S. based hosting service doesn't mean you have U.S. activities.

To clarify, let me quote Google AdSense Tax Information (they have it right):

Generally, utilizing an unrelated third-party U.S. web hosting service to host your web pages, renting web servers that are located in the U.S. from an unrelated third party, or having your payment sent to a U.S. Post Office Box or mail forwarding address, do not of themselves constitute U.S. Activities.

No Need to Fill the W-8BEN Form

I've had to go through this many times when joining a affiliate program, and every time it's equally confusing. They send or ask me to fill some weird tax forms, even that they shouldn't even need to do that.

Many affiliate programs ask non-U.S. affiliates to fill a W-8BEN form. However, this W8-BEN form is only required to be filled out for U.S. sourced income. Now "U.S. Sourced" doesn't mean where the person writing the check is, it means where the work was done by the payee (or an affiliate).

As the W-8BEN instructions (from IRS) state:

Who must file. You must give Form W-8BEN to the withholding agent or payer if you are a foreign person and you are the beneficial owner of an amount subject to withholding.

In general, as an affiliate for product/service/company X, living in Finland with no employees or owned equipment in the U.S., my affiliate income is foreign sourced income. If that's the case, the foreign sourced income is not subject to tax withholding in the U.S.. No tax forms are required in this instance, e.g. the W-8BEN form.

Source: Forum post, (Why there is usually no need to) fill the W-8BEN form for foreign affiliates

Commission Junction Example

Commission Junction is big affiliate service and for non-U.S. affiliates, they ask affiliates to select either (this is where I first encountered this):

• Certification Of No United States Activities
• W-8BEN Certificate of Foreign Status of Beneficial Owner for United States Tax Withholding

I hope this post clarified to you, that in most cases, the choice is to certify that you have "no U.S. activities". The same goes for many other affiliate programs as well. If they know what they're doing, they have similar place to state that you don't have U.S. activities.

If the people running the affiliate program are not sure, they will send you the forms and ask you to fill them (because they think they have to withhold taxes unless they have the form from you), even that they should just ask if you have any U.S. activity (as they already see that you are not from U.S. when they asked which country you are from.

Anyway, since they don't know what they should do, it's good that now you know better, and you can state that your affiliate income is not subject to tax withholding because you don't have U.S. activities (if that's the case).

Of course, if you do have employees and/or actual U.S. based equipment, the W-8BEN form is quite simple and probably know what to do anyway - or have the resources to get help, as you have employees :)

Conclusion

I say it again, that I am not a lawyer, and this it not legal advice or any kind of fact, but after reading and checking these things many times now, I'm pretty sure this is correct...

In short, I pay and handle my taxes where I work and live, in Finland. This is because I don't have any employees in the U.S. and I don't own any U.S. equipment and thus, don't have any U.S. activities.

If you do have employees in the U.S., or you own equipment in there, your U.S. based income is subject to tax withholding and you do have to fill the required forms and do a whole lot, but unfortunately I can't help you much there. If this is the case, I welcome you to write a part 2 on the subject if you want to share how you do handle the U.S. taxes, just contact me if you're interested in writing such a guest post.

But if you're like me, living somewhere else than the USA, you don't have any employees (or if you do, they're not in the U.S.) and you run your blogs and websites on rented servers (or servers not in the U.S.), all your income is "foreign sourced income" from U.S. point of view.

No IRS tax forms to fill, no U.S. taxes to be paid, just handle the taxes in your own country (which are probably much simpler to manage than the IRS / U.S. system), at least that's the case for me.

Thoughts? Your experiences with the U.S. taxes?

p.s. If you found this post useful, you might want to subscribe to this blog via email to get free useful content like this delivered straight to your inbox (or get the RSS to your reader).

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
US taxes guide for non-US affiliate marketers

1. Affiliate Marketing Explained
2. How To Join Your First Affiliate Program
3. 3 levels of affiliate marketing – link, review and promote

So there must be something to that, right? If you're offering an email subscription option to your blog via FeedBurner's RSS to email option, your blog posts will be automatically send to your readers. This is great (I use it too). But what if you want to send special newsletters for your readers and not just the latest posts you put on your blog? Nope, sending the mails manually is not good, so you need a system for it.

They say you should sign-up for Aweber, which costs $1 for the first month and then $19 a month (or little less if you pay for the full year) and the price will go up as your list gets larger. You're just starting out, you don't have a large following on your blog yet, and paying 19 bucks a month doesn't sound so tempting. So what do you do? Well, you bite the bullet and sign-up for a service and start collecting emails. or you get...

Free Email Newsletter

You can go for the FREE option with Google Friend Connect and use that to deliver email newsletters to your readers. No, it's not an autoresponder system, like AWeber, but it IS a mailing list - FREE mailing list.

And as a bonus, the Google Friend Connect has other features like creating interest polls for your readers, something you might want to do anyway. There are several gadgets available, like ratings and reviews, recommendations, targeted content for your readers, and others which you can use to get your readers involved with the blog. It even connects to the comment systems in WordPress, Drupal and phpBB.

However, because the Friend Connect is not an autoresponder system, so you do have to send out the newsletters manually as an broadcast to current subscribers, and the new subscribers won't get the same sequence of emails as those who joined earlier, so it's not suitable for setting up a eCourse delivered via mail for example. For something even better, you will also want a...

Free Email Marketing and Email List Manager

In the end, you should get a "real" mailing list, if you're looking to make money online. And even if you don't, an proper email newsletter service or autoresponder can be a great addition to any website or blog.

If you're ready to pay for a service like AWeber, go ahead, but I recommend that you sign-up for MailChimp which is free up to 500 subscribers (and 3000  mails a month ~ 6 mails to a list of 500 a month, which is plenty). They don't ask for credit card details and force you to upgrade from their forever free plan if you don't want to, so it's 0% risk free.

Account creation couldn't be simpler.

1. Go to MailChimp
2. Hit "Sign up for free"
3. Enter your email address, desired username and password
4. Go to your email
5. Open the confirmation mail from MailChimp
6. Hit "Activate my account"
7. Done

If you sign-up to MailChimp through my affiliate link AND decide to upgrade to paying option along the line (which you don't have to do, if you don't want to), I will get 30 monkey credits, which I can use to send bananas to my list. I won't get any money and buy myself a fancy tree house in the jungle, but you'll get a great autoresponder system. Seriously, no monkey business.

If bananas is not your thing, you can go set up the friend connect and start building your community right out of the gates, also for free. Or you can get both! And even if you already have a mailing list and autoresponder system up and running, you should still check Google Friend Connect out if you could use some of the features.

How to Add the Google Friend Connect

• Go to Google Friend Connect
  • If you have or start a free blog at Blogger, your site is automatically included in the Friend Connect, so you can go in there right now and check your settings.
• Sign in with your Google account
• Look for a green plus icon and text: Add new site
• Hit it
• Fill in the "Tell us about your website"
  • Website name
  • Website URL
  • Language for the Widgets
• Hit Continue
• Your site has been added.

You can then create a Members -widget for your blog if you want (you can find mine here, on my connect-page, because unfortunately the full widget is bit of a slow loader for my taste).

For the newsletter, check the Newsletters -link and enable the newsletter sign-up when someone joins your site and generate a newsletter sign-up like the one you see on my sidebar on the right.

Was This Useful to You?

How did you like them apples (or bananas even)? If you liked this tip, go ahead and join my site via Google Friend Connect. Go to my "Connect with Antti" -page, and click the Friend Connect widget with the big blue "join this site" -button. While at it make sure you select the checkbox to "sign up for our newsletter".

Why? Because I might throw in some exclusive content & latest mon(k)ey making secret in there one day and you don't get it because you didn't signed-up for the newsletter. It's definitely not as exclusive as Jordan Cooper's super awesome mega exclusive E-Mail Blog newsletter as just anyone CAN sign-up, but it sure is cool.

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Now You Can Start a Mailing List for Free!

1. A little known way to manage your email via sub-addressing
2. Give it away for free
3. Get Free eBooks to Boost Your Online Success

As anyone can write an eBook, it has become a popular method to self-publish a book. Getting a publishing deal for a book is hard, and getting a book printed, delivered and marketed is not only expensive but big effort too. Online, you can write a document, publish it in a downloadable format and you instantly become a published author!

Selling and Promoting eBooks

If you publish the eBook for free, it is a great way to attract new audience, visitors and customers for you, your blog or business. And you can always try and sell the eBook, or promote the eBooks of others as an affiliate. There are millions (my guestimate) of eBooks out there, loads of them sold every day, and people are making a living either publishing themselves or marketing the eBooks as affiliates.

Shopping carts, electronic delivery and affiliate systems like Clickbank or E-junkie (those are affiliate links, so in case you join as a new seller/merchant, I thank you for the coffee!), offer an easy way to sell your own information products, find affiliates to promote your products or find products for yourself to promote as an affiliate.

When looking at information products, meaning a non-fiction eBooks, electronic books work the best when providing information, help and solutions to problems people have. And they work even better if the problem the people have is something they can do online, an "electronic solution" to an "electronic problem".

Why eBooks Do Not Work on Every Market

Of course, not every eBook out there solves a problem, as there are eBooks done just for entertainment, but from marketing perspective it is all problem solving. For non-fiction, the problem might be obvious, like learn how to program in C++. For fiction, the "problem" might be that people are looking to be entertained, or looking for something to read to just enjoy and relax.

But books, electronic or not, are not perfect for every market. Or at least the eBooks themselves are not the solution; it's what the eBook helps people DO. If you're running a business yourself or doing affiliate marketing, be aware of this. And understand what the people really want. They don't want to buy an eBook, they want help to solve their problems.

People who want to lose weight, want to lose weight. People who want to learn to play a guitar, want to learn how to play guitar. They don't WANT to buy an eBook, but they MIGHT buy it, IF they are convinced that the eBook will HELP them to solve their problem.

On the other hand, if someone wants to buy a video game, they probably don't want to buy an eBook about video games instead. Or if someone is looking for new pants, an eBook about pants won't be a big hit.

So eBooks are not perfect, sometimes people really need the hard goods, or some other solution than text (or audio/video for that matter). Lesson? When looking at your current or potential market, offer people what they really want. If an eBook help people get what they want, perfect, if not, look past information products, branch out to other products or services.

Writing Your Own eBook

If you, after evaluating the market, decide that an eBook could work, you should consider writing one. If not for sale, as a free resource you can give away. In certain niches, like the Internet marketing space, we've seen a lot of these. And we've seen a lot of them, because they work, free eBooks bring people to your site and into your mailing list if you're building one.

Personally, I enjoy reading, and eBooks are great way to get information in a format I can easily go back to (have tons of eBooks saved). I'm an information junkie, and just last year alone, I think I read 200+ eBooks, or at least glanced through them and then read the best. Most of the books were free, but some I bought as well, like the Beyond Blogging for example. Reading all those great eBooks, in addition to reading blogs, news and such, I'm keeping myself educated and informed on what happens in the industry and learn a lot while at it. After reading a ton, the next step is probably writing one myself.

If you are interested in writing your own eBook, check out Pat Flynn's eBooks - the Smart Way, a free guide about writing, publishing and marketing eBooks. The eBook is downloadable at his site, SmartPassiveIncome.com, if you Pat's mailing list (the eBooks is free and available for instant download after you join and confirm your subscription).

If you're looking for buying an eBook about launching and selling eBooks, you could take a look at the How to Launch the **** Out of Your Ebook by Dave Navarro & Naomi Dunford. I haven't bought that one myself (although I did use affiliate link there), but based on the authors and what people have said about and looking at how successful the launch of that book was, the stuff in the book seems to work (and it does have a pretty sick 12 months money-back guarantee!).

For "generic" help on writing (not just eBooks), I'd recommend that you add Copyblogger and Write to Done to your reader. WtD is run by Leo Babauta, of ZenHabits.net fame, and he has used eBooks effectively for both branding and making money selling them (check Leo's interview at Problogger.net here, it was done on late 2007, at the time the Zen to Done eBook was published).

And Copyblogger (as I think you think you know already) is hands down the best resource there is for blog writing, copywriting, and heck, writing in general (do sign-up for their newsletter!). Spesifically for eBooks, reading Writing and Selling Ebooks by Sonia Simone will certainly benefit you.

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Getting Started with Writing and Marketing eBooks

1. Get Free eBooks to Boost Your Online Success
2. What Free eBooks You Have Read Recently and Would Like to Recommend to Others?
3. Affiliate Marketing Explained

There are three ways to earn money through Internet.

1. Advertising
2. Selling and promoting products and services of others
3. Selling your own products and services

Each of these ways have the potential to make you full-time income or add another income stream for your Internet business. None of the ways rules the others out, so always think about ways to add additional ways to earn money to your business. At least test the different ways out. After you've found what works the best for you, you can re-think your strategy and start concentrating on the ways that are most profitable for you.

1. Advertising

To make money through advertising, you can either

• Display ads from advertising networks, or
• Sell ads directly to the advertisers

Displaying ads from advertising networks means that you sign up to a service and place a code or link from their service to your website, like blog, and the service displays ads on your site through the code. For example, you can sign up and display ads from Google Adsense. Advertising services, like Google AdSense, are available for some free blogging or website creation services, so this is the easiest way to get started.

The money you make through this kind of advertising is based on

• Clicks on the ads, or
• How many times the ads are displayed

The other way to make money through advertising is to sell advertising directly. This means that advertisers can buy advertising directly from you and you display the ads on your website. An example of this would be selling banner advertising placement for your blog.

To make money through direct advertising you need

• a website (like blog, preferably self-hosted, most free websites don't allow you to sell advertising directly), and
• traffic to make it worthy for the advertisers.

In theory, it is also possible to get paid for advertising without a website. But paid blog posts, sponsored tweets and such are more of a paid service than advertising, or at least that's how I look at them.

2. Selling and Promoting Products and Services of Others

To sell products of others through Internet means setting up an eCommerce store or site. From the ways to earn money through Internet, running an eCommerce site is probably the most complicated one as you would need to get the products for sale, handle delivery, payments, customer service, etc.

Setting up a business where you sell products of others is not nearly as common as an Internet business centered around promoting other people's products. Getting paid for promoting the products and services of others is called affiliate marketing. For affiliate marketing, you don't necessary need a website, although it will make things easier and more scalable for you.

Affiliate marketing is sort of re-selling, but in the digital world you don’t have to move any products, just REFER someone to a service or product. If they buy or join, you get percentage of the sale. After signing up for your first affiliate program and getting the affiliate links to the products you want to promote, you send people to someones website or offering and get paid for the completed sales or for the leads that the traffic you sent generates (e.g. sign-ups for email list or registering to a service).

3. Selling Your Own Products and Services

At the end of the spectrum for earning money through Internet, is selling your own products and services. Your products and services can be fully sold and delivered online, e.g. information products, like eBooks or consultation services through email, instant messaging and Skype. Offline products, hard goods or live consultations and presentations can of course be sold online and online presence is important to these kind of businesses as well.

A service that make money can be anything from hiring yourself as a consultant to building a web service for thousands, if not millions of users. It doesn't matter whether your Internet business is a big company with hundreds of employees or just you. It's about offering people a service they need and are willing to pay for.

To sell your own products online, you need to create the product or outsource the production, and pay someone else to make the product for you. For example, you could write an eBook or hire an writer to write an eBook for you, and you would have your own product to sell.

If you turn your eBook into audio and video, divide into several parts, you have yourself a course in your offering. Add webinars, conference and coaching calls, 1-on-1 consulting and your product product grows into a full-scale coaching course and even a consulting service.

The Chuck Norris of Internet Business,

Antti Kokkonen aka Zemalf

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
3 Ways to Earn Money Through Internet

1. Affiliate Marketing Explained
2. Make Money Review, June 2009
3. Give it away for free

But I'll give you a little teaser.

This will make you stop thinking about money and concentrate on things that really matter.

If you feel it after reading this post, please leave a comment, I'd love to hear what you think!

What would you say is the value of this?

Apple iPod touch 32Gb

The image and the link above are affiliate links, so if you go and click it, and end up buying the iPod or something else from Amazon, I'll be getting a commission from Amazon. I have iPod Touch 32Gb model myself (might be older generation) and I love it. You can always go directly to Amazon, or any other online or offline store and buy your iPod without clicking the links above.

I didn't make this post to sell you iPods, but it'll all make sense soon. And if you paid attention, you just received a free lesson on how to disclose affiliate links according the new FTC regulations.

But now, back to the subject at hand.

What do you think is the value of the iPod Touch, 32Gb and all?

Maybe around 200 dollars?

300 hundred dollars?

OK, that would be about right...

...if I had asked what do you think it COSTS.

But I didn't. I asked what do you think it's VALUE is.

Understanding Value

I'm using the Apple iPod Touch as an example on this post. I will show you why VALUE is way more important than COST or MONEY.

I could be talking about cars, real estate, information products, services, even food. I just happened to be listening to my iPod when this idea popped in my head.

Anyway, here's another way to look at something as trivial as a pocket-sized media player, like iPod:

• There are thousands of entertaining and useful applications and games I can enjoy and use.
• I can listen to educating podcasts with it when I'm on a bus.
• I can watch eCourse videos on it while on a train.

or the other way around

• I don't need to bring books and magazines with me when I'm traveling.
• I can turn hours I sit on a bus, train, car or plane into my benefit by listening and watching educational information or
• I can be playing games if I feel like it.

Let's say I would use ten hours reading eBooks and watching videos to learn something I want. And on the other hand, I would be sitting twenty hours in a bus doing more and less nothing, perhaps reading a bit, until it would make my eyes hurt because of the moving vehicle.

With my iPod Touch, I turn those twenty hours into power-hours, listening to all kinds of podcasts, learning about all kinds of things and getting a few laughs while at it. And I have ten hours at home to do whatever I want as I don't have to go and find, read and learn everything while sitting on a computer.

So I'm using my time more efficiently, learning a lot (which I love) and I have more time to do other things I enjoy.

How do value that?

There's no price tag for making my life more enjoyable really.

How Would You Sell It?

If someone would come to me and say, here's a great mp3-player for you. It costs $300. Buy it.

...I probably wouldn't go for it.

Come on, it looks sweet and it will make you look cool! I know you want it. $300 $280.

...I do like to look cool. But I think I'll pass. I don't really need it.

Selling is hard, right?

What If You Didn't Have To Sell Anything?

You could just show what VALUE it brings...

What you showed me that with this little device, I would get a chance to turn all the hours I'm wasting sitting on a bus every month into something useful.

I could make the most boring hours of my day into something I look forward to. And I could spend ten more hours with my wife at home instead of sitting on a computer.

I don't even have to ask what it costs now. I want it, I want it bad.

I want to be at home, way smarter than I was when I left, hugging my wife. Where's the cashier??

It's a Different Mindset!

I bet you're thinking about getting one for yourself too! OK, maybe not, but it's an interesting way to look at something which is "just a media player".

Yes, there are many media players out there and this is just one of them, but it's the one I have and like, so I used it as an example.

And this post isn't about iPod Touch and it isn't about the joy of portable media players we dreamed about in the 1990's.

This post is about value.

Create something and try to sell it, you will have hard time, well, selling.

Create and show value, and people will rip if off your hands.

Create value and you will make difference.

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
A Little Lesson With Massive Value

1. Do less
2. 3 Ways to Earn Money Through Internet
3. They laughed when I said I want to create a product

But what is that spirit? What does it take to be an entrepreneur?

Wikipedia defines an entrepreneur as "a person who has possession of an enterprise, or venture, and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome". There's some truth to that, but I'm looking for something more and in this post, I present you the five key characteristics and traits that the entrepreneurs have.

1. Entrepreneurs Believe That Success or Failure Lies within Their Personal Control or Influence

Entrepreneurs don't blame others or make excuses when they fail. An entrepreneurs know that everything they needs to succeed is within them already.

This doesn't mean that they do everything themselves, but they do find the way. And when you understand that anything you want is possible if YOU make it happen, you understand what it takes to be an entrepreneur.

An entrepreneur is a person who has decided to take control of his future... Daile Tucker, Are You An Entrepreneur?

2. Entrepreneurs Have an Endless Creative Need To Create Something New

Entrepreneurship is about start-ups. It's about creating something new and innovative. When that is done, entrepreneurs move on. They move on to improve what they have already done or start something new again, letting others continue on their previous "project".

Entrepreneurs passionately seek for new opportunities, new ideas. That's what keeps them going. When they see that new opportunity, or get that new idea about a product or a business, they put all their energy in pursuing that opportunity.

It's the dream and visions, innovation, that drives entrepreneurs to build. Build something new.

3. Entrepreneurs Are Willing To Take Risks in Order to Make It

Entrepreneurs are not afraid about failure. They take calculated risks. They are not controlled by their fears, but their passion instead. And if you are passionate about something, you are willing to take risks, fearlessly.

If your choices are based on fear, you will have to learn to banish those fears before you are true entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs listen to that little voice that tells all the things that can go wrong, but instead of letting the fear paralyze them, they look what they can do to minimize the potential harm.

By managing fear so that it doesn't become an obstacle, you are able to harness opportunity. Self-trust is paramount for risk-taking. Claudette Rowley, Harness Your Entrepreneurial Spirit

4. Entrepreneurs Fail

Entrepreneurs are not perfect. They fail, and they fail hard. They might drive their new business to the ground so hard that everyone around them will think they are gone.

But no, entrepreneurs take those hits, learn their lessons and start again. They get up when they are down, over and over again.

You can't stop an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur sees the opportunity, even in failure.

5. Entrepreneurs Take Massive Action

Entrepreneurs know that nothing will happen unless they do something about it. They know that they can't make their dreams into reality without taking action. And they take that action NOW.

Entrepreneurs don't wait for something to happen before they do something. They determine what they can do right now to take a step closer to their target, and they take that action right away.

And they take one action after another. MASSIVE action.

Massive action means that the entrepreneur won't let anything get on their way, they take action to remove those obstacles. Entrepreneurs start with the end in mind, and do everything that is needed to get there. One action at the time.

Is There an Entrepreneur in You?

If you have these five covered, you don't have to worry about how to spell the word.

You will find the way to do it, just like you find the way to make anything you want into reality.

And that's the entrepreneurial spirit.

What do you think -- is there an entrepreneur in you?

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Do You Have The Entrepreneurial Spirit?

1. 5 Things Yoda Can Teach You About Blogging
2. Achieve nothing – Little advice for getting nowhere

Impossible is Nothing

I've been quiet blogging-wise for this week, mainly because of the 12th IAAF World Championships in Athletics 2009 being held in Berlin. I'm a sports fanatic and championships always get me thrilled -- especially with super-humans like Usain Bolt getting closer to 19 seconds in the 200 meter dash, which is beyond my comprehension.

Between 1979 and 1996, the 200 m world record (19.72s) was held by Italian Pietro Mennea for 17 years.. There were not many who ran under 20 secs for years, and at the time many (me included) thought that the 19.72 record was unbreakable.

But then came the legendary Michael Johnson. Atlanta Olympics 1996, because of time different I had to wake at the middle of the night to watch the games, which I did, and couldn't believe my eyes when Michael Johnson stopped the clock at 19.32s for a new 200 metre world record. 0.4 seconds faster than the unbeatable record of Mennea!

Johnson's time was so amazing, that it was clear that the record would stand for a very long time, as the record seemed unbeatable. But as we know, and as Adidas has stated as their slogan, Impossible is Nothing...

Now Usain Bolt has crushed that record, not once, but twice. Now the record stands at 19.19 secs, and I honestly believe Bolt can run 200 meters under 19 seconds...

What Does All This Have to Do with Blogging?

First of all, if you're not a sports fan and couldn't care less about Athletics, I'm happy you read this far. But training hard and working towards your targets is exactly what Internet business and pro-blogging is all about, isn't it?

What's there to learn from sports and athletics? Quite a bit, but to begin let's look at these four lessons...

1. Have a plan
2. Have a target
3. Work hard
4. Believe

1. Have a plan

Competing in any sports is about careful planning. Every athlete has a thought-out plan and schedule they've created with their coach, based on the main competitions of the season.

Shouldn't an Internet business and a blogger work like this too? If you don't have a plan how you want to build your blog and Internet business, how do you know what you should do and when to do it? Are you going on with a feeling, making things up as you go?

Do you think Usain Bolt manages to do what he's doing (= running faster than anyone else in the world) without a plan. Do you think he wakes up in the morning and then starts to think whether or not he should train today and what that training would be?

Like-wise, the most successful Internet businesses didn't pop-up by an accident. The people behind the most successful blogs started out with a plan, or at least formed that plan at some point of their career to really boost their success. And that's what you should do -- plan out your Internet business -- it can be an editorial calendar for your blog, Internet business plan, a education plan for yourself, etc.

The plan doesn't have to be huge, it doesn't have to lay out your whole (business) life. But at least make sure you know what you blog is about (if you are building a blog that is) and have a plan: Start small, but plan big.

2. Have a target

Athletes have targets. They might target to make in to the finals in the World Champs. They might want to break their record this season. They might set a target to break the world record in 3 years and plan their yearly schedules and training based on that.

Have you set targets for your blog? Are you building your business towards clear targets? If not, why do you do what you do? What is the purpose of the things you do? -- If you don't have targets, you're running blind. You're wandering in the forest with no idea where you should be heading and you run towards anything that catches your attention, or away from it.

You must build your business, blog, marketing, and everything related with the end in mind.

• Set yourself targets to work to towards.
• Break the targets into short-term goals. Yearly, monthly, weekly, daily.
• Have something to "achieve" every day

This kind of approach will keep you focused, enable you to actually achieve anything and daily goals will keep you motivated, as you see yourself going forward.

3. Work hard

No progress is made without hard work. No world records are broken without years of training. The world-class athletes work towards their targets, according to the plan they've laid out every week, every day -- and you should do the same.

Don't spend too much time planning. Or to be more precise, don't get stuck on planning and setting targets. That is called (day-)dreaming. Dreaming and wishing that something would happen might make you feel great for a moment and dreaming big is very important for success, BUT dreaming won't take you anywhere.

Remember to break your targets into smaller parts, goals and even further into actionable tasks. If you've set out a target that feels impossible to achieve, break it down into smaller parts. Getting 100 new readers for your blog is a great target, but it's kinda hard as an actionable task. If you're blog is new, you gotta get it indexed by Google first. Have a blog already -- Maybe write a killer post that might attract new readers: research, plan the content, write a great headline (based on a quick keyword research), write the first draft, refine the post, publish, promote, etc.

You have to TAKE ACTION. You have to work hard to achieve the targets you've set for yourself. And never stop taking actions, always go for the next step. Put your best anti-procrastination tips into use and kick the best getting things done -principles into work here. Continuing with the sports analogies and slogans: Just DO it!

4. Believe

If an athlete does not believe she can make it to the finals, she never will.

If you don't believe you can achieve something, you won't.

It's simple as that, BUT only believing doesn't get you anywhere and you must be realistic.

BELIEVE that you can achieve whatever you want if YOU make it happen.

You won't break the world record in 200 metres if you keep laying in bed all day and you most certainly won't build an Internet business sitting on your couch watching the Athletics World Championships, but you know what, with all the above, you also gotta give yourself a break too and relax every now and then...

With that -- excuse me, I gotta go back watching today's events from the world champs!

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
4 Internet Business Lessons I Have Learned from the World Championships in Athletics

1. 3 Ways to Earn Money Through Internet
2. Learn from the Internet Marketer Masters for Free
3. Top 7 Michael Jackson Songs and Lessons for Bloggers