Web playing a key role in marketing - Social Media

Middle East Internet users are finding more ways to maximise their use of the World Wide Web aside from finding the information they need by using it also to market businesses, a survey revealed.

The research by global marketing communications firm UM , entitled “Wave 5 — The Socialisation of Brands”, showed that users in the region do not surf the Internet just for info and shopping, but to also promote market brands to consumers.

“For marketing communication specialists, it is crucial to understand consumers’ social usage, influence and motivation to help brands build equity, drive sales, increase loyalty and create brand endorsement,” UM MENA Regional Managing Director Paul Katrib said.

“Social media continues to change the way we interact with our peers and fundamentally impacts our thoughts, feelings, attitudes and behaviour.”

The MENA results were impressive, showing that 26 per cent of regular active Internet users have joined at least one brand community compared with 57 per cent who visited official company Websites. Of those people who joined a brand community, 76 per cent said they thought more positively of the brand as a result, 72 they are more likely to buy the brand, 73 per cent said they felt more loyal to the brand and 63 per cent said they recommended others to join.

The research revealed that users contribute material such as written pieces and media, and updates on their daily activities via social networking sites.

The study also showed that on the average, a user is in frequent contact with 38 people via social networks. It also showed that there has been a 60 per cent increase in the number of people creating new profiles on these Websites.

Over half of active Internet users in the region own a laptop and have access to a broadband connection, with around 90 per cent accessing the web from home and the rest through a mobile device.

The Wave 5 study also identified over 540,000 social media amplifiers — those users who have more than 345 friends and followers over social networking sites — in the Middle East and North Africa region. They also enjoy a higher level of activity, and their role as influencers who try to give opinions and recommendations are deemed important.

Most importantly, social networks enable active Internet users to create a network of digital friends who share the same interests or needs. They enable them to acquire a sense of belonging to a group or community.

This year’s findings were discussed by a panel composed of some of the region’s social media experts, including du Chief Strategy and Investments Officer Raghu Venkataraman, CloudAppers Master Chief Dr Baher Al Hakim, Socialise founder Akanksha Goel, AMEinfo.com Editor Edward Poultney and Innovations CEO Tom Roychoudhury.

alvin@khaleejtimes.com

Alvin R. Cabral 

Web playing a key role in marketing - Social Media

Middle East Internet users are finding more ways to maximise their use of the World Wide Web aside from finding the information they need by using it also to market businesses, a survey revealed.

The research by global marketing communications firm UM , entitled “Wave 5 — The Socialisation of Brands”, showed that users in the region do not surf the Internet just for info and shopping, but to also promote market brands to consumers.

“For marketing communication specialists, it is crucial to understand consumers’ social usage, influence and motivation to help brands build equity, drive sales, increase loyalty and create brand endorsement,” UM MENA Regional Managing Director Paul Katrib said.

“Social media continues to change the way we interact with our peers and fundamentally impacts our thoughts, feelings, attitudes and behaviour.”

The MENA results were impressive, showing that 26 per cent of regular active Internet users have joined at least one brand community compared with 57 per cent who visited official company Websites. Of those people who joined a brand community, 76 per cent said they thought more positively of the brand as a result, 72 they are more likely to buy the brand, 73 per cent said they felt more loyal to the brand and 63 per cent said they recommended others to join.

The research revealed that users contribute material such as written pieces and media, and updates on their daily activities via social networking sites.

The study also showed that on the average, a user is in frequent contact with 38 people via social networks. It also showed that there has been a 60 per cent increase in the number of people creating new profiles on these Websites.

Over half of active Internet users in the region own a laptop and have access to a broadband connection, with around 90 per cent accessing the web from home and the rest through a mobile device.

The Wave 5 study also identified over 540,000 social media amplifiers — those users who have more than 345 friends and followers over social networking sites — in the Middle East and North Africa region. They also enjoy a higher level of activity, and their role as influencers who try to give opinions and recommendations are deemed important.

Most importantly, social networks enable active Internet users to create a network of digital friends who share the same interests or needs. They enable them to acquire a sense of belonging to a group or community.

This year’s findings were discussed by a panel composed of some of the region’s social media experts, including du Chief Strategy and Investments Officer Raghu Venkataraman, CloudAppers Master Chief Dr Baher Al Hakim, Socialise founder Akanksha Goel, AMEinfo.com Editor Edward Poultney and Innovations CEO Tom Roychoudhury.

alvin@khaleejtimes.com

Alvin R. Cabral 

Social Media Monitoring: Why using search engines is not enough?

Most people think that they can conduct their Social Media monitoring using search engines only. I'm a big fan of Google but we have to wade through a massive number of irrelevant messages.

The use of search engines:
• Help find some information, but they do not pinpoint information, you will not be able to process the entire amount of information.
• Information humanly processed: Going through the websites and directories is labor intensive, error-prone, tedious and time-consuming.
• Inefficient methods: the time analysts spend to find, collect and aggregate data instead of analyzing data and gaining the competitive edge.
• Ranking technology will not let you retrieve first the more relevant documents.

Let's say that we spent hours (even days) to build a corpus of relevant messages around our subject of interest:

Corpus of relevant data.

Now that we have structured data we can use that information in order to produce different kind of deliverables, here are some examples:
• A newsletter per Business unit or division.
• A dashboard: a graphical scorecard which measures the evolution of the number of documents, compares persons or brands, evaluates the tonality of discussions, identifies the most critical message, blog post, tweet or discussion, then list the most active sources and determines the issues that are most often addressed and the companies most often quoted concerning a given issue and that for all types of sources and in all languages.
• Experts can use this system in order to write reports that can be published in a format and with a frequency adapted to recipient needs (weekly CGM summary, monthly reports, quarterly studies, strategic analyses or recommendations…).

Maybe you have a powerful tool for analytical processing of information but do you really know what your information need is? Did you take the time to qualify the information that you need to gather?
Prior to start using a Social Media Intelligence tool it is necessary to qualify your daily and strategic needs in terms of information in order to optimize your monitoring system in the best possible way.
These can range from knowing your brand health to engaging with your audience online and optimizing your image or defining new risks and protecting against them.

Social Media Monitoring: Why using search engines is not enough?

Most people think that they can conduct their Social Media monitoring using search engines only. I'm a big fan of Google but we have to wade through a massive number of irrelevant messages.

The use of search engines:
• Help find some information, but they do not pinpoint information, you will not be able to process the entire amount of information.
• Information humanly processed: Going through the websites and directories is labor intensive, error-prone, tedious and time-consuming.
• Inefficient methods: the time analysts spend to find, collect and aggregate data instead of analyzing data and gaining the competitive edge.
• Ranking technology will not let you retrieve first the more relevant documents.

Let's say that we spent hours (even days) to build a corpus of relevant messages around our subject of interest:

Corpus of relevant data.

Now that we have structured data we can use that information in order to produce different kind of deliverables, here are some examples:
• A newsletter per Business unit or division.
• A dashboard: a graphical scorecard which measures the evolution of the number of documents, compares persons or brands, evaluates the tonality of discussions, identifies the most critical message, blog post, tweet or discussion, then list the most active sources and determines the issues that are most often addressed and the companies most often quoted concerning a given issue and that for all types of sources and in all languages.
• Experts can use this system in order to write reports that can be published in a format and with a frequency adapted to recipient needs (weekly CGM summary, monthly reports, quarterly studies, strategic analyses or recommendations…).

Maybe you have a powerful tool for analytical processing of information but do you really know what your information need is? Did you take the time to qualify the information that you need to gather?
Prior to start using a Social Media Intelligence tool it is necessary to qualify your daily and strategic needs in terms of information in order to optimize your monitoring system in the best possible way.
These can range from knowing your brand health to engaging with your audience online and optimizing your image or defining new risks and protecting against them.

Social Media Monitoring: Automate your information gathering

With the number of discussions, reviews, posts, tweets exponentially increasing, the daily launch of the same query and the information collection manually is time consuming and painstaking.
So researchers & analysts need to find a way to mine the internet for nuggets of gold, that is to say that piece of information that will bring significance to their investigation and create valuable and actionable intelligence.
Social Media Monitoring solutions enpower you to look into the vast amount of data that is accessible on the Web. Millions of posts, messages, tweets, discussions get published every day. The question is: How to keep track of our subjects of interest (products, brands, campaigns, Leadership Image, Digital Identity ect.) in this information overabundance era?
The answer is simple but the implementation of this answer is challenging: You need to automate the process of collection, indexation, analysis and delivery (I will talk in another post about engagement & alerts, stay tuned).
 However, you will do this only for a limited part of the web: Focusing on social media outlets that are relevant to you business or your specific interests.

Needless to say that the challenge is no longer getting information from the Web and other sources (API for instance), it has become sifting through the data. That's why a solution with sophisticated algorithms and Advanced Boolean Operators is paramount in order to get rid of the noise (noise refers to irrelevant information).

A Social Media Monitoring solution helps to bring order in this data chaos, the web is composed of unstructured content so we persistently need to Extract the data, Tranform the messages, posts, comments, tweets in a standard format for the processing and then Load the content into the database.

Powerful tools for Extracting, Transforming and Loading (ETL) data from source systems into a data warehouse are available today. They support the data extraction from internal applications in an efficient way. There is a growing need to integrate external data, such as product reviews, into these systems. The World Wide Web, the largest database on earth (Some would say that I'm wrong - largest network then) holds a huge amount of relevant information.

Advanced data extraction and information integration techniques are required to process Web data automatically. Increasing demand for such data leads to the question: How this information can be extracted, transformed to a semantically useful structure, and integrated with a "Web-ETL" process into a Business Intelligence system.

Social Media Monitoring: Automate your information gathering

With the number of discussions, reviews, posts, tweets exponentially increasing, the daily launch of the same query and the information collection manually is time consuming and painstaking.
So researchers & analysts need to find a way to mine the internet for nuggets of gold, that is to say that piece of information that will bring significance to their investigation and create valuable and actionable intelligence.
Social Media Monitoring solutions enpower you to look into the vast amount of data that is accessible on the Web. Millions of posts, messages, tweets, discussions get published every day. The question is: How to keep track of our subjects of interest (products, brands, campaigns, Leadership Image, Digital Identity ect.) in this information overabundance era?
The answer is simple but the implementation of this answer is challenging: You need to automate the process of collection, indexation, analysis and delivery (I will talk in another post about engagement & alerts, stay tuned).
 However, you will do this only for a limited part of the web: Focusing on social media outlets that are relevant to you business or your specific interests.

Needless to say that the challenge is no longer getting information from the Web and other sources (API for instance), it has become sifting through the data. That's why a solution with sophisticated algorithms and Advanced Boolean Operators is paramount in order to get rid of the noise (noise refers to irrelevant information).

A Social Media Monitoring solution helps to bring order in this data chaos, the web is composed of unstructured content so we persistently need to Extract the data, Tranform the messages, posts, comments, tweets in a standard format for the processing and then Load the content into the database.

Powerful tools for Extracting, Transforming and Loading (ETL) data from source systems into a data warehouse are available today. They support the data extraction from internal applications in an efficient way. There is a growing need to integrate external data, such as product reviews, into these systems. The World Wide Web, the largest database on earth (Some would say that I'm wrong - largest network then) holds a huge amount of relevant information.

Advanced data extraction and information integration techniques are required to process Web data automatically. Increasing demand for such data leads to the question: How this information can be extracted, transformed to a semantically useful structure, and integrated with a "Web-ETL" process into a Business Intelligence system.

TSA Scans and Pat Downs - Not Good for Survivors of Sexual Abuse

I can't believe no one has thought of this. As I watch people, disolving into tears about their pat-down experiences, I realize that some have been victims of sexual abuse. Have TSA screeners received any training in how to handle these melt-downs? Do they even realize that their probing hands can trigger flashbacks and PTSD. This is serious folks! More on triggers in victims of sexual abuse

Gifts for Social Workers

For years, I have put special designs on shirts, mugs and more via Cafe Press. Have a look at the Social Work World Gift Shop and see what you might find.
 
There are designs for social work specialties such as hospital social work, school social work and geriatric social work.
 
You'll also find gifts for the social work student, recent grad or (like me) the retiring social worker!
 
Enjoy

Social Media: Is it a off-the-shelf solution or a mindset?



What we can add to the above is that Social Media is a mindset, it’s actually a culture that permits to go through a passive way of interacting with the environment to a more proactive behaviour that makes people involved in this discipline actors of their environment.

If the head office is keen to spread this discipline within the organisation and use the right channel to promote that a more formal and disciplined approach of processing the external information is vital in remaining competitive on a daily basis.

Companies, government bodies, associations are becoming far more sophisticated at scrutinising their targets and therefore gather more information and spend more time on processing this information.

A lot of professionals have tented to think that the end result of listening and measuring social media buzz is just a monthly news bulletin or a newsletter. This is actually the starting point, or the "knowledge base" of information.

In this regard, Social Media discipline needs to be seen as an associate that helps the entity make better business decisions by providing actionable intelligence to the right people at the right time. On one hand, people within the organisation are seen as an entry point. On the other hand, Social Media as a system that feeds each entry point with the necessary information but prior to that the Buzz measuring system needs to know who needs information. An other issue is : which kind of push deliverables will be used to send the information? (Alert report, product Buzz, campaign Buzz, Leadership Image buzz...). It’s an interactive process by which each party needs to define the parameters of the information distribution.

“Social media is like a snowball rolling down the hill. It’s picking up speed. Five years from now, it’s going to be the standard.” – Jeff Antaya, chief marketing officer of Plante Moran

Social Media: Is it a off-the-shelf solution or a mindset?



What we can add to the above is that Social Media is a mindset, it’s actually a culture that permits to go through a passive way of interacting with the environment to a more proactive behaviour that makes people involved in this discipline actors of their environment.

If the head office is keen to spread this discipline within the organisation and use the right channel to promote that a more formal and disciplined approach of processing the external information is vital in remaining competitive on a daily basis.

Companies, government bodies, associations are becoming far more sophisticated at scrutinising their targets and therefore gather more information and spend more time on processing this information.

A lot of professionals have tented to think that the end result of listening and measuring social media buzz is just a monthly news bulletin or a newsletter. This is actually the starting point, or the "knowledge base" of information.

In this regard, Social Media discipline needs to be seen as an associate that helps the entity make better business decisions by providing actionable intelligence to the right people at the right time. On one hand, people within the organisation are seen as an entry point. On the other hand, Social Media as a system that feeds each entry point with the necessary information but prior to that the Buzz measuring system needs to know who needs information. An other issue is : which kind of push deliverables will be used to send the information? (Alert report, product Buzz, campaign Buzz, Leadership Image buzz...). It’s an interactive process by which each party needs to define the parameters of the information distribution.

“Social media is like a snowball rolling down the hill. It’s picking up speed. Five years from now, it’s going to be the standard.” – Jeff Antaya, chief marketing officer of Plante Moran

Why do you have to get Social?

• To stay ahead of your competition
• To monitor your brand health
• To know who and where are your influencers
• To track each moves of your detractors and mitigate risks
• To engage with evangelists and detractors
• To track yours products/services or campaigns in the social media outlets
• To increase your visibility

Here are obviously just a few reasons to get on the social media wave. There is a radical shift in the purchase funnel because the customer is back in the driver's seat and express himself. Brands can no longer afford to overlook those comments, replies, references, referrals, tweets, retweets, opinions and perceptions about their products. Needless to say that posts and comments on social media outlets carry more weigh than articles in traditional media. 

We all agree that there are hurdles on the way when it comes to get relevant social media content to feed our analysis. Several platforms claim that they can put at your fingertips information that is paramount for your business activity. I don't think that an off-the-shelf product can understand my challenges and priorities. Only a well-seasoned team of analysts coupled with the right technology can help you stay in touch with online conversations about your brands.

As you all know time is an expensive currency that needs to be optimized. You need to focus your efforts on engagement that is to say responding to meaningful and insightful messages.

I always provide my clients with some key takeaways, here are a few:

• use one single interface to monitor all your subjects of interest. 
• Spend your time where you create value namely on the analysis - produce recommendations, generate insights.
• Don't stack information. All is about relevancy (clean data without redundancy).

“Businesses used to have a small suggestion box near the door that mostly housed dust bunnies and an occasional piece of gum. Rarely would someone get back to you. But people can now make a post from an iPhone or a BlackBerry while they’re sitting in your restaurant.” – Charles Nelson, President of Sprinkles Cupcakes president

Keeping an eye on your Social Media Environment

Understanding your customers is no longer a luxury in the business world, it is essential. Information is the lifeblood of an organization and even more, it’s the backbone of a strategy.

Regardless of size, entities must be able to assess their Social Media environment in order to predict strategies and shape success. Social Media intelligence is much more than knowing what people are doing or saying about your brands, products or campaigns, it is the translation of that knowledge into practical application.

Social media is free, easy, unaided even unbiased (literally Wild) but how can we really track the buzz around our subjects of interest?

Well, you can but be cautious don't just go out there without the necessary social media survival kit.

Obviously when it comes to social media we all have different needs, requirements... budgets and unfortunately the one-size-fits-all solution doesn't always work and common sense needs to be used.

Social Media Intelligence is about :

1. Direction: Why do you need to collect data? Customer Care, Consumer behaviour, product perception, Leadership Image, threats/opportunities detection, early warning. Basically what are the main reasons to keep an eye on the radar.
2. Collection: As mentioned earlier the organization is on I.V for fresh data and  consequently the right keywords are paramount - Keyword generation phase: you need to take into consideration how people interact online, the expression used, mispellings, all declensions...
3. Analysis: It's a funnel-shaped process where a pool of relevant data has been captured and archived. The next step is to make sense of this information using mappings, trend analysis and other kind of reports to easily visualize large volumes of data to turn the raw data into actionable intelligence.
4. Digest: Here is what I like to call the "one step back".  You have valuable information but how can you go the extra mile and make sure that your client or yourself will capitalize on the value of online buzz and swiftly comprehend the big picture?
5. Dissemination: the right piece of information sent at the right time to the right person within your entity. It's one of the biggest challenge faced today by Social Media experts.
6. Interaction: Here is where we need to be cautious, engagement is critical but make sure that you are using the right people to interact with your audience.

The Social Media Intelligence Cycle is basically Listening-Measurement-Engagement. I was willing to share my perspective of this SMI cycle.

Don't use information like a drunk man uses a lamppost, more for support rather than illumination.

Keeping an eye on your Social Media Environment

Understanding your customers is no longer a luxury in the business world, it is essential. Information is the lifeblood of an organization and even more, it’s the backbone of a strategy.

Regardless of size, entities must be able to assess their Social Media environment in order to predict strategies and shape success. Social Media intelligence is much more than knowing what people are doing or saying about your brands, products or campaigns, it is the translation of that knowledge into practical application.

Social media is free, easy, unaided even unbiased (literally Wild) but how can we really track the buzz around our subjects of interest?

Well, you can but be cautious don't just go out there without the necessary social media survival kit.

Obviously when it comes to social media we all have different needs, requirements... budgets and unfortunately the one-size-fits-all solution doesn't always work and common sense needs to be used.

Social Media Intelligence is about :

1. Direction: Why do you need to collect data? Customer Care, Consumer behaviour, product perception, Leadership Image, threats/opportunities detection, early warning. Basically what are the main reasons to keep an eye on the radar.
2. Collection: As mentioned earlier the organization is on I.V for fresh data and  consequently the right keywords are paramount - Keyword generation phase: you need to take into consideration how people interact online, the expression used, mispellings, all declensions...
3. Analysis: It's a funnel-shaped process where a pool of relevant data has been captured and archived. The next step is to make sense of this information using mappings, trend analysis and other kind of reports to easily visualize large volumes of data to turn the raw data into actionable intelligence.
4. Digest: Here is what I like to call the "one step back".  You have valuable information but how can you go the extra mile and make sure that your client or yourself will capitalize on the value of online buzz and swiftly comprehend the big picture?
5. Dissemination: the right piece of information sent at the right time to the right person within your entity. It's one of the biggest challenge faced today by Social Media experts.
6. Interaction: Here is where we need to be cautious, engagement is critical but make sure that you are using the right people to interact with your audience.

The Social Media Intelligence Cycle is basically Listening-Measurement-Engagement. I was willing to share my perspective of this SMI cycle.

Don't use information like a drunk man uses a lamppost, more for support rather than illumination.

20 Most Famous Social Workers of Our Time - Inspiring Read

I was checking out the articles on the MSWPrograms.com website, and came across this list of well-respected social workers. The 20 most famous, they said. As I looked at the list, I was inspired and felt good, all of a sudden, about my 35 year career as a social worker. Much good has been accomplished and social workers have been the ones to effect change.

Read about writers, teachers and public

Top 50 Resources for Students Attending Online Social Work Schools

The Social Work World Blog is now listed as a top 50 resource for students in online social work schools. Actually we think our main site, Social Work World is the best resouce.
You can see our mention here: There are some other great resources listed.

What ever happened to the resourcefulness of Social Workers?

I've been getting a lot of mail lately. And, somehow people believe, since I am an Internet blogger, and run Social Work World, an informational website, that I will "take care" of their needs. Here is an example of what is becoming more and more common:

Good Morning!
I would appreciate some guidance. I graduated from ______ School of Social Work in New York in 1996 with an MSW. Today, I would

Note to those Considering Suicide from Prince Poppycock

What a wonderful message John Quale has for those who feel "grey." Life IS a rainbow.

America’s Got Talent finalist, John Quale (aka Prince Poppycock) says, “Life isn’t gray. Life is a rainbow. And a rainbow wouldn’t be a rainbow if it were missing a single color. And life just wouldn’t be the magical miracle that it is if it were missing a single one of you unique individuals.”

Come Follow my Voluntourism on the Navajo Reservation

I'll be blogging my experiences as I travel to the Navajo Reservation with the Adopt a Native Elder Program. I've been doing this for over three years now and thoroughly enjoy the experience. Voluntourism is fast becoming a meaningful way to travel. Travel, learn, enjoy and do some good while you're at it!

Here's my blog about the experience.

Does High Altitude Affect Suicide Risk - American Journal of Psychiatry

I never thought of this.  AZCentral.com reports on research published in the  American Journal of Psychiatry...  "For years, researchers have observed that U.S. suicide rates appear to be highest among residents of the so-called "Intermountain West" region of the country. Now, fresh research points to a possible explanation: high altitudes."

The research shows a connection between the metabolic

Lindsey Lohan Case - Will the Co-Dependent Behavior Ever End?

So, once again, Lindsey Lohan, is out of jail.... and not in a treatment facility either. This article in the Los Angeles Times questions  whether Lohan is receiving special treatment. I'd like to ask, why she is not IN treatment?

According to the Times, ... in posting bail, Lohan must agree to conditions including wearing a SCRAM alcohol and drug detection device, refraining from being in areas

The Benefit of Customizing Your Resume for a Job You Want

I came across this article today and felt that it would be helpful to social workers who are applying for jobs. The focus of the article is customization. Let's say you are applying for a job working with geriatric patients at a hospital. You could change the focus of your resume from one that highlights your youth work to one that  features your knowlege of medical terminology, your work at a

Danger to self or others? - Florida minister wants to burn the Koran

According to MSNBC, "The government turned up the pressure Tuesday on the head of a small Florida church who plans to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11, warning him that doing so could endanger U.S. troops and Americans everywhere."

This fellow is an extremist just as those who attacked the World Trade Center were extremists. I have heard that over 30 followers have left his church. I commend

Top Ten Tips for a Successful Social Work Job Interview

There are quick and easy ways to prepare for a social work job interview and to interview well. When you are applying for a social work position, you will be judged on your background, experience, fit for the position and interpersonal skills. Here are some tips that will lead you to being one of the top candidates... More: Interview Tips from Social Work World.

Social Work Degree or Not?

We've been having quite a few questions on the Social Work World listserv from people who are trying to decide whether or not they should get a MSW. Some think that a counseling degree or psychology degree will suffice. Fortunately they are looking forward toward licensure. They ask if a counseling license is as good as a social work license, etc.

Of course knowing that the listserv is chock

How To Find Genuine Work At Home Opportunities

The Internet has exploded with opportunities for those who are looking for an additional stream of income or want to break away from their current 9-5 and have more flexibility while working at home.

There isn’t a single type of person that wants to work from home. It can run the gamut from the stay-at-home moms who want to find opportunities to the executive who has recently been laid off and needs to find something in the meantime to tide himself over. Whether you simply want to make a little extra cash or you are trying to bridge the gap between full-time to flex-time work, there is something for everyone who is looking to find a work at home opportunity.

But, how do you find the right opportunities for yourself? If you have done any research at all, you will realize that there is not a shortage of scams out there. You have to be prudent in your choices so you don’t end up spending time or money on a so-called opportunity that is of little to no worth. Here are some legitimate sources that will help you on the road to freedom and flexibility.
What Opportunities Are There Out There?

1. Freelance Writing

Freelance writing is an opportunity that does not necessarily require a lot of experience though it is helpful if you have it. There are countless topics that clients are willing to pay to have content written for and you do not have to be an expert in order to write about it. If you do the right kind of research, freelance writing can be a lucrative endeavour. There are a many reputable sites such as oDesk and Freelance that offer thousands of opportunities at a time.

Another way to find resources for freelance writing is to network. If you know someone who is already writing from home, then ask him or her how they got started. You may be surprised how many opportunities come from putting yourself out there and asking the right questions.

2. Customer Service or Technical Support

If you want to continue working in a field that you are familiar with or have experience such as customer service, sales or technical support, there are sources out there that can help. Sites like Arise and Solo Gig have listings for a variety of consulting or contract positions. For Arise, you must become certified as an Arise Certified Professional. Once this happens, you are in control and have the ability to choose which clients you will work for, how many hours, etc. Solo Gig lists offers that need to be filled quickly. If you are skilled in the technical or professional arena, you can find positions that need placement as soon as possible.

3. Odd Jobs and Tasks

There is a growing community of employers who do not have the time to complete a variety of tasks. These tasks can range from the very simple to the more complicated. For example, there may be jobs that require creating a spreadsheet or another that wants to have forms filled out online. It really could be anything but the common factor is that it is a task that usually does not require a lot of time. There are sites where you can find many different types of short term offers. A couple of examples are Short Task and Live Work.

Finding legitimate work opportunities from home can be extremely time consuming if you don’t know where to look. If you are able to streamline your efforts then you can put that energy into finding the right job that will allow the flexibility and freedom you have been longing for!

Great E-mails for CEU's and Articles of Interest

I just unsubscribed to one of the most interesting and helpful CE e-mail newsletters I have seen. Why? Well, I am retired and not in practice. But I thought I would share this resource with you and copy this week's edition so you could consider subscribing:

CE Calendar


Mental Health Continuing Education

September 1, 2010 - Vol. 12 Issue 9

Published by athealth.com - http://www.athealth.com/

Hoarding - Buried Alive - Another Positive Portrayal of a Social Worker

Every time I need to do a good housecleaning, get ready for a garage sale or clean out my closet, I watch the TLC Show, Hoarding - Buried Alive. Hoarders, on this show, range from the neat and tidy shopaholic to the brain-damaged individual who just can't organize or understand why he collects things and brings them to his tiny apartment.

Many hoarders have a precipitaing incident, such as the

How To Make Money Using Credit Cards

Most of us only think of credit cards as ways to spend money and not ways to make money. But, if you really think about we could all stand to make a bit more money using the same kinds of tricks that card issuers use to get our business. Credit card companies have become infamous for luring new customers with the offer of no interest on purchases. While this sounds great in the beginning, consumers quickly find that once the introductory period runs out they are slammed with a high standard rate. For those who carry a balance on their credit cards this usually means spending loads of extra money on interest. Of course, the easy way to avoid that cost is to pay off your bill each month, but that also means taking money out of your checking account which just means breaking even on your finances.

Imagine if you could have the best of both worlds. You could spend on your credit cards without having to empty out your cheque account at the end of each month and also not have to spend a bunch of money on interest. In fact, you can do just that with a unique spending plan that gives you the freedom of using credit cards but comes with a profit instead of a cost. This plan is not for everyone, only those people who can spend wisely and save carefully. Those that fit the bill can make a neat little profit through nothing more than normal spending.

Making Money With Credit Cards

Step 1: The first step to making easy money with credit cards is to seek out those zero interest introductory offers. Make sure that you find a card that offers you an interest free period of several months, the longer that period lasts the better more money you can make. If you can find a deal that is also free of annual fees then you stand to knock up your profit a bit more. You will have to fill out an application and be approved for this card, so having a fairly good credit file is necessary.

Step 2: Once you have procured the credit card the next thing to do is to use it as often as possible. You should switch all of your spending to your credit card instead of using cash or a cheque. This means every time you go out to dinner, buy groceries, or fill your car with petrol you should use your credit card. At the end of each month pay only the minimum payment. Make absolutely sure that you pay your bill on time each month so you do not lose that zero interest deal.

Step 3: After you have paid your minimum payment and any other necessary bills, take the remainder of your cash and put it into a high yield savings account. This is how you will make money. Over time the money that you put into the account will grow far past what you need to pay off your credit card bill. Since that card has zero interest it should cost you nothing to revolve your balance, but you will be earning big money on your savings account.

Step 4: Finally, when it comes time for your zero interest promotional offer to expire, simply pay it off with the principle money in your savings account. This will leave you with a net profit of all of the interest you earned. There you have it, free money just by doing your normal spending. The only trick is to maintain good credit so that you can continually get those zero interest cards and good accounting skills so you can count up your big profits.

This article was written by Timothy Ng. You can read more of his work at Credit Card Finder, where he has a number of comprehensive guides to find the best credit cards.

People of Walmart - Am I being insensitive?

True confessions. I love laughing at the People of Walmart photos.

I rarely shop at Walmart as I don't like their personel practices and I've heard some really scandalous gossip about their hiring illegal aliens and paying them low wages since we don't yet have comprehensive immigration reform. But, that's a whole separate rant!

My question is.... when I was working with a client I was

5 Things to Know When Starting a Blog

Guest Post by David Brown

Is there a better way to express yourself and interact with unknown yet like-minded people than starting a blog? Perhaps not. Blogs allow an ordinary man to write the story of his life, share his thoughts with people he doesn’t know and even make a living out of it. This has made blogs more than a phenomenon these days. However, not every blog is a success. While some blogs enjoy enormous popularity, others are not equally well known and some fail to attract the attention of the readers completely. Clearly, a huge number of people plough on with a lot of determination as they love blogging but only a few taste the kind of success that they dream of. So if you are contemplating on starting a blog then make sure that you know the ground rules. Here are a few things you should know before you put your right foot forward:

Develop a niche
The world of blogging is a busy place overstocked with the stuffs offered by amateurs as well as professionals. Making your own personal space here can be a challenging thing. It is generally agreed that to build a huge and loyal audience you need to have a niche. It is very important for you to focus on something in particular and have firsthand experience as well as expertise on the subject. This will help you to present things in a creative and interesting manner. On the other hand, if you try to cover life, universe and everything then most probably you won’t be heard.

Content is the king
One of the most important ways to build a successful blog is to provide your readers something that is really intriguing and hard to find anywhere on the web. Fresh and innovative content should be presented in a unique manner in order to attract readers. Top bloggers always make a buzz because they are trendsetters. They focus on introducing new things, stuffs that are unheard of to attract the readers. If you publish bulk articles on topics that others have covered then it’s not wise to expect huge traffic. Also make sure that your blog is free from duplicate content. Major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. hate duplicate content and will punish your blog by not indexing it.

Awesome Marketing
Having good content is a primary requirement but it might not be very effective without proper marketing. Make people aware of what you are offering with effective web marketing. This primarily involves SEO link building. It means your blog should have backlinks from top quality blogs and sites. This will increase the search engine ranking of your blog. If your blog appears in the first few pages of the search results for certain keywords then it will possibly have a decent number of visitors. Also make it a point to promote your blog in popular social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook etc. Having presence in social content sharing sites (for instance, Hubpages) also helps in a major way. Your blog will climb up the ladder of popularity pretty soon if you follow the above tips.

Patience is the key
Before starting a blog it’s important to realize that blogs do not become successful overnight. For many blogs, it takes years to achieve even moderate success. You have to spend quite some time on marketing the blog and tweaking its design. Moreover, to enhance your chances of building a successful blog you should post everyday. Most successful blogs publish more than one article daily. Initially you might not feel motivated to post heavily since you won’t see any immediate results. But understand that the posting more content will increase recognition among the search engines. You must Continue updating your blog and wait patiently. Chances are high that readers and search engines will eventually embrace your blog.

Think twice before quitting your full time job
We understand that you are really passionate about blogging but how rational is it to quit your regular job for it? Blogging is a very uncertain proposition. It works for some and not for others in spite of their best efforts. So leaving your full time job can actually push you towards financial crisis and debt. To play safe you should set aside some time for your blog on a daily basis. Once it gets popular and generates stable revenue, you can contemplate on saying goodbye to your boss.
Are you beginning to think that blogging is a psychological and physical strain? Well, you are mistaken. Blogging can be a very enjoyable, rewarding and satisfying experience if you remember what you have read. Go ahead; maybe it’s your turn to be the winner. Good luck.

Top Social Work Blogs

MSWprograms.com has listed our Social Work World Blog in their Top 50 Social Work Blogs.

It's a great list of blogs by and for social workers so have a look at their handiwork.

Quick and Easy Ways to attract More Traffic to Your Site from YouTube

Guest Post by Richard Chidike

YouTube is one of the most common and biggest social networking websites online today. Millions of web surfers browse through the YouTube site monthly in search of videos that in their chosen niches. There are traffic generating potentials from YouTube but you may not be able to leverage this fact if you don't know the right steps to take and how to perform certain simple traffic-oriented tasks using your YouTube videos. If you had been reading how lots of other website owners had been getting loads of traffic from YouTube, it is time for you to join the successful train and start experiencing very meaningful traffic to your website from YouTube. The right step to take are outlined in this brief discuss.

What You Must Know In Order To Drive More Traffic to Your Site Via YouTube

It isn't rocket science to drive traffic from YouTube irrespective of the type of business you are doing. Saying this is important because some site owners may unnecessarily be intimated by the huge results of those that had been there before them. The skill you have or whatever qualification you may have wouldn't count if you fail to read and digest the following three important YouTube traffic tips.

1 - The first thing is to submit your videos to YouTube. Don't be deterred if you don't know how to create and upload any video at the moment because it doesn't take more a couple of minutes. Essentially you will need free 'Camstudio' which is readily available on the internet to create any prolific video to be shown on YouTube. If you are among those internet marketers that still find it difficult to join the social marketing 'war-fare'; you have to wake up today if you really want your online business to survive.

While using YouTube as a traffic-driving medium, you have to ensure you give your videos adequate titles. This is important because there are lots of marketers that make the mistake of titling their YouTube videos for the search engines. This may not yield the desired popularity for such video because the search engines are becoming smarter than they were few months back. The best option is to give your videos proper titles that will appeal to humans and be sure of its popularity once it starts getting shared and voluntarily linked to on the internet.

The basics concept of any video you upload online should be to either entertain or educate so you have to carefully make it worth your viewers' while. If you have some educational or informative tips to give, nothing prevents you from sitting in front of your computer and recording 2 or 3 minutes clean video of yourself talking. This is quite acceptable online and can go viral as long as you have useful or informative content in the video.

2 - You shouldn’t forget to include the link to your website or blog in any video you create and upload to the YouTube. This is very important especially if your sole aim of uploading such video is to drive traffic to your online or offline business. The time you spent on the video creation may have been wasted if you fail to provide link back to your site so that those that view your videos can click-in to your blog or site to see more of your offerings. It is common to believe that many viewers wouldn’t type in the URL in the YouTube videos but the truth is that many actually do.

You Can Create a Community of YouTube Video Viewers

3 - This is similar to asking potential clients to subscribe to your newsletter but in this case, they would be subscribing to your YouTube channel so that they will know when you post new videos. This can effectively bring repeated traffic to your site especially if you have very insightful videos on display. You can simply ask people to subscribe to your YouyTube video channel by mentioning it at the beginning and the end of your videos but be sure to make your videos are informative as possible.

Author:
Richard Chidike is the owner and founder of Motivatory.com. As a professional blogger with valuable years of experience in internet marketing, his motivational blog is fully dedicated to helping bloggers and internet marketers succeed online. You can join me on twitter at Motivatory.

Make Money Online in Record Time by Building Your List!

Guest Post by Paul McCarthy

If you're new to making money online then I have three words that will hopefully transform the way you look at your new business. This article will help you make money online in record time and I only wish I had this information when I started out!

Build Your List

All the top internet marketers out there have the ability to generate wealth on demand and the reason they can do this is because they have spent time to get people onto their mailing list.

This means that when they release new information products, they instantly have a list of prospects to sell items to. This usually means an instant pay off every time a product is launched and is extremely powerful.

How do you Build a Sizable list?

Building a list is actually pretty easy. Here are the steps that you need to follow:-

1. Create a one page web site where you offer a free gift in exchange for the name and email address of your visitors

2. Create the gift that you are going to give away to your visitors – often this simply needs to be a short report. There's no need to create a whole book to give away. Generally speaking, less is more, because people are always after quick fixes to their problems.

3. Drive traffic to your one page web site

And that's really all there is to it.

So, let's assume that we were in the male dating niche. We might have a one page web site that offered a free e-book that people could download. The e-book might tell them how to approach any woman confidently and successfully.

Of course, a male who's having dating problems would visit the page, see the free e-book and feel enticed to enter his name and email address into the opt-in box.

How do you Make Money from your List?

Here's the clever part. You can use software services called autoresponders that allow you to add emails in advance of them being sent. This means that you can set up a year's worth of emails to be sent out, sit back and let the whole thing work on autopilot.

So, firstly, you should focus on providing top quality information to your prospects on your list. Make sure that they enjoy receiving emails from you and that you're providing real value and helping them to solve their problems.

After the initial relationship building stage, you can then start make soft and hard sells of products. You can either sell your own products or you can be an affiliate for products that other people have created.

So continuing our example from earlier: Once the prospect is on your list, he'd received some really helpful dating tips from you that he could go out in the “field” and try out on women. After a week or so, you'd then recommend a product, or mention your own product, that is specifically aimed at helping men have more success with women.

Of course you'd mention this product in each of the further emails that you send out.

The Money Making Machine....

And that's really all there is to making money online – it's not rocket science – but learning the skills to get everything set up the first time round takes a little learning.

If you want a rock-star lifestyle and private jet hire then I truly believe that internet marketing is your quickest ticket. If you just take the time to learn the skills you can really create a desirable lifestyle for yourself.

If you'd like to learn step by step how to create an online business that I've just described here then enter your name and email address here: http://www.fromzerotowebsite.com and I'll teach you personally myself for free.

Commenting on Other Blogs - A Great Source of Traffic

Guest Post by Sandeep

You have a wonderful blog that you have started recently. But you are worried about the number of visits or traffic to your blog and almost quit blogging. Well, if you work hard and explore other successful bloggers you will know a lot on how to run your blog successfully with a good number of visitors.

I'm going to share how you can increase your traffic by commenting on others' blogs.

How many of you comment on other blogger's posts in your niche?

Do you know commenting on other blogs in your niche is one of the most important things for a blogger?

Following are the reasons why every blogger should comment on the blogs of his/her niche.

• The immediate benefit you will get is traffic to your blog. You might be following so many other things like link exchange, submitting your blog to blog directories etc to drive traffic to your site. But none of them will get you the 'quality' traffic. Commenting on the blogs of your niche will help you get the quality traffic.
• What makes you comment on other's blog? The obvious answer is their posts. So, you would obviously go through their posts before posting a comment. By going through different posts on different blogs, there is a great chance of you getting some good ideas for you to write a great post on your blog. Reading that many posts will also make you know how to write better and attracting posts.
• Post valid and good comments regularly. By dooing so, there are great chances of people getting interested to know you. Make friends with them. This helps your blog getting linked by them.
• If you keep commenting, you will also get more comments to your blog. Whatever you put out comes back to you. So, keep commenting.
• Search for new blogs in your niche once in a while and comment on them too. This helps you expose yourself to new people in your niche.
• Add value to the conversation with your comment.

But wait! This is not everything. There are a few other things to consider before you comment.

• Your comments should not be like "great post", "nice blog", "Thanks for the great post" etc. You'll be considered a comment spammer if you do so.
• Your comments should be related to the topic.
• Tell him what you like and why you like.
• Don't always put a link to your blog in your comment signature. Add the link back to your blog only if you feel it is relevant to the post.
• Don't add more comments on the same post. It can hurt you more than it helps.

Blogging is not just about what you want to say. What good does it make you, if you don't have visitors to read your blog. So, reach out to people, expose yourself to new friends, new ideas.
Have fun!

How did you get benefited by commenting? Share any other practices that I missed?

Author Bio:
My name is Sandeep. I hope you enjoyed reading this article. If you are looking for more tips on blogging, ideas on making money online, please have a look at http://smmo-startmakingmoneyonline.blogspot.com.

How to Make $3000 per month - A Detailed Guide

Guest Post by Indu Priya

There are many ways to make money online. But this article contains the method I personally use to make $100 per day.

Step1: Decide two ways of making money. I personally make money from list building and affiliate marketing. I work full time focusing on building my list and promoting the affiliate product.

Step2: Write a free ebook and giveaway to the people who subscribe to your list. For your affiliate product, create a blog with 5 articles related the product, including a review of the product.

Step3: Initially, dedicate your time for both list building and promoting affiliate products. Subscribe to the newsletters of 5 experts in your niche and observe how they are promoting their
products. Make a list of their promotional activities. Start implementing them.

Make a list of promotional campaigns that worked for you. Repeat the methods to promote your site.

Once you have a list of 200, you can start making money by promoting your products to your subscribers. Communicate with your subscribers and try to offer the products they desire.

Once you start making a steady income of $200 per month (you can achieve this in a month), focus on promoting the affiliate product. Implement the same marketing methods that you used for building your list. Apart from that, invest $50 - $100 per month on paid advertising.

Do you want to know what 90% of millionaire level marketing experts use for traffic? It's not f'ree traffic, it's paid traffic.

I extensively invest on banner advertising in niche blogs. They do not cost more than $50 per month and I make a minimum of 5 sales from each blog.

Let me tell you another secret. Try to promote products related to dating, fitness and forex. Write 5 articles daily with a link to your blog in the resource box and submit them to ezinearticles.com. These niches do so well in ezinearticles.com that you can easily get 100
views per article.

Let us make some calculations. Let us assume that if 100 people read your article, 10 of them will click on your link. You can expect 1 sale for every 100 visitors. This means that you can make a sale every alternative day. Now, if you get a commission of $20 per sale, you can
easily make $1000 per month.

Repeat, repeat and repeat. Repeat whatever worked for you. Within a couple of months (It took 5 months for me), you can easily make $3000 per month.

Author Bio:
Indu Priya is an online marketer. Get her FREE guide (link
to http://www.hypertracker.com/go/priya123/mmi/) to learn how to get 0-1000 targeted visitors to your site in just one week using both SEO and non-SEO methods.

Smart Internet marketing with Facebook – How to Leverage on the Goldmine of over 400 Million Users

Guest Post by Richard Chidike

It's no longer secret that facebook is the worlds largest networking site but unfortunatly, most internet marketers and web surfers are yet to fully realize the immense possibilities of marketing with facebook. If you have a facebook account, you may not know that millions of other users are logging on to their facebook accounts on daily basis. This amazing social networking site can be used as a very potent business networking ground if only you know what to do and which steps that are right.

If you want to startup a marketing campaign with facebook, it is very essential that you create a separate facebook business page for your business on facebook even if you already have a personal facebook account. This should be the vital first step. Doing this is important because your business should be separated from your personal profile or in you may discover that visitors could begin to socialize and share personal pictures on their personal facebook pages. This certainly isn’t the best practice if you are on facebook for marketing purposes. You simply have to give your business a different identity from your personal facebook activities.

The need to access the pages of facebook is important because you have to create your business profile in this page and begin to project what your business stands with great focus and determination. It is even very interesting to note that there are lots of advertising tools you would use in facebook pages for better optimizations of your marketing campaign. You really have to take advantage of these valuable tools while starting out your marketing with facebook. You shouldn’t get scared when we mentioned these facebook pages because it doesn’t require any special skill to set up. You can easily set it up the same way you got your personal profile page up.

Marketing with facebook is even made much easier by the free access to visitors analytics tools and a precise report on your fan base as well as their activites. This will help you to know the kind of persons or businesses that are following your updates. It is very easy for you to constantly send your updated facebook pages to other facebook accounts that are following your page. The importance of sending these sorts of message to your fans is more appreciated when you want to alert them of certain new developments in your business. That way, you would be sure that they got your message and the possibility of getting positive response is always higher if your fan base constitutes mostly of visitors who are interested in your kind of business.

There are lots of innovative ideas that are being added to facebook by the owners and the employees just to make sure those businesses such as yours get the very best from facebook marketing. You don’t have to let this unique and explosive marketing avenue slip because over 400 million users are huge enough to accommodate any kind of business. There are lots of Facebook Marketing Solutions to choose from such as the Direct Targeted Marketing Tools and the Engagement Ads. You also have more options such as commenting, fanning, sharing, applications, events and so on. If you hadn’t looked at the possibility of marketing with facebook, you may also need to know that these marketing tools would cost you little or nothing to utilize.

Author:
Richard Chidike is the owner and founder of Motivatory.com. As a professional blogger with valuable years of experience in internet marketing, his motivational is fully dedicated to helping bloggers and internet marketers succeed online.

Your First Hugely Important Steps to Making Money Online

Guest Post by Paul McCarthy

In this post I'm going to show you how you can get started making money online in as short time as possible. This process is one that I've been using for the past year to make money online and “fire” my boss.

The great thing about this way of working is that you don't need to have any special knowledge, skills or experience. In fact, if you're not comfortable with doing anything that I mention in this article then you can simply find somebody to do it for you by outsourcing the work to a site like http://www.elance.com.

The First Step to Making Money Online is Finding your Profitable Passion

Our ultimate goal is to create a residual online business that brings in money while we're asleep. It sounds like a far-fetched idea, but let me reassure you that some of my friends are actually doing 7 figures a year online and they really do earn while they're asleep.

Obviously it takes a bit of work to get to 7 figures a year! And it all starts with finding your profitable passion. There is one question that I need you to ask yourself...It's this: How can I help others?

The amount of money in your bank account is in direct proportion to the amount of value that you can provide for others. I want you to stop thinking about yourself and start thinking for others.

What Problems Can You Solve for Other People?

Let me give you an example. Years ago I used to suffer from quite severe acne. Now through a heck of a lot of research, trial and error I actually found a way to heal my poor skin naturally. This knowledge would be hugely valuable to other acne sufferers out there.

In fact, I'm willing to say, that if I took some time to figure out a way of reaching these people with acne problems then it would be very profitable for me.

What problems can you solve? What do you have experience in? And, if you can't think of anything, then ask yourself what you'd be willing to research to help others.

Once you've found your “profitable passion” then it's simply a matter of reaching your target market.

Broadcast your Message through your Web Site...

Now it's simply a case of setting up your web site and also setting up what's called a profit funnel.

Your web site should really have one goal in mind – and that's to capture the names and email addresses of visitors to your site. Once you have people on your list then you're in a great position to push them down what's called a “profit funnel”.

A profit funnel is simply a series of messages that you send to your list. Some of those messages will contain valuable free information (in fact, I always recommend sending lots of free, valuable information for a couple of weeks after your visitors have joined your list) and other messages will contain sales pitches to products that you have created yourself, or that other people own.

Of course, if you sell somebody else's product then you're entitled to a commission.

The Great Thing about this Business is...

The really great aspect of this business is that once everything is set up then it truly runs on autopilot. Can you imagine what it would be like to have a web site and a fully fledged profit funnel making you money each day without having to go to work?

It's a dream that is absolutely possible, you just need to understand the system and then implement it.

Remember – provide real value in abundance, and you'll get even more value in return! And the wealth will flow to you in streams.

If you'd like to learn step by step how to create an online business that I've just described then enter your name and email address here: http://www.fromzerotowebsite.com and I'll teach you personally myself for free.

Free Video Tutorial Shows You How to Make $20-$50 Per Day on Autopilot

Whether you are new or already working on something on the Internet to make money, I'm sure you are interested to learn about any money making method that is working or participate on any opportunity that is generating real money for you.

Goran from Indigitalworks.com has posted a new video tutorial that teaches about how to make $20-50/day on autopilot. This video tutorial is totally free to access. It gives a money making method that anyone can use to start making money online. Even you are a beginner you can learn the method and put it to work right away to make money online.

Here's the direct link to watch the video tutorial:

http://www.indigitalworks.com/Make-Money-Online.html

There are no sign up and opt-in needed. When you landed on the page, the video titled 'How to Make $20-50/Day on Autopilot' will show up immediately and you can watch it and learn to start making money online.

What actually the video is teaching you?

The video is about how to make money online using digital content. It shows exactly in step-by-step on how you can start from scratch to marketing your digital content and generating cash online. This isn’t some sort of traditional method where you have to do research, create your own digital content product, generate traffic to your website to promote your product and make sale revenue.

The video is going to show you a way to get a collection of free and up-to date digital products like ebooks, software, videos, and graphics which are created by other people. Then you can resell these free digital products on the Internet right away and keep 100% of the profit.

There are high traffic e-commerce sites that you can take advantage to market your digital products on the Internet quickly and earn money. These high traffic e-commerce sites allow you to upload your digital products and they will promote the products for you. In the video you will discover several of these high traffic and reputable e-commerce sites where you can set up an account to upload your digitalproducts and get free promotion for your products to generate potential sales. The video will teach you everything you need to know, so you can make use of these e-commerce sites effectively to get traffic and generate sales.

All these free digital products come with either resell sale right or private label right. A digital product comes with resell right means you can resell the digital product on the Internet. A digital product with private label right (PLR) means you are allowed to modify the product in any way you like and you can even change the author name of the product to yours.

There are actually several other ways you can use for besides reselling these digital products. You can break the PLR e-book into a number of articles and do some modification to each article. Then submit the articles to the article sites to gain backlinks and traffic. Alternatively you can offer some digital products as free gifts to your visitors to entice them joining your mailing list. Or you can use the content to create niche website for generating AdSense and affiliate marketing revenue….. Any idea that you come up with on using the (PLR) digital products, you can go for it.

Watch the Video Tutorial Now and Learn How to Make $20 to $50 a Day

Build A Link Wheel To Increase Search Engine Rankings

Guest post by Aden Clark

If you want to increase your search engine rankings then you need good backlinks. This process is also known as search engine optimisation or off page seo. The more relevant your website is for certain keywords and the more relevant backlinks you have to that specific page, the higher your rankings will be in the search engines.

The quality of your backlinks is way more important than the quantity. You need relevant backlinks from sites that have authority as well as page rank. The best way to achieve this would be to develop your own personal link wheel that you have control over. You can then build backlinks to your website for free, and increase the rankings to the first page.

The sites you can use for this process are the popular web 2.0 sites such as squidoo, hubpages, blogger and wordpress, along with many others. If you open up an account on each, you will then be able to post content on this site which will link back to your own. These specific websites have huge trust within the search engines and can pass on trust to your own site.

Although the main domain of these web 2.0 sites are usually high, this does not mean that your article page will have the same. All articles that you upload to these sites will start off with zero page rank so you will actually have to build backlinks to these in order to increase the value of the backlinks to your main site.

If you are not sure of what a link wheel is then here goes. A link wheel is a set of popular online properties that are linked together in a strategic way that maximises the impact on the rankings of the main website. I build my link wheels in a way that all other sites would link in a wheel effect and link to my main site from each. I would never link back to these web 2.0 sites from my main site to ensure one way linking across the whole network.

None of your online properties should have two way links. For example: If i had 5 web 2.0 sites and 1 main website (my money site). I would link property 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4, 4 to 5 and then 5 back to 1. This creates the link wheel. Then i would have a link back to my main site from each property. All the backlinks must include the keyword you are targeting as anchor text.

You can actually create a link wheel for each post on your blog or for each keyword you are targeting but the most important thing of all when using this method is that the content you post on these web 2.0 sites are unique. You can either re-write a blog post 5 times and post one on each or you can use an article spinner to speed up the process. If it spins to 80% unique then that's fine.

The key to success when using this method would be to then build backlinks to your web 2.0 sites. This will increase the page rank of each property and pass on link juice to your main website. Its best to use automated tools for this kind of job as you will not be able to keep up. This whole process is to increase the rankings of your main site to the first page of search results, for free, unless you pay for automated tools to speed things up.

Watch the video below to gain a better understanding of how to build a link wheel for your own website to increase your search engine rankings:


Author Bio:
Aden Clark blogs about how to Make Money Online and creates video tutorials to make it easier for you to learn. Visit Profit-Academy.com today.

Sell Information Products through Clickbank for a Passive Online Income

Guest post by Paul McCarthy

You're probably here because you want to make money online which is why I wanted to put this quick post together for you. I'm going to tell you how you can make money online by harnessing the knowledge that you already have....And if you don't already have the knowledge, then you can learn it in no time at all!

It's really important that you read to the end of this article because you'll be armed with all the instruction you need to earn a passive income online by selling digital information.

Did you realise that selling information products is a multi-million dollar business online? In fact, one guy alone (he goes by the name of Eben Pagan) has generated over 100 million dollars in revenue solely by selling digital information products online. So, now you understand the overwhelming potential of this business, let me tell you how to do it!

How Do You Make Money Online by Selling Information Products?

Firstly, you need to decide whether you want to sell your own information products or whether you want to sell other people's information products for commission. If you're starting out in this business and you want to get your feet wet, then I'd suggest selling the work of someone else to learn the marketing strategies that you'll need before you start to create your own products.

Let me just quickly say that once you have made money online as an affiliate, I recommend that you become a product creator as soon as you feel comfortable doing so. As an information product creator, you can then have an army of affiliates selling your products (rather than the other way round) – and of course you'll make money with each sale. In short, you have a high earning potential as a product creator instead of being just an affiliate.

In this article, I want to tell you about a web site that will allow you to find thousands of digital information products that you can sell today....The site is called Clickbank.

Tell Me More About Clickbank...

Clickbank contains a huge library of digital assets that have already been created and are ready to be sold. This means that you don't have to go through the time consuming process of creating your own information products.

There are a few great features about Clickbank that you should be aware of:-

Firstly, they handle all transactions which means you don't have to worry about payment processing and security – all that complicated stuff is taken care of.

Secondly, Clickbank pay out on time, every time. I have been an affiliate with Clickbank for a long time now (I also have a few products on there too) and they have never missed a pay cheque. You can paid every two weeks directly into your bank account or by check if you prefer.

Thirdly, they provide sophisticated analytics so you can see how many people you have referred to the sales page of a product, how many of those visitors viewed the order form and, of course, how many of them purchased the product.

So, What Do I Have to Do to Make Money with Clickbank?

The first thing you need to is sign up for an account at http://www.clickbank.com. By doing this you will be set up with a unique username (the correct terminology in Clickbank is “nickname”) and this will be the nickname that is used to form what's called affiliate links.

Now, to make money as an affiliate you simply need to get people to click on your affiliate link so that they are taken to the product sales page and then when they buy the product you earn a commission.

One of the great reasons for promoting information products online is that the profit margin is so high. If you tried to become an affiliate for Amazon.com (to sell physical products) then you'd typically only expect to earn 5% of the total value of the product. As a Clickbank affiliate, it is normal to earn 50% and sometimes even 75% of the product value for making sales.

Where Can I Find The Products to Promote?

There is a section within Clickbank called the “Marketplace”. In here you'll find a series of categories (“Health and Fitness” for example) and under each category there are a list of products. You can choose any one of the products to promote and you can generate your affiliate links by clicking on “Promote”.

Once you have generated your affiliate link (or “hoplink” as they're known on Clickbank) you can then add the link to your web site, email signatures, articles...Anywhere you like...to get people to buy through that link.

Once you've decided on a marketing strategy, you then simply need to get traffic. I will be publishing another post that will talk about all the traffic strategies I use to make money by selling information products (the majority of my online income comes from selling digital products) very shortly.

Information Products are the Way to Go!

I have to say that once you've got a system for marketing digital products online, it is really just a case of replicating that system for different products. And once you're at this stage then you can pretty much scale your income up to heights you wouldn't believe.

Author Bio:
My name's Paul McCarthy...And I hope you enjoyed and got some benefit from reading how to make money online from information products.

Now, if you want somebody to show you each and every step in great detail and tell you exactly how to make money online with information products, then you should sign up at my page here: http://www.fromzerotowebsite.com/mmi2 and I'll teach you personally myself, for free.