This is part of the A-Z of Making Money Online series. This series covers the various ways of making money online, in alphabetical order.

Facebook - There are different ways you can make money online using this very popular social web media network. Read: 6 Ways to Make Money with Facebook

Feedblitz - Make money from email subscriptions from your blog.

Flickr - Yes, believe it or not, there are ways you can make money off this photo sharing community.

Fluc - This is a service that helps you to make money with your mobile phone.

Freelance Work - People who wish to make money online often do it with various freelance work.

Tags: FaceBook, feedblitz, flickr, fluc, freelancing, make-money-online

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As promised, here’s the result of our poll: Have you ever read a book about making money online?

And, as you can see in this chart, majority of the JMMO voters say that they haven’t read any online business books, but they plan to do so (35%).

The next group of voters say that they have read a few (28%) and 13% said that they’ve read 1 or 2 so far.

Interesting to note is that there’s a good 24% who seem adamant that they’ll never read an online business book. And, I imagine there are varied reasons for this.

Anyway, here are some interesting comments:

From Barbara Ling -

My favorite to date is Jim Edward’s Lazy Man’s Guide to Online Business (he advocates writing a superior customer care autoresponder sequence that solves 99% of customer questions ahead of time, as well as create a great helpdesk).

The problems with MMO books are that if they require actual hard work…people tend to become quite unhappy with them. Folks are always looking for the Silver Bullet and after doing this now for 10+ years, I know for sure… there ain’t one EXCEPT hard work.

From Kay -

I’ve read a few articles and blogs about making money online. It always struck me that I would find it far too boring to devote sufficient time and hard work to the online aspects, rather than making the objects I like to make and may want to sell. I tried some scheme that turned out to be a pyramid thing of just persuading people to subscribe to introduce more people. BORING! As soon as they wanted my money for “nothing”, I dropped out. I haven’t got a business head and need more intellectual stimulation than what I’ve found online regarding selling.

From Michael Clark -

Books have far too long a lead time, so the information is generally going to either be very generic; or out-of-date. Ask this question again in a few years after self-publishing and on-demand publishing have matured.

From Jennifer Kyrnin -

So far, I haven’t found any that were worth the cost of their printing. All the ones I’ve tried to read have either been MMF schemes or all the same SEO and marketing techniques of every other “build a website” book out there.

Thanks again to everyone who voted. I’ll be posting a new poll soon.

Tags: business books, feedback, online business, poll results, polls

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It’s time to announce the winners of the ZacJohnson.com Market Leverage content. The original post ended up with 100 comments/entries… so I would say it went over pretty well. Without further ado, here are the winners!

This Month’s Prize is Still Up for Grabs: WIN A FREE IPOD TOUCH!

iPod Nano (Highest June Earnings) - CD8298

$200 American Express GC (Random Affiliate) - CD8179

Flip Video Camera (Random Blog Link)
Slick Affiliate

USB Pen - (Random Blog Link)
Darn Good Reviews

USB Pen - (2 Random Commenters)
About Blog Contest & Jay Geiger

Winners will be contacted by Market Leverage.

If you haven’t already signed up to Market Leverage, please do… as this month’s prize is a brand new iPod Touch, which will be going to the referred affiliate with the highest earning for July. The month has just started, so it’s game for anyone to walk away with.

Thank you and good luck!

Don’t forget to visit www.ZacJohnson.com and comment on new posts! Top Commenters are rewarded with fun prizes every month!

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Ever wanted to start an online forum? I always have. If I could ever find a smaller niche that I loved enough I certainly would. But what software do I use for it? How does it make money? How do I get it going? Well, if you ever wanted to know the answers to those questions, listen to this podcast (below).

I talk with Patrick O’keefe who wrote the book entitled Managing Online Forums. We talk about these topics (show notes below):

What’s the difference between a forum and a blog?
What’s the biggest forums out there. Big-boards.com is a great example
Which software to use?
Self-policing members
Social networks vs. forums
Seesmic is threaded discussions, a forum
How do you get it started and keep it going?
How do you make money? Classified ads is a good choice. Adsense. Sponsorships.

Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards

Every day, millions of users log on to their favorite online forums, communities and social spaces and interact with others to get advice and discuss everything from the latest news and trends to their hobbies and professions to whatever else strikes their fancy. Administrators have to lead these communities, deal with difficult users, manage staff members and make tough decisions.

Just thought I’d give you all a heads-up on a couple of contests that the wonderful Kristen King (Biz Chicks Rule) and Char Polanosky (Essential Keystrokes) are currently running for online business folks.

Biz Chicks Rule is giving away an iPod Shuffle. The deadline is on July 13 and the winner will be announced on July 15.

Essential Keystrokes is celebrating 2 years of blogging and Char is holding a giveaway. Prizes include: subscriptions to her favourite (and essential) online tools such as pMetrics, Freshbooks, and Highrise. 5 copies of Darren’s Problogger book and a blog critique from Chris Garrett are also on offer. Deadline is also the 13th of July.

Head on over and try your luck in winning something.

Tags: charlene polanosky, contests, free things, giveaways, kristen king

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When looking for new ways to make money online, the decision to create your own site and build up a member/visitor base is always a good one. Today I will show you how to create a video / entertainment site of your own, while setting up the necessary advertising to turn it profitable. Way before there was all of this video content available, one of the first areas I started making money online in was with freebies, celebrities and video entertainment area. Now, putting all of these methods together and utilizing the free resources at hand, you can create your own money generating entertainment site.

To give you a basic idea of how you can setup your new video entertainment site, I will use the CollegeHumor layout as an example. The key points I will focus on are Building Your Site, Adding Fresh Content, CPM Advertising, Tell a Friend Forms and Newsletter Subscriptions. I have marked several advertising and viral linking methods on the image below.

Building Your Site & Adding Content
For this article, we are going to focus on building a site around funny videos. There are already hundreds, if not thousands of funny video and humor sites out there. The main purpose of all of them is to gain the attention of the user and keep them coming back to the site. In the end, they make money by offering free content and getting paid every time banner ads are displayed. The longer a visitor stays at a web site, the more money there is to be made.

We all know that everyone loves watching videos online and there are already several huge sources that can provide you with free content. Just head over to any of the big video sites like YouTube, DailyMotion or MetaCafe and start grabbing content. These video sites want to get more viewers, and are giving you their “embed” code to place the banners on your site. Since you are grabbing content directly from their site, you don’t have to worry about copyright issues from videos or having to host them on your servers. To make your life easier, these sites already have the videos indexed and broken down into categories, you can easily create multiple categories or new sites based on each different category.

To keep your web site updated with new videos, simply visit these video site often and add new content, or visit the “What’s Hot” categories and add the most popular videos to your site. As your site continues to grow and gets spread around, you should start seeing some nice free traffic coming in through your free search engine listings. Once your site gets larger and established, you may want to host your own videos.

CPM Advertising on Your Site
Once you create your video entertainment site, you are going to try and build the site around your content, along with premium placement for advertisements. In the CollegeHumor.com example above, you can see they have a 786×60 skyscraper on top and a 300×250 banner on the side. Because of the massive traffic and branding of CollegeHumor, they are able to sell their advertising direct and on a CPM basis. Not all of us have this same branding and traffic power, so the next best solution for us, is to place CPM banner advertising on our sites from companies like CasaleMedia, ValueClick Media and CPX Interactive. If you are unable to get approved by any of these CPM networks, you can also place your regular affiliate network offers on the site. (In addition to cpm advertising, you can also play around with contextual advertising, such as Google Adsense. Placing adsense above or below video content has proven to perform well.)
- CPM Networks I Use: CasaleMedia, ValueClick Media, CPX Interactive
CasaleMedia is a more premium network and hard to get approved with. ValueClick Media is one of the largest and easier to get approved with. CPX Interactive is the easiest to get approved with, but also offer the lowest cpm rates.

Tell a Friend Forms & Social Network Marketing
Below the main video content, you should have the option for users to embed the video (if you are hosting your own videos) or link back to your web site. Offering your users the ability to link to your content, will not only give them something to add to their MySpace page, (thus sending more visitors back to your site) but it is also one of the greatest reasons to create a video site… people love to send funny stuff to their friends. In addition to social bookmarks and linking, you should also add a Tell a Friend form, which enables the visitor to send an email to a friend, with your web site url and funny video link. There area few TAF affiliate programs that will pay you to add a tell a friend form onto your web site, where you will get paid every time the form is sent. The ideal placement for a tell a friend form is right below the funny video or funny picture content.
- Tell a Friend Networks I’ve Used: TafMaster & OptMedia

Building Up Your Newsletter
Creating a newsletter for your web site is crucial to it’s growth. In most cases, people will visit your site for a few seconds, then leave. If you offer them a newsletter subscription, you can have them coming back to your site daily. In addition to sending out the latest content added to your web site, you can also feature ads or free content of the day. In most cases, this can be any type of freebie or trial offer from an affiliate network. You can send out mailings daily, once a week or once a month. Sending out daily would be best for traffic as long as you are providing quality content and mailings.
- Mailing Provider I Use: Aweber

In addition to the methods I listed about for earning revenue and increasing traffic, you can also link with partner web sites (check webmaster forums), run “free stuff” (cpa offers) sections on your site, create a forum around your site where users can submit content or even offer your own image/video hosting service. The options are limitless, and each will help in establishing your new web site’s presence.

Before jumping into the video entertainment area, make sure that you spend some time to research other sites and what may be your next competition. There are thousands of sites out there fighting to get top position in search and trying to build a visitor base. If you can create a unique or useful service around video entertainment, you might just be able to create the next hot video portal like CollegeHumor.com, Break.com or EbaumsWorld.com.

Don’t forget to visit www.ZacJohnson.com and comment on new posts! Top Commenters are rewarded with fun prizes every month!

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Interviews are a very important part of your plan to promote yourself. As an expert in your field, you’re going to want to be interviewed as much as possible because it gets your name/brand exposed out to new markets and new customers.

Gayl Murphy has done over 14,000 interviews in her career in Hollywood. She’s talked to A-list celebrities like Russel Crowe, Wil Smith, Angelina Jolie, and thousands more. So Gayl knows how to conduct a good interview. Gayl also knows how to assist YOU if you’re being interviewed.

I got Gayl on the phone for a bit to talk about her experiences interviewing people, and also to find out how you, the small business owner looking for publicity, or blogger, or whomever you are, can be a better interviewee. Also check out Gayl’s InterviewTactics.com site.

Today, I learned about Photrade, a new photography marketplace that’s still in beta. The basic idea is that you upload your photos in the service, then you can sell products based on your photos. These products include: photo prints, apparel, and gift items, as well as digital downloads (stock photo). You can set your own price and they’ll take care of delivering the products to the customer. It also seems like they plan to offer an affiliate programme in the future.

In any case, payments may be: 1) collected in the system and used to buy stuff from the site; 2) donated to your chosen charity; and/or b) sent to you via Paypal (with US$15 minimum payment threshold).

Since it’s still in beta, there are a couple of issues: a) You can only try out the service if you get an invitation; and b) There’s still a few kinks in the system. Plus, I’m not sure yet of its track record when it comes to quality of products, payment systems to photographers, etc.

In any case, I still think it’s a service worth watching. And right now, I have 3 invites available to give away. If you’re interested, leave a comment here answering the question: What kind of camera do you own?

If there are more than 3 folks interested, I’ll raffle off the invites.

NOTE: Thanks to Janette Toral for sending me an invite and telling me about Photrade.

Tags: janette toral, online business, photography, photos, photrade, sell art, selling, selling online

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It was no surprise when MarketingSherpa released their latest reporting, basically stating “PepperJam Network Explodes onto the Affiliate Marketing Scene with Unprecedented Growth and Industry Support“. In the report from MarketingSherpa, they break down some heavy numbers on the largest affiliate networks in the game today, and it’s no surprise to see PepperJam Network giving the big players a run for their money. Here are just a few of the big numbers we are seeing from PepperJam Network after just 5 months from their network launch date. (Results from Partnercentric surveyed top partners)

Networks with Active Affiliates
In the first chart, we clearly see all of the big players in the game which have had networks for years, and it’s really no surprise to see these names listed. However, in the fifth position, PepperJam Network is quickly gathering market share and soon enough, may even pass some of these well known affiliate networks.

Where Affiliates Make Money
The next chart shows which of the top networks affiliates are also working with. All of the same affiliate networks listed in the first chart appear again, but not in the same order. Shareasale affiliate activity crushes Linkshare, even though they have a larger following… and the same can almost be seen with Performics and PepperJam. Performics has a higher following in the top chart, but nearly tied with PepperJam Network in affiliate activity.

Why Affiliates Choose Some Networks Over Others
We are all members of different affiliates networks, but the majority of us only make money with a couple of the many we are affiliates with… why is that? As part of the survey, affiliates were asked the same question and their response was the following:

For more details and the full report, be sure to head over to MarketingSherpa. I’m sure in the followup report, we will see even more promising numbers from PepperJam Network.

What’s New at PepperJam Network?
Based off the report from MarketingSherpa, PepperJam Network is showing some very promising numbers. In addition to their growth in the affiliate space, I also wanted to keep you updated with some news surrounding their network.

- Make Money with eBay: If you ever made money with the eBay affiliate program, you were probably making it through Commission Junction. On April 1st, the eBay Partner Network launched as they removed themselves from Commission Junction. Just recently, eBay and PepperJam Network teamed up to offer affiliates another alternative for advertising their network. Now you can run eBay directly through PepperJam Network. (For all affiliates running Build a Niche Software, the ability to run and track through PepperJam is now available)

- Tons of New Offers: Since going live, PepperJam Network has added an amazing amount of new advertisers to the network. Now with over 250 offers, they are quickly becoming the prominent network to make serious money with. Keep in mind, the 250 offers I mentioned are each their own web site and brand name!

- $10 Signup Bonus to New Affiliates: With the explosion of growth PepperJam Network is seeing, they are only pushing harder to make this growth continue. If you aren’t currently an affiliate with PepperJam Network, join now and you will receive $10 in your account once you are approved as an affiliate. It doesn’t get much easier than that!

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you join the PepperJam Network. If you’re already an affiliate, be sure to login and see what offers were recently added to the network.

As an affiliate, what makes you choose certain networks over each other and what would make PepperJam Network or any of the other networks mentioned, be your network of choice?

Don’t forget to visit www.ZacJohnson.com and comment on new posts! Top Commenters are rewarded with fun prizes every month!

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Here’s the deal. I’m looking for someone to send me this Ukulele. Yep, it’s only $200 bucks or so. Purchase it and send me this ukulele and here’s what you get in return.

1. My playing the ukulele in at least one video per week for the rest of 2008 broadcast on this blog.

2. Your logo on those video recordings as the sponsor of these shows (anytime I play it).

3. Bad playing and bad singing of some of your most favorite and beloved songs of all time. :)

Here’s the video explaining it in more detail.

Live Streaming by Ustream.TV

If you’re going to do it, email me first so I can give you my address.

For your enjoyment, here’s my playing Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by the Flaming Lips.