MySpace is a popular topic to discuss among webmasters these days. Its unbelievable traffic leaves nobody indifferent. And it seems much easier to get a portion of that traffic from MySpace than from search engines. With every passing week MySpace makes it harder and harder to earn some money for webmasters by banning accounts for spamming, making the process of friend addition harder to automate, etc.

But it does not stop online entrepreneurs – more and more persons join the game looking for the weak points in MySpace. Many run numerous accounts, try to invent new ways of automated friend generation and are more careful with sending out the bulletins. Well, MySpace traffic is not high quality targeted traffic that most webmasters search for. Bit it is better than nothing taking into the account that it is relatively easy to get it – I again compare to the difficulty to get search engine traffic.

The simplest and most common way to use MySpace for your online marketing efforts is to send the traffic to your website. Hopefully, someone will click your ads or join your community.

Another way practiced by some webmasters (who never stop experimenting) is to use their friend lists generated for numerous accounts to promote some affiliate offers. You can send out bulletins and add the links of affiliate programs in the text. The chances that your offer to buy something will work out are next to nothing. It is not the right type of affiliate links. Most webmasters use so-called incentivized affiliate programs – when the users have some incentive to click or join your offer (for instance, enter your e-mail and win a free iPod, complete the application and get a free MP3 player and the similar offers).

Where to get that kind of affiliate programs? Just check the most popular affiliate networks. Webmaster often mention in this connection:

AzoogleAds.com
HydraMedia.com
CPAEmpire.com

I am not sure if it is allowed by TOS of these networks, but at the moment it works for many people.

Summary: I think MySpace will not last for webmasters – it is spammed too much. And those users who join MySpace for networking and communicating purposes are more and more disappointed with all that flood of bulletins they get from their ‘friends’. The rules will become stricter. So, this way of making money on the Internet is not a long-term approach.

On the other hand, it is ‘fast money’ – automatically generate friends for a few accounts, send out bulletins with affiliate links and collect some cash.

Another party that might be dissatisfied with this practice – customers of the affiliate networks. They are not likely to achieve their marketing targets with this sort of promotion. And as it is known Yahoo! Publisher Network is probably the first to take steps against this kind of activity – they do not allow to use their ads next to images and it is also rumored they ban those accounts that get greater portion of their traffic via MySpace.

[tags]incentivized, websites, cpaempire, azoogleads, myspace, web content, web 2.0, unique content, duplicate content, links buying, links selling, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, ebay, google, make money online, work from home, home based job, wikipedia, del.icio.us, technorati, bloglines, duplicate content, links, earn your living online[/tags]

How many people earn their living online? It is hard to say. Millions. And millions work online part time in addition to their main full time job. How do they earn on the Internet?

1. Sell tangible products. Start with eBay – test what is in demand, find product suppliers. Next move – set up your own online store to cut costs.

2. Sell digital products. For example, ClickBank is the top player on the market of e-books. Explore the bestsellers, develop a better product than your competitors offer. Software, stock photos and other digital goods go to this category.

3. Design websites, program websites, promote websites (SEO) (best places to learn and improve your skills – forums similar to www.sitepoint.com, www.webmasterworld.com, www.digitalpoint.com, blogs – see my blogroll list on blog home page).

4. Publish your own websites and collect advertising revenue. Income resources:

- CPC (cost per click) networks (YPN, AdSense, etc);
- CPM (cost per impression) networks (Casale, TribalFusion, ValueClick, BurstMedia, etc);
- CPA (cost per action) networks (CJ, LinkShare, AzoogleAds, Shareasale, etc);
- Link sales (via eBay, text-link-ads, etc);
- In-text advertising (VibrantMedia)
- Direct adv sales
- Donations
- Subscriptions

5. Online services: auctions (eBay), online payment services (PayPal), hosting companies.

What other ways to make money online would you recommend? Probably, some important additions to the ones I mentioned.

Summary: it is not the ultimate list of ways to make money online. I have tried to make the list of the best ways that can generate you enough funds to make it the only income source.

There are other ways but I think they fit some of the five ways. For example, forum posting goes to the 1st type.

[tags] paypal, YPN, AdSense, CPM, cost per impression, adv networks, Casale, TribalFusion, ValueClick, BurstMedia, CPA, cost per action, CJ, LinkShare, AzoogleAds, Shareasale, text-link-ads, links buying, links selling, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, news aggregator, ebay, google, make money online, work from home, home based job, wikipedia, del.icio.us, technorati, bloglines, duplicate content, links, earn your living online[/tags]

Links are harder to get this time. Link exchanges do not work, natural links are not that easy to obtain. As a result, link buying is probably the easiest way to gain link popularity (here it is also not that simple: Google states that it can detect the websites that sell links and promises to their ability to penalize them. As a result, those website that rent links from penalized resources will not get the benefits they pay money for).

On the other hand you can generate some extra income if you sell links (but there is a chance to be penalized by Google for this activity).

I was quite impressed with the information that Steve Pavlina generates about $600.00 and Matt does even better and gets about $700.00 per month from links sales through one channel. Yes, these two persons run well-known blogs on the Internet and at this time I will not dare compare my websites and online business with theirs. But I am still impressed and signed up with the service they both recommend: www.text-link-ads.com (aff link).

I have placed their code on three websites and I also joined their Affiliate Program (placed it’s banners and links just on this blog). Now one week later I can’t boast of any link sales. And referral program does not work. But I am sure that the service will generate me some extra cash.

1. Firstly, one week is not enough time to become visible.
2. Secondly, it is summer time, most people enjoy their holidays and will be back to their routine activity in autumn – I expect at that time more traffic and more opportunities.
3. Thirdly (probably, most important point), my websites are not as well established as the two I referred to.

Nobody wants to waste their cash inefficiently – I need to improve my websites first.

www.text-link-ads.com is also a good place to buy links. I have checked their competitors (LinkWorth.com, Linkadage.com), browsed webmaster forums and eBay.com and conclude that their service suits me best: selection, prices, security, reliability and convenience. I guess every webmaster approaches link purchase process from two points of view:

- buying links for PR boost and improvement of his website search engine rankings
- buying links for getting considerable targeted traffic

The best solution is, of course, to combine both aspects in one link, but it is unfortunately a rare case. So, expect to spend funds on a few links if you need to achieve both targets. Also, one-two months are not enough for your purposes. It is recommended to keep the links at least 6-9 months to get some result.

Summary: text-link-ads.com is a promising supplemental source of income generation for all types of websites. You can safely combine this type of adv with any other (including contextual adv from YPN and AdSense); the links do not annoy your visitors; they as a rule come from the website that operate in your industry; so one can say that it is an extra benefit for your visitors.

If you are going to spend some funds on link buying – it is also a nice place to start your tests.

[tags]text-link-ads, links buying, links selling, steve pavlina, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, news aggregator, ebay, google, make money online, work from home, home based job, wikipedia, del.icio.us, technorati, bloglines, duplicate content, links, earn your living online[/tags]