Want to earn money staying at home? There are lots of opportunities nowadays-and one of the easiest is to make your own website. The question is what to begin with. So first of all you may buy domain name and than chose any policy in promotion of the site you created.

What are the ways of making money online that do more or less fine in my case now?

-    dropshipping. Yes it took me months to get where I am now and even now I work hard at searching for new products to dropship and setting relations with dropshipping merchants. I currently dropship books, dvd’s, audio books, video games, baby products. Next on my list – office supplies. I sell the stuff through eBay and my own websites.

-    AdSense. A few months ago it was my focus. All my websites were optimized to generate income with adsense (except e-commerce ones). But that stage is in the past, luckily. I like a comparison I have found in one forum: AdSense = AdCents. I agree with that 100%. But AdSense remains a nice addition to other monetization ways.

-    TLA (or: text-link-ads.com). Nice and easy way to get extra cash. Though Google threatens to add sellers to the lists of the websites that can’t pass their PR to other websites they (I mean Google does sell the links). Other similar, but less popular services (I did not try them): LinkWorth, LinkAdage.

-    Amazon. It used to bring me just a few dollars per month in the past, but as my websites become more established and after a few simple optimization steps (individual keyword researched titles, unique articles on product pages, store closely integrated into the content – product categories, bestsellers, etc) the sales have increased dramatically.

-    PPC (pay-per-click) resulting into CPA (cost-per-action) sales. I do PPC with top 3 engines (Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and MSN AdCenter). The hardest task is to find the niches that will make you money. The competition is tough here and you need PPC skills, niche knowledge and some luck to find that balance when you make more than you spend.

-    Freelance sites (Getafreelancer, Scriptlance and Rentacoder for now): writing content, getting links and promoting websites. But as a rule, the projects I get are in the range of $100-300.00 and they take time to communicate with your customers and meeting their requirements in full. Not the most profitable method.

-    Direct advertising sales. To tell the truth, I was very skeptical I will sell any adv spots on my websites. I was wrong! After a week of sending out the messages to the websites that might be interested to see their ads on just one of my websites I have signed three advertisers for long term campaigns for the amount of $500.00.

-    Inline ads. I was sure that I would make good money with them – the results of my first trial month with Kontera were so promising, but then the earnings dropped quite low (summer slowdown?). Now when I target direct advertisers I think of removing inline ads from those websites completely.

-    Pay per post services. I have been aware of these for many months, but did not pay attention to this way to monetize those websites that are not quite profitable. After some experiments I am sure that it is also a way, and an easy one, to earn extra cash – but for that you need some decent websites to be approved by the services and advertisers. Recommended: PayPerPost, ReviewMe, SponsoredReviews, Blogvertise. Not recommended: LoudLaunch (in fact, I have completed one review and posted it, then I receive a notice that the advertiser has no funds in the account), BloggerWave, Smorty (two latter quite new and have just a few advertisers). Now and then I think of becoming an advertiser myself for ptromoting some new web projects – these services are a nice way to get permanent one way links of good quality.

-    Next on the list: a) software sales (my partner has developed a nice product for eBay sellers) and b) some paid online service (have some vague ideas)

Technorati Tags: make money online, affiliate marketing, ppc, tla, ppp, amazon, ecommerce, advertising, freelance, ebay

Are you an online merchant who does dropshiping and would like to accept payment directly? If you found a nice niche for products to dropship or set up exclusive relations with some wholesale merchants then you should think of growing your business and optimizing your costs. One thing when you accept payment through paypal and another when you have your own merchant account.

You are certainly in need of a merchant account (shopping cart + software) or credit card processing terminal.

Then First Data service is the one you need. Easy online application for a merchant account plus a nice pack of freebies (free: gateway software, merchant account setup, shopping cart setup, delivery, re-programming, online reports) make this service quite attractive in the eyes of merchants.

Customer testimonials, gold medal from ‘Top ten reviews’ website, featured toll free phone number, 300,000 clients, work with the clients 24 hours a day and 7 days a week – and you are about to click the button ‘apply for a merchant account’. What positive do the company customers say about its services? Customers say: reliability, serviceability and goodness of the work.

It looks like you will deal with an industrial leader in merchant account/ credit card processing for all types of businesses.

The rates are not listed on the website – you need to contact the company and provide the details of your business to get a free quote of fees.

I recommend to visit the page ‘Merchant account types’ – I am not a specialist in this industry, but I was sure that I know quite about merchant accounts. And I was surprised to discover that merchant account types can be: wireless merchant account, telecheck, etc…

The company caters not just for online merchants, but for offline too.