14 Undisputable Ways To Make Money Online Legitimately

14 Undisputable Ways To Make Money Online Legitimately (Get Everything You Need, And Don’t Need To Be A Successful Internet Marketer In Africa, And Save Yourself Time, Money and Frustration)

THE OFFICIAL INTERNET BUSINESS GUIDE FOR AFRICAN NETPRENEURS

By: Valentine Ukoh

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TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

DESCRIPTION INTRODUCTION WHY INTERNET BUSINESS IS THE NEXT BIG THING IN AFRICA WRITE & SELL AN E-BOOK BUILD A BLOG AFFILIATE MARKETING FREELANCE WRITING ARTICLE WRITING SOFTWARE VENDING SELL PROFESSIONAL SERVICES ON UPWORK OR 99DESIGNS SELL PRODUCTS ON ETSY USE SHOPIFY TO BUILD YOUR OWN ONLINE STORE CREATE VIDEO TUTORIALS ON YOUTUBE SELL AUDIOBOOKS WITH AUDIBLE CREATE WEALTH WITH KONGA & JUMIA OFFER GIGS ON FIVERR WORK AT HOME COMPANIES 25 MAJOR INTERNET PAYMENT GATEWAYS CONCLUSION AND SUMMARY

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14 UNDISPUTABLE WAYS TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE LEGITIMATELY

INTRODUCTION Welcome to the 21 st Century, where almost every business in the world is tilting towards the internet. This is the Official Internet Business Guide of African NetPreneurs.

In this book, you’re expected to learn the Legitimate ways to make money on the internet, and save yourself Time, Money and Frustration! This book is intended to lay the blueprint for success for Africans who desire to learn the legitimate ways to make money on the Internet.

It is one thing to understand that there is money to be made on the internet by Africans, and it is quite another thing to know exactly where that money can be made.

In addition, any serious business person must seriously consider the Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) inherent in each opportunity before making a choice which one to pursue.

While there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of ways to make money on the internet, I will choose just 14 most promising ones to discuss in this book.

This section is for those still looking to choose the most legitimate models for making money on the internet consistently and legitimately.

While Africa generally may have been slow to catch on to the internet money-making frenzy due to its structural and logistics handicaps, the trend in the last few years has shown a dramatic upsurge of interest of Africans in creating wealth via the internet.

With liberation in internet access and mobile technology, we now have the perfect storm for an explosion in internet activities in Africa. There is therefore an urgent need for a manifesto or explanatory document that will explain to practitioners and greenhorns what is required to make real money on the internet, and how to be successful in it.

While there are several Africans who are doing awesomely well on the internet marketing scene, there are millions who are desirous of getting into the internet business rush but simply do not have the knowledge or training to understand what it requires and why the internet business phenomenon is even relevant to them.

This Book will most-definitely help highlight the most legitimate ways to make money online.

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It is my hope that this book will be a resource book for serious NetPreneurs in Africa and further help them avoid the pitfalls of internet business while pointing them in the right directions for the major resources they may need to succeed as NetPreneurs in the World Wide Web.

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CHAPTER 1

WHY INTERNET BUSINESS IS THE NEXT BIG THING IN AFRICA With the global explosion of commercial activities on the internet in the last few years, the internet is rapidly becoming a potent outlet for self-expression and self-employment for people all over the world. In Africa, the liberation in internet access and mobile technology has created the perfect storm for an explosion in internet activities in Africa.

With the recent upsurge of interest in the internet marketing, and improved infrastructure arising from government initiatives (i.e. access to internet is now possible for virtually everyone in major cities through PCs and Mobile Phones), the internet is a veritable platform to create selfemployment for the unemployed, youths and fresh graduates.

The exploding usage of internet by individuals, companies; governments and parastatals in Africa and the world at large has created a huge body of needs that savvy internet marketers from Africa can exploit to create unlimited income for themselves in the years to come.

Furthermore, growth in Africa’s Internet and Broadband sector has accelerated in recent years due to improvements in infrastructure, the arrival of wireless access technologies and lower tariffs.

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While being the world’s most rapidly growing market for mobile telephony, Africa is also home to some of the fastest growing fixed-line markets in the world. Africa still has some of the world’s lowest penetration rates in both market sectors. The difficulties of rolling out fixed-line networks across its vast land mass have meant that from the mid-2010 upwards mobile users now constituted around 90% of all African telephone subscribers.

This development has huge implications for internet marketers not just in Africa but all over the world. As mobile marketing industry explodes worldwide, Africa presents a huge and largely untapped market for the savvy internet marketer.

Generally, in today’s world, if you're at all serious about succeeding in any endeavor, whether online or offline, you have to deliver enormous amounts of value. Yes, you have to do the most amount of work for the least initial return. This is especially true online. Why? Because it takes time to build authority and create an audience, two primary ingredients necessary to succeed in the wonderful world of commerce on the web.

Every successful business and person has delivered a tremendous amount of value at the outset.

They did the most amount of work, and they inspected every detail meticulously, to ensure that they were doing right by their customers. As long as you keep that in mind, and you don't look for a quick buck, you'll succeed in the long term.

I’m going to tell you about all kinds of legitimate ways to make money online. Since we are talking about legitimate jobs, you’ve got to be…well, legitimate.

• Find Your Niche: Figure out what you're good at or what you want to be good at. You don't need to be an expert right now, but you do need to decide where you're going to fit in if you're at all serious about making serious cash in the long term.

• Build A Blog On A Custom Domain: Your blog is your virtual home. Without it, you've no place to filter all that traffic and people interested in what you have to say. But don't build a blog on a sub-domain like yoursite.wordpress.com, create a blog with a custom domain like www.yoursite.com.

• Always Add Value: Adding value over time creates authority and authority breeds trust, which in turn helps to grow your audience and readership. Without a significant following, you'll find it hard to gain any traction online. It simply takes time.

• Create An Email List And Treat Them Right: One of the best ways to make money online is by marketing to an actively-interested group of email subscribers. While most people think that email marketing is dead, that's far from the truth. This is your greatest potential source of income online. Think of it as your money tree.

• Don't Sacrifice Morals For A Quick Buck: At the outset, you'll want to do all sorts of things to make money online, but don't sacrifice your morals for a quick buck. Not only will you put people off, but you'll lose Google's trust. You also shouldn't concern yourself with things like Adsense or other Ads on a blog before you have around 100,000 visitors per day. Yes, per day.

The point? Think about the long-term results of your activities. It will seem frustrating in the beginning. Then again, everything worthwhile is going to be difficult. It will take time. Stick it out

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and don't give up. In the meanwhile, here are some of the best and most legitimate ways you can make money online in the short and long term.

CHAPTER 2

#1 WRITE AND SELL AN E-BOOK If you have a propensity for writing and you can slay with your prose, consider writing an e-book.

An E-Book is the short form of ‘Electronic Book’. It is an electronic version of a printed book which can be read on a computer or specifically designed handheld device, like your Smartphone.

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While the market has certainly become saturated as of late, books that help teach people about a technical topic still sell extremely well. This is a great source of passive income and one of the most popular niches online; but it does require a large amount of effort at the outset before any money is generated. It is mostly related to teaching others how to make money online or business opportunity niches.

There is a huge hungry market here looking to find the holy grail of making money online.

Though a MOST COMPETITIVE niche online –everyone is fighting for the same pie– but people are also willing to buy. If you have a product that can help them to make money, save money, save time, save effort or generally run their business for them, then you have a huge market here.

An E-Book is also called a ‘digital product’ because it is essentially any product that you don’t hold in your hands and that can be saved on a computer, Smartphone or tablet. Your E-Book should revolve around providing information.

Creating and selling a digital product like an Ebook just happens to be one of the most popular and most effective business models that there is. The reason for this is that it offers incredible ROI (Return On Investment) and is highly versatile.

When you create and sell an E-Book, you are providing value in the form of the information contained therein. This is what allows you to charge money for your product and it’s what makes it desirable for your audience.

At the same time though, an E-Book has very little overhead. There may be some initial investment involved in the creation of your product as you’ll need to outsource the process or pay someone to create it for you but after that, you’ll then be able to sell as many copies as you like without it costing you a single thing. There’s no cost associated with storage, there’s no delivery and there are no materials.

In business, this is known as ‘COGS’ or ‘Cost Of Goods Sold’. With a high value and no overheads then, an E-Book can provide almost 100% profit on each sale. What’s more is that it’s incredibly versatile and simple to create and sell. You don’t need to get in touch with a manufacturing contractor, or find seed money, or learn to code. As long as you understand how to write into a Word processor, this option is available for everyone. The primary thing that is required to be known is how people are making money from E-books, an how you can make your as well. Are you ready?

If yes, then let’s unveil the secret!

How People Are Making Money From E-Books

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So how do you turn this into a money making business model? One good example we can turn to is ‘Double Your Dating’ (www.doubleyourdating.com).

This is a website that sells a wide variety of different E-Books, all relating to how to attract and meet women.

The owners of this business therefore invest a little time and money into running the site and promoting it and then generate income from people who decide they would like more information and thus buy the books. This works because the products being sold have a very strong ‘value proposition’ which is to say that they solve a clear and simple problem and promise to make the buyers’ lives better in a measurable way. This makes promotion much easier.

In this case, ‘dating’ is the niche (meaning the subject) and this is one of the most popular niches out there. Other popular choices include ‘making money online’ (like this one), ‘style’, ‘weight-loss’, ‘muscle building’.

Remember though, E-Books are just one option. You can also sell a video series, an online course, a shorter ‘report’ or a range of other E-Books.

In terms of how the business model works, it will largely be posting to a blog that will help you to bring more traffic to your website. The more you add content to your website in the form of a blog, the more people will be able to find your website via Google and the more people are likely to share your content on social media as well.

Adding content to a blog also allows you to build trust with your audience. The people who enjoy your content on the website will find themselves wanting more and trusting what you have to say.

This then means they’ll be far more likely to want to buy your products when they see that you provide even more information behind a small pay wall.

That right there is the basis for ‘content marketing’ which we’ll look at more when we come onto the chapter on blogging, but for now, our focus is on E-book. Now, it is time for you to discover how to create your own information product in form of an E-book.

How to Create Your First Information Product

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So there are lots of options when it comes to selling an E-Book. Simply put, this is one of the simplest and easiest ways to get a product that you can then start promoting and marketing.

But how do you go about making one?

There are plenty of options here but in many cases you’ll be able to simply handle the creation of your E-Book yourself. In this case, you only need to create a large MSWord document, include some images and good formatting and then save the final file as a PDF. Alternatively, if you’re creating a video series, then you can just film yourself on camera and then edit the video neatly using editing software such as Adobe PremierePro or Ulead Video Studio softwares.

The main tip when doing this is to make sure you come up with an E-Book that will play to your strengths and that you can be proud of.

It’s very important to come up with an E-Book you’re proud of because that way you’ll be able to promote it much more easily. When you talk about a product you truly believe in, your passion will come across and people will be far more likely to believe in what you’re offering too. If you’re kind of shy of the quality of what you’ve created, then your marketing will lack conviction and you won’t attract repeat customers.

In terms of creating something that plays to your strengths, that means picking a topic that you know a lot about and that is relevant to the topic or niche of your website and it means creating something you can create well. If you’re a great writer, then write an E-Book! If you aren’t so good at writing though but have an excellent manner on camera, then film a video series! If you can’t do either of those things, then consider using screenshots of your computer/creating slideshows and then narrating them.

Alternatively, another popular option is to simply outsource the creation of your E-Book. There are thousands of writers, video editors and other skilled individuals on the web and any one of them will likely be happy to help.

The best places to find these people are generally freelancing sites which include the likes of ‘Elance’ (www.elance.com) or ‘UpWork’ (www.upwork.com). On either of these you should be able to find someone with the skills you need, and from there it will cost you between $100 and $1,000 depending on the nature of the job you need done and the quality you are looking for. Also note that very good writers will generally charge upwards of $3 per 100 words.

Once you have your E-book, either it was composed by you or an outsourced writer, the next big thing is to get the E-book out into the market. But first, the question that crops up at this juncture is, what price will be best to place your E-book at, so it doesn’t look too expensive, but moderate enough to have valuable information and at the same time, affordable.

What To Price Your E-Book?

Once you have your E-Book, the next question is how much you want to charge for it. This of course is entirely up to you, though you don’t want to charge too much and alienate your audience.

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We recommend around $7 for a short report, or $17-27 for a full length E-Book (10,000 words plus).

What you’ll find when you look around the web is that there are plenty of examples of E-Books being sold for ridiculous prices – sometimes as much as $50, $100 or more. While this does happen, the books very rarely manage to provide value for money and in the long run this can lead to damaged reputations and angry customers. Likewise, you’ll find it much easier to sell a cheaper book to begin with until you have built up a reputation for yourself as someone who can be trusted and who delivers premium content.

A good tip is to start with something small to test the market. Don’t aim to create the E-Book to end all E-Books. Instead, start out with something smaller like a report and sell that for $7. This allows you to very quickly and easily start honing your business model and generating income without investing too much or creating too much risk. Only once you’ve seen that this method is working and you’re earning money, do you then go and invest further into the business model with a bigger product at a higher price point.

Remember too – there’s nothing to stop you from experimenting with price points and running ‘split tests’ to see which is the most profitable!

Now your E-Book is ready to be sold. But where will you direct your prospective customers too when they show interest in purchasing your E-book. That place is known as a ‘Landing Page’.

Creating Your Landing/Sales Page One of the most important tools when it comes to making money online is to create a landing page. This is essentially a single page, also known as a ‘sales page’ that is entirely dedicated to selling your one product.

A sales page will look different from the other pages on a website because it has no links to other parts of the site, no adverts and no distracting images. In other words, everything on the page is there to serve the one objective of selling copies of your E-Book or whatever else it is that you’re selling.

Often these pages are long and narrow and they contain a lot of text and a lot of ‘buy now’ buttons.

Those buy now buttons are your ‘call to action’ buttons.

The real magic of the landing page is the text. All the copy here is going to be aimed at persuading people to buy the product and this is where you’re really going to earn your wage. Your objective is to be as persuasive as possible while not misrepresenting what you have to sell.

The way to do this is to remember that ‘value proposition’. That means focusing on what the product does for people. How will their lives be better after they’ve used it? Maybe they’ll be a success with the opposite sex, or maybe they’ll be much richer and happier. Your job is to get them to imagine that possibility and to really desire it. At the same time, you point out their current failings in their situation and why their previous attempts to improve their lot in life may have failed. In other words, you present a problem and then provide the solution – that solution being the E-Book you’re selling.

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An easy and fast way to create a sales page is by using OptimizePress (http://optimizepress.com) which is a theme for Wordpress.

Once you have this landing page, you’ll then be well equipped to market your product very easily.

For instance, if you pay for advertising then all you need to do is ensure those ads are sending the right kind of traffic to your sales page! Likewise, you can hand out flyers with the URL of your sales page, or you can mention it in social media posts. If you’ve written your sales script well then you can expect a large number of people who stumble on that page to end up converting – becoming paying customers!

You can then sell your E-Book through Amazon's Kindle program or Apple's iTunes Connect, which gives you access to a large majority of the E-Book reading market and the barriers for entry are incredibly low. You can also sell an E-Book via social media, on forums. You don't need to invest lots of money to make this happen, but you do need to invest lots of time, not only in writing the E-Book, but in marketing them as well. Another option is to let other people promote your product for you and to simply take a cut of the profits.

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CHAPTER 3

#2 BUILD A BLOG One of the most exhaustive endeavors when it comes to making money online is to build a blog.

But we all know that building a blog with real readership is difficult. It takes a lot of work. And I'm speaking from experience. However, once you reach a certain point, the progress and momentum sways in your favor and it becomes far easier.

Blogging is one of the easiest models that anyone can attempt. Almost anyone can become a blogger. Even those who can’t write can still blog with pictures.

Blogs can easily generate tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars per month when done right. Yes, that much. But it won't be easy to get there. However, looking back on it, a year from now you'll wish you started today. So why wait another moment?

First off, I’m a blogger so it seems wrong not to mention it, but more importantly, it’s a legitimate way to make money. It’s quite possibly the least straight-forward way on this list, but it’s very doable and it’s also quite possibly the funnest way on this list. I love blogging and I know hundreds of bloggers who feel the same. So let’s talk about making money blogging and what it really means.

Blogging is something that requires patience, persistence and discipline. It may mean writing everyday for over a year before you really start to see any money from it. There are exceptions to the rule, but from my dealings with other bloggers, it seems to be pretty common to spend one or even two years building your blog, your brand and your authority, before making any serious

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amount of money. You may not be able to see yourself making money at the start, but to offset that, you can blog for others (for a fee) or even sign up for PAY PER POST and get paid for blogging!

A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breakingnews outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world. Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules.

In simple terms, a blog is a website, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what's new. Then they comment on it or link to it or email you.

Or not. You can blog about anything you want! Focus on your passion and share your thoughts with the world. If you have great content, people will come to your blog and you can monetize through advertising or affiliate programs.

Since Blogger was launched in 1999, blogs have reshaped the web, impacted politics, shaken up journalism, and enabled millions of people to have a voice and connect with others. And we are pretty sure that the whole deal is just getting started. (You only pay for the domain name and yearly hosting respectively.) You can even register some blogs for free!

There are countless examples of people who have become very wealthy through running a blog.

Pat Flynn who owns (www.smartpassiveincome.com) is one such example. Pat is a guy who talks about making money online and who actually owns several blogs and websites including one aimed at food trucks which he publishes his earnings from. Pat’s blog is very easy to read and provides a ton of great information and as a result, he has achieved almost superstar status and is invited to big events. This is just an ordinary family guy! Pat makes his money mainly through adverts on the sites and via sales of E-Books.

Another great example is The Art of Manliness (www.artofmanliness.com). This blog was founded

by Brett McKay in 2008 and focuses on a range of topics relating to what it means to be a man in the 21st century. It’s a unique niche that allows him to cover diverse topics ranging from beard trimming, to weightlifting, to how to smoke a cigar and drink whiskey. The site is now highly successful and provides far more than a full time income to Brett and his family. He makes his income through various types of advertising, possibly commission on physical products and through sales of his own products through an e-commerce store.

How to Get Started, And Succeed!

The problem with running a blog is that it’s not easy. In order for a blog to become profitable, it’s often necessary for you to be getting hundreds of thousands of views a day and to have a smart form of monetization in place.

The question is, how do you get to this point? 

Setting Up a Blog

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Thankfully, actually setting up a blog is a relatively easy process. To do this, you’ll need to find a hosting account and a domain name and you’ll probably want to use a CMS such as WordPress.

A hosting account is basically what gives you the ‘space’ to store your files on the web. You’ll be paying a monthly or yearly fee in order to rent space on a ‘server’ which is a giant computer that remains constantly connected to the web at all times. You place your website files on that and it ensures they’re able to be served up when someone wants to find them.

In order to find those files though, your visitors will need to use your domain name or URL. This is the address that people will type in order to find your website and this address is going to point at the specific directory within the server so that people are shown your website when they navigate there.

Fortunately, finding hosting and a domain name are both relatively easy tasks and shouldn’t set you back too much more than $200 a year to begin with (tops). This is where creating a SaaS (Software as a Service) business would be much more complicated – as you’d need a lot more space and speed from the server in order to let thousands of users upload and edit files as they needed to.

A great example of a hosting site that also offers domain name registration and web hosting is Blue Host (www.bluehost.com). A quick search on Google though will yield many, many more.

Next, comes the CMS. CMS stands for ‘Content Management System’ and essentially what this is, is a tool that will allow you to easily change the look of your website and to add and delete pages of content.

The best known CMS is WordPress and it’s highly recommended that you go this route.

WordPress will allow you to create a website in minutes rather than months, it will manage your files and it will look highly professional. WordPress is not a ‘beginners’ tool by any means but rather is a professional piece of CMS software that is actually used by many of the biggest brands on the planet.

Huge websites like Forbes, the BBC and Mashable use WordPress, as do the aforementioned successful blogs we mentioned. Using WordPress also ensures your site will be compatible with a ton of useful tools and features including the aforementioned WooCommerce and Amember. It also means you’ll have a community of people out there who can help with any technical troubles you may be having and that your site will be easy for most web developers to understand and edit.

In short, WordPress makes life much easier for you and also makes your site far more professional. It is tried and tested and known to succeed… so why go with anything else?

If you choose a prominent hosting service like BlueHost, then the option to install WordPress will even be right there in the control panel meaning it takes literally just one click.

All that said, there are other CMS options if you would prefer. One is Joomla! (www.joomla.org) which is similar to WordPress and offers a lot of flexibility. It’s a lot more complex though and there’s less support available – mostly it is used in house for companies creating backend software.

Another popular choice is Drupal, which is again much more complicated. Of course you could always create your own CMS or forego having one at all, but either of these choices will drastically increase your workload while actually putting your business at more risk.

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Note: There are other options that don’t require self-hosting, such as Blogger. However, this is an inferior tool for multiple reasons. Not only do hosted options mean you can’t choose your own URL but they also tend to be very limited in terms of space, bandwidth and the other elements of your website. Blogger is also highly limited in terms of the features it offers for building your own web design. In other words, if you want to create a proper website with the potential to grow and scale into something that will earn a lot of money, you can’t use something like Blogger.

Creating Blog Posts Once you have your blog and you’ve given it a look and navigation you’re proud of, the next step is to start writing blog posts. This is very important as it’s what will give your site its value and it’s what will encourage people to want to visit your site and hopefully to come back time and time again.

The problem though is going to be standing out in a sea of content from other websites and blogs.

To do this, you need to focus on offering something that is very high quality and that is consistently offering value. As we’ll see later on, this is also good for your SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

The key to remember is that someone has to want to read your content based on the title and based on their previous experience with your site and brand. If you constantly churn out content that is uninspired, derivative or badly written then no one is going to bother to visit.

This is why the ‘optimal length’ for a blog post is actually around 1,800 words. That might seem a bit long but this kind of length is what will enable you to really dive into a topic and to offer some insight and discussion that can’t be found elsewhere. It lets you do a comprehensive overview of a subject and it lets you make your blog post into a resource that other people will recommend and share around the net.

Meanwhile, you also need to think about the title and the topic. If you are writing another article called ‘Top 10 Pec Exercises’ for your fitness website, then you aren’t likely to win over any new fans. Why? Because this subject and structure have both been done to death already! People read the title and already know precisely what your post will be about and they’ve probably already seen the top ten exercises you’re going to offer. How is that providing value?

On the other hand, consider the topics/titles from Maria Popova’s incredible ‘Brain Pickings’ (www.brainpickings.org) website. Here are a few:   

“Bruce Lee on Self-Actualization and the Crucial Difference Between Pride and Self Esteem” “The Outsider With the Public Voice: How Joan Didion Mirrored Us Back to Ourselves” “A year Without Mom: A Gorgeous Graphic Novel About Separation and Reunion, the End of Childhood and the Tradeoffs of Happiness”

These titles are unique, fascinating and they beg to be read. What’s more, is that when you click on any of those titles, you quickly find that the same care and attention has been given to the posts themselves. Each blog post is between 1-3,000 words long, it is decorated by beautiful images and quotes and it is very well written. In other words, it’s offering real value for the reader and giving them something to enjoy over a cup of coffee.

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How much more likely do you think that something like this is to generate discussion? Or to get shared? And how much more likely is someone to subscribe to that blog? It’s just so far superior when compared to an article on ‘The Top 10 Pec Exercises’.

Of course this doesn’t mean all your posts need to be highly thought-provoking philosophical pieces – they just need to be unique, inherently interesting and different.

If it’s the fitness niche you’re interested in, then, consider some of these titles from Breaking Muscle (www.breakingmuscle.co.uk):   

“World-Level Weightlifters Are Just Like Us” “The One-Session, One-Exercise, One-Set Strength Plan” “So, You Want to be a Lion?”

Again, all of these titles are interesting and unique and the posts are long, in-depth and provide tons of value. T-Nation (www.t-nation.com) also does this very well:  

“Iron Core: How to Build a Punch-Proof Body” “A Lifter’s Guide to Alcohol”

You can even consider the ‘clickbait’ articles used to generate traffic via social media. These articles use titles like ‘You’ll Never Believe What This Mum Does Next… Shocking!” or they employ controversy. Either way, this makes the user curious and they want to click. Your objective is to generate that same curiosity but then to deliver on the promise in the title by making sure your posts are actually as interesting and unique as they sound.

And keep in mind too that the point is eventually to convert your visitors into paying customers.

To do that, you need to gain their trust and you need to demonstrate your ability to provide value.

Once again, the best strategy is clearly to create content that is interesting, unique and in-depth.

8 Proven Ways To Make Money With Your Blog Some people argue that you can make money without a lot of traffic and while that is true in some circumstances, you will generally need a lot of website traffic to start earning from a blog and that takes a while. Once you’ve reached that point, here are the primary ways to monetize your blog and start earning in Africa and make it a viable income generator within a few months of launching it.

The following list is a collection of many of the different ways of making money with your website.

Depending on what your website is about, a large number of these techniques can be implemented

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to earn you cash. However, you should not give up or get discouraged if one method does not work for you, just try a different one and build upon that!

A. ADVERTISING This is definitely the most old-school way of earning money with a blog. It’s also starting to become the least common way. You can sell advertising spots directly on your site or you can sign up with a company like Google AdSense or Media.net. Either way, you won’t see a whole lot of money from ads until your views are well into the thousands each day.

Advertising on your blog comes in nine basic wealth-pulling ways.

1. Pay Per Click Advertising The best (and easiest) income sources for bloggers (especially those who are just starting out) are PPC ad networks. A PPC Ad network is an advertising program in which ads are placed on your blog and you are paid whenever your visitors click on the ads. Simple, isn’t it? And Totally Passive.

You just put the PPC ads on your blog (inside the content, sidebar, header or just anywhere) and then see the money coming in. But hold on, it does require you to get traffic to your blog.

The best PPC network, without any doubts, is Google AdSense. It is the highest paying network and shows content related ads only. There are many alternatives to AdSense but most of them either pay too low or have less relevant ads. Some good alternatives to AdSense are Chitika, Adbrite and Bidvertiser etc. Pay Per Click (PPC) ads vary in profitability depending on the amount of traffic your website gets. Only a small percentage of people will click on these ads, so to earn a lot of money from them you will need a lot of traffic.

The click-through rate (CTR) of your visitors depends on the design of your website. Certain parts of your website pages are more valuable than others, so to increase your CTR these PPC ads can be placed there. For example, spaces at the beginning and end of articles/blog posts are highly visible, so by putting a PPC in these positions may increase the chances of someone clicking on one. If on the other hand you place these ads at the bottom of the page where nobody can see them, then nobody will click on them. The cost per click (CPC) can also determine how much you are likely to earn from this type of Ad. Adverts that display financial products or mortgages will generate you more income due to the higher price of the actual product, compared with perhaps children’s toys. The former may pay you as much as $1+ for every click through by one of your visitors, whereas a click on toys may pay you only a few cents. PPC ads are a good way to easily monetize your blog. However, to make serious money from them you will need lots of traffic.

2. CPM (Cost Per Mile) Advertising Cost per Mile advertising (CPM) is similar to PPC advertising, however instead of getting paid on a per-click basis, you get paid according to the number of impressions (page views) you get. This is worked out for every 1000 impressions that it has. For example, a website that gets 200,000 page views per month that displays a $1 CPM ad will generate you $200 a month! There are a number of different CPM providers out there that you can get ads from. Each varies on how much they will pay you, generally the better the provider the higher rate you will be paid. This is because the best

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providers have access to more and better quality advertisers that are willing to pay you more. Just like PPC, CPM adverts can pay you more depending on where the advert is placed on your website. The higher the ad is placed and the bigger the ad is, will generally make you more money.

CPM adverts are beneficial for websites that have lots of traffic and a high page view per visitor ratio, but it is still a good option to consider when looking to monetize your blog.

3. Text Link Ads This type of advertising allows you to place text based ads within the text of your articles. For example, if you are writing an article about certain software, you can place text-link ads within your posts that would refer your viewers to that particular product. You can’t just link to anything though, you need to sign up to that specific product affiliate advertising scheme, or you can sign up to a specialized provider who will automate the service.

4. In-Text Ads Very similar to the above text link ads, ‘In-text ads’ are adverts that are placed inside your text content such as articles or blog posts. You can sign up to an In-text advertising provider that will place sponsored links within your text. These are double underlined to make them stand out from other links, so that when a user moves the mouse over one of them a small advertising pop-up will appear. The user can then decide if they want to click on it, which will make you a small amount of money. These types of ads are a bit more obvious than the previous type, which can put some people off. If used properly, they can be a good way to monetize your blog.

5. Advertising Widgets This method is relatively new on the scene. An increasing amount of people are using widgets on their websites to generate some money. These widgets are designed so that they can be easily placed onto a website without any hassle, which display a mixture of PPC, text link ads and affiliate programs.

6. Advertising Space You can monetize your blog by selling space on your website for advertisers to display a banner.

This can be a very lucrative method as it allows you to cut out the middleman and charge what you want for other people to advertise on your site. Generally these deals are worked out so that you display an ad for a fixed amount of time for an agreed fee with the advertiser. The downside of this method is that you need to commit time to manage the whole process with the advertiser and that your site needs to have a lot of traffic to be considered by advertisers.

7. RSS Adverts If you have an RSS feed (which you should!) then you can follow in the footsteps of millions of other website owners and start placing ads on it. Many RSS feed generators now offer this service, so that it is even easier to implement them. Some offer CPM or PPC advertising, however you

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could opt to do it yourself and offer to sell sponsored messages or banners directly on your feed.

You can find adverts for your RSS feed on BidVertiser that you can implement to monetize your feed, though Google FeedBurner lets you do this as well.

8. Pay Per Play (PPP) Audio Advertising Pay per Play (PPP) are audio adverts that are played every time someone visits your website. The Ads usually last only a few seconds, with the viewer, unable to stop it. This creates a 100% conversion rate with unique visitors, so you get paid about $5 per visit; however this method is very intrusive and may turn off your visitors, making them less likely to make a return visit. Another form of audio advertising that you could use is ‘Podcast ads’. If you run a podcast on your website, perhaps a weekly update letting your listeners know everything that is new on your website, then you could choose to include advertising. I believe that this type is less intrusive than the former because your podcast would just seem like a short radio show with commercial breaks. As long as you don’t go overboard with the amount of adverts, then this may be a method that could use to monetize your blog.

9. Pop-ups Pop-ups are very common online, but they are also very annoying. Many people hate pop-ups and have pop-up blockers installed to stop them. However, if executed in the right way, they can work.

Having a single pop-up on your website that only appears to new visitors may work. They grab the attention of the visitor on their first visit and after that they won’t be bothered again by them. Popups do not necessarily need to sell products directly. You can use them indirectly to promote aspects of your website, for example ‘PopUp Domination’ can be used to encourage people to sign up to your email list or tutorial course, or alternatively you can create a light box with Aweber.

Pop-ups can work if you make them less annoying to people. The more frequently they appear the less traffic you will get coming back!

B. AFFILIATES This is the most Lucrative way to make money online and if you have a blog, it is a plus. In this wealth-pulling way, you recommend ‘useful and relevant’ products to your blog readers, and if any of your reader buys that product (through your Affiliate Links, you earn a commission).

If done right, this method is a great way to monetize your blog. Many of the previous methods can be used as affiliate marketing methods as well, but often, a review of a product can work just perfectly. For example, if you have a gardening website you could research affiliate programs that contain products related to gardening. Perhaps someone wants people to advertise their new lawnmower product, you could write a blog entry.

A title as simple as ‘What’s the best lawnmower for my garden?’ could fetch you tons of traffic to your blog, an in the end you could promote the affiliate product. With this type of advertising, you can get a commission with every sale that resulted from your recommendation. You refer viewers from your site via recommendations, banner ads, text link ads, etc., which takes them to the product page. If they buy, then you get a commission. This is often worked out on a percentage of

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the sale price, maybe 10-20%, sometimes more (I’ve seen products offer up to 80% commission) depending on the individual product.

There are many affiliate networks, such as FlexOffers and CJ Affiliate that allow you to promote other people’s products and services. You simply put a link or a banner on your page and then you get a percentage if someone clicks through and buys the product/service. You’ll want to select products that are specifically within your blog’s category. This is an effective way to earn money once you have the traffic coming to your blog.

C. MEMBERSHIP Many people have created a paid membership area on their blog. This is typically for exclusive content that you can only access in the “member’s area.” If you have a really great idea on what to include, this can be a great idea. You’ll have to create something that can’t easily be accessed around the web.

This is a great way to earn a residual income from your blog. If you are expert in your niche you can create some premium content (posts) that are not available directly to your normal readers but only paid members can access those. One way to achieve this is to create password protected posts (this is easily achievable from your WordPress post edit page) and then charge a membership fees to your readers to access those posts. Other way is to use premium plugins like Wishlist which will instantly convert your WordPress site to a full featured membership site. You can also offer some premium products or services to the paid members.

Another way to utilize the membership feature is to start a private forum in your niche with lots of useful content and then charge a membership fees to anyone who want to have access to it. One such example is Problogger.com Community which charges $5.95 per month to get inside.

D. PRODUCTS This can be your own product or another manufacturer’s product.

You can create your own product, such as an E-book or computer software. You would then use your blog as a promotion tool to get people to buy your product. As long as you create a legitimate product with a whole lot of value, you should be able to get some buyers, but like everything else with a blog, you’ll need the traffic to get the sells.

Truth be told, we are a society of consumers! If you have a product that you have made, then why not sell it on your website. Perhaps you are a software programmer and have designed an app to help people track stocks on their mobile phone. You could let people download it from your website for a small fee. Maybe your hobby is pottery and you want to sell off some of your work, then sell it on a website. If they are popular, there might be a full-time business for you! The good thing about this is that compared with selling a product in a shop that has a small customer basis, online you have the world to sell your product to.

Everybody seems to be writing an E-Book these days, so why don’t you give it a try. These have become very popular in the last few years with the introduction of commercial E-Readers such as the Apple iPad and Amazon Kindle. You could write an eBook about almost anything. Maybe you

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are good at DIY, you could write a book about renovating your house that people might find useful. You can then sell it through the Apple iStore or on Amazon. You can sell it directly on your website as well! This way you get 100% of the sale price and you get traffic to your website.

Selling your own eBook can be an excellent way to monetize your blog!

You could also review a product that has already been manufactured. Basically, it is the same as Affiliate Marketing, but more obvious. You can write detailed reviews about products and publish them on your site. Obviously it is better to review products that are related to your website, as you are catering to your target audience. There is no point writing a detailed review about a solar panel for your roof, if your website is about scuba diving. Many people can build a website solely around product reviews, writing about a variety of subjects such as, hotels, holidays, cars, gadgets, films, etc.

If that product has an affiliate program, then you can make quite a bit of money from it.

E. SERVICES You can offer a paid service, such as life coaching, blog coaching, goal setting or financial planning.

Just be sure to investigate all the legal implications and make sure you’re not claiming to be a professional if you’re not one. With a service like this, you’re basically using your blog to sell yourself. You’ll need to convince people that you’re worth buying and then be able to back up your claims once they purchase your service.

If you offer a consultancy service, this is a great way of turning your passion into a thriving business using your blog. You need to have a large number of followers and have built a good reputation in your field for this method to earn you money. You can offer one-on-one consulting to people over the phone or via Skype for a fixed rate. People would be willing to pay a premium for this service as they are paying for your undivided attention for an hour or more. For example, you have built a reputation as being an expert in health and fitness and have a successful blog talking about methods of weight-loss and healthy eating. You could offer a consultancy service, where for one hour a day people can arrange to talk to you via web-cam to plan out a personal tailored exercise regime. You might charge $100 for the hour and the individual might not need to contact you until the next month. As previously stated, you do need a reputation for this to generate you any money.

This is not a method for a startup website, but it could be something to aim for in the future as you grow your website.

A great way to find clients is to have your own ‘Hire Me’ page on your website. That way, people can see that they can hire you to help them out.

F. SPONSORED/PAID POSTS Many blogs publish sponsored and paid posts. Sponsored posts are basically just posts about a specific brand, product or service. A company will pay you to publish an article about it. It’s similar with other paid posts as well. You are basically selling the spot for the article on your site. If you decide to take this route, you’ll want to build your traffic before you will get many offers. For example, the popular Linda Ikeji bills anyone willing to place a sponsored post on her blog the sum of sixty thousand naira.

G. VIDEOS This could be an entire section on its own. Many people have made money by creating YouTube videos. Evan of EvanTube is a kid and he has made millions by creating reviews of products that

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other kids his age would use. It’s not easy to get views into the millions, but once you do, you’ll start seeing some cash come in. Many bloggers have completely turned to videos to get their point across by starting a video blog.

CHAPTER 4

#3 AFFILIATE MARKETING Affiliate marketing is one of the most lucrative models on the Internet though still relatively new in Africa. Major companies like jumia.com and konga.com have been creating awareness about this online money making goldmine with their heavy online and offline adverts. Savvy Africans are already picking up on this to make a huge windfall while others are still napping.

What is Affiliate Marketing and How to start with it?

Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. As an affiliate, you can promote other people’s product and get commissions for your efforts without seeing a single customer or talking to anyone.

My own simple definition is this: “Affiliate Marketing is promoting other people’s/company’s product and earning a commission in return (If a sale is made).” It works the same as in the offline world, however the profit and scope is much bigger over the Internet (Not to mention that people had exploited this too much though).

Basically what you do as an affiliate is: You promote other these Product(s) using a special link with a code only being used by you embedded into it (this is required by advertiser to track the leads referred by you).

If someone buys that product (or in some cases completes a task like signing up or completing a survey) using your link, it gets tracked by the advertiser and you are rewarded a commission (which is a percentage of the sale price but can also be a fixed amount as set by the advertiser).

This way both the advertiser, and the publisher, benefit. Advertisers get more sales of their product when many publishers (or affiliates) promote their products, and Affiliates in turn generate revenue by promoting the product. Moreover, Advertiser pays only when a sale is made so there is no risk of getting non converting visits like in some PPC campaigns.

This is the reason why most of the product creators and Advertisers provide an affiliate program for increasing their product sales.

In this type of business venture, you don’t even need a domain name or a website in some cases.

You can earn huge commissions from up to 50% to even 100% commissions! You don’t need to

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focus on creating products – just drive traffic to the merchant site and watch your income roll in (if you do it right of course). You’ also need to search for a good affiliate program and build up traffic in order to see results.

There are unlimited opportunities because there are always new products coming out each day and affiliates are needed everywhere!

How To Get Started With Affiliate Marketing There are a few things to keep in mind before choosing to get into this business. Firstly, you must find the right Affiliate Product to Promote and secondly you must have an audience that will be interested in that product.

Finding the Right Affiliate Product This is the most Important Step (literally). If you get wrong here, you will definitely fail in this business. You will have to choose a product which will help your audience. If you have a Weight Loss Blog, then promoting a forex product will be completely useless as it will not get you any sales. Moreover, If you promote a low quality product (let’s say, on your blog), you could be hurting your brand as well.

Remember, to get the best results, always promote a product that you have tried yourself or you must be confident enough of the quality of it.

Below are some of the tips that will help you find a related Affiliate Products:  Browse Affiliate Networks: The easiest way to get started with promoting products is to search though Affiliate Networks. An Affiliate Network act as an intermediary between publishers (affiliates) and merchant's affiliate programs. There are a few affiliate networks that list many affiliate programs. You can use their search option to get related products to your blog’s niche.

Some of the most famous Affiliate networks are: ClickBank (This is my favorite and also, the first affiliate commission that I earned was by promoting a ClickBank product), Commission Junction (aka CJ), ShareaSale etc.  Search Google: Other way to find relevant affiliate product that you can promote is by doing a simple Google search. Just type: “your keyword + Affiliate Program” (Replace “your Keyword” with your niche like “Weight Loss Affiliate Programs”) and you will easily find the appropriate product.  Checkout Online Stores: Almost all of the famous online stores (like Amazon, EBay) have affiliate programs. You can just sign up for that and then promote any of the stuff that is listed there. Generally the commissions are not big here but as these online stores have a huge range of products; it is not that difficult to get referral sales through them.

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 Check Your Competition: If you can’t find the products by above methods, you can simply have a look at what your competitors (sites in your niche) are promoting and you can start promoting those products.

Now, these are some of the ways by which you can select a product to promote.

You can make serious money promoting products as an affiliate in many way including: Using your Blog; Social Networks; Writing and Submitting Articles: Creating Videos; Creating Web 2.0 Properties; Joining Online Forums: Building an Email List; and Creating Niche Sites

So How Does This Actually Work?

To begin with, you need to find the product that you want to sell. The easiest way to do this is through an affiliate network such as JVZoo (www.jvzoo.com), Commission Junction (www.cj.com), ClickBank (www.clickbank.com), WSOPro (www.warriorforum.com/warrior-special-offers/) or others. Below is the welcome page for JVZoo, followed by that of ClickBank.

Here, you’ll then be able to find a massive list of affiliate products along with the amount they’ve sold, the commission they’re offering and their price. You then find something that appeals to you and that fits your niche and you apply for an ‘affiliate link’. That link is basically a special URL that directs people to the page where they can buy the product while also storing a cookie on their computer to show that you sent them. If they click your link and then buy the product within a certain time frame, it is logged as your sale and you get the money. Very straightforward!

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Your job then is to simply promote that affiliate link, which you can do in a number of ways. You might for instance decide to simply set up an advertising campaign using Facebook Ads or AdWords. As long as you’re paying less for the advertising than you’re earning from the sales, then this will be an effective method.

Another option is to use your own channels. If you create a large email list then you can send your affiliate link around those subscribers after you’ve built their trust. Or if you have a blog, you can promote the link that way. You can even promote the links via social media, or using ‘real world’ posters and flyers. Or how about a YouTube channel?

Either way, this is a very simple and straightforward business model that lets you earn big cash without having to invest anything or take any risks yourself. There are some very well known figures in the affiliate marketing industry which include the likes of John Chow (www.johnchow.com) who is now somewhat famous online and regularly attends talks and interviews. Other big names include Mark Link and Rae Hoffman. All these people now live incredible lifestyles enjoying passive income while they travel the world or spend more time with their families.

Having known that there is so much potential in taking advantage of affiliate marketing to pull in your own passive income to be financially free and wealthy, the next thing big thing you should learn are the best practical tips and skills to apply to yield profitable results.

Affiliate Marketing Best Practices And Tips Now you know what affiliate marketing is and how to get started with an affiliate marketing network, the next thing to consider is how best to succeed in this space and to really start generating the kind of income you’re looking for.

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One of the most important points here is to pick the right product . Of course this means that you should choose a product that is selling well and that offers large commission on an attractive price point.

But on top of that, you also need to think about how you’re going to sell that product and succeed in that niche. This is the most important part and it’s something that will help you in a ton of different online business models actually.

When selling anything, you need to look for what is known as the ‘route to market’. This essentially means the route you’re going to take to present your product to the largest number of people who may be interested in it. If you have an eBook on flowers, then a route to market might be something like a blog on flowers or maybe a magazine for brides-to-be.

Most of us have a few contacts and resources we can already use. Maybe you happen to be in touch with a big blogger in the fitness niche? Maybe you happen to know the editor of a magazine?

Instead of choosing a random product and then trying to build that audience from scratch, choose the subject that you already have a headstart in and then exploit those contacts and opportunities.

When you choose your product remember that you aren’t just choosing your product – you’re choosing your market, your marketing strategy and your audience!

Oh and often, this means going for slightly smaller niches. It’s sometimes easier to find and connect with a group of truckers than it is to get noticed among all the different marketers going after the dating crowd. Once again, starting small and building up is often the best strategy.

Thinking Physical Products?

One last point to consider is that there are also a number of affiliate programs aimed at people who want to sell physical products. The best known of these is Amazon’s Associate Program (https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/).

This lets you promote any product on Amazon for commission, potentially opening you up to a much wider audience. Bear in mind though that these sales offer much smaller commissions – typically about 3-10% of the retail price.

CHAPTER 5

#4 FREELANCE WRITING Freelance writing is one of the most popular ways to earn money online. Many successful freelancers can earn an average of 50 cents to a dollar per word. Some are earning twice that!

Writers, graphic designers and other talents are in demand especially on the Internet.

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Of course, it doesn’t start out like that. You’ve got to build your portfolio and your résumé, blah blah blah. If you’re interested in writing, I’m sure you know this. If you’re not interested in writing, I wouldn’t recommend traveling down this road just for the money.

It takes dedication and time, though it can be highly profitable if it’s what you love. Assuming it is what you love; let’s talk about making money with it.

Before you decide to start reaching out to all of these freelance writing companies, you need to have a web presence. You need a blog (in my humble blogger opinion, of course). Or you could just have an online portfolio. Even a LinkedIn profile works to get started.

When you’re ready to start, here are 150 Resources to help you write better, faster and more persuasively.

If that’s intimidating, just start with these 50 resources.

Now for what you’ve all been waiting for; once you’re ready to actually start making money, here are 10 websites you can start with: 1. Listverse: Listverse pays $100 for each accepted post. The article must be a list, it must be at least 1,500 words and you must include at least 10 things. Other than that, you can get pretty creative with it.

2. TopTenz: TopTenz pays $50 for each accepted post. Again, the article has to be in a list format and it must be at least 1,500 words, with few exceptions. They post often so your chances of getting accepted are fairly high.

3. A List Apart: A List Apart pays $200 for each accepted post. They’re not first on the list, because they tend to publish less articles, which means you have a smaller chance of getting accepted. Same guidelines as above, 1,500 word minimum.

4. International Living: International Living pays $75 for each accepted post. They are mostly looking for travel experiences from countries you have visited. For this site, it’s more about your experience than your writing ability.

5. FundsforWriters: FundsforWriters pays $50 for each accepted post. They are looking for articles about writing and making money with it. They only accept articles between 500-600 words, but they want you to make each word count.

6. Uxbooth: Uxbooth pays $100 for each accepted post. They do tend to take four to eight weeks to accept and post articles, so don’t count on this being a quick money maker. They take so long, because they pair with editors to only publish amazing content.

7. iWriter: iWriter pays up to $15 for each accepted post. That may seem small, but they aren’t as strict as many of the others above and they also allow you to pick exactly what you write. You can write as many or as few articles as you want.

8. Textbroker: Textbroker pays up to five cents per word, if you’re a 5-star writer. You’ll start by submitting a short sample article and you will most likely start as a 3-star writer, but you can work your way up by writing more and writing great content.

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9. Matador Network: Matador Network pays up to $60 for each accepted post, but standard pay is around $20-$25. They don’t really focus on a minimum word count, but they have a maximum count of 1,500 words.

10. The Penny Hoarder: The Penny Hoarder pays up to $800 (rarely), depending upon the number of page views you receive. The pay starts at $100 for 50,000 page views, so this isn’t a guaranteed paid article, but it can potentially be highly rewarding.

There’s no doubt that you can make money with freelance writing, but it’s a process. Once you start building your portfolio and your writing skills, you can start making some serious money. If you’re not an experienced writer, expect to put some time in before you really start to see some dough.

Of course, it is understood that the kind of services that have a demand on the Internet are services that you can provide online. These are mostly services related to website building and marketing. The following services are very much in demand: Article Writing and Content creation

 Website Development

 Internet Research

 Social networking services

 Blog management

 Proofreading and editing

 Search Engine Optimization

 Video Creation and so on.

 Graphics Design If you feel you fit within any of these skills, you could make an amazing amount of money with them. Remember that the Internet allows you to reach out to a global level and you could liaise with people from all over the world to seek work.

Below are twenty five freelancing sites that you can take advantage from to pull your wealth from the internet, making use of your skill as a writer or hiring one, while you share and make money from it.

TOP 25 FREELANCING SITES The following are some sites where you can join and create an account quickly so that you start earning through this mode:1) Upwork.com – general 2) Freelancer.com– general 3) Freelance.com– General 4) Elance.com– general 5) 99designs.com– design 6) Designcrowd.com– design 7) Guru.com– general

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8) Clickworker.com– online marketing, e-commerce, media, information etc 11) xplace.com– designing, programming, writing/editing, translating, marketing.

12) ifreelance.com– proof-reading, arts, data entry, graphic designing, photos 13) Project4hire.com– programming, translation, consulting, graphic design 14) Scribendi.com– editing and proofreading 15) Freelancesuccess.com–writing 16) Joomlancers.com– everything Joomla CMS related 17) Genuinejobs.com – telecommuting 18) freelancedesigners.com– web and graphic design, programming, logos 19) Governmentbids.com– general 20) Freelancers.net– general 21) Greatlance.com– general 22) outsourcexp.com– SEO, programming; engineering, admin, marketing.

23) Freelancer-job.com – programming 24) programmingbids.com – programming, databases, graphic design.

25) Peopleperhour.com– programming, design, admin tasks, accounting, PR You can get started with a few of these and see the vast potential that lies therein. These are all bidding sites. You find a job that meets your preferences and then make your bid and give an estimated time of completion. If the project poster finds that to be all right, they will select you.

You are paid through online routes.

The drawback here is that you have to spend time.

You have to be at your desktop for all the time that you are generating money, which is a very different thing from other approaches such as affiliate marketing. You earn only as much as you work and there is no scope for residual income.

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CHAPTER 6

#5 ARTICLE WRITING Since many of the internet business people in Africa are literate, with most having university or polytechnic degrees, I believe making money by writing articles is a major gold mine just waiting to be exploited by Africans.

Depending on your skill level when it comes to writing, you could always find work writing articles for other people. At the outset, this won't pay you much, especially if you have little in the way of examples or portfolio pieces. But, like anything else, you can build this up over time.

You could also do a number of other things related to writing such as copywriting for descriptions, emails, or other sales-related content. Do your due diligence to find out what the going rates are for writing articles, and even try to find a mentor if you're serious about making money online through this method.

If you're good with words and writing interests you, it is possible for you to make money writing online. There are many websites just waiting to PAY you for writing articles. Also, many site owners and publishers are looking for people to write articles for them to use in promoting their businesses. Good writers can never lack for money on the internet if they know where to go and how to go about it In case you are wondering how it is possible to be paid for writing articles online, here are 18 of the top sites where you can get paid for writing articles.

18 MAJOR SITES THAT WILL PAY YOU FOR YOUR ARTICLES

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1. Squidoo.com Squidoo is a publishing platform and community where you can share personal write-ups through their website. Articles on Squidoo are called ‘lenses’ or pages.

Once you’ve posted a lens, ads of similar or recommended products of what’s written is placed around your lens.

The ads will consist of products which are sold via their affiliate programs with Amazon, eBay and a few others. You keep half of whatever Squidoo makes off your lens which is then payable to you via PayPal or donated to a charity for you.

2. HubPages.com Like Squidoo, in HubPages, you write ‘hubs’ or articles about an original and useful topic. Once you’ve posted your article, ads related to what you wrote are placed. These ads are generated from Google AdSense, HubPages Ad Program and/or affiliate programs such as Amazon and eBay products.

Once your article(s) earns the minimum amount on Google AdSense ($100) or HubPages Ad Program ($50), you can chose to cash out through PayPal. 3. ContentBLVD.com ContentBLVD connects blog owners to writers. To be a writer for ContentBLVD, you have to send in an application and meet its criteria. Once you get in, you can start writing articles based on the topics or assignments as required by ContentBLVD’s clients.

If your content gets used, you will be paid ranging from $12 to $48 per piece. For now, ContentBLVD is still in beta mode (at the time of this writing) but it is worth checking out if you want to quit writing spam assignments.

4. Epinions.com If you love writing reviews (and who doesn’t?), check out Epinions. You can write positive or negative reviews about products available for purchase on web stores all over the internet. From the reviews, you earn Eroyalties credits through the Income Share program, which is redeemable in US dollars.

The program rewards reviewers who help other buyers make their decisions on buying or not buying the product based on your review. US residents can redeem their check with a minimum balance of $10 while non-US residents must have a minimum balance of $100.

5. Fiverr.com

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Fiverr is a place you where you can ‘sell’ your writing skills or services (among others) for a fixed price of $5 – you get to keep $4. When someone buys whatever you’re offering to sell, they’ll pay to Fiverr first. Once you’ve completed the task at hand, $4 will be credited into your account. You can then withdraw your earnings via PayPal. Unlock ‘levels’ by selling more and more often on Fiverr, and more opportunities and tools will be opened for your use.

6. DemandMediaStudios.com You need to apply to write for Demand Media Studios but once accepted; you’ll be given tasks or assignments which they require you to write about. These assignments will be based on subjects you are interested in or have knowledge of. This is determined when you first apply for the assignment.

We also have reason to believe that content on eHow originates from here, giving you and your articles even more exposure. Your articles that get published will net you from $15 to more than $30.

7. Blogging.Org This is a website for people to buy and also write articles to be sold. To earn money from Blogging.org, all you have to do is contribute quality articles of specific topics. Since the other half of the website is for people to browse and purchase content, if your article gets chosen, you’ll get paid a certain amount.

Articles go for as low as $1.50 up to $20 per piece, however there is no mention on how much you are entitled to. Premium writers are mentioned to ‘earn $30/hour and payments are done weekly.

Register for free to start writing.

8. Constant-Content.com Constant Content is a website that allows writers to get their content sold to multiple clients. There is also a Public Request System where writers can submit fresh articles to buyers who are looking for content on a specific subject.

As you write more, you can join the Writer Pool to claim exclusive projects from clients. This is a great way to build your portfolio. Each article price is determined and paid by the client; Constant Content will take 35% while the writer receives 65% through PayPal. 9. Bukisa.com Bukisa’s aim is to give knowledge to others by sharing experiences. So most of their articles are ‘How-To’ guides. This is a great place to write about a something you are interested or have knowledge in.

Earnings are based on Google AdSense within your article. It’s also a community where you can meet other writers. It’s free to sign up so just give it a go.

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10. Xomba.com Xomba is a place with articles in the categories of Entertainment, Home, Writing, Science & History, News & Politics, Technology and Living. Ads from Google AdSense are automatically placed on the article you write.

Despite the flexibility of topics to write on, when it comes to payments, Xomba splits the earnings with you; you will receive 40%. Also, earning through Google AdSense means you can only withdraw your earnings when it reaches $100.

11. Wizzley.com Writing on Wizzley can earn you money in a few different ways. Besides earning from Google AdSense, you can show related products sold on Amazon in your article, and you will receive a commission if one of the products is sold through the writing your article.

They even allow you to use pictures for sale from AllPosters, and if they get sold from the click of your article, you get a share of the earnings. Other similar ways to earn commission include Zazzle and Chitika.

12. SponsoredReviews.com SponsoredReviews is a place where advertisers look for bloggers to write about their products. This is also a site for bloggers who want to sell sponsored posts on their blogs.

Advertisers who go to Sponsored Reviews have their own requirements for what they want in each post. Once your account and profile is on Sponsored Reviews, advertisers will visit your blog and if they’re interested to buy ‘advertising space’, they’ll contact you. Bloggers can also approach advertisers directly.

13. InfoBarrel.com This is a fantastic money site for authors and it shares out about 75% of income to the site to the content writers 14. WiseGEEK.com WiseGEEK offers free and clear answers to common questions in almost all niches (500+ topics).

They pay writers per article. Currently wiseGEEK pay $10 to $14 depending on the article. You get paid via PayPal and there is no fee as they cover the PayPal fees.

15. eCopywriters.com

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eCopywriters hires copywriters to assist their clients in creating quality content. They’re looking for only professional copywriters only. You can earn up to $25 per hour for basic writing projects.

They have different levels of writers and top level writers earn as much as $0.30 per word. eCopywriters’ projects include TV & Radio Commercials, SEO Content, Blogs, Press Releases, Ads, Sales Letters, Business Letters & Plans and more.

16. Textbroker.com This is another great site that allows you to earn money for writing. If you are looking for simpler articles and writing projects, then this might be a better fit for you. You can typically earn $3.00$8.00 an article but the articles are shorter and much easier to write in my opinion. Textbroker allows entrepreneurs and companies the opportunity to post writing projects in the system. You go through the system and claim articles in areas of interest. They pay twice a month by PayPal on all of the articles that you have written.

17. ProBlogger.com This is more like a job board for writers but it is very good. You can find fresh, new job postings almost every day. If you are looking for some extra work, then keep your eye out on this job board. For example, if you like sports, it is not uncommon to find an opening every once in a while for a sports blogger who can write on recent sporting events.

18. FreelanceWritingGigs.com This is a great website on many different levels. Not only can you learn how to be a freelance writer, but they have relevant, fresh job postings listed daily as well.

Below is a list of 50+ places that you can get paid just for writing.

TOP 50 ARTICLE DIRECTORIES IN THE WORLD (By Alexa and Google Traffic Pagerank) Apart from getting paid directly to write articles, you can also submit your articles on article directories to promote yourself as well as your businesses and products with backlinks. The more people that read your articles, the more name recognition you have and the more you attract traffic to your sites and blogs to make more sales!

Here is a list of the top articles directories in the world where you can post your articles.

S/N 1.

2.

URL ehow.com hubpages.com

Alexa Rating 277 534

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Google Pagerank 7 6

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

examiner.com squidoo.com ezinearticles.com seekingalpha.com technorati.com apsense.com/article/start goarticles.com articlesbase.com buzzle.com textbroker.com selfgrowth.com amazines.com sooperarticles.com biggerpockets.com/articles articlesnatch.com knoji.com/articles/ articletrader.com triond.com brighthub.com thefreelibrary.com suite101.com gather.com articlecity.com ezinemark.com isnare.com infobarrel.com articlerich.com EvanCarmichael.com articledashboard.com artipot.com articlesfactory.com pubarticles.com articlecube.com articlealley.com articlebro.com

543 667 674 913 1,760 2,424 2,831 3,016 3,580 5,866 6,333 7,146 9,501 10,166 11,135 11,323 11,595 11,679 12,200 12,621 12,657 12,661 13,204 13,461 13,981 14,066 15,415 15,941 16,218 16,537 17,261 17,630 17,932 18,009 19,149

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8 7 6 7 8 4 2 6 6 4 6 4 4 4 5 3 5 5 6 7 6 6 5 4 5 4 4 4 5 3 4 4 4 4 1

38.

39.

40.

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43.

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45.

46.

47.

48.

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upublish.info thewhir.com/find/articlecentral abcarticledirectory.com submityourarticle.com/articles/ helium.com earticlesonline.com articlecell.com xgbook.com a1articles.com informationbible.com articlesxpert.com articlestars.com web-source.net

20,151 21,210 23,765 23,837 24,630 26,555 27,448 27,831 28,164 28,716 28,881 29,261 29,490

CHAPTER 7

#6 SOFTWARE VENDING

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4 5 3 3 5 2 2 4 4 2 4 3 6

This has to do solely with marketing a Software As A Service [SaaS] and Making your Millions from it.

Selling software is one of the most emphatic routes to make good money on the Internet. People who use computers are always trying to make their jobs easier or to add more quality to their jobs.

That is the reason they look for good software all the time.

With broadband Internet, it has become so very easy to provide software in downloadable formats.

You promote a link from where people can download particular software and allow them to access it when they make payment. They will pay and you give them the link to download the software.

Many marketers tease people by giving them demo versions of the software for free. This allows the downloaders to understand the quality of the product before they decide to spend good money on it. These demo versions generally have some features locked or they are timed demos which expire after an hour’s worth of usage or so. When that happens, people are prompted to buy the product to make use of it limitlessly.

So, What Must This Software Be Like?

People on the Internet like each and every kind of software. Or, let us put that in another way each and every type of software on the Internet will find takers.

There’s a niche for everything on the Internet. So, if you have made a software application that will help Grandma remember her recipes or made a software that will help a businessman with his end-of-the-year accounting, you are going to find people who will be willing to download it and check it out. The success lies in the promotion.

For promotion, you can use more of the same methods that you have been using all along. If your software becomes prominent, especially in places where your niche market usually visits, you could be assured of a healthy flow of downloaders. At the same time, you have to remember that there is no lifespan for this. There will always be downloaders, provided you promote well and keep upgrading your software, which means, you can keep generating a flow of passive income through this.

You do not need to have your own software application either. You could buy the resell rights of software and sell it. There are several creative people on the Internet who like building software but don’t like the marketing side of it.

These people give away the software they have developed for a price. You can modify these software applications to an extent, and in some cases you can rebrand them too. Of course, you sell them at a much higher and enduring price than you bought it for. You could just look for ‘software resell rights’ on Google to find a host of such sites.

Like everything else, there are so many categories of this gold mine and those who want to play in this area have lots of choices as to the specific niche of this section they want to play at. To help you have an idea of the different software markets available to you, I have included a list of some of the most common types of software that are in his demand today. Enjoy!

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How To Monetize Software One of the most simple and straightforward ways to monetize software is of course to simply sell the software. This can be very varied in terms of the scope and the price.

For instance, if you look at a piece of software such as Sony Vegas (video editing software), that will set you back several hundred dollars for the full package. On the other hand, you then have ‘apps’ which will sell on the Google Play Store or Apple App Store for 50cents.

Of course it’s much easier to go after the latter market – a small app is cheaper to develop and maintain and from there, you’ll have a great route to market (and payment system) in the form of those stores.

Another option with an app meanwhile is to make money from advertising. In this model, you actually give the app away for free but then make money every time someone clicks on or views an Ad that shows on top of it.

SaaS Another completely different option is to go the SaaS route. This stands for ‘Software As A Service’, and essentially it means that you are selling access to a piece of software for a recurring fee – much like a subscription.

The dating website Match.com (www.match.com) is a great example of this. Others will often offer a free membership in order to attract potential customers and then encourage them to upgrade their membership for a fee, giving access to more features. Examples of this include Dropbox (www.dropbox.com), Evernote (www.evernote.com) and Feedly (www.feedly.com).

How To Create Your Own Software Now, creating a piece of software is going to be a little more challenging than creating an information product. The question is just how much of a challenge you’re willing to take on.

If you’re going to create a mobile app, then assuming it’s something simple, this will require a relatively low investment and should be something most readers can accomplish. On the other hand though, if your intention is to create a SaaS business model, this will involve a lot more work.

That’s because creating software that can be a service will normally mean creating something that runs in the browser and is cloud enabled. In other words, people need to be able to log in from anywhere, edit files, communicate with others, etc.

This then means that your program is going to need to run on a server, which immediately makes things more complicated as now you’ll need to understand how servers work and you’ll probably need multiple coding languages in order to handle what’s going on behind the scenes (called the

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‘backend’). You’ll also need to deal with customer complaints and potential errors and generally provide a service. This is not a passive model and it has a much larger barrier to entry.

Of course on the other hand, creating a SaaS model means that you have much more guaranteed income and potentially earn much more from each customer.

Once again then, the best advice is to start with something much more simple like a mobile app and then to build up to bigger challenges such as a web app.

Either way, you’re going to either need to learn programming or you’re going to need to find someone who can help you do that. Once again, you can outsource the creation of your software by going to Elance and UpWork. If you’re building a SaaS business, then note that you’re going to need a ‘full stack developer’ which means that you’re hiring someone who understands everything from HTML and CSS (which are used in web design) to PHP and Linux. In other words, they need to know every stage of the coding process and each element that contributes to a smoothly running piece of cloud software. If you can’t find a true full stack developer, then you’ll more likely need a team.

For mobile apps, finding a developer will be a bit simpler. Do make sure you see a sample of their work first though and for preference, try to choose someone who is in your local area so that you can work together at the same computer. This will save you a LOT of time.

Doing It Yourself If you want to create your own software though, then what options do you have? Unfortunately, this is a massive question and not one that can easily be answered here. Suffice to say that there are hundreds if not thousands of programming languages out there and the right one to learn will depend entirely on your skill level and the nature of your project. To make an Android app for instance you will need to learn Java, as well as how to use the Android SDK. Conversely, if you’re making a computer game for the PC, then the easiest strategy is likely going to be learning to use Unity which will require a little coding in C#.

As mentioned, creating a web app is a huge undertaking and will require you to learn HTML and CSS along with PHP, Python or Ruby, several frameworks and more.

All this is not to say that learning to code can’t be done. Just recognize that there’s no single way to do it and it will take time. If you’re coding yourself then you must start with a simple project. Buy yourself a book, do lots of Googling and work towards something very simple as a learning exercise to begin with.

Another option is to use something like an ‘app builder’. These are very limited in terms of what they can accomplish though and won’t be suitable for most online business models.

So this option is a little harder than the last two. Still though, if you can create something truly useful and unique then you’ll have contributed greatly to the web and you can be very proud of that! And while unlikely, this has very real potential to make you very rich!

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LIST OF HOT CATEGORIES OF SOFTWARE SERVICE THAT CAN MAKE YOU MILLIONS ► Free application software

► Genealogy software

► Multimedia software

► Business software

► Government software

► Music software

► Software for children

► Graphics software

► Communication software

► Industrial software

►Computer tools

► Data management software

►Knowledge software

► Desktop widgets ► Editing software ► Educational software ► Entertainment software

representation

programming

► Religious software ► Science software

► Language software

► Simulation software

► Legal software

► Spreadsheet software

►Library science

and

information ► Stagecraft software and so on

CHAPTER 8

#7 SELL PROFESSIONAL SERVICES ON UPWORK OR 99DESIGNS Upwork and 99Designs are two of the biggest resources for selling just about any professional service under the sun. If you have extensive experience in a field, you might want to consider selling your services through one of these sites www.99designs.com and https://www.upwork.com.

99Designs only applies to graphic design while Upwork applies to nearly every other professional service.

However, like anything else, the beginning will be difficult. Before you have a significant track record and extensive reviews, sourcing work in one of these highly-competitive platforms will be difficult. Find the most successful people in your niche and try to model your approach and online profile after theirs.

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What is 99designs & How It Works 99designs is a graphic design company that creates logos, websites, applications, business cards, book covers, vehicle wraps, and more. When a client asks 99designs to design them a logo, website or an app, 99designs ask the client how much money they want and how long they have. Once the client replies, 99designs then pots the project into the user community. The user community will then analyse the proposal, if they think it's worth the money they'll design it.

The client can then choose their favourite design. In some cases the client will shortlist 6 designers who can work together or tweak their designs a little. When the client picks a design the designer must hand over .psd .jpeg .swf etc. or other recommended format. Designers are never expected to code for their designs.

99designs does some minor quality control to check the designs are the minimum resolution etc.

If everything's okay, 99designs will credit the user's account with the fee. Then after the user's account reaches $50-100 dependant on how long the user has been using the service, they can request a payout via BACS Transfer or PayPal. It is rare that a fee will be less than $170. 99designs also offer Platinum only contest that designers experienced with their platform can enter for fees of around $2000. Some contest are hidden so you can't see others entries and they can't copy yours.

Finally if you work with a client they can request to work exclusively with you in the future.

What Is Upwork And How Does It Work Upwork is a global freelancing platform where businesses and independent professionals connect and collaborate remotely. Upwork has twelve million registered freelancers and five million registered clients. Three million jobs are posted annually, worth a total of $1 billion USD, making it the world's largest freelancer marketplace.

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Upwork allows clients to interview, hire and work with freelancers and agencies through the company's platform. The platform now includes a real-time chat platform aimed at reducing the time it takes to find and hire freelancers.

Freelancers can be hired for jobs on web, mobile, and software development, engineering and data science, creative services such as graphic design and writing, sales and marketing, customer service, virtual assistants, and accounting and consulting.

How I Made $1,000+ Per Week On Upwork I know when I started my freelance career, I did as well. I thought it was a place to outsource tasks to people overseas for $4 an hour. While you may be able to do that with Upwork, you also have the ability to use this marketplace to jumpstart your career and provide a continual flow of projects for your freelancing business.

Early on, I began landing small projects of a few hundred dollars at a time, and within a few weeks I was generating $1,000-$1,300 per week just from Upwork. While this isn't retirement income, this is enough income for most creatives to take the plunge and dive in full time.

Following are the basics of how to get up and running on Upwork, and how to quickly get to a point where you are generating over $1,000 per week. Cool? Yea it is!

Why Job Posting Sites Are Better Than You Think 1) Location: You can do the work from anywhere. All of the jobs on these sites are completely location independent 2) Hiring Potency: Everyone who has posted on this site is ready to hire someone right now. You don't need to waste time marketing or networking. You spend your time talking directly to the customer, which cuts down the sales and marketing process in between.

3) It Is Low Risk.

That means it is a great way to practice your skills, build a portfolio and generate some cash. The only thing at risk when working on these sites is your oDesk rating.

Why Upwork Upwork is the product of oDesk and Elance merging. It has the highest earning community of freelancers over any of the other platforms with gross earnings of $920M. In addition, Upwork has a feature where the contractor installs an app on their computer and the app takes random screen

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shots throughout their work process so you can as the individual hiring the person can check to see that they were on task and not surfing the web on your dollar.

This is a huge attraction point for many employers and has made Upwork to be what I believe is one of the best marketplaces to outsource work. That means it has a huge community of quality employers ready to hire you for their job.

Who Should Be Using Upwork   

Freelancers who are early on in their career and struggling to get their first few clients Freelancers who are afraid of selling and negotiations Freelancers who want to work remotely

Who should not be using Upwork  

If you are steadily generating over $5k-8k per month, then you should not consider Upwork If you are niched vertically and offer services to a specific target market (healthcare, fitness, education, etc.), then you should not consider Upwork

Getting Started 

PHASE I: PREPARATION

Pay attention to your profile completeness percentage on the home page dashboard. Do everything Upwork asks to get this to 100% Getting started on Upwork is not a small commitment. You will invest 2-4 hours of time on the front end on getting your profile ready in exchange for a continual flow of work once it is done.

When you get started on Upwork. The first thing you need to do is set up your profile as a contractor. Go through and fill out everything in as much detail as you can. Again, be sure to pay attention to their 'Profile Completion %' and make sure to get everything that they recommend.

Once your profile is 100% complete you will begin moving up the Upwork search engine much quicker.

How To Position Your Profile With Upwork, you want to position your profile around 1-2 primary skill sets that you are offering.

Try to be specific as well. Instead of offering 'Web Design' offer 'Wordpress Development'.

Instead of offering 'Marketing' offer 'Copywriting, Social Media, Facebook Advertising, etc'

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Be as specific as possible with the skill sets you are offering as this will help in the long run for moving up the Upwork search ranks.

Become Great At Your Craft If your work isn't good, you aren't going to make money on Upwork. It's as simple as that.

I would highly recommend grabbing a membership at Lynda.com. It is a great site with incredible video training on any type of software, programming language or skill that you want to learn. There is a 7 day free trial so just sign up, try it out and improve your skills.

A good quality portfolio and body of work is essential to success on Upwork.

Setting Your Rate On Upwork Early on, you will want to have a decently low rate on Upwork until you get at least a few jobs under your belt. Even if you are experienced with a great portfolio, if you have a high rate and no past projects or reviews on Upwork, then it is probably unlikely that you will get hired. Early on, keep your rate low for 2-3 projects and then raise it once you have the reviews to back your profile up.

My recommendations to new freelancers from English speaking countries would be to start with a rate of $20-35hr.

Take The Upwork Tests This part is annoying but it is a necessary part of being successful on Upwork. To begin working on Upwork you must pass a few simple tests on working on Upwork, and also on the skill sets you desire for your profile. This can be quite annoying as each test can take about 20 minutes although I ensure you it is worthwhile.

Once you complete these tests, your application limit will be raised up to 20 applications at a time and your profile will shoot up the Upwork search engine much faster.

ďƒź

PHASE II: GETTING THE WORK

Once you have your profile optimized, your job application quota is up to twenty then it is time to start applying for jobs and pulling in the work. Here are a few tips on how to land clients on Upwork.

Get your first job. Dive into the search box and look for jobs similar to the skill sets you desire.

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Once you are in the search engine, take a look at the filter features on the left hand side. When getting started you just want to land a few jobs regardless of what they pay to get some positive reviews on your profile. Aim for 'Fixed priced jobs' instead of hourly and aim for something between $50-$250.

Find a few jobs that seem interesting to you and go ahead and apply.

Early on, you will have to apply to a lot of jobs on Upwork. I recommend keeping your application quota maxed out at all times (Applications expire after 7 days and your quota will go back up).

Over time, as you do more work, and you gain more high reviews for your work, you will begin to be regularly invited on jobs and you won't even have to deal with the application process anymore.

Generally the first job is the hardest. People are hesitant to hire someone with no reviews or past work on Upwork. Don't get discouraged and just take what you can to get that first job!

Understanding The Types Of Jobs On Upwork there are two types of jobs, Fixed-Price and Hourly Jobs. There are pros and cons to each.

Fixed price Fixed priced jobs are just like they sound. They are jobs with a set scope that is arranged at a fixed price. Early on, I recommend that most freelancers start at fixed priced jobs. You have the freedom to work as many or as few hours as needed on these project in order to get them done.

In some cases, I had fixed price projects that took me only a couple hours and paid hundreds of dollars. In other cases, I had fixed priced projects where the client dragged on for weeks and kept making changes.

Because you aren't tracking hourly, be careful with fixed priced projects as a bad client can quickly become a nightmare.

Hourly Projects For hourly projects, Upwork has an application that you install on your desktop. This application takes random screenshots of your computer every 5-10 minutes and uploads them to a work diary.

Mostly, the employer will never actually look at these, but occasionally if you have a picky employer or someone who is suspicious about the amount of time you spent, they can check these logs.

While this can seem annoying and ridiculous at first, it is honestly a great thing. Upwork guarantees payments for hourly work. For fixed price work, the client can dispute the project if the work is not done or they can end the project early without submitting your second half of payment. With hourly work, Upwork guarantees that as longs as you are logged in, using their app and on task, then you will get paid for that time no matter what.

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ďƒź

Phase III: APPLYING FOR JOBS AND ACTUALLY WINNING THEM

When you are applying for these jobs, you are mostly competing with contractors from overseas who apply for nearly every job that pops up on Upwork. A large percentage of them will paste a template cover letter in their application and not even read the job description.

While a job that has 30 applications on it can seem like you have no chance in hell of winning, the truth is that 28 of those are probably not even competition.

Attaching a case study is a great way to also help you win jobs.

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CHAPTER 9

#8 SELL PRODUCTS ON ETSY Etsy is a great resource for those that enjoy making their own products and selling them online. If you're into hand-crafted items and you have a penchant for creating killer goods and wares that people just have to have, then you might want to consider setting up an Etsy shop and selling through a massive online portal.

What Is Etsy Etsy is simply a global creative commerce platform. Markets, services and economic opportunity have been built already for creative entrepreneurs.

Within these markets, millions of people around the world connect both online and offline, to make, sell and buy unique goods. Etsy also offer a wide range of Seller Services and tools that help creative entrepreneurs start, manage and scale their businesses. It is the mission of the creators to reimaging commerce in ways that build a more fulfilling and lasting world, and is committed to using the power of business to strengthen communities and empower people.

It was founded in 1062, with over 45m Employees, and has sold items worth 1.8M. Active sellers totals up to 29.7M, with an Annual gross merchandise sales in 2016. It has its Headquartered in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY.

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Etsy is a great way to go directly to where all the consumers are congregating. While the company will take a small fee to list your products, along with fees to process the transaction itself, it is easier than setting up your own transactional website. Do some research on the top sellers and try to emulate their success.

Before you start up an Etsy shop, here are five things to consider.

1. Do Your Research Whether you have an idea for something you’d like to make and sell, or you have been making something for a long time, research online is essential for creating an E-commerce business. Just because you list it on Etsy, does not necessarily mean buyers will come. If you don’t have a strategy behind your shop, you will not be successful. Do your research on the web, through Google searches, image searches, and pinterest, and on Etsy itself. These are some of the questions you should answer during the research process.

-

Is there a demand for what you are making?

Have you found items similar to yours for sale?

If yes, what are your competitors selling their items for? Are their items selling?

If no, why don’t you think there are items similar to what you are making out there?

If you don’t see anything like what you make, why do you think that is?

Would your items meet a need if they were available? If yes, who specifically would they meet a need for?

Would customers be able to imagine via a picture and description, what they would do with your item or use your item for?

Do you know your product well? Meaning, do you know what it costs you to make it, how much time it takes, and what you would need to charge to make a profit? And the icing on the cake, would someone be willing to spend what you want to charge for that item?

The answers to the above questions are key in determining if you should move forward with your idea on Etsy.

2. Originality Originality is defined as, “a freshness of aspect, design or style.” While yours may not be the only item available in a specific genre, what differentiates your product from the rest of the crowd? You need to be able to answer the following questions to determine if your item can stand out: -

What exactly makes your product stand out?

After doing some research, you might determine that you do have competition. If that’s the case, what would cause a customer to purchase your item over your competitor’s?

What do you offer that your competitor does not offer?

What makes your item one of a kind, what is the draw? Is it the style? Price? Quick turn around?

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-

If you determine there’s not something out there like what you are making, how will you draw in your customer?

Once you have done a sufficient amount of research and have a clear understanding of your product’s draw, you need to think about who is going to buy this amazing creation.

3. Target Market All forms of business are targeting someone. Your target market should be who you envision being interested in your items, and who you imagine becoming your customers. If you don’t have a clear idea of who would buy your product, chances are your product won’t be purchased. Identifying your target market also helps you determine the direction to take your business and how to expand your product line someday. Think about the following: -

Who do you envision as a customer? What is their age, sex, occupation, etc.?

Why would they purchase this item from you?

How will your target market find you? Will they be online? On social media? On Etsy? Will you spread the word via referrals and word of mouth?

Is the nature of your product something that can create repeat customers within your market?

4. Time is Money What kind of time are you willing to devote to your shop? If you don’t have the time to devote to creating and maintaining a shop, you will not be successful. The most successful Etsy shops are maintained regularly, regardless of the amount of sales coming in. What does that mean exactly?

That means that a great deal of time and effort has gone into creating and choosing quality images to use to showcase the items for sale. The seller of a successful shop has a current and up to date shop announcement that is welcoming and informative. The seller has well written item descriptions and strategically chosen key tag words and phrases for each listing. Thought has gone into creating the shop banner and shop description. The seller has taken time to create policies, shipping guidelines, and an about page. This is what a well created shop looks like.

But it doesn’t end there. Once a shop is created, there is the actual running of the shop. That means checking in on the shop regularly, answering conversations, making changes to listings, responding to sales, checking shop stats to see if people are visiting the shop. That means asking questions when viewing shop stats: -

What do you notice about your traffic?

Are people all viewing the same listing?

Are people favoriting one item in particular?

What are the search terms people are using to arrive at your shop?

Is there outside traffic coming from other locations?

This kind of “feedback” can help determine what direction you go with the items in your shop.

This is the kind of regular self evaluation that a successful Etsy seller engages in. It also means that if nothing is selling, and you are getting very little traffic, it’s time to reevaluate things:

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-

Is there really a demand for what you are making?

If you believe there is a demand, are you having trouble being found?

Is your pricing too high? Should you try running a special bonus or sales promo? Would that be something your target market would be interested in?

Are you promoting your shop elsewhere to drive traffic to your shop?

How are your competitors doing?

If it does not appear that there is a demand for what you are selling, do you need to reevaluate how or what you are selling?

Some of the most successful entrepreneurs have tirelessly gone back to the drawing board many times before finding that winning idea. Just like most things in life, time is related to success. It is impossible to have a successful shop without investing time into it.

5. “Etsy-style” There are all types of creations that people sell at craft fairs or to friends-that work great off Etsythat just don’t work on Etsy. Along with doing research for your product, ask yourself how familiar you are with Etsy, the marketplace. Have you purchased anything from any Etsy sellers before?

Take a good look around Etsy and get a feel for the place. Etsy is a handmade marketplace with its own style and vibe. Etsy is not Amazon. Etsy is not Ebay. And Etsy is not your local craft fair. In answering all the above questions, you should be able to determine more clearly if Etsy would be a good fit for you.

Remember: -

-

Do your research and determine if your product is something people want or meets a need.

Know exactly how much time and money it takes to make your product and if you could make a profit.

Ask yourself what would make someone buy your product over similar items out there.

Determine who your target market is, how they might find you, and if they would be willing to buy your product at the price you are wanting to sell it for.

Decide if what you are making is a hobby, or if it something you can make a business out of. If you want to make selling your items a real business, that means investing some serious time, commitment, late nights, and being consistent and constant in maintaining your shop. Are you willing to do that?

After analyzing your product, pricing, market, and potential buyer do you feel confident Etsy is the place for you to set up shop?

If you answered no, take some time to reevaluate your goals and your products. What are you wanting to achieve? What are your goals?

If your answer is yes, Etsy is the place for you, welcome to the family! In addition to setting up and maintaining your shop, it is also your job to continue making yourself more knowledgeable on your product, market, the Etsy community, and social media. Its hard work, but if you love what

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you are making and doing, and you do it well, opening a shop might just be one of the best decisions you ever made.

CHAPTER 10

#9 USE SHOPIFY TO BUILD YOUR OWN ONLINE STORE Don't want to sell through Etsy? You could always build your own online store using a platform like Shopify. Shopify makes it easy to build a transactional website without all the hassle, which takes much of the guesswork out of doing what some would consider a highly-complex task.

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The company markets their services with being able to start selling online in seconds. Well, it might not work that fast, but you could most certainly get a good transactional website up and running within minutes or hours.

What is Shopify Shopify is an all-in-one commercial system, where you pay a monthly fee to use the company’s web design, ecommerce and product management tools. It's all packaged into one product, so you can simply choose a template, upload your products and start selling online. Sheykinah!

Why Use Shopify?

Shopify is a solid tool for beginners and people who don't want to spend too much time with development. It's also nice for straying away from hiring a developer. You can sell however many products you want, and most companies don't have any problems scaling up.

How to Create a Shopify Store in 15 minutes It is no secret that we think Shopify is a great ecommerce platform; there is a reason why we recommend that you make use of it as you start your e-commerce business. Before now, it used to be that setting up an ecommerce store took a lot of hours as well as a lot of know-how. Today, however, that has changed and setting up an online store only takes a few minutes. With a few mouse clicks and a little typing, you can set up your own store on the web. There's a reason why Shopify is such a popular platform. Perhaps the biggest reason lies in the fact that creating your first store has never been easier. Below is a detailed tutorial for you to walk through: Step 1: Sign Up for Shopify

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Navigate to the Shopify website via https://www.shopify.com.ng/website, and click on the ‘Get Started’ button. Fill in your desired email address, password and store name.

It will then ask you if you'd like to make a brick and mortar store or an online shop, select ‘an online shop’ option and click ‘Next’.

The following page asks you to fill in personal information such as your name, address and phone number, all of which is used to configure currencies and tax rates.

After you click ‘Next’, tell Shopify about yourself by specifying how much you plan to sell and if you're already selling. Click on the ‘Enter My Store’ button when complete.

Step 2: Add a Product to Your Shopify Store When going to your Shopify backend it outlines a nice step-by-step process on how to completely setup your shop. The first button asks you to add a product, so you should click on that first. You can fill in details like a title, description, price and vendor. Feel free to complete however much of the product page you'd like. Just make sure you save the product at the end.

Step 3: Customize the Look of Your Site Go back to the main dashboard, and select the “Customize the Look of Your Site” button. This area asks you to customize anything from logos to colors. This takes a bit of tinkering, but the main part you want to focus on is the link that asks you to ‘Visit the Theme’ store.

Here you can browse through the hundreds of themes in Shopify to make your site look awesome.

Step 4: Setup Your Domain After you choose your template and design your website to your liking, it's time to select a domain to make your site official and make it live.

Go back to the dashboard and click on the spot that asks to “Add a Domain”. This asks you whether you want to transfer a domain or register a new one. Choose the domain you like and walk through the steps to make the purchase. You'll also need to specify which Shopify payment play you'd like to go with.

Upon activation you can then go to that particular domain and see your website.

Step 5: Activate Your Payment Processor Click on the tab to the left of the dashboard called ‘Payments’. This area allows you to select from dozens of payment processors such as Stripe and Authorize.net. Shopify also has its own payment processor which is super easy to implement. Simply walk through the steps to activate your payment processor. This allows you to accept payments and put those payments in an account.

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After all is said and done, you can click on the ‘Launch Website’ button to make the store live.

Congratulations! You now have a fully functional Shopify store.

CHAPTER 11

#10 CREATE VIDEO TUTORIALS ON YOUTUBE The convenience and far reach of the internet has given millions of people the ability to make a living by monetizing just about any skill, talent or opportunity.

Creating video tutorials on YouTube is a sure way to pull in your millions on the internet. Though, this is definitely a long-term strategy, and you won't get super rich overnight by doing this, but I can guarantee that you can start making money from your first day of uploading the video.

Secondly, creating an engaging and well-

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thought-out video tutorials and posting them on sites like YouTube could make you a significant amount of passive income in the long term depending on just how well-received those videos might be.

Create a YouTube channel and find something that you can do that will add a whole lot of value to the people that might be interested in that field or niche that you would be creating videos on.

However, keep in mind that this will require a significant amount of time and upfront investment before this pays off at all.

I’m sure you have seen a viral YouTube video. They come in all shapes and sizes—from popular funny comedy videos to short films, and other catchy videos making the waves on the internet.

What do they all have in common? Well, these videos all made a ton of money on YouTube for the creators when their videos went viral.

So let's find out how to make money on YouTube.

First Steps Making a lot of money on YouTube is not as easy as you might think. There are a lot of hurdles to overcome in the process. It's definitely not a way to get rich quick. However, if you have a hobby, or you are really good at a particular activity and would like to help people; you might be a funny character in the way you act or talk, or even if you just want to have some fun, YouTube is a great option to cash in some extra bucks doing something you love.

The first and probably most obvious starting point is to set up a YouTube account. You should have an idea of the types of videos that you want to upload. Next you’ll want to enable monetization and sign up for Google AdSense.

Enabling monetization means that you agree you will only upload video content that you have the rights for and that you will play by the rules (such as not watching your own video over and over to boost ads). Google AdSense is the way you set up your payment information for when you actually start making money.

Next Up You’ll want to become a YouTube Partner. This isn’t as hard as it used to be. In the past, to become a YouTube partner you had to have some 15,000 hours of your video watched at any point in time. The benefit here is that you can upload more than 15 minutes of video, which may help on some video projects. You also get analytics tools and some more advanced editing tools.

Now that you have monetization setup, along with Google AdSense, and YouTube partnership, you’re ready to go. But first, I would like to help you decide on the type of Ads you’d like to run on your videos.

Types of Ads

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You’re probably familiar with them if you watch any amount of YouTube videos. There’s the bottom text based ad that is displayed at the bottom of your video, and then there is the clip that plays at the beginning of your video. You can select which of these ads your video can have, and it might make a difference depending on your audience or how much revenue your video brings in.

The way advertising works with YouTube is probably one of the most complicated things that comes with trying to make money off of YouTube. The real estimate comes out to about $7.50 per 1,000 impressions. The difficult part is actually defining the word ‘impressions.’ The only time you make money on YouTube is when someone interacts with your ad or when it leaves an ‘impression’ on them.

This means that if someone skips an ad, or is running an ad blocker, then you don’t get paid for that view. This makes estimating the amount of views a video has and how much a user makes off of the video very challenging. It also depends if it’s a video Ad at the front of your video, or just a box at the bottom of your page; this determines how many people interact with your ad and the amount of money that can be made.

At the end of the day, though, there are a lot of variables that can affect just how much you can make on YouTube. Your audience has a lot to do with the type of Ad that would work best. For example, if you are making short funny videos, it’s probably best to not include a 30-second ad at the beginning—a viewer might just skip right on by. Luckily, YouTube has an analytics page that you can use to see just about every measurable aspect of your video—from demographics to time of day watched and location.

Things To Consider The first and most important thing is that you want your videos to be about something you are passionate about. If you’re not passionate, it will show in your videos—plus you’ll have less incentive to make them as time goes on.

I recommend coming out with normally scheduled videos at whatever interval you are comfortable with, whether that’s once a month or once a week. If you come out with regular videos, viewers are much more likely to ‘subscribe’ to your channel. Subscribing means that the user has started following you; if you post a new video, he or she will see it. This is a great way to build an audience and get some regularity to your viewership.

Make sure your videos are short and high quality. Unless you are doing targeted tutorials, or have some reason to keep your video on the long side (anything over six minutes), I recommend keeping it short. Even if you have to break the video into multiple parts, it makes the content more easily digestible by the viewer, which increases the likelihood it gets shared.

For example, a funny video that's 10 minutes long will have lower odds of being shared by a user who might tell his or her friends “you have to see this!" You’re aiming for something short, with a clear message, clear audio, and decent editing. A little bit of thought in the beginning could pay large dividends down the road.

Momentum

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Next, you’ll want to keep the momentum of your video going. You don’t just get in a boat and paddle once and hope to get where you want to go. You have to keep paddling and marketing your video. This could be as simple as commenting back to comments people have left for you, commenting on other people’s videos, or sharing your video on Facebook, Twitter or other social media platforms. Really, any way that you can drive people to watch your video is beneficial.

Also, you can get more views, and drive more traffic to your video, by joining a YouTube Network, which is really just a group of videos. The idea is that by combining a lot of similar videos together, you’ll attract more views and make more money.

FOCUS: Video Tutorials Our focus in this chapter is not just to teach you how to create a video and make money on YouTube, but to create video tutorials.

Any hobbyist can produce videos and upload them on YouTube to share with the world. But as a smallbusiness owner, you also can produce tutorials to make money, which can be an effective source of additional income. To get started, buy/rent a good quality video camera and create a small but well-lit stage setting. The better quality your tutorials have, the greater chance you have of making money from them.

Boost Tutorial Views YouTube tutorial producers can make money based on the number of people who view the content. The way it works: advertisers pay Google --the company that owns YouTube-- to display ads on videos. To get started, open an Adsense account and link it to your YouTube account.

Then, monetize your videos by choosing the type of advertisements you want to display: banner ads or video commercials. To make money, you must get thousands of people to view your tutorials. You can boost views by creating viral tutorials, which requires some research. For example, if you make crafting video tutorials, viral content might be a tutorial showing viewers how to make a very trendy holiday gift. You may not make tons of money through video monetization, but you reap the rewards of increased viewership for your channel and publicity for the products and services you sell.

Get Product Endorsements Some product makers and sellers pay well-known YouTube tutorial producers to promote their products. Generally speaking, the more viewers you have, the greater chance of a product maker or seller approaching you with an endorsement opportunity. In such an arrangement, you create a tutorial that demonstrates the product and sell its merits to your viewers. For example, if you produce makeup tutorials, a product maker or seller may pay you to demonstrate a new line of holiday lipstick colors and to build enthusiasm for the line by giving away samples. Being a

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successful "taste maker" -- meaning someone who has the power to influence consumers -- can open doors to additional, potentially lucrative, product endorsement deals.

Offline Expansion You can make money on YouTube tutorials by increasing demand for your services. For example, if you're a cake decorator, you can use YouTube tutorials to increase awareness about cake decorating classes you offer locally or to build your client base for your hand-decorated cakes.

Although some tutorial producers may not use their real names or reveal specifics about their locations, you must be willing to provide your name and a business location for your YouTube marketing to be successful.

Reality Check YouTube provides an ideal platform to share what you know with others. But millions of people upload videos daily and getting noticed can be a challenge. So to build your audience, get active in every social networking platform available to you. For example, open accounts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to market your video tutorials and build your audience. You also might consider setting aside a modest budget to advertise your video tutorials within social networking platforms.

Lastly, I would like you to examine why YouTube may prove to be a better monetization method.

1) No Domain And Hosting Investment.

The biggest advantage of YouTube is that you do not need to buy a domain or hosting package to get started. Instead, you can make your online presence known simply by the virtue of your channel.

The YouTube channel is where a user will see all of the uploads and recent activity of the uploader. If the uploader has enabled certain settings, visitors can also see the uploader’s interactions.

In terms of hosting, it’s really cool to get your content hosted for free by a site which is among the world’s top 5 websites and whose servers are present almost everywhere the internet exists.

In a nutshell, YouTube can allow you to earn money from the comforts of your home with zero investment.

2) It Is Possible To Earn On The Very First Day With YouTube.

The most beautiful thing about earning with YouTube is that you can earn from your video content on the very first day.

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You can simply make a YouTube account and upload a video (any video which does not violate YouTube or AdSense terms and conditions).

This can be a video about a trip you took. Or a video about how you made spaghetti bolognaise in the morning.

People have uploaded a wide-variety of videos and found success out of nowhere.

3) Adsense Approval Via YouTube Is Easy.

Most Indian and other South Asian bloggers wait for 6 months (or more) to get their AdSense account approved.

But if you apply for AdSense via YouTube, getting approval is easy. However, this AdSense account will be “AdSense for content hosts”, which functions differently than the traditional ads shown on blogs.

But you can always add your blog or website to this account once you think you fulfill all of the criteria to get an approved site.

4) Big Audience And Ready-Made Platform On YouTube.

Once you upload your video, it will be instantly available to billions of YouTube visitors. If your video is catchy and turns out to be sensational, it can certainly catapult you to fame and earn you a substantial amount of money. People have rocketed their YouTube views in a matter of a day or two and earned hundreds of dollars in a very short time.

There are people out there who make a lot of money with YouTube. There are even some artists who are earning over $2,000 every day from their YouTube videos. So don’t underestimate the power of this platform.

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CHAPTER 12

#11 SELL AUDIOBOOKS WITH AUDIBLE I know a thing or two about audiobooks. And, what I've noticed recently is that audiobooks are growing in popularity as their digital-ebook counterparts are becoming less and less popular.

People are turning to audio and visuals when it comes to technical subjects. However, you should consider doing an E-Book first and turning it into an audiobook through a resource like Audible's ACX platform.

What is ACX ACX is a marketplace where authors, literary agents, publishers, and other Rights Holders can connect with narrators, engineers, recording studios, and other Producers capable of producing a finished audiobook. ACX puts you in the driver’s seat. If you’re a Rights Holder, you choose how you produce your audiobook—whether on your own or by engaging a Producer on ACX—and you choose among two royalty models. ACX is brought to you by Audible.com, an Amazon.com subsidiary and a leading provider of audio content and entertainment.

Writers using Audible.com’s Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), an online audiobook rights marketplace and production platform, created ten times as many audiobooks in 2012 as they did in 2011, the year the platform launched. The tool helps writers, publishers and literary agents to create and publish audio versions of their books. Authors can record their own readings using the platform, or they can work with actors and voice over professionals, who also have profiles in the market place. It is used by a variety of types of writers. Self-published authors and authors who have

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publishers but manage the audio rights themselves use the site. In addition, agents and publishers can use the tool to produce work.

Here is how it works.

Whether you're an author, publisher, narrator, or studio professional, ACX makes life better, more creative, and potentially much more lucrative.

Step 1. Confirm Confirm you have audio rights for your book by checking your print book contract. If you have the audio rights, then for purposes of ACX, you are a Rights Holder.

Step 2. Create a Profile Create a Title Profile by describing your book and the type of narrator best suited for it. You'll also post a 1-2 page excerpt from your book to serve as the Audition Script for potential narrators.

Step 3. Find a Producer Post your book so Producers can audition. Or listen to sample narrations and invite a handful of producers to audition for your book.

Step 4. Review Auditions Review auditions from interested Producers.

Step 5. Make a Deal You can make an Offer to a Producer to produce your audiobook by sending the Producer a Production Offer Page. If the Producer accepts the Offer, you have a deal on ACX. Step 6. Get Started Your producer will record and upload the 15 minute checkpoint of the audiobook, which you can approve or provide feedback. When the sample is approved, the producer will record the full project.

Step 7. Approve the Final Product You can ask the Producer to make up to two rounds of corrections to your finished audiobook.

When you're happy, you pay your producer directly, unless you agreed to a Royalty Share deal.

Step 8. Distribute ACX distributes your audiobook through Audible, Amazon, and iTunes under both the exclusive and non-exclusive contracts. If you grant non-exclusive distribution rights, then you can distribute through additional channels.

Step 9. Promote

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Promote the availability of your audiobook to your fans. Get started with great marketing advice in the Promote Yourself section.

Step 10. Earn royalties You'll receive a monthly digital royalty statement and payment from Audible via direct deposit, and you may track your progress using your Sales Dashboard.

NOTE: Promoting and Distributing your audiobook is the key thing to raking in millions online.

How to Distribute Non-ACX Audiobooks ACX is by far and away the leader in self-published audiobooks; we wouldn’t have done an entire series on the platform if it weren’t. That being said, there are some instances in which you might want to consider going a different route. While ACX recently opened its doors to British selfpublished authors, there are still many parts of the world in which ACX is not available.

Additionally, if you’re interested in getting your books on non-Amazon platforms, then you may want to consider selecting the nonexclusive contract and TRYING TO DISTRIBUTE YOUR AUDIOBOOK ON THESE OTHER PLATFORMS. Unfortunately, Audible has such dominance in the audiobook industry, that it’s doubtful you’ll make many sales from other platforms. Since there is no telling what the future of the audiobook industry holds, here are a few options you might want to consider if you want to get your book elsewhere: 1. OverDrive OVERDRIVE is a platform that distributes e-books and audiobooks to libraries. There are tens of thousands of libraries in the United States alone, which means that distribution with OverDrive could get your books into the hands of many potential readers. The main caveat is that OverDrive is very selective of the authors it chooses to include in its platform. Unsurprisingly, most of the books in OverDrive were placed there by traditional publishing company.

If you have over a dozen audiobooks available, you are more likely to get accepted into OverDrive’s catalog than if you have one alone. Even if you have 30 books available in audio format, there’s no guarantee that OverDrive will select you. If you have a nonexclusive contract with Audible, then there’s no harm in applying to OverDrive, just make sure that you don’t get your hopes up.

2. Audiobooks.com and Downpour AUDIOBOOKS.COM and DOWNPOUR are the number two and number three audiobook only subscription services in the US. They are the second banana and third banana to Audible by far. That being said, with rapid growth of the audiobook industry, there may be promise in trying

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to get your self-published audiobooks on these two platforms. According to a late 2014 chat on Reddit, Audiobooks.com’s CEO said that authors will soon be able to list their books on the platform using THE RECORDIO APP. The app allows you to record your audiobook using a mobile device. The conversation did not mention self-published audiobooks produced professionally being included on the platform.

It is likely that you’ll need to negotiate individually with both Audiobooks.com and Downpour if you hope to get your books on those platforms. Once again, if you have a nonexclusive contract through Audible, this may or may not be worth your efforts. At the time of this article, there are no known success stories of indie authors on either platform.

3. CD Baby CD Baby is a platform best known for its distribution of indie music. By giving up a small portion of their royalties, indie musicians are able to post their albums to Amazon, iTunes, and other platforms. In a guest post on Jane Friedman’s blog, author Lee Stephen discussed USING CD BABY TO PUBLISH HIS AUDIOBOOK without going through ACX. While Stephen was able to obtain pricing control, better sound quality, and a higher royalty rate from his books, there were a few drawbacks.

Since CD Baby doesn’t usually handle audiobooks, it places the books into Amazon’s spoken word category. Because of this issue, Stephen decided to use CD Baby for direct sales only. By circumventing Audible, the CD Baby method also keeps your books from being accessible through the convenient Audible app. If you plan on only selling your book direct to your fans, and you don’t want to deal with a file sharing service, CD Baby may be a viable option for you.

4. Podiobooks, Soundcloud & Internet Archive Making money off your audiobooks may not be your primary concern. In fact, you may be more interested in using the medium as a lead generator than as a separate source of income. If that’s the case, you can use platforms like PODIOBOOKS , SOUNDCLOUD , and INTERNET ARCHIVE . Podiobooks provides a service much like its name by allowing you to release free chapters of your book like you might a podcast. SoundCloud is an audio file hosting service that some podcasters already use to host their files. Internet Archive lets you host both audio and video files.

Each of these three services have some minor differences, but they serve the same purpose if you’re interested in getting free audiobooks out there. If money is no object, and you don’t feel like dealing with ACX, then posting your books on any of these platforms for free may work well at finding new audiophile readers.

5. eBookIt

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Let’s say you want to be on ACX but you’re in a country that doesn’t allow for it. EBOOKIT is an ebook and audiobook aggregation service that lets you submit your book to get it on ACX no matter what country you reside in. It’s kind of like Draft2Digital for audiobooks.

ACX is expanding as fast as the audiobook industry itself. Since eBookIt takes a fee for every sale, it may be worth waiting until Audible opens up in your country. If you can’t wait, and you want your book on ACX now, then eBookIt is a good way to make it happen when you’re outside the US or the UK. 6. iAmplify & Self-hosted When you sign an exclusive seven-year contract with ACX, one of the things you miss out on is the ability sell your book direct. Using a service like IAMPLIFY or any other file hosting provider will allow you to sell direct if you went the non-exclusive route yourself. Similar to the problem with self-hosted Kindle books, there isn’t a great way to make your direct audiobook files convenient for readers. Until someone gets over this hurdle with more convenient software for open source audiobooks, selling direct may not pay dividends for quite some time.

The Best Choice For Now Currently, there aren’t many choices that top what you can get from ACX. You can try to cobble things together using some of the other services, but the best deal still lies with the 900-pound gorilla in the room. While the next few years may bring massive changes growing audiobook market, the best self-publishing option remains the Amazon standby. Keep an ear to the railroad tracks on this one, because the next great innovation in self-publishing is likely to disrupt the audiobook industry.

CHAPTER 13

#12 CREATE WEALTH WITH

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KONGA & JUMIA What is Jumia?

Jumia is an ecosystem of online commerces, marketplaces and classifieds websites and applications created in 2012. They have presence across 23 African countries with different lines of services ranging from Jumia Market, Jumia Travel, Food, Jumia House, Jumia Jobs, Jumia Car, Jumia Deals and Jumia Services.

Acclaimed as Nigeria's no. 1 online retailer, Jumia is the largest online retail store in Nigeria, and their aim and vision is to become the one-stop shop for retail in Nigeria with implementation of best practices both online and offline.

What about Konga?

Konga on the other hand, is a Nigerian electronic commerce company founded in 2012 with headquarters in Ikeja, Lagos State. It offers a third-party online marketplace, as well as first-party direct retail spanning various categories including consumer electronics, fashion, home appliances, books, children's items, and personal care products.

Konga was founded in July 2012, shortly after launching, Konga raised a $3.5 million seed round from Investment AB Kinnevik. The site initially functioned as a Lagos-only online retailer focused on merchandise in the Baby, Beauty, and Personal Care categories, but broadened its scope to all of Nigeria in December 2012 and gradually expanded merchandise categories through 2012 and 2013. This expansion may have been a response to Konga's major competitor, Rocket Internet backed Jumia, which launched around the same time and was functional across all categories.

There are a lot of opportunities to make money legally online; one of them is by selling your goods on ecommerce websites such as these.

KONGA SELLERHQ This is Konga.com’s online platform for individuals and companies to sell their goods on Konga.com, Although many people are unaware of this, Konga itself just like most ecommerce websites sells only very few goods, majority of the goods are sold by traders registered by Konga who then pay a percentage of their sales to Konga which is currently from 3 – 15% of the selling price of any product.

Anyone can become a seller on Konga, simply visit shq.konga.com and register for a free account, then you can start listing your products by uploading pictures and writing descriptions, your listing will then be manually reviewed by a Konga staff and if accepted it will be live on the Konga.com website.

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Users browsing for products might see it and order it and you must be able to ship the order within 5 days from the order date or it will be automatically cancelled and your seller ranking will decrease which means your products will not be seen by prospective buyers as frequently as before.

You can get goods to sell from www.Aliexpress.com and other websites with cheap products and sell on Konga, you can also sell locally made products. Konga automatically offers pay on delivery to almost all locations in Nigeria so you must be willing to accept Pay on Delivery orders as that is what you will get mostly.

You can increase your sales by advertising on the Konga homepage, I am sure you have seen some products featured on their front page, there are different categories of adverts ranging from Gold to Bronze with different prices and positions on the front page. You can also advertise on the KongaSellerHQ website.

JUMIA SELLER PROGRAM Jumia Nigeria offers a similar seller platform as Konga and everything is basically the same although it seems they only accept sellers based in Lagos, Nigeria. You can register at https://www.jumia.com.ng/marketplace-vendor.

Making money is more of practical than theory, so I always recommend, you waste no precious time in reading too much theory, instead devote your time to immediate practicing of what you learn, and as you do, you increase in small incremental steps, till success is eventually yours.

2 Easiest Ways To Make Money Online from Both Jumia and Konga 1. Become an Affiliate Partner As an affiliate, you promote the products on Jumia/Konga.com and you get a commission (up to 9%+) on every successful order made within 30 days after a click on your affiliate link. You can make money online successfully with this if you own a website, blog or just any useful social media account (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc).

First, you need to sign up for the affiliate program, find products you know people really want or the products you know your website/blog readers want or the product your social media networks need. Promote the products in a humane way (sweet mouth) and get people to buy from you.

Track your sales and earn commissions.

You can also use the appropriate banners from the Jumia/Konga.com advertising media via your affiliate account. Choose the banner that is according to your target audience from the various product banners. The good thing is that you can be upgraded to a premium affiliate and earn more. That depends on Jumia/Konga.com. Regular promotions to targeted audience would definitely means more money for you.

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Affiliate payments are made via local bank transfer. Also, you have access to Jumia/Konga customer support any time.

2. Sell on Jumia and Konga If you have your own products and services to sell, you can easily sell them on Jumia/Konga.com.

Jumia/konga.com will allow you to list your products for sale, as long as you are approved to have visible products and you want to sell more of your products online. Also, you have to be selling genuine products.

To get started, you will need to go to the Jumia/Konga Seller registration page and sign up. After signing up, you will be able to upload your own products to sell on Jumia/Konga.com.

CHAPTER 14

#13 OFFER GIGS ON FIVERR It’s good to have some income which is not coming from your regular job. These days earning from online services has become relatively easy. One of the websites that offer online income is Fiverr (www.fiverr.com). This website normally sells services such as content writing, photo editing, and video editing. It is possible for a person to earn up to one thousand dollars a month on Fiverr, but you need to follow some simple tips for that.

If you have some professional experience in graphic design, accounting, social media marketing, web development or SEO training, for example, you could

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offer gigs on Fiverr starting at $5 per job. You could perform a valuable service that you could also up-sell to make more money per gig.

Fiverr is one of the biggest providers in the gig economy on the web and you can sell a wide variety of services and products through this medium. Do the research and find out what you can offer.

However, keep in mind that like any other money-making task, it takes time to succeed here. And stellar reviews will help you generate more and more income over time.

Freelancing is gaining prominence all over the world, because it has been proven to be a cheaper way of hiring employees to deliver some services needed, and major corporations are towing this path. One of such corporations is the Fiverr freelance platform.

Fiverr’s unique model of freelancing gives her an edge over others; as you can to join the league of people making money online without affecting your regular job. Michael Kaufman one of the cofounders of Fiverr once said that Fiverr is a marketplace for services and that it is the only mobile marketplace online today that has been able to offer services as products. He added that it isn’t about hiring the freelancers; it’s also about hiring the service they provide.

The main concept to this is you are to sell your services over at Fiverr and people who are interested about your services (services being offered are termed as “gigs”) will eventually hire you and you will be paid $5 in each gig that you provide.

Take note that some services or gigs can be more than the $5 value but the main point of the system is to provide affordable services in which customers can surely pay for.

Well, $5 worth of your services is fair and unselfish enough since you can still earn more per gig.

This would only mean that you can earn more once you have multiple clients who are interested to your gigs. Be it about your skills or simply by selling your own physical products, you can still earn a hefty amount of money.

The good thing about Fiverr is that you can join anytime and it is free. This means that you don’t have to pay for the websites services since it is also the way of the website to entice more and more people to join their money making endeavors.

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How To Get Started However, one very unique thing about Fiverr is that you get services at very ridiculously lower rates than you would ordinarily get them. So just what type of ideas could you possibly sell on Fiverr?

Here are 10 gig ideas you could sell on Fiverr. a. Sign Up On Fiverr To start making money on fiverr, you might have to do the needful first. First thing you need to do is to sign-up. This process is a free and easy one. However before signing, you might want to take out time to read the terms and conditions. This is so that you are very conversant with what you are about to go into. Give the detailed information you are asked to provide and get started.

Now, as for the gig, you can create different gigs in which you think is “sellable”. You need not worry about the kind of gig you can sell simply because you can sell just about anything.

When we mean “anything” you can sell gigs such as: • Gifts

• Writing

• Business

• Graphics

• Advertising

• Technology

• Videos

• Music and Audio

• Programming

• Social Marketing

• Fun and Bizarre

• And much more

• Travel

• Tips and Advice

As you can see, there are many gig categories in which you can use to make your own gigs. From the outrageous to the most romantic and from funny ideas to the most interesting gig, you can surely have your own and sell it for $5.

Also, you can use the new feature provided by Fiverr which means you can sign up using Facebook Connect. Simply sign up with Fiverr by using your existing Facebook account.

Once you have signed in, you are now a part of the Fiverr community and you can now create and post your own gigs and make money.

Consequently, for you to make money on Fiverr, you can consider these step by step ideas to make your gigs popular and sellable.

Identifying Your Skills Remember that your skills are your investment in creating and selling a gig at Fiverr. This is the reason why you need to identify your strengths and your skills. This means that you have to know your best abilities in making just about anything.

You don’t need to be a graduate in college or in any university here. All you have to do is to bring out your best skills and make a gig.

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As an example: • You have a good voice – Offer a song using your skills in singing.

• You are expert in drawing and painting – Offer your skills in drawing using pencil, water color, paint brush and etc.

• You are an expert in any video making – Offer videos that will benefit customers or make videos for them.

• You are an expert in computer graphics – Offer graphics designing for their web page.

These are just some of the examples of the skills you have and you can surely use these abilities to earn you more than $5 at Fiverr.

Always remember that knowing your strengths in creating your gigs can be identified once you have started implementing it. In this way, you already have your own unique gig to offer at Fiverr and people who are interested in your “Fiverr masterpiece” will greatly reward you.

Moreover, you have to make sure that the gigs you have created using your skills should also be implemented within a time frame. This is to provide you and the client a better relationship.

10 Hot-in-Demand Gig Ideas to Sell on Fiverr and Make Money 1. Writing Gigs Yes writing! Articles, blog posts, copywriting services, book writing, E-books, business writing, creative writing, and other forms of writing are amongst such services you could possibly offer on fiverr. If you know your onions so well, the Fiverr site is where you should be and offering your service for sale. Clients are there waiting for you. People are looking for those who can render services to them at reasonable prices and in a professional manner.

On Fiverr, you can earn 4 dollars per gig. Basically, a gig costs 5 dollars but 1 dollar is charged by Fiverr for providing the platform to make money. Now, the most important thing that most of the people fail to over look while delivering a gig is the time they are spending on a particular gig. You should be able to deliver a gig without wasting your time or spending too much on a gig.

For example, you take an article of 1000 words, and then it is obvious that you would have to spend a substantial amount of time on this article and in the end, all you will be getting is 4 dollars.

So, you should keep the time spent on a task in mind when you are taking a Fiverr gig. To keep it simple, you should only take those gigs which you are comfortable with and which you can perform repeatedly.

2. Proofreading/Editing

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Just like writing, some folks are also interested in folks who can help them do a professional work on their written materials. Some people know how to write, but do not know the technicalities or rules that guide writing. Hence, they are unable to differentiate between spoken words. You would be amazed at the number of prospective clients waiting to do business with you.

3. Ghost-Writing This may sound a little strange to you, but it does happen. It refers to those who accept to help others turn their thoughts and scrapings of jottings into finished materials for publications. You may ask, “How is this different from article writing?” With article writing, you own the ideas you write, but with ghost writing, the ideas are not originally yours. You might have to take your clients ideas, transform them, as well as get creative to arrive at a finished work. You get paid for the writing for them, it could be a best seller book or thesis and the owner of the idea gets the credit.

4. Translations Another line of business that relates to the use of words is Translations. Do you speak more than one language and can translate for people? There are those who have materials that need to be translated into English or from English to other languages. This is a viable and respectable business and one that commands high patronage.

5. Graphics Designing A graphic artiste’s work isn’t just about opening the CorelDraw or other designing tools. There are people who are gifted in this regard and can be described to have the graphic Midas touch. If you are one of these special class of people, Fiverr is where you should be to sell your craft. All over the world, there are people who might need your services for book covers and other forms of designs, logo creation, and business card design and so on.

6. Voice Talent There are people and businesses looking to record commercials for their organizations and other campaigns. These folks are in dire need of voices that can resonate and reverberate; voices that are amiable and admirable. If you have such a voice and you are in such profession, then you should get on Fiverr. Why? The reason is because clients are there waiting to do business with you. Voiceover artists are in high demand there; rightly positioning yourself will ensure you are smiling to the bank regularly.

7. Website Development It is no longer a cliché that everyone and especially every business should have a presence on the net via a domain. Even though there are various software today that make website creation easier than before, there are still people who don’t have the time or technical know-how to sit down and create one. So if you are a web developer, you need to get your gigs on and be on Fiverr.

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8. Animations/Video Animation can be used for different purposes. If this is one area of competence that you possess, then Fiverr provides you with an opportunity to meet clients that are in need of your service. And in the same vein, if you have video editing knowledge too, you can also sell it on Fiverr.

9. 3D Design With a gig as this, coreldraw and other designing tools are available for achieving such needs. But 3D design is in a class of its own and is an area of service needed amongst clients who want panache and want to create a more professional impression. So if you are good in this area, go for it.

10. Consultancy You might want to ask yourself questions like; what body of knowledge have i developed myself in over the years? Also, do you think you can offer professional advice on the subject? If you do have such skills, why not sell your consultancy service on Fiverr? This can be in any area 11. Data Entry Just like other freelance sites, Fiverr from time to time has employers who are looking for people to perform simple data entry tasks. Therefore if you are good at the data entry business then you might want to seek to be hired on Fiverr. Data entry is a simple task that can be done by just about anyone. You do not need any extraordinary skill.

12. Email Marketing If ordinarily you send mails to your friends or loved ones, then you should definitely know how to do the email marketing thing. Employers would be willing to hire you when they know that you would be able to send bulk marketing emails to their prospective clients. On Fiverr you would find employers who might require you to do this because they do not have the time to.

13. Sell EBooks If you are good with writing short stories or generally a gifted writer, you will be able to sell your eBooks on Fiverr. Just make sure you keep it simple and small since it can only be sold for 5 Dollars. However, the good thing about eBooks is that you can write one and you can continue to make money from it without adding any additional effort. Just be ready to keep marketing it.

These gig ideas are such that if you try had and stay consistent with it; you would end up smiling to the bank. Everyday there are thousands of people waiting at the other end of the fiverr site hoping

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they could do business with you. It is therefore time for you to get started at these gigs and watch how fast you would go One other great advantage of getting gig on the Fiverr site is for the fact that you can do business in a new, cheaper and even better way with less hassles and more convenience.

In conclusion, the easiest way to make good money on fiverr is to render services that won’t take much of your time. Before taking on any gig, it is advisable that you do an estimation of the time it would take you to deliver it. If it would take much of your time, you can always ignore it and choose other gigs that will require less time to complete. Since all gigs costs 5 US Dollars; why spend a longer time on some when you can choose ones that could take less of your time.

Take note that on Fiverr if you can get many tasks done within a short period, you would be able to do more; the more the volume the higher your earnings.

More Vital Information Consequently, the most important thing you remember in creating your gig is to make it captivating and it should also benefit the buyer of the gig.

Now, the testimonials provided by the customer are also an important factor for you.

Once your gigs are done in an excellent way, customers will eventually post their positive feedbacks over at Fiverr and this will add more “reputation points� on your part since other interested customers will gain more trust with regards to your performance and your gigs will sell just like hotcakes.

On the other hand, you will get a negative feedback once your services are not met within the allotted time provided so better avoid this issue since Fiverr will also post negative feedbacks. This is simply fair for every gig seller who posts their gigs in the site.

This is the reason why you have to do your best in creating and selling your gigs. Remember that competition is always there so perform your best to earn you more money.

It is also an important factor that you abide with the terms and conditions provided by Fiverr.

Be honest and perform your tasks implementing the guidelines of the website. However, once you fail to follow the rules and regulation of the website, they have the right to disable or suspend your Fiverr account.

Another bad news here is they can even suspend the payment provided to you. Hence, follow the rules of Fiverr.com and ensure a money making relationship.

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CHAPTER 15

#14 Work-at-Home Companies Finally, there are some companies that will hire you to work from the comfort of your own home.

If you’re interested in working for someone else, while still making your own schedule and deciding where to work from, here are a few companies that will let you do just that:

1. CrowdSource: CrowdSource offers many types of jobs from “microtask” jobs to larger writing and editing jobs. You decide how much you work and you can do most of it right at your computer.

2. StudioD: StudioD is hiring all kinds of creative professionals, from writer to filmmakers. The pay isn’t amazing, but it’s competitive for a work-at-home job.

3. Fast Chart: Fast Chart allows you to work from home as a medical transcriptionist. There are some requirements and qualifications listed on the page, but if you meet them, you’ll make competitive pay for the industry. You’ll also be able to set your own schedule since you’ll be working from home.

4. Leap Force: Leap Force is one way that Google rates websites for search engine ranking. If you’re hired, you make decent money (usually over $11/hour), you set your own schedule and it can be pretty fun to view and rank websites.

5. Liveops: Liveops is a call center that allows you to work from home. Once your set up to take the calls, you can begin making a weekly schedule and working from home. The pay is generally close to $10/hour, but you can earn more with commissions.

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6. SpeakWrite: SpeakWrite will pay you up to $15/hour to transcribe information. You set your own schedule and work from home.

NOTE Now you’ve got many different options to start earning online. If you saw something that really interests you, try it out and learn more about it. If you really want to make a full-time income online, you need to be dedicated to learning how to do what you want to do.

The next big thing to do is to practice what you’ve learnt. Just as you have read this book up to this point, you should begin to strategize on how to put to work all you’ve been taught here. You only make money in the doing not in the knowing.

Most definitely, you can’t begin to practice all the 14 undisputable ways to make money online legitimately, but focus of the ones that is in line with you passion, potential, and purpose. As you begin to pull in your millions, then you can extend to other means. Don’t forget the power of focus. Be a master of one, than a Jack of all trades.

Having known these ways to pull in wealth online, we would like to also add the gateways for which your monies can get to your local bank account. It is not enough to know how to make money online, it is more important to also know how these monies can come directly to your local bank account in Nigeria.

CHAPTER 16

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25 MAJOR INTERNET PAYMENT GATEWAYS AND PROCESSORS AVAILABLE TO THE AFRICAN NETPRENEUR One of the most discussed topics at online forums by African internet business practitioners is the issue of how to pay and be paid for services on the internet. Many have often lamented that they have no effective ways of paying for products online, while many have also lamented the fact that they have no effective way of receiving money from the world-wide web for their products and services Often times, these complainants in Africa often single out major merchant payment sites like

PayPal as proof of the fact that most countries in Africa are not allowed to access PayPal. This discussion has even got to the point where many Africans now feel there is no way they can be successful online without having a PayPal account.

Yet, nothing can be further from the truth!

Now, while there may be some valid points to the issues of inaccessibility of PayPal, I think the seriousness of the matter is over flogged. There are many other payment gateways and merchant accounts that are available to service the African Netpreneur even if PayPal does not like them.

I strongly believe it is counter-productive to focus on the payment problems with PayPal. It prevents us from focusing on solutions that are right under your nose. I think it is time that African Netpreneurs, and those who want do internet business with Africa, stop whining about what they could not get, and instead start using what is available to them Yes, PayPal may be huge but it is by no means the be-all, do-all of internet payments and receipts. Far from it. As a matter of fact, the trend among super gurus is to actually move AWAY from using PayPal because of their increasing difficult operational conditions. It is also a true fact that there are very similar portals out thereeven better!

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Here are 25 of some of the most important payment gateways that I was able to discover online during my research when putting together E-Book. Some of them accommodate payment services extending to many countries in Africa. Check them out and see how they can be utilized for payment processing for your African business online.

1. PAYZA.COM (FORMERLY CALLED ‘ALERTPAY’) Payza is a leading global online payment platform that specializes in ecommerce processing, corporate disbursements, and remittances for individuals and businesses around the world. With over 9 million members, Payza offers its services in 197 countries and in 21 different currencies.

Most African countries are allowed to use Payza.

Payza and affords you the ability to receive payments not just from account holders but also from credit card holders who may want to pay you with their credit cards. The e-wallet feature on Payza provides members worldwide with convenient and flexible loading and withdrawal options, such as localized bank transfers, global bank wires, credit/debit card, checks, prepaid cards, among others.

In addition, Payza offers foreign exchange services, fraud screening services, email invoicing, mass and single remittances and business management tools.

Payza also provides under-serviced and emerging markets with an affordable and convenient way to receive international payments.

2. 2CHECKOUT.COM (2CO) (PAYONEER MASTERCARD) 2CO is the authorized reseller for thousands of tangible or digital products and services.

Established in 2000 and headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, 2CO provides turnkey e-commerce solutions to thousands of business customers around the world. 2CO’s supports back-office functions including financial reporting, tracking, fraud prevention, affiliate tracking, customer service and sales tracking.

2Checkout’s online processing provides your business the ability to accept payments from customers in over 200 countries including most African countries.

Their customized checkout pages allow your customers to make purchases in any of 8 payment methods, 15 languages, and 26 currencies. Customers can checkout in 15 different languages and it supports multiple Currency Options.

You can get paid in dozens of currencies and multiple methods including, Electronic Funds Transfer that goes directly to your bank accounts, international Wire Transfer, or a 2Checkout branded Payoneer MasterCard.

3. ETRANZACT.COM ETranzact is Nigeria's first award winning multi-application and multi-channel electronic transaction switching and payment processing platform. eTranzact has operations in Nigeria,

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Ghana, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Cote d'Ivoire, and UK and is currently expanding operations to more and more countries in the world.

ETranzact has evolved into a brand with global reach. eTranzact offers payment solution platforms and easy payment channels to its numerous customers while providing security, convenience and affordability.

4. INTERSWITCHNG.COM Interswitch has a secure, reliable, and scalable platform for electronic transaction processing in a multi-institution, multi-functional, Online/Offline environment.

Their systems accept transactions from a diverse range of delivery payment channels.

The Interswitch Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) switching application supports major networks including Verve, MasterCard, and China Union Pay, besides other proprietary networks.

Interswitch currently offers three Internet Payment options: Paydirect (web with reporting); Paydirect (web without reporting); and Quickteller 5. VOGUEPAY.COM Voguepay is a unique online payment processor whose vision is to offer buyers and sellers a secure and easy-to-use means of transacting business online.

VoguePay allows site owners to receive payment for their goods and services on their website without any setup fee. VoguePay distinguishes itself from other online payment processors with its array of features that are guided by its core values: Security; User Friendliness and Reliability They are aimed at continuous improvement of its services and consistent introduction of new value adding features and maintenance/upgrading of existing ones.

6. DIGITALRIVER.COM Digital River provides advanced processing offers including Access to payment gateway; Supporting transactions for a wide range of credit cards; Global transaction processing, with 150 currencies across more than 200 countries, including most African Countries; processing tools such as shopping carts and storefront builders and Access to an advanced member site, giving you full featured transaction controls and advanced analytics and reporting.

Digital River makes sure that the payment solution is just right for you, whether you need a simple online payment form, access to a secure payment gateway, the ability to take payments anywhere, or an optimized global payment platform.

7. TRIALPAY.COM

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TrialPay is one of the industry leaders in cross-platform monetization. The offerbased payments platform drives revenue for software publishers, e-commerce sites, online marketplaces, and major web and mobile gaming platforms around the world. TrialPay offers its services in 180 countries.

The company works with online merchants in the software, social applications, casual games, online services and retail industries, relying "on a web of business relationships to give consumers free goods, as long as they buy something else from a long list of well-known online stores.

8. E-JUNKIE.COM For merchants selling downloads, they automate and secure the digital delivery of files and codes.

If you are selling tangible goods, they automate the shipping calculation and inventory management. Their shopping cart has a built in sales tax, VAT, packaging and shipping cost calculator. You can sell eBooks, sell mp3 tracks and albums, sell software, icons, fonts, artwork, phone cards, event tickets, Cds, posters, books, t-shirts and almost everything else you want to sell.

E-junkie has no transaction limit, no bandwidth limit, no setup fee and no transaction fee.

9. CASHENVOY.COM This is a privately owned gateway integrated with Interswitch and ETranzact. They allow their registered merchants to receive payment via their gateway. They have an awesome API to allow you seamless integration on your website.

10. EYOWO.COM This is yet another payment processor created in Nigeria and registered with Interswitch and ETranzact for now. They have a very friendly interface for both merchants and the payers. They charge N6, 000 setup fee and 1% transaction fee.

11. GLOBALPAY This is another gateway built by A Nigerian bank, Zenith Bank just like the GTPay. It allows the bank customers to receive card payments on their website. GlobalPay is registered with Interswitch, UnifiedPayments and ETranzact!

12. PAYGATE.CO.ZA Based in South Africa, PayGate offers a comprehensive list of features. The folks at PayGate are super friendly and experienced. They also offer a range of mobile, subscription and currency conversion services. You will however require an internet merchant account to use PayGate.

13. MYGATE.CO.ZA Mygate is fully fledged payment gateway provider and provide a feature rich back end system. The backend system has lots of options including configuration and reporting. They give some

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flexibility in terms of adding your logo and the like to a template which in fact looks quite good, which is way too often overlooked.

14. VIRTUAL CARD SERVICES: WWW.VCS.CO.ZA Also require an Internet Merchant Account. Admittedly I have limited user experience with VCS but have found their support very responsive and helpful. From an outsiders perspective they could use some graphic design and mostly client feedback seems positive.

15. MONSTERPAY.COM MonsterPay have excellent fees and overall a great product with an awesome backend reporting.

Signup is quick and easy and no internet merchant account is required. We also love the option of multiple currencies. As mentioned above the email verification token is frustrating and their internet banking module is cumbersome and at time of writing only works on windows based pc.

16. PAYFAST.CO.ZA PayFast offer a brilliant service with well written IPN’s which compete with the best in the business.

They offer a range of 3rd party shopping cart integrations. Their instant EFT option works well on all platforms and personally have found it to be an excellent alternative to credit card payments.

There fees are higher than MonsterPay and they also require users to create an account at checkout.

17. GTBANK GTPAY GTPAY is a one-stop, safe, secure and convenient web payment solution that enables merchants receive payments from both local and international payment cards. GTPAY accepts both locally and internationally issued cards including Interswitch, MasterCard and VISA and Merchants get value next day after transaction takes place.

18. SIMPLEPAY4U.COM SimplePay Payment Gateway allows any business or consumer with an email address to securely, conveniently and cost-effectively send and receive payments online. Their network is built on the existing financial infrastructure of bank accounts and credit cards to create a global, real-time payment solution.

They deliver a product ideally suited for small businesses, online merchants, individuals and others currently underserved by traditional payment mechanisms. Simple Pay’s service, which lets users send payments for free, can be used from PCs or web-enabled mobile phones.

19. CASHENVOY.COM

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CashEnvoy is one of the safest, easiest and most convenient ways to make payment, send money and get paid online. It is an e-commerce business that allows payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. A Cash Envoy account can be funded with African debit cards or through online bank transfer from specific local banks.

CashEnvoy performs payment processing for online vendors, auction sites, and other commercial users. It charges a transaction fee for receiving money (a percentage of the amount sent plus an additional fixed amount).

20. UBAGROUP.COM (UBA UCollect) The UBA U-Collect is an Internet Payment Gateway service which allows Merchants accept online payments for goods and services. This solution accepts multiple card types available in Nigeria – VISA, Verve, MasterCard and eTranzact. The platform supports International VISA and MasterCard for selected industries.

21. ZENITH BANK GlobalPay GlobalPay is a web-based payment gateway that enables you accept payments on your website from customers all over the world. With a one-time integration, you can receive payments from a wide variety of locally and internationally issued credit and debit cards. This solution gives your business a global outlook and vastly expands your potential customer base.

GlobalPay allows for acceptance of locally and internationally issued cards –Interswitch, eTranzact, VISA and MasterCard; Online log for monitoring transactions – View transactions as they occur; Real-time online payments processing; Real-time transaction reporting and management among many other standard international features.

22. MYPAGA.COM Paga Merchant Services allows businesses to collect payment from all spectrums of the population– whether banked or not. By leveraging the Paga ewidget, businesses can integrate a world class online checkout process on their own websites.

Businesses can also leverage on their agent network to collect payment for goods and services or provide customers the convenience of paying via SMS or online at Paga's customer portal.

23. FASTECASH.COM This company holds your e-currency in the naira and you can easily make payments and withdrawals by just using your bank account. It allows you to receive money from members who hold accounts with the same processor. One dynamic feature of Fastecash is that it also uses an IPN once you receive payment thus enabling you to satisfy customer’s virtual purchases using an ipn handler. [

24. VIRTUAL TERMINAL NETWORK (VTN)

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This is a mobile phone payment service that can also be used for sending and receiving naira online and is also allows you to fund your Graphcard account which could be used for a lot of purposes such as a virtual credit card.

25. SOFTPURSE.COM We have not used Softpurse yet but it is also a growing means of online payment in Nigeria especially among recharge card online vendors.

CHAPTER

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So there you have it: 14 very effective internet marketing business models you can start using right away to generate an income from the comfort of your home. Many of these models are passive, meaning that you can generate money while you’re sleeping; others have the potential to scale to full sized businesses – anything is possible!

We’ve gone over an awful lot over the course of this book and have discussed a diverse range of different options. For some readers, selling a product via eBay is going to be most appealing, while others might prefer the idea of becoming an affiliate.

Either way, the very core of every business model is the same. Your job is to provide value to a specific target audience and to make sure that you’re able to communicate directly with that audience in order to promote the product. At the same time, you need to ensure it costs you less

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to do this than you earn from the sales – which normally means that you have to somehow add your own value.

Where To Start?

At this point, you may be suffering with a little overwhelm. With so many options and so many strategies, how do you know where to start?

And some of these models involve building up a highly successful blog – so you may find that off putting. The trick then is to make sure you start with just one model first and to start small. The key early on is to start seeing results as soon as possible. As soon as you start generating any income, you’ll understand how the process works and you’ll open up new opportunities.

In other words, you’re not going to become a huge success overnight with a SaaS model – it’s just too much work. But making a few bucks from selling some items on eBay? That’s super easy and highly doable. The same goes for generating some money from selling an affiliate product.

Don’t set out to change the world. In fact, don’t even set out to get rich! If you do, you’ll likely only be disappointed which more often than not leads to quitting. Instead, set out to just earn some money in a quick, safe and low-risk manner. Then set out to build on that success and to replicate the business model or add another string to your bow. Take one step at a time and do what you need to do every day to eventually reach your goals!

Look at it this way: even if you only make $30 of sales a week for the rest of your life, that’s still $120 a month – or $1,440 a year! How much better would life be with that extra money? You could go on holiday guilt free!

Another tip? Always emulate the success stories. Over the course of this eBook we’ve looked at many cases of people who have been successful with these various business models whether it’s as an affiliate marketer or a blogger. Look at what they’ve done, study them carefully and repeat their model. Success always leaves clues and you can follow those clues to repeat the business model.

Likewise, don’t overcomplicate matters. If you do find a business model out there that works then there’s nothing wrong with copying it! Don’t make things harder than they already are because your pride gets in the way. Don’t choose to build your own PHP CMS when you could just use WordPress.

Some affiliate products that are selling very well will even give you the marketing materials that the creator used to generate their sales. This is the perfect ‘copy and paste’ business model because you’re literally taking what worked for them and doing the exact same thing within your sphere of influence. That’s great – it’s not breaking the mold but it’s easy and it works. Look for those easy wins!

There’s Much More!

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Of course we’ve only really scratched the surface here as well in terms of what’s possible. There are countless more ways to earn money online as a marketer and there’s nothing to stop you from inventing your own methods either as you get more confident.

There are countless opportunities. So start with something simple to learn the ropes, then let your creative juices flow!

Your Action Plan With all these different models available, it’s impossible to lay out one plan that will appeal to everyone. Generally though, these are the steps you should take…

1. Think over the different business models we’ve discussed. Assess your current situation, your contacts and any marketing you’ve done in the past and identify what will work best for you.

2. Choose products and a niche that you already know about and that you’re happy to work with.

3. At the same time, start as small as possible. Minimize the investment and the risk involved and focus on creating one small, easy business model that has been tried and tested.

4. This will normally involve finding an audience and providing value. That means finding your target market, finding a way to reach them and showing them the product.

5. Reinvest some of your profits into growing your business. That may mean investing in more marketing for your affiliate products, or it may mean investing in more inventory.

6. Build a website and grow it in order to generate your own audience. Eventually, this will become an excellent asset to you because it will provide you with your own, effective route to market.

7. Either repeat the business model that has worked for you (selling one affiliate product? Time to sell two!), or branch out into the next area.

8. Keep refining and perfecting your business model and keep on growing!

So what are you waiting for? You’ve seen how easy it is – now go out there and start earning from one of these models!

I look forward to climbing to the top of the success mountain with you!

Your wealth is definitely waiting!

Yours truly,

Valentine Ukoh www.sureprofitsonline.com

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