3# Earn Money As A Freelancer

It's been awhile since I made any new posts and I didn't post anything about earning money as a freelancer.

If you are skilled in webdesign, graphic design, web promotion, programming, writing, Java, PHP, ASP, ... you can earn money by doing jobs for others. This is a great way to cash in your knowledge.

There are two ways how you can do this.

1. You can either design a site where you offer some services and interested people may hire you.
2. You can use sites that find and offer freelance work.

You may check: GetAFreelancer

There are no upfront fees to join Get A Freelancer. Membership is free. You can also use this site to find other freelancers if you need some work done.

You may also check: Elance

Best regards,
Jaksa Dubljanin

"Instant Buzz" - The Best FREE Advertising Tool

Hi everyone!

Today I'd like to share with everyone something I discovered recently.

This simply is THE BEST FREE ADVERTISING TOOL I found out on the net. It is called Instant buzz. All you have to do is to download it and install. Instant buzz is completely free! It is a small toolbar that appears in your browser and displays random ads. It does not interfere with your surfing. You just surf the web like you normally do and you earn free credits at the same time.

Credits are used as impressions - that is the number of times your ad will be shown to other people using Instant buzz.

If you refer other people to Instant buzz, you will earn more free credits. If they refer others, you will also earn credits from everyone in your downline. The more people you have in your downline, the more credits you will earn.

You will be amazed with the results. I surely am!

For more information on Instant buzz, click HERE.

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I discovered also a site that allows you to submit your link for free to a network of high traffic sites. Don't worry, this is NOT FFA!!!!

Check it out HERE!

Best regards,
Jaksa Dubljanin

Traffic Exchange List

I have added a list of traffic exchange programs. Check my previous post.

Best regards,
Jaksa Dubljanin

Traffic Exchange Programs

Hi everyone!

I had some private matters to attend in the past weeks and I didn't have time to write any new posts. Sorry about that!

In one of my earlier posts ("Getting Internet Traffic") I mentioned traffic exchange programs as a way of bringing visitors to your site. I also mentioned that they are free to join and all they require is that you spend some time visiting other sites and in exchange they send visitors to your own.

These sites will bring you untargeted traffic. Why? Because all other users are surfing these programs for the same reason you are - they want visitors for their own sites and they are usually NOT interested in what you have to offer.

On the other hand, if you make your offer quite interesting and eye-catching you can still profit from this kind of traffic.

I don't want to repeat myself anymore :), so I'll stick to what I've had in mind.

You can use traffic exchange programs to bring a lot of traffic to your site (or your affiliate page!). I'll write in this post how you can significantly increase the number of visitors you can receive with these programs.

As you know the only thing these programs require is your time. If you join one program, you can surf about 100 pages in an hour (you have to spend at least 30 seconds on a single page to receive a credit). Since traffic exchange ratio is usually 2:1, you will receive 50 visitors for
a 100 page views. If you spend at least 3 hours a day surfing, you will receive about 150 visitors each day.

The idea is to multiply that number by 5, 10, 20, or even more...

You can do this by joining multiple traffic exchange programs, and than surf more of them at the same time. If you have a dial-up connection I wouldn't reccommend you to surf more than 5 programs at the same time. On the other hand, if you have a much faster connection, you can surf more.

That way, if you surf 5 programs for 3 hours each day you can earn 750 visitors! If you can surf 10 programs, you would automaticaly earn 1500 visitors! That's 45000 visitors in a month!!!

Since opening a multiple pages at the same time can take a lot of workspace for your other internet activities, there is a program that can help you solve this problem. Program is called "Crazy Browser" and you can use it at the same time with your default browser.

"Crazy Bowser" can open a multiple web pages within a single page. You can use "Crazy Browser" to surf traffic exchange programs and, at the same time, use your default browser for your other internet activities.

"Crazy Browser" is a FREE software. You can download it for free at this address: www.crazybrowser.com

After you download and install "Crazy Browser", you will need to join a lot of traffic exchange programs. After you join each of them, take a note of your surf URL and your referral URL. The best thing to do is to create a text file on your computer where you will store all your surf URL's and a text file where you will store all your referral URL's.

That way, whenever you need those URL, you can easily find them. The other important fact about text files is that "Crazy Browser" can import directly your surfing URL's from a text file.

I'm supplying you with a list of traffic exchange programs you can use for getting traffic.

TRAFFIC EXCHANGE LIST:

Traffic Swarm
Webmaster Quest
Eternal Hits
Traffic Round-Up
Hit Harvester
Fast Freeway
Start Frenzy

Best regards,
Jaksa Dubljanin

2# Affiliate Marketing

Hi again!

I've been busy these days setting up links and promoting my blog on the internet, so I didn't have much time to write new posts. I hope my previous posts gave you some insight of how to sell your products on-line. I'll write much more about internet traffic and ways how to get it, but right now, I'd like to write about one other way of making money on-line. It's called affiliate marketing.

In affiliate marketing, you join some on-line company or store as an affiliate partner and than you promote their products or services on the internet. You promote their services by using your special affiliate link you receive upon joining, and every time someone who visited their site through your affiliate link purchases their service or product, you receive commission.

Commissions usually vary from 10% - 50% of the product's price, sometimes even more. That is usually about 5$ up to 100$ per sale for most of the sites on the internet. There are, of course, some sites that offer much larger commissions.

After you accumulate enough commissions, company mails you a check. For some programs, only one sale is necessary to receive a check and for some programs you have to accumulate commissions until you reach a minimum payout amount which is usually about 20$ or 50$.
Checks are mailed usually once per month. Some programs mail checks more frequently.

Most programs offer you commissions for sales and they are called "pay per sale" programs. There are also some programs which offer you commission for leads, or clicks and they are called "pay per lead" and "pay per click" program. These are good because they don't require
their visitors to purchase anything. "Pay per lead" programs pay you every time visitors you referred enter their e-mail addresses on their sites and "pay per click" programs pay you for every visitor you send to them.

The best thing about affiliate marketing is that you can join these programs for FREE. You only have to fill out simple form on their site to be approved. Sometimes you have to wait up to 24 hours. There are no obligations and you can cancel anytime. Just be sure to read their Terms Of Service everytime you join some program.

Some more benefits of selling other's people's products online are that you don't have to hustle with taking orders, packaging, shipping, customer service,... You only have to bring visitors to your merchant's site.

Before you decide to join some affiliate program, you should also pay attention to their conversion rates. Conversion rate is a percentage of visitors who make a purchase. That is one way to see if that program will be benefitial to you. You can calculate how many visitors you need to bring in order to earn some amount of money. "Pay per lead" programs usually have much greater conversion rates than "pay per sale" programs, because they don't require a purchase.

I also want to point that YOU can improve your merchant's conversion rates significantly. This is called "preselling". You have to design a website or a webpage where you endorse your merchant's products or services. This is very important if you want to be a successful affiliate.

This is one of the affiliate programs I recommend:

VMC Satellite - They offer you 50$ per sale of a satellite dish system.They have an excellent training for new affiliates.

I'll post some more programs soon.

Best regards,
Jaksa Dubljanin

P.S. I have made available one more free e-book for download. It's called "Free Advertising Sources". Click HERE to download it. I hope you'll find this e-book useful.

Return Of Investment (ROI)

There is one aspect very important to every business I wish to discuss today.

If you plan to run an on-line business, you must pay a special attention to your investments. Investments are often necessary in order for your business to succeed. Internet access and/or domain registration and hosting services are basic expenses. The most money you will spend is on advertising.

Advertising is necessary for a successful business. It can help you reach more people and more importantly, it can help you reach targeted visitors. Reaching free traffic levels you need to achieve success is possible, but you can't do this overnight. I wrote about this in my last post.

When you decide to spend money on advertising you must make sure it pays out. Before you begin spending any money, I suggest you take a simple plain notebook and ALWAYS calculate your expenses. The most important expenses are advertising expenses, but you should also include basic expenses I mentioned earlier and bank transaction fees.

That way you will know how much money you spend every month and how much money you need to earn to cover your expenses.

If you are new to internet business, you shouldn't expect to return all of your investments soon. You'll probably need a few months. But you should always return your advertising expenses!!!

I'm saying this because if you loose money, you'll loose it sooner with your advertising than everything else. If you don't return your advertising investments that means you are doing something wrong. You have chosen either a wrong way or place to advertise or your ad is not good or your site's salespage is poor or you are advertising wrong product. You must first find out if there is some way to improve your advertising results.

If you are sure some way of advertising doesn't work, don't waste money on it. If you find some advertising that works, stick to it! If it works only partially , try somehow to improve it. And ALWAYS inform yourself as much as you can about some form of advertising BEFORE you decide to spend any money.

Many people don't pay attention to the ROI and that is the main reason many businesses fail. They start losing money until they can't afford it anymore and than they quit. Don't let this happen to you!

You won't always manage to return your investments. Sometimes expenses are necessary to test out some new form of advertising and that is ok, especially if you are a beginner. There is a saying that experience always costs. :) Just don't let it get out of control.

But remember, ROI is only the minimum. You must make more money in order to be successful, because everything else you earn is profit.

I'm giving you an example:

You are selling something that brings you 10$ per sale and internet access and hosting expenses
are 45$ per month for example. Including bank transaction fees let's just say you need 50$ per month to pay your expenses and that is your initial investment.

You now decide to spend 20$ on advertising (making your expenses 70$). If it brings you no sales, you just lost your 70$. Even if it brings you one sale, you are still down by 60$. If you make two sales you have covered your advertising expenses, but what about your initial investment? You get the idea that you need to make 7 sales in order to return your full
investment. That means, if you want to make 100$, you must make 17 sales...

I hope you won't make the same mistake as I did. :) When I started advertising, I didn't keep track of my expenses and I lost about 120$ and in my country 120$ is quite a lot money (especially for a student).

I'll try to make available some more e-books for download in the next few days. Feel free to post some comments.

Best regards,
Jaksa Dubljanin

Getting Internet Traffic

Hi everyone!

Today, I plan to write about getting traffic to your site. In my previous posts, I mentioned the importance of internet traffic.

I also mentioned in my last post that there are two types of traffic: targeted and untargeted. You should focus on getting targeted visitors, but you will usually receive both targeted and untargeted traffic in the beginning.

There are many ways to get internet traffic. Some of them are free, but some are costly.

Traffic exchange sites

This is one way to receive visitors to your site. Traffic exchange sites are free to join and they offer you to a way to earn visitors to your site. All you have to do is to visit sites from their members, and in return, their members will visit your site. Sometimes you will receive one visitor for one site's view and sometimes you must visit 2 or 3 sites to receieve one visitor. You'll have to spend some time (usually 30 - 60 seconds) on a site in order to receive credit. Your
visitors must also spend that time viewing your site. You should at least spend 2 to 3 hours each day surfing for traffic.

This is a good way to receive traffic in the beginning. The downside is that this traffic is UNTARGETED! The other members are surfing sites to earn their own visitors and that is the only reason they will visit your site. If your offer is unique or interesting enough, it may grab
someone's attention and you may make some sales, so if you decide to use traffic exchanges, make sure your salespage is interesting enough.

Note: Some of traffic exchange sites may offer you to purchase a certain number of visitors. If you are considering to pay for these visitors, remeber that they are untargeted visitors.

FFA sites

These sites usually let you post you ad and a link to your site. FFA stands for Free For All. FFA sites will bring you targeted visitors, or at least semi targeted visitors. The downside of these sites is that your ad is very limited usually to 65 characters, sometimes less and your ad will be mixed with a thousands of other ads, so it may be difficult for someone to notice your ad. Besides, your ad will usually be removed very quickly.

I didn't have much success with FFA advertising. If you have been successful with this type of advertising, please post a comment.

E-mail advertising

This is a good way to receive traffic. You can advertise your site by adding signature to all of your e-mails. When you create a signature, include a few words about your site and a link. That way, whenever you send any e-mail to someone, he/she will be able to see your ad at the bottom of your message.

The other way is to send your e-mail advertising to a certain groups of people. With e-mail advertising, you MUST BE VERY CAREFUL!!! Send your e-mails only to the people who agreed to receive advertising (100% opted-in). There are some yahoo and topica groups where you can send your e-mails for free, but you must first join these groups. You can also pay for sending your e-mail ads to someone's subscriber base, usually an e-zine or GPTRE program.

Word of caution:
When you are using third party (e-zine, GPTRE, safelists,...) to send your e-mail advertising, be sure that their subscribers are 100% OPT-IN. If you are not sure, don't advertise there or you may regret it one day.

Always include disclaimer in your e-mails e.g. "This e-mail is NOT SPAM! I'm the member of the same safelist as you,..." or something like that.

Before you advertise on GPTRE programs (Get Paid To Read E-mail), you should visit first GPT Boycott, to see which program is recommended. There are a lot of GPTRE scams!!! I have a very bad experience with these programs, but it wouldn't be fair not to mention them.

Getting incoming links

This is one of the most important things you must do and you must do it correctly. You should find as much sites as you can where you can post your links. There are a lot of sites where you can post your ads, besides FFA sites. There are "free classifieds" sites and free ad board sites. Links from these sites are usually time limited, so you'll have to repost often.

The more important links are permanent ones. You can get these links by exchanging links with other webmasters. Just make sure you stick to relevant sites. Incoming links from non-relevant sites will do you no good. The other way is spontaneous linking, but don't expect that unless you have a content site. Noone will link spontaneously to your salespage.

The most important links are links from sites with high PR (Page Rank - Google's measurement of page importance). Getting these for free may be tricky. It is much easier to buy these links. You should also try to include your site in internet directories, like DMOZ or Yahoo Directory. This will help a lot to increase your PR.

When you create backlinks pay attention to a quality of a site you exchange links with. This is important, bacause if you choose wrong sites it may cripple your rank. Links from FFA sites may do this, but they are usually ignored by search engine spiders.

I would recommend you to download and install Google Toolbar. This toolbar will instantly show you the Page Rank of every page you visit.

Search engines

The best way to receive traffic is from search engines. This traffic is HIGHLY targeted, because people are actively searching for a content your site has to offer. Search engine spiders constantly crawl internet for a new content. If they find your site, they will list it for free. You can also submit your site to the search engines, but it will take about a month or two before your site is listed.

This is definitely the best way to receive free traffic. The only problem is that your site must be ranked high by search engines, or you won't receive any traffic at all. Your site must appear in the search results on the first few pages to receive maximum traffic and your competition is HUGE!

If your site is a new one, you must know that it isn't easy to get high ranking. New sites have low popularity, and you must work hard to increase your site's popularity. It can really take a while, sometimes up to a few months, or even longer. For a high rank, your site must be optimized for search engines and you must have a lot of high quality back-links. I'll write about SE optimization (SEO) and back-linking some other time.

The other (quicker) way is to use Search engines for PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising, but it will cost you. That is a great way to bring in HIGHLY TARGETED visitors. With PPC advertising, you write an ad, select keywords which will trigger your ad to appear and set the amount of money you are going to pay for a click. Your ads start showing on SE results whenever someone enters keywords you specified and you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. You can use Google AdWords, Overture, Goclick, Kanoodle,... for this purpose.

I hope you'll have some use of this information. Feel free to post some comments of your experiences with marketing.

Best regards,
Jaksa Dubljanin