Print-on-Demand or POD services can give you another income stream

Make money at home with PODs

I've mentioned different ways people make money online, but here is one that I have only mentioned in passing. Print-on-Demand services, or POD are relatively new to the internet and have been getting better and better.

Why you should use a Print-on-Demand Service

Lets say that you are creative and you write books, paint, draw, take photographs, etc. That's great. You probably have CDs full of your photos and sketch books full of drawings, right? Probably only your closest friends have seen any of your work. Why not share it with the world and make some money so you can by more paint, paper, computer memory, a better digital camera, etc.?

Perhaps the money isn't important to you, but I bet you could use the money to buy better supplies or pay your internet or web hosting bill.

With these systems you upload images or text, make your products, set markups, and then you just get the word out while the sales slowly trickle in. You don't have to worry after that.

The process

1. You should first compare the pods for the features and the type of printing that you're looking for art, text, gifts, etc.


2. Once you have selected your first POD, create an account. If your funds are limited go with a free account.


3. Create a shop or store. Typically the name of the store is the same as your user name (if your username isn't your e-mail address)


4. Configure your store's title, your photo, your profile or shop info, etc.


5. Configure your shop or store's colors and log. Not all PODs allow this, so do what you can.


6. Upload your images. Upload only images or text. Only upload what you plan to use. You can always upload more files later.


7. Create categories and subcategories for your products. No one wants to scroll through hundreds of mixed up products.


8. Create products using your images or text (depending on POD) and add titles, descriptions, and keywords.


9. Set prices and price markups for your products and shops if you haven't already in the shop preferences.


10. Check your payment preferences and address, If this information isn't correct, you might not get paid!


11. Get the word out! Promote your shop, store, or products sold on the POD via your website, blog, by word-of-mouth, etc.


12. Cash your checks, buy more supplies and then go back to step 8.

The benefits of using a Print-on-Demand Service

There are many benefits to working with a POD. Here are a few:

• You don't have to bill any customers


• You don't have to worry about shipping


• You don't have to worry about printing


• You don't have to worry about product returns


• You don't have to worry about Customer Service


• You don't have to worry about the web server or hosting for your shop

The disadvantages of using a POD

• You lack some creative control over your products since you are limited to what they offer.


• You have to play by the POD's rules


• You have to wait between 30 and 45 days to get paid


• You can't host the shop on your own website.


• If the POD shuts down, you'll have to set up everything on another.


• Your POD shop customization will not be as good as you could do on your own web server.


• You'll typically have header or footer links to the POD's home page which are potential sales leaks.

Here are some PODs that I have tested:

Fine art prints and framed art

• Imagekind - See example store/gallery


• RedBubble - See example store/gallery Note: Not as high in Quality as Imagkind.

Image gifts and collectibles

• Cafe Press - See example store - not recommended for wall art


• Printfection - See example store - ´plenty of Shirts


• Zazzle - See example store - Plenty of products to choose from
  

When selecting a POD consider the following:

• Payment options. If you don't live in the United States, it is great if they offer PayPal or you'll be waiting weeks to get your check.


• Store and Gallery design and optimization. Can you add categories, unlimited products, change site design and colors?


• Product offering. Do they offer the products that you want to sell?


• Product base prices and markup options


• Search Engine Optimization - especially if you are not planning to market your products.


• Account fees. Compare base prices to fees. Sometimes a free POD charges a higher base price to cover the costs.


• Product Quality. Check each POD's forum and see what people say about product quality.


• Shipping costs

Conclusion

Above all you should be realistic. Whether you use a POD or not, it takes effort. Don't expect to get rich on a site that you only work on a few hours a week. Expect to get out of it, what you put in. Just like any business it takes time to get recognized. If you like being creative then this might not feel much like work at all. It could be a good opportunity to get a second income since you can do it on the weekend or in the evening after your normal full-time job. Do you use a POD other than one I mentioned here? Please tell me about it by e-mail or in this post's comments. Good luck!

Shareasale is one of the best Affiliate marketing Networks

About Shareasale, a great Affiliate Marketing Network

One way to make money online with a home business is by being an affiliate marketer. Affiliate marketing is NOT a get-rich-quick activity. It takes a lot of work and time just like any other job, but it does have its advantages of simplicity. In this post, I want to let you know about the Affiliate Marketing Network Shareasale.

An Affiliate Marketing Network is a company that provides a common interface between affiliate marketers and merchants which offer affiliate marketing programs. They provide integrated sales tracking and payment for a fee to the merchant. The merchant saves time by outsourcing some of its tasks while the marketer gets merged payments and one site features.

What is Shareasale?

Shareasale is a great Affiliate marketing network with many affiliate marketing programs.

Reporting &Tracking

It offers real time click and sales tracking through its varied reports. I personally have checked my product and merchant links and they have updated immediately. I use two reports almost exclusively. Today's stats and activity summary.

Today's stats only shows a list of merchant's programs that have been clicked through on the same day. It resets at 11pm Central Time. This is useful for testing new links for tracking and to see which pages people are clicking through.

Activity Summary gives you a month to date and total figures by merchant so you can check overall performance. Since it lists all of the merchants that I have signed up for, it is a good place to make sure everything is running smoothly. If I don't see any clicks then I check to make sure that I've put up links and that they're working. I can also click 'get links' to find products, banners, and data feeds to use on my website(s).

Another useful report is past revenue which shows you your earnings by month.

Link Creation

Link Creation is simple with shareasale, but it is up to each affiliate manager to make those links available so the number of links available do vary.

Most merchants offer text links, banner ad links, and product links. Some merchants offer data feeds which is a type of database that can be integrated into a website using special software. Very few merchants will offer widgets.

If you like to use plain old HTML on your webpages, you can use the "Make a Page" feature. "Make a Page" makes HTML coded pages that you can upload on your website using your criteria.

Program Management

You can easily join different merchant affiliate programs through searches, categories, and advanced search. The categories aren't perfect but they are good enough to find what you need in a minute. Before you join you can check information such as the company URL, Percent of commission, Earnings, and tracking cookie duration. Many programs will automatically approve you so that you can start promoting right away. Others will requre a review by the affiliate manager.

If you ever get denied from an affiliate program that you believe will be a good match, send an e-mail to the affiliate manager and let them know how you are planning to promote them and most likely they will approve you. This is common when you have more than one website and the manager only looks at the first site which more than likely isn't related.

Payment options

Sign up is free for affiliates. When someone buys a product through a link, graphic, text or otherwise, on your website, a commission is earned and the amount is reported at the top of your Shareasale administration page as well as in the reports. Once your account reaches $50 or a higher amount that you manually set, you get paid.

Currently Shareasale offers direct deposit for United States accounts (and possible some other countries), check via FexEx for a $20-$55 fee (a good reason to see a higher minimum payment!), or check sent by US mail/postal service which is slow but doesn't incur a charge. Getting checks internationally even if only to Mexico can take weeks.

Conclusion

Except for the lack of PayPal or Mexican bank deposit, I'm happy with the Shareasale program. They seem to be more responsive than the other networks and their click tracking seems to work better meaning fewer lost sales. If I were starting over today I would have gone first to Shareasale and then to the other networks.

Go Ahead and sign up today, you won't regret it. Join shareasale.com, Earn Cash!

Consider adding content description meta tags to each of your webpages for better search traffic (SEO)

Would you like more traffic to your website?

Whether it is a blog or a shopping site you need traffic for your website to be a success. One way to do so is to work on your SEO, otherwise known as Search Engine Optimization. Typically people optimize for Google, but it is also good to consider traffic from Yahoo and ask.com as secondary targets.

Content First, SEO Second

Once you have good original content on your website, it is time to consider SEO. There are many different tasks involved in SEO, and I admit that I still need to do many tasks on my websites as well, so I've added the webmaster and SEO category and a SEO series for these articles that any website can use to improve its results.

The main problem is that it is a lot of work! SEO is not yet automated. If you use a CMS like Wordpress or Joomla, you might find special plugins and modules to help you, but you still have to type in the information that the system needs.

The focus in this post is in adding a Meta content description tag to each page of your website. Meta tags are nothing new. Meta tags are informative HTML tags placed in the header of a web page's code. There are many meta tags used for many different reasons.

Adding meta page descriptions to static HTML is simple

Add the following to each of your page headers describing that page:

<meta name="description" content="Brief description of the contents of your page.">

Add a description of that specific page instead of the 'informative description here'. If you use static HTML pages on your website then simply go into your code with your favorite editor and add the code in between the head tags. You should be concise and descriptive. You should not repeat the title since that is going to be seen in the search result above the description.

Dynamic pages often require coding or SEO plugins

If you use a dynamic header through a CMS or website template using PHP then it is trickier, since one header is used for all of your pages. In this case you could perhaps make your own PHP modification if you are a programmer, or you could search for a plugin or module to add that information for you. Even with a plugin, you will still have to add that data in your CMS software. In a wordpress blog, you'll probably see it as an extra field in your writing admin. page after the plug in is activated. Once you activate a plugin with this functionality you'll have to go and add meta data to each page, post, and article you have.

Meta page descriptions improve search click through rates

You won't see results until Google's webcrawler rechecks your site. It doesn't matter if your pages are static or dynamic. This could take between hours and weeks. After Google's search engine updates your information and a page on your site appears as a search result, your description will appear after your page's title. By giving a more detailed description of your page, your page will be more interesting to the person searching and you should get more clicks. It should also lower your bounce rate, since people know what your page really contains.

What meta descriptions won't do for you

Adding meta descriptions will not improve your page ranking. Your web pages will appear at the same rank. This optimization is for increasing clicks on your pages when seen in the listing. You will need to do other optimizations to improve page ranking.

Google Adsense program requirements (make money online)

Requirements for Google Adsense a program for monetizing a website.

Google Adsense is a great way to make money with an information or content based website. You get paid when others click on advertisements from Google that you place on your website or websites. You get paid one month after your account reaches $100 US and its reporting is pretty accurate.

If you haven't signed up for Google Adsense there is no time like the present. Here is a list of requirements for participating in Google Adsense.

• A website with content
  
  
  
  • A valid URL (address)
  
  
  • A live website (not just in-the-works)
  
  
  • With unique content (not pretend website kits with search results)
  
  
  • The primary language should be on the supported language list: Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Hungarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.
  
  
  
  


• A valid Payee name (so that you can get paid)


• A valid address (for confirming your account and for receiving checks)

Google Adsense cannot accept a website that pays people to do different tasks such as clicking on ads or links or to visit sponsors, or any similar activity. The idea is that people will click on the advertisements because they are interested in doing so not because of reimbursement or reward. Remember that you are not allowed to click on your own ads nor should anyone else who uses your computer or shares the same IP address in a local network.

Sign up now, it is free!

If you are interested in placing ads contextually to display on the same service, check out Google Adwords.

Affiliate Marketing Networks

Affiliate marketing via Affiliate Marketing networks

While many companies offer affiliate programs directly from their websites, It is also important to consider the time it takes for you to manage programs' advertising and promotions and that you consider the reporting and payment options.

Here are the largest Affiliate marketing networks that I have signed up for. I will later post about my experiences using them.

• ShareASale


• Linkshare


• Commission Junction


• Performics


• Clickbank

Why should you sign up with an affiliate marketing network?

Well, there are many companies which don't offer in-house affiliate marketing programs, so you'll have to sign up with their associated network to be able to promote their products. If you like to promote products from many companies, you might prefer getting one or two paychecks instead of many. If you live outside of the US like me, you'll appreciate having to worry about fewer checks. If an affiliate program allows payment via PayPal or direct deposit to a Mexican account it is even better.

Why shouldn't you join an affiliate marketing network?

With the exception of ShareASale. I haven't yet done any tests, but I have seen examples of affiliate clicks being stolen. Typically this click piracy comes via web browser plugins which 'offer' discounts or promotions to typical internet users. They call these 'loyalty' programs, but behind the scenes they change the tracking cookie from that of the person who is promoting the product to that of the web browser plugin. They make the commission even though they did absolutely nothing at all while the person who worked hard or even paid to promote a product gets nothing. Although their websites say they go against piracy, I have seen examples of piracy that steal clicks. The only way the commission can be stolen is by replacing the tracking code in the cookie with ANOTHER TRACKING CODE. Therefore all they would have to do is cancel the affiliate account(s) being used with loyaltyware/Parasiteware. Parasite software is bad even if a customer arrives directly to a website without a referral. The parasite web browser plugin inserts its own cookie and makes a commission, again without providing any benefit. The company pays a commission that it wouldn't have had to pay. It is possible for an in-house affiliate marketing program could also be affected by parasites, but it is much less likely.

How to install Joomla 1.5 on your webserver

Step-by-step instructions for installing Joomla 1.5 RC & nightly build.

These instructions assume that you:

• have basic computer skills


• know how to use FTP


• have access to your webhosting account

Download Joomla 1.5

1. Download Joomla 1.5 from Joomla.org

Extract the download to your computer's website directory

2. Open the file and extract the contents to the directory or folder on your system where you'll keep your website backup. If you want to install it in a special folder on your site do so. It isn't recommendable to install it in the same folder as another web program, so if you have already installed WordPress or another program in your public-html directory then put Joomla in another directory like /joomla or /yoursitestopic.

Upload Joomla 1.5 via FTP to the web server

3. Upload everything to your webhost's server's FTP account. I use Dreamweaver for normal HTML coding and it has FTP included so I use that but any program that lets you upload a folder or directory is fine.

Some webhosting companies let you upload .zip files for later extraction online but many do not. That is why I don't tell you to upload the compressed file. If your host lets you do so then extract the file online to save time.

Take a break

4. While your Joomla files are uploading, watch something on TV, play a video game, call your mom, or whatever.

Go to your uploaded directory on the server

5. Once the files have finished uploading and they DID all upload, go in your favorite webbrowser, mine is Firefox, to http://yourdomain.com/yourjoomladirectory

Substitute the domain that you have registered and the folder you put the Joomla contents in.

If you installed Joomla in the public_html or main web directory on your server then just go to: http://yourdomain.com

again substituting your actual domain.

Verify that the Joomla! page appears

6. If you typed the address correctly then you'll see a page with "Joomla! Installation version 1.5" in the header.

Choose your installation Language

7. First you have to choose your installation language. En-GB for British English is selected. You could select a different language in the list and click the 'next' button. The next button is to the right of the language list.

Pre-install Check

8. The next page is the Pre-installation check. The Pre-installation check checks your PHP and Mysql settings.

This depends on your webhosting company and the server software that they installed. If your system fails a check then you'll need to let your hosting company know and see if they can change the software or if they can help you modify your php.ini. I have been using Bluehost and by default my system passed the Pre-installation check.

You know you are ok if all the settings are in green, so click on 'next'.

License Agreement

9. This next screen has the License agreement. You can read it and click on 'next'.

Database page

10. This screen has fields for the Mysql database. You need to create a database for use with Joomla. If you haven't already just open a new window or tab in your webbrowser, login to your webhosting account, and create a database and user. Write down all this information so you can enter it into the Joomla window that is still open.

• In the hostname field type: localhost


• In the username field type the username for the database as you setup via your webhost.


• In the password field type you username's password for the database that you setup.


• In the database name field type the name of the database.

Click on 'next'

Joomla! FTP

11. This page asks for you to configure Joomla 1.5 with FTP. Use the same settings that you used to upload the Joomla files to your server OR create a new account with your webhost and enter it instead.

Click on 'autofind ftp path' and it will test your FTP settings and enter the actual directory path from your account root.

Click on 'next'

Main Configuration

12. This page is called 'Main Configuration'

Enter the name of your site.

Enter the e-mail address that you will use.

Enter your administrator username and password (and write it down in a txt file or on a sheet of paper).

If you have a new install keep the dot in the 'install the default sample data'.

If you are upgrading, use the option to load the migration script and add the required information.

click on 'next'

Finish

13. You are now on the 'finish' page. This means that Joomla 1.5 is installed. Wasn't that easy?

Delete your Joomla installation directory

14. Using your FTP program or your webhost's control panel or file manager, delete the installation directory inside your Joomla directory. You could also rename it but you should delete it for security reasons.

Log in to your account as administrator for further configuration

15. Log in as administrator so you can configure it to your heart's content.

warning: If you enable the 'wrapper' module you must add a URL to its URL field or the system won't open in Internet Explorer and you'll get an error message in Firefox saying that the URL is not valid.

As long as the site's URL is entered OR the wrapper module is disabled you won't have a problem.