If you are planning on setting up your own home internet business then you will definitely need a website. As your business is based online, the customers that you attract will also be internet based. Without a website of your own it will be near impossible to attract new custom.

In some instances a free website can work well. However, if you want to come across as professional and trustworthy you will need to spend a little money on website hosting.

Setting Up a Good Website

If you are only just starting up a new business then it is likely that you won’t have a lot of funds available. While there are definitely a few good free website hosting offers open to you, it would still be a better idea to look for a professional service. Take your time to search for “cheap website hosting” and compare as many different companies as possible. What you have to understand is that you will need a domain name as well as hosting. The domain name is your company name followed by .com or .org or whatever you choose. Many web hosting packages come with a free domain name so you shouldn’t have to worry too much about that.

It is also important to note that you can claim the cost of the website hosting back at the end of the year through expenses.

What to Include on the Site

You need to remember that your website is often the first thing that your customers will see. They will make a decision based upon whether or not to purchase from you depending upon what your site looks like. Therefore you need to ensure that it gives the best information and that it appeals to your target market. If you aren’t confident with words then it may be worth hiring a professional writer to do it for you.

Overall a website is extremely important to any business. Behind every successful home internet business is a great, attractive website.

Are you looking to earn money online? If so then many opportunity seekers will tell you that blogging can be a great way to do it. There is a surprising amount of money to be earned in blogging; you just have to understand what it involves and where to start.

How Blogging Earns Money

The main way in which blogging can earn money is through advertising. Many other companies will pay you to host a banner on your blog that will take customers to their site. It could be a blog about anything. As long as you regularly update the blog and write interesting content, you will continue to gain new traffic to your site. The more traffic you attract, the more you could potentially earn through banner advertising.

The only thing that you need to keep in mind is that the advertising should be relevant. If your blog is on an IT topic for example, the advertising that you include should be related to computers and the internet. It wouldn’t make much sense to include advertising for pet products on an IT blog! Irrelevant advertising is one of the main mistakes that people make when trying to earn money through blogging. So get to know your target market and ensure that you provide relevant advertising.

Is Blogging For You?

It may be a fairly easy way of earning money but blogging is not always for everyone. It will take up a lot of time if you want to earn a lot of money from it. You will need to update it regularly and you will need to have a way with words. The good news is that you don’t need much technical experience. It is a competitive field however so you will face a lot of competition.

If you take the above tips into account you could join the many opportunity seekers that earn money through blogging.

If you are a webmaster creating anchored links pointing at your own site, then you are probably already doing some social bookmarking as a part of your backlinks profile.  You are probably manually submitting to web sites like Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon and Reddit. And to do so, you had to create accounts.

To give your accounts more authority, the next step is to ping your profiles. Huh?  Every profile has a home URL.  Here is an example URL for the account profile of a reddit user named bookgirl5:  hxxp://www.reddit.com/user/bookgirl5   (note that the hxxp would really be http)

So you gather all your account profile URLs at the bookmarking sites to which you submit, and you ping these.  That means you submit them to ping servers.  You can do that manually or you can buy software to automate the pinging process.  Whether you ping manually or with software, you will need to ping with proxies.  This is because ping web sites block your IP from submitting repeatedly, and each ping web site has its own set of rules. For example, one ping web site might be set up to reject an IP if it has already submitted a URL within the last two hours. Other sites might use two days, two weeks or two minutes.  This information is generally not shared with the public.  So you must ping behind the protection of a proxy, which masks your own IP and allows you to repeatedly and rapidly submit URLs to ping web sites.

If you decide to automate the process of submitting to social bookmarking sites, then I recommend Bookmarking Demon. I have tried nearly every automated bookmarking submission software to come along in the past two years, and nothing surpasses Bookmarking Demon. It truly is the best social bookmarking tool on the market today.

Besides being the best automated social bookmark submitter, the Demon also has a ping function built right into it. After each bookmarking session, all your account profile URLs are already gathered, lined up and ready for you to ping.  All you have to do is feed Bookmarking Demon the proxies and ping web sites to use.  You can manually search for Bookmarking Demon proxies with an advanced internet search.

You will need a constant supply of free public proxies to use inside Bookmarking Demon, as these proxies die within days or hours of creation.  Once you find a list of ping server URLs, that list will last a very long time.  I still use a ping server URL list I was given by a friend in 2008, and it is still going strong.

If you do not want to go through the hassle of finding public proxies over and over again, you could always purchase private proxies and pay on a monthly basis.  I used to use Proxy Bonanza, but I found the list of proxies were all so similar to each other, that I really wasn’t looking very unique to the ping web sites.  The paid private proxies also slowed down the pinging process so much that there was little time left for bookmarking.  So I stopped my subscription and returned to public proxies.

This post is by guest webmaster Diane Sontag, who sells tested Bookmarking Demon proxies at her website http://bookmarking-buddy.com

A large proportion of those seeking new and profitable business opportunities are also looking for ways to earn an extra income based from home. This may be out of necessity as they are unable to find a job, or it may be that they simply are looking for an extra income for whatever reason – to enhance their current lifestyle, support a hobby or raise cash to invest in more business activity. Whatever the reason, businesses that can be started and run from home are the easiest and cheapest to establish – and for that reason they are very popular. The trouble is that this leads to a massive market in other businesses offering “work at home” programs and “easy ways to riches” that the unwary are so vulnerable to.

However, there are many ways to earn extra cash from home. Without fail they will require effort and diligence in order to make them work and there will be no quick route to riches. However, starting small and building up was the route taken by every self made millionaire (and billionaire!) and so if you can find something you like or are interesting in, it is possible to invest time and any profits you make growing a home business as far as you like.

Internet marketing

You can earn extra income from home with nothing more than a computer and Internet connection. However, this is one area where there is so much hype and promise and the reality is very much different. You cannot simply pick up a program advertised on some web site, pay your up front fee or first monthly subscription and expect to be earning money within days. It is simply not possible to even start raking it in within months. It is on the other hand possible to start seeing some revenue after a couple of months, that then grows month on month as a result of regular and targeted work – but only if the course or mentoring program you have selected is realistic, achievable and reasonable. Otherwise even if you are seeing some results they will not be anywhere as big as promised, you will become disillusioned and quickly give up.

Those successful at Internet marketing will tell you of many months and years earning a few pound or dollars every month. However, with persistence and willingness to learn, experiment and monitor results carefully they were able to rise to the surface and earn a significant level of income.

WordPress blogging software

As an example a wordpress blog can illustrate the potential for making money. If you have a key word that Google’s Keyword tool tells you costs say $2 every time somebody clicks on it and that there is traffic of around 10,000 people using that keyword (on Google alone) then you can see that some $10,000 is paid by Google every month to web site owners that host Google adverts for that single particular keyword. Surely it must be possible to build a great web site and get 10% of the traffic? In order to build a blog site into a business that earns you say $1000 every month there is a long road that needs to be taken.

1. Setting up a WordPress blog is easy. You buy a web site domain name and arrange web hosting with one of the many providers on the Internet. You set up a SQL database on your new hosting account. You download a free copy from the WordPress web site onto your computer. You make a few simple changes to the underlying file structure of the program and upload it to your new web hosts. Then you configure your blog by downloading and installing a suitable theme to your site together with a number of other “plugins” (pieces of software) that are freely available on the Internet.

2. You now have a web site that you can write some useful and interesting content for, that you hope will attract people to your web site out of interest and curiosity. However, just getting visitors would be no point if the intention is for them to make you money. Therefore you need to set up an account with Google so that you can install Adsense advertsiements onto your site in order that you visitors will click on them to earn you you commission. Once you have done this you have a “monetized” web site that can make you money if only people will visit you.

Getting to this stage is incredibly simple, and currently takes me an hour or two which also includes writing 2000 to 3000 words of interesting content to go on the site and finding maybe a couple of relevant photos to add in also. However, to get to this stage for the first time took me around 18 months!

Now that I know what I am doing it is easy, but initially I went down so many wrong and wasteful paths that my enthusiasm waned on a regular basis. So finding the correct route can take time – everybody will try to sell you the best and quickest method but even the basics as described above can take time to master. For me the turning point was visiting the forums, learning from others and not trying to do it alone.

3. Ok, that was the easy part. You have a web site that is capable of making money but no visitors. Is the keyword that you are working with suitable – and is your site optimized for that particular keyword?

4. You have a great keyword and your site is completely relevant to it – why are you still not getting traffic and hence earning any money?

5. You need to impress on Google that your site is the number 1 site for the keyword you have chosen. With some keywords this is easy to do, with others, usually the more valuable in terms of earning capacity for you, can be extremely difficult if not impossible to do. However, again there are ways to boost your search engine ranking without spending huge sums of money that take time and effort but do work.

Getting to this stage has been something of a slog – don’t you think? And instead of earning $1000 from the keyword every month, I am earning $30. What to do?

6. Now I need to boost my site with many other suitable keywords, so that they all help to boost each others ranking and start to generate substantial combined revenues. If I want $1000, maybe $5000 every month from this site I might need 100 or 500 suitable keywords, each of which will require time and patience to boost it in the Google and other search engines. As individual keywords begin to be noticed by Google, they will in turn support other keywords within separate content on the site thus increasing traffic overall.

Eventually perhaps after 2 or 3 years, working full time with content writers writing for me (at a cost) I might be turning over a respectable business – then suddenly without reason Google decides to “sandbox” my website and my earnings dwindle to nothing. This would indeed be a late stage in the game to realize that in Internet Marketing it pays to spread you effort over several web sites and use different hosting companies for each (what happens if your hosting company goes bust?).

If you are interested in the type of Internet Marketing I have described above, and are prepared to risk $1 (yes one dollar) from your PayPal account – try following the program of work on the Keyword Academy. This is the only step by step “formula” for internet marketing that I have seen where you can learn all the basics (avoid the long learning curve that I experienced) for virtually nothing. If you stay in the program beyond the first month you will be charged $33 every month thereafter – I promise you that you can in fact learn everything you need, download all the webinars etc within the month. However the value comes with the forum which is only open to members, and the free tools that are provided. I got everything I could in the first month planning to quit my subscription (it is easy and secure when paying by PayPal to do this) then – now some months down the line I am still subscribing and not planning to leave!

Attention, website owners!  If your website is awesome, popular, or even just started, you can make money with Google’s programs.  Whether or not your site is designed to generate income, you can still get a weekly check from it.  Here are a few good options for your online finances:

If your site is designed to make money (a sales or business site, for example,) then all you need to make more money is to get more viewers.  This means advertising.  It may be tempting to submit site to Google, since that service is free.  This is actually not a very effective program, however.  The problem is that you’ll still have to be popular enough to rise to the top of the result pages, once Google posts you there.  And if you’re that popular, you won’t have to ask them to post your site.  Submitting to Google won’t hurt you, but it probably won’t do you any good, either.  Use your time for something more fun.

While Google Submit may not help you a whole lot, you can get good advertising with AdWords.  With this program, Google will match up your site’s content with relevant search keywords, and post ads for your site on the sidebar of search result pages.  This means that the people who see your ads are those who are already searching for something similar.  Google will only charge you for the ads that are clicked on, which also means you’re only spending money on ads that actually work.

Another program to look into is Google AdSense.  This is designed for sites that aren’t really supposed to be making money – that is, there’s nothing being sold.  If you’re not really sure how to turn your site into a source of income, then this is the program for you.  Google will pay you simply for letting them post ads on your site, and they’ll match the ads to your site’s content.  You get paid for each ad clicked on, so your loyal viewers can actually be making you money.  Who knew you could be paid for popularity?

So are you the type of person who wants to get in and get out quickly, making a fast grab for cash in the process, or would you rather take your time and build up something more sustainable, even if it might be boring at first?  If you are just trying to get rich quick then you might consider doing certain things on the internet in order to make your money.  For example, you might try writing articles for other people.  If you can discipline yourself to sit there and write for several hours every day, you can make a lot of extra money in a short period of time.  However, you are likely to burn out if you are writing mindless dribble for hours on end, especially if you do not really care much for the topic at hand.  So for some people, freelance article writing is going to be a quick cash grab sort of activity, but not a long term producer of income.

Another route you might go in the internet marketing world is to build up your own websites by writing articles for yourself and publishing them online.  If you do this enough and then learn how to properly promote these websites then you can eventually build up a passive income stream from the work.  This is not an easy thing to do because you have to know how to test new ideas, find something that works, and then go crazy with hard work and put in a ton of effort in order to leverage whatever seems to be paying off well.  If you can put in a long, sustained effort without seeing any return right away, then you will have a formula for creating and building up a passive income stream that can make you money for the rest of your life.

There seems to be a fallacy about online businesses that makes people think the business models are some how different that a standard offline business. It is almost like: since the internet is new that must mean the old ways of doing business do not apply and new rules for success need to be developed. This is precisely the wrong thinking that caused the Dotcom crash close to ten years ago. Everybody thought since the web was new the old business models needed to be changed. This turned out to be completely false.

The basics of business and commerce have stayed the same ever since the first civilizations in Mesopotamia allowed people to specialize and offer their services to others for a price. The basic is, a business must solve a problem for the customer or it will not be successful. You can have some great ideas for business opportunities online but if you don’t succeed at this one truth your business will not be successful.

Oh sure, you can fool the customers for a while like the old “snake oil” salesmen did in the wild west, or like Bernie Madoff did recently, but you will not build a long term business and you will always be looking over your shoulder waiting to be found out. It is much better to develop a business based on problem solving for your customers because that gives a win-win solution. Your customer is happy because their problem is solved or their concern is met and you are happy because you receive compensation for making the customer happy. Nothing could be better.

At the Christian Business Opportunities blog we focus on using the internet to build long term, successful businesses that result in both happy customers and happy owners. If you are thinking about starting an online business then you really need to decide if you are in it for the long haul or if you are going to try to make a fast buck and get out. If it is the former we can help you. If it is the latter, good luck because you will need it. One thing the internet has done is allowed scammers to be found out very quickly. The successful online business opportunities are the ones that offer a solution that really works.