For those people who have started writing blogs using WordPress blogging software the idea of building your traffic to increase the numbers of hits you are getting will be nothing new. You will already be alert to the possibility of making some money from your site using Adsense advertising and you will probably have learned a little about the scale of Internet Marketing these days. You probably wonder if the glossy adverts can be true – that there really are ways how to earn money working from home on your computer? How can there be – you get 100 unique visitors to your interesting blog every day and yet your Adsense revenue is meagre – a few $ per month! Not a very good method of work at home employment!

Adsense earnings can be hard fought for – yes there is a huge budget available for paying web masters to include Adsense on their sites – but the competition is huge. To rely on Adsense alone for bringing in a useful income means that you must be writing totally commercially with an extremely astute choice of subject matter – such that the browsers happening upon your site are actually looking for the item that you have written about!

It is arguably easier to find a product to write about and use an Amazon link to encourage browsers on your site to buy the item from your affiliate prompt. Take for example a subject that I write about on one of my blog sites – scuba diving computers. These cost around $300 to $1000 each. If a visitor to my site hits upon a page that is about a particular computer that he is looking for, the Adsense adverts will most likley be pointing to scuba diving holidays in the Maldives or some other holiday location. I will be unlikely to get my $1 click from Adsense going to my bank account.  However, if my product review of the particular computer instead has a dedicated link to a good deal for that item on Amazon – there is a much higher chance that my visitor will click through. Not only is there a higher chance he will click through, but even if he visits Amazon and decides upon a different computer I will still earn the commission on the sale. And guess what, with commissions starting at 5%, this means $50 on a $1000 computer! I would rather have one click in 10 producing a commission of $50 than one click in 100 earning me $1!

The sums do add up in preference of Amazon – or indeed other affiliate sales. Adsense is easy to install to your WordPress blog and is the route in for many aspiring Internet Marketers. However, using Amazon as one of your ideas for making money can be just as easy. If you use an Amazon Widget Shortcode (simply browse for this in your “Add New Plugins” option) – you will get a tool added to your new post toolbar in your blog. You will also need to register as an Amazon affiliate in order to get a code for adding to your Amazon Widget Plugin dashboard. Once you have done these two simple steps you are ready to write product reviews and install an Amazon link into each one.

Now whatever the subject of your blog you can find something relevant to sell from Amazon to write about – even if it has to be a book. For example if your site is a business or career related discussion forum you can review few books on it. Don’t forget to link internally within your blog site to the review and also spend time building back-links to your review post.

Of course if you are blogging specifically to make money on the Internet then you will be choosing your niche areas to promote with care. You can use the Amazon browsing facilities for this and it is a good idea to look on their bestseller list to see what is popular. Essentially you want a subject area with a number of categories so that you can write a unique post targeting items within these categories. In this way you will be building up a strong site covering a wide range of products that are linked. As the site strengthens over a year or so each new product you add will be ranked much easier for the key words (in this case product names and brands) you are targeting.

And for those of you that think this is complicated – consider this:

1. It takes me about 15 – 30 minutes to research a new product item and write a post about it.

2. It takes me about 10 seconds to locate the item in Amazon (I usually do this first to make sure it is being sold) and copy and past the ASIN code into the drop down box on my new post window.

So if you are writing posts anyway why not add an Amazon widget to it – it acts as an illustration improving your post anyway and might result in a few commission clicks!

So many people are seeking ideas for making money and come across many of them in their quest – but why is it so hard to find good money making ideas? This seems to be the question most would be entrepreneurs ask themselves – almost continuously. It is why wanting to make money or work for yourself can be so frustrating but more importantly why so many less reputable people see the opportunity for taking hard earned cash from people desperate to set up a new business opportunity.

There are no shortage of money making ideas, the trick is to find a good one – not only one that will work but one that actually suits you. This is where most business opportunity seekers go wrong. They are lured with the promise of making easy money and seldom pause to think about the way it is going to be made! This is important, because if you are able to find some work or business that suits you then you will make money – and are most likely to be satisfied as well.

Take for example multi level marketing, sometimes called network marketing or mlm – this business has a reputation for providing a meagre return for those that attempt it. The companies using this method of selling rely on a regular recruitment of marketers by a small cadre of enthusiasts who are able to make significant sums from the business. An example is the top sales representative for Avon cosmetics in the UK. She runs some 1700 sales persons each of whom turn over a small sum but collectively earn her about $200,000 per year. Why is she successful? because she loves the work and in particular is able to motivate a large number of much lower achievers to earn her large amounts of commission. She is a people person and a good administrator. The business suits her and she does well. Thousands of others are lured into this form of marketing thinking that they will become rich and only manage a few $. They do not like continually meeting people, motivating them – arguing with them.

So how do you go about finding a good money making idea that is suitable for you? How do you recognise the best business opportunities? Ask yourself what it is you like to do – not the specifics like fishing or motor racing – but very general questions like:

1. Do you like meeting new people?

2. Do you prefer to work alone?

3. Do you understand business?

4. Are you financially astute?

5. Are you creative?

6. Can you write interesting content?

7. Do you like to move around or would you rather work at home?

8. Do you want to work outside?

9. Do you want a big business or a small business?

10. Do you seek recognition?

As you work through these questions you should write down answers – in bullet point. The questions will trigger more general questions and ideas will start to emerge. If an idea crops up as you are answering the questions pop down a reminder on the other side of the page to your bullet points. For example, when asking yourself about whether you understand business you might think of the idea of franchising where the business model is provided for you and you need to provide the entrepreneurial management to make it work. A little later you might come up with an idea for a particular type of franchise and this must be jotted down for future research.

You are building up what might be considered to be a “mind map” by this brainstorming. This is an effective and recognised way of reaching an initially unseen goal – and could well assist you with finding a good money making idea!

If you are seeking an idea for making money from the Internet that does not involve you enrolling on any expensive monthly subscription course, or similarly does not require you to invest in a web site domain name or hosting account – and really will make you a valuable side line income, then follow these instructions:

1. Spend some time considering the things that you are interested in. Take for example fishing. Start entering words connected to fishing into Google and see what results come up. Try bass fishing, fishing tackle box, sea fishing gear etc. You want to find a search term around which you are going to write an interesting article and publish it on the Internet.
2. Prepare your article. Article titles including the words “How to…” often work very well, for example “How To Make Your Own Bass Lure”. Make sure you add some interesting and useful information to the article.
3. Publish the article with Hubpages.com – that’s it – all you have to do is wait for people to read your article and hopefully click on the advertisements that Hubpages puts around your offering and you will receive advertising income. You will have to follow Hubpages’ instructions to make sure that you receive your income.

Now the likelihood is that not many people will visit your article to start with. You can improve the numbers of visitors by becoming a regular and supportive contributor to Hubpages, getting to know the subjects that people are most interested in. You will be writing more articles, and gradually raising your author profile.

However, you will still be lucky to see more than a few pennies coming in each month! To improve your readership you should consider actively promoting your Hubpage articles. This can be done simply by writing more articles and getting them published on different web sites. There are hundreds if not thousands of directories that will be happy to publish interesting and unique articles that you have written. They will also allow you to include one or more Internet Hyperlinks back to your Hubpage site. The more hyperlinks that you distribute around the world wide web pointing back to your Hubpage article the better it will rank in the search engines. The result is that you will get more visitors to your Hub and as a consequence your advertising revenue will increase.

For more information concerning Search Engine Optimization using targeted key words and article marketing visit the Keyword Academy and risk $1.

Finding a new business opportunity lead is the starting point for many would-be entrepreneurs and seasoned business persons alike. It can be one of the most enjoyable parts of setting up a business (excepting for when the money comes in of course!) and can also be one of the most frustrating. Get it right and you can replace your current day job or add a valuable income stream to your current portfolio of businesses – get it wrong and you can waste a lot of time, money and energy for nothing.

It seems that some people have a gift for spotting money making ideas that will work. However, most of us need some assistance in finding business opportunity leads. The best tool is the Internet as it is crammed full of all sorts of business ideas, good and bad. To find one that is suitable for you takes some care and an element of luck.

The worst thing that you can do is to surf aimlessly round the web. You will simply be entering search items that interest you and are not necessarily money orientated. Or, you might enter words like: home business opportunity lead. In this case you will be presented with a whole range of sites selling businesses purporting to be able to make you money. This is where care is needed.

I would advise a minimum of three phases of research that are needed to get anywhere near a business that will stand a chance of working for you:

1. Your initial trawl through the Internet using the broad search terms for finding an “ideal business opportunity” or a “profitable business idea” etc will result an a wide range of different subject areas for businesses. On the face of it the marketing hype will probably sound enticing for all of them. However, you must now sift through all these ideas carefully. Make a simple spreadsheet that sets out some details including:

• web site address
• business name
• type of business
• investment required
• initial estimate of resources needed (your time, extra staff, special equipment etc)
• references provided by the marketing site
• initial assessment – good/uncertain/poor or something similar based on your initial reaction

2. Once you have spent time amassing your initial ideas, you need to first reject all the bad ones obviously, and then to collate the rest into categories of the different types of business leads. Now your second search will be on these category names and any associated relationships you can think of. This will allow you to thoroughly find out about the different business ideas and become more knowledgeable about the general feasibility of starting a new business in a particular industry or niche. Examples of the closely associated nature of the different categories can be found within Internet Marketing:

• article marketing
• keyword research
• affiliate marketing
• search engine optimization

Each of these areas will be associated with a number of different marketing web sites offering you the chance to set up your own business and make money. They will now form your business opportunity lead list that you can further refine, excluding any that form part of an industry that you do not think would be suitable for you. For example, you might have a number of categories representing several business offers in the world of network marketing. They will generally require strong networking skills and some people do not like this.

3. After these two phases of research you will hopefully be left with a short list of perhaps one or two categories within a single industry area. Now comes the detailed checking of the companies that are offering you business leads in these areas. Not only must you carry out more detailed checking – for example by re-entering each business name into Google and sifting through as many of the results as you can, but also carry out as much further research around the central subject as you can.

I was in the position recently where I wanted to add an income stream to my portfolio and had time to carry out the research. I narrowed my options down using the first two stages until I had only one idea I was interested in pursuing. Just for the sake of this article – let us call the company “Prime Widget Co” – and it was attempting to sell me a subscription to a course that instructed me how to sell “widgets” over the Internet. I was hooked on the idea and was now ready to do my third stage of research. On entering “Prime Widget Co” into the search engine I received a lot of hits for similar companies selling widgets and similar products. About half way down the first page one result came up for “…is the Prime Widget Co a scam…?”

In this case the web site was actually a customer of the Prime Widget Co and was extolling their virtues – however, I could have been on to something! What I was able to do was contact the site owner (it was a blog site and allowed contact easily through the comments feedback forms) and ask him about the business. He was positive and guided me to a couple of forum sites where the company was being discussed. I found a lot of balanced information in this way.

When you are in the market for business opportunity lead generation the best tool to assist you is the Internet. You might be able to supplement your research with books and magazines, but the Internet will always offer more current and up to date information. However, you must carry out your due diligence investigation into new business ideas, ensuring that you learn as much about the business as you can. If you follow a methodical three stage approach as detailed above, this will act as a checklist and hopefully help you reach your goal safely, that is a business idea that will make you money!