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A listing and review of reliable, legitimate sites where you can get paid to write, surf, search and more. All the sites in this listing are free work at home opportunities that have a history of paying when they say they will pay.

When I decided I was going to find a way to make money from home, I didn’t really believe I would be successful. After years of seeing work at home scams in the help wanted ads, deep down I expected to find nothing but the same. Imagine my surprise when it turns out you really can make money from home with just an internet connection, some rudimentary mouse and keyboard skills, and some free time! It’s not likely you’ll become wealthy overnight (or even over years), but you can definitely make some decent spending money, and if you put some real effort into it, earn a small, simple living.

After I found ChaCha , the first site that paid me to do what I was doing all the time anyway (searching the internet), I began a quest to find every site I could that was for real, was proven to actually pay, and was worth my time to use it. Below is a list of sites that are working for me, categorized between those that require little to no skills and those that require at least some basic grammar and writing skills.

Get Paid to Read, Click, and Fill Out Forms

Cash Crate

There are a ton of sites that pay you to complete free offers online, but from my experience nothing beats Cash Crate. I made almost thirty dollars the first night I tried it and got a check in the mail the following month. It’s possible to make a lot more than that if you’re very comfortable giving out your personal information. I recommend getting a separate email address for these offers, since the junk mail they accumulate is overwhelming. Also, although there are a lot of free offer sites and many of them are good, I haven’t personally found much point in fully participating in more than one. They all have the same offers, and I’d rather get one big check than several small ones. If you’re still interested in trying several, two of the better ones are Treasure Trooper and Swat Cash.

Zotspot

If you’re like most of us, you search the Internet daily, usually several times a day. Of the sites that pay you to use their search engine, Zotspot is the most straightforward and has the most potential for earnings. You won’t amass a fortune doing this, but you won’t lose much time to it either. This site, like many of the “get paid to” sites, also has a referral program where you can exponentially increase your earnings by inviting others to join, which makes the pennies add up more quickly. One important note: Don’t be concerned when your account shows 0 for a long period of time. There is a delay of about two months between when you do the searches and when your account is credited, just like a pay lag. But once you get that first credit, you can cash out monthly for as long as you continue searching. For those of you who want to try some of the other legitimate paid search engines, check out Slash My Search and Agloco

Clix Sense

Clix Sense is just one of several sites that will pay you to look at ads. On Clix Sense, you get a penny or two per ad, which you need to leave open in your browser window for at least thirty seconds. I’ve found Clix Sense to be rather painless, since I can do it while I’m online doing other things, but this is not a big money earner for me. I’d say I’m making about ten cents a day. By using several of these sites and taking advantage of the referral programs, it’s possible to make more. If you want to check out some other reputable sites, try Adbux and WordLinx. There is also Myster-e-mail for those who’d like to get paid to read email, and Cash Fiesta for those who want to get paid to surf.

Get Paid to Write and Help Others

Daytipper

Daytipper is a site that pays $3.00 each for brief descriptions of useful tips. If you know a way to get wine out of carpet or to sleep when you’ve got insomnia, write up a blurb on it and send it in. The site accepts and publishes about 1/3 of its submissions, so you’ll want to take the time to write well and clearly. Still, even with care to grammar, structure, and spelling, it doesn’t take long to write a tip. The downside of this site is that it can take months to get the payment from them, but the upside is that they do actually send it.

Review Stream

Review Stream pays as much as $1.50 each for reviews of just about anything. Review books, movies, medicines, your favorite restaurant, the mp3 player you got for Christmas, whatever you like. These reviews need not be long; they just need to include your personal opinion of the item in a way that is useful to others. It’s fun and easy and they come through with the payments. Review Stream requires full rights to your reviews, meaning you can never publish or post them elsewhere.

Epinions

Epinions is another site that pays writers for reviews. However, instead of a single upfront payment, Epinions pays you a penny or two each time someone reads your review page. Like Helium, Epinions has a system in place to ensure that the best reviews are more likely to be read, so it’s essential in making money on this site to write clear, useful reviews. It’s also to your benefit to review items that people search on frequently.

Review Party

Review Party is one more site where users can make money for writing reviews. In this case, your payments come solely through advertising on your page, which you take some responsibility for procuring by signing up for Google Adsense and the Amazon Associate program. The key to this site is to write reviews that will generate enough readers that some of them will click on your ads. Review Party does not require exclusive rights to your reviews, so it might be worthwhile to publish them here as well as elsewhere and see if they generate any income.

Associated Content

If you’re looking to make some extra cash writing articles for web pages, there are several sites that will pay for your efforts. The best of these is Associated Content. Unlike many “get paid to write” sites, they frequently pay a lump sum upon publishing the article, as well as a bonus for the number of page views the article generates. Also, unlike many other sites, it is your choice whether or not to give them exclusive rights to your work. You may choose to accept a smaller initial payment in order to keep the option of publishing the article again in the future. Payment for articles is generally under $20.00, but if you can quickly write clear, engaging articles, you can make some decent income here.

Helium

On Helium it pays to be a good writer who can create informative or entertaining articles on popular topics. This is a site that pays you based solely on clicks to your articles, so if you’re not drawing readers, you’re not getting paid. There is a voting system in place to further assure that the best articles get the most attention, a useful feature that helps keep poorly written articles from annoying readers. This is necessary because any article written on an existing Helium topic is immediately published to the site. If you’re a serious writer, money can be made on Helium, but it may take a considerable amount of work and tweaking to find what will bring in the money. If you like to write and you like the challenge of improving your writing to meet the demands of readers, this site is worth a try.

Triond

Triond is quite similar to Helium, in that you are paid for visitors to your article pages rather than given an upfront payment. There is voting at this site, but it is not as central to readership as it is at Helium. Triond appears to weed out poorly written articles by declining to put them on their websites in the first place. Another major difference between the two is that, unlike Helium, Triond requires that all articles submitted to them be previously unpublished, either in print or on the web. You are free thereafter to republish your work as often as you like.

Looking For Clues

This site is similar to Associated Content. It pays upfront for well-written articles on a variety of subjects that are then available on the site and accessible from search engines. The major difference is that Looking For Clues is specifically seeking articles that are more insightful or entertaining than the usual fare. It’s harder to get published on Looking For Clues, but when your articles are accepted, you are paid a higher rate for them, usually between $10 and $30. Looking For Clues requires the full rights to your articles, but the higher payment makes this worthwhile for many writers.

My Lot

I mention this briefly only for people who sincerely enjoy posting in forums and would spend their time doing it anyway. My Lot will pay you a penny or two for each post, which means that if you post fifty to a hundred times, you can make a dollar. They have a referral program that gives you a percentage of your friends’ posts as well, but even then it’s not really possible to make a significant amount of money on this site without spending all your waking hours at your keyboard.

ChaCha

The ChaCha search engine pays guides to assist users in finding information on the Internet. ChaCha is a real work at home opportunity that can bring in a significant amount of money depending on the time and work a person is willing to dedicate to it. ChaCha pays guides $5.00 an hour, but this amount is often less for new guides who rarely get a steady stream of searches.

Another limitation is that searches are only paid for the first six minutes, so those that run over cut into the hourly rate. There is a significant amount of unpaid training involved to get to the higher levels where more and better searches come in, and because ChaCha guides are rated by users, it’s necessary to deliver consistently excellent customer service to maintain those levels. ChaCha guides are independent contractors, meaning they have to pay self-employment tax (in addition to regular income tax) on their earnings, another factor that lowers the $5.00 hourly rate. There are also a number of rules and regulations ChaCha guides are expected to follow that can sometimes feel restrictive.

Despite all this, ChaCha has something going for it that makes it a serious contender as an at-home income generator: it’s addictive. Guiding searches is challenging, fun, and although sometimes infuriating, it is never boring. ChaCha is not currently taking on new guides as of June 2007, but it’s certain they will do so again in the future. You can become a guide by finding another guide to invite you or by applying through the “become a guide” link at the bottom of the ChaCha home page.

WAHM

For those of you looking for more serious Work At Home opportunities, something more like a real job, the WAHM (Work At Home Moms) forums are the best place to start. They list legitimate companies that hire telecommuters

and at- home workers with a variety of different skills. I got my first at-home transcriptionist job through WAHM, for which I will always enthusiastically recommend their site.

To conclude, by making use of a multitude of these sites, it’s possible to bring in a significant amount of money each month. Since many of them also have paid referral programs, you can increase your income by inviting other users to join. As with most pursuits, you’ll get out of these sites what you put into them. A little extra work in the beginning can pay off handsomely in the end. Have fun trying them out!

There is a near-universal belief that content is king of the internet marketing world. Doing a quoted search in Google for “content is king” will return a ridiculous 700,000 results - people have been talking about this concept now for more than a decade.

The basic idea of the ‘content is king’ theory is that the more content you put online, the more traffic you will be able to pull to your site. This has lead blogger after blogger to post thousands of times, wasting literally hundreds of hours of time on the lowest of the low-leverage methods for creating traffic.

I would suppose that many of you have been caught in this trap, in fact I’ve been caught there myself. I’ve posted nearly 400 times on this site, and less than 20 URLs on CourtneyTuttle.com are responsible for more than 90% of my current traffic. What does that tell you about the other 380 posts?

Now some of you are going to tell me that I wouldn’t have the site authority I have without the other 380 posts and this is at least partially true. That said, I can tell you this with certainty: I could have leveraged my time a lot better during this process. My ‘content is king’ belief was directly responsible for the loss of hundreds and maybe thousands of hours of my time.

Ability to create links from other sites is king, content is but one of the king’s many tools.

More to come…

During the last few weeks, I have been doing some very interesting experiments here on Court’s Internet Marketing School. The question in my mind is whether it’s the actual ‘posting’ on a blog that results in traffic and RSS subscribers. Most people out there are going to believe that posting more will result in more traffic to a blog, which will result in more RSS subscriptions.

I have the luxury of having quite a few of my own sites and also having clients whose sites I watch on a weekly basis. What has this led me to discover? In most cases, ‘posting’ on a blog actually has very little to do with the traffic that reaches the blog.

Why? Well, think about it. How many of your old blog posts actually bring residual traffic? Do they bring search traffic? When you get linked to from other sites, do those links produce continuous traffic or do they simply give you a short-lived burst?

I have had the luxury of being linked to by some of the most popular blogs on the web. I’ve been linked to multiple times by Problogger, John Chow, and most of the other big names in this industry.

If I look at yesterday’s stats, how much referral traffic did I get from those links? I got 2 visitors that came from ProBlogger.net, and 0 visitors from JohnChow.com. That honestly doesn’t compare well at all with the residual search traffic that I get from Google every day.

As you might have noticed, it’s been two weeks since I last posted on this site. What have I been up to? I’ve been creating some keyword-rich landing pages (as opposed to posts) and building links (among other things that you’ll find out about very soon…). What are the results? A healthy increase in daily search traffic and more than 200 new RSS subscribers.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Over the course of years I have been working online I’ve learned and increasing amount of search tactics to find information on Google. As a freelance writer who has many niche marketing clients it is imperative I find information super fast.

The more time I waste, the less money I earn because my rates are tailored to the time I need to get the job done. Tailoring my searches to my respective needs means that the results are more accurate right away, allowing me to concentrate on the writing, rather than spend time researching Google for hours.

Also, I wanted you to know that while I mention Google here, some of these search terms will also work on other search engines. I simply love Google and couldn’t imagine life without it. It is the tool I used most in my business besides my brain and my fingers.

1.) The hyphen search string

A hyphen search string will omit any word that is being placed after the actual hyphen in your search.

For example, if you were to search for Internet -marketing, the results would omit anything to do with marketing but return information related to the word Internet.

2.) The wildcard search *

To use a wildcard search insert the * symbol instead of a word. This is great for long tail searches as well as comparison searches. Examples, the search pay * will return varied results while you can do comparison search to find more detailed information like this search: [pay * per word]vs[pay * per hour]

3.) The date range search

To search for information within a specific date range, do this:

Internet marketing daterange:2008 january-2008 july

This type of research is especially important if you need relevant and updated information.

4.) The exact search

The phrase or exact search allows us to find relevant information by putting quotes “” around our search term. This will cut out all irrelevant and time wasting results. Example: “marketing blogs”

5.) Blog keyword search

If you are a niche marketer, or an assistant to a niche marketer you will find this particular tip very handy while searching for blogs to comment on.

writing inurl:blog

You can also use the search term inurl: to restrict the search to page URLs e.g. inurl:writing

6.) The filetype search

I love this search as I can find PDF’s, PPTs, spreadsheets (xls) and more with this particular search:

business filetype:pdf

7.) The safe search

The safe search excludes all adult content from the results: safesearch:online

8.) The link search

This search finds linked pages on any website. While Google does return results, you will find more up to date stuff on Yahoo for this particular search.

inlink:www.courtneytuttle.com

9.) The site search

If you want to find information on only the one website you are best off to use the following search term to find the most accurate results: site:courtneytuttle.com

While you could also do a search with the www in front of the URL, the results are often limited.

10.) The find stuff using either or results

if you need information on two words that might not even be related, you can use the OR in between. Example: marketing OR writing

11.) The definition search

The definition search is great for writers or bloggers. Whenever you don’t quite understand the meaning of a particular word or phrase you can use this search to find its definition.

define:writing

Bonus tip

Did you know that you can also use Google like a simple calculator. this is so handy when you add up all your income at the end of the month. Simple us the same symbols like you do on a simple calculator:

• + = add
• - = subtract
• / = divide
• * = multiply etc.

You too can become a search warrior

Knowing your way around the search strings will make your online life a lot easier. If you struggled up to this stage, these “shortcuts” will give you a huge advantage over your competition since you will be faster and able to find more accurate information from now on.

I know that there are many more of these search strings and if you feel like sharing, feel free to let us know which ones need to be on this list. Maybe it will become the 50 best killer research strings instead.

(original article)

A lot has been written about time management and how we can possibly run our busy lifestyles without feeling like we play catch up all the time. Even though this topic has been covered over and over again, I feel it is one of the classic timeless topics and therefore never be covered enough.

But instead of writing about the various tools that can take you from a procrastinating professional to an effective and kick ass time management warrior, I rather talk about what I tried and failed with before I discovered the simple ways to control my business in the end.

I think the biggest issue we face is to have too many choices in tools to help us manage our time. It can be hard to resist the pulling forces of all the cool apps currently floating around on the Internet. So many have tremendous appeal and they offer us every imaginable ability, except they can’t make us coffee. Bummer.

My desperate search

So, in my search of trying to find the best medium to help me keep control of my ever increasing mountain of paper clutter, digital clutter and schedules, I tried just about anything out there. Leo Babauta wrote a post on 8 Simple Online Time Management Tools a while ago on Freelance Switch, but despite the shiny facade of the application mentioned I found none of them worked for me. I might mention here that I did try them all bar one or two. Not to mention the many others I discovered along the way in my search for the holy grail of time management tools.

The magic discovery

After trailing and failing with dozens of applications, ways, ideas and DMO’s, I made a miraculous discovery. In fact, if it wasn’t for this particular discovery I’d still be searching for the perfect time management tool for me.

And you know what, this tool I discovered has got to be one of the easiest, straight forward and manageable tool ever invented. Not only that, but this tool has so many uses it is a true all rounder.

This magic discovery is the one and only Moleskine. Now, before you ask “what is a Moleskine”, let me explain. The following is an excerpt from the actual slip of paper that comes with every Moleskine notebook:

Moleskine is the legendary notebook used by many European artists and thinkers for the past two centuries, from Van Gogh to Picasso, from Ernest Hemingway to Bruce Chatwin.

This trusty, pocket size travel companion held sketches, notes, stories and ideas before they were turned into famous images or pages of beloved books.

It is that easy. Since I discovered the Moleskine notebook, I quit on all the other online time management tools. To be honest, I found them time consuming, which in my eyes defeats the purpose of managing time in the first place.

Instead of spending two hours inserting schedules, reminders and contacts into the various online time management tools I spend about 15 minutes max. every Sunday evening. Not only is my week ahead clearly outlined, but I have developed a great system to keep the tool easy, fast and fuss free. And best of all, it works a treat!

Hacking your Moleskine

I basically own a Moleskine dedicated as a diary. It fits into my pocket and my hand bag and I can take it with me everywhere I go without the extra bulk, extra weight or having to be afraid to drop and break it.

To make it my own I hacked it according to the guidelines of Mike Rohde. My Moleskine Hack is the easiest time management tool I have come across in all the years I have been online.

Important aspects of taking control

Before you can use any tool to manage your time, whether it is online or offline based, you need to be clear about the work flow. The biggest setback for me in the past was my inability to keep things simple.

I overcomplicated matters and worst of all I always tried to do too many things without matching them for realistic execution.

Instead of opting to complete six major jobs in a week I now space these out. I also found it best to mix small tasks with big ones and never to include more than two major tasks every single week.

The moment I started to execute this, I finally managed to finish my to do lists pretty much every single day.

The other benefit

Ticking off your list has another major benefit. Besides getting things done, you will actually go to sleep with a sense of accomplishment rather than feeling stressed.

Keep it simple stupid

The K.I.S.S. principle applies also very well to time management. If you struggle with it, then take a step back and go easy on yourself. Release the self imposed pressures. You will soon find that you’ll actually get a lot more done once your new time management system is in place.

(original article)

So you’re looking for easy ways to make money. You aren’t alone, who wouldn’t want to make a lot of money the easy way?

Are There Really Any Methods To Make Money That Are Easy?

I have spent the last few years of my life seeking for methods that I could use to make money and actually have been able to find some easy ways to make money, in fact they are dang easy now that I think about it. The difficulty was actually in finding them, not in the actual use of the methods.

Part of my struggles to find easy ways to make money was that I only cared about finding ways to make money online because I knew that online methods for making money would provide me with huge amounts of leverage - how else can you make money off of people on the other side of the world?

Sorting Through The Junk Ways Of Making Money

This led me to try hundreds of different methods for making money online, most of which were a total waste of time. The methods that actually worked for me were found through trial and error - I created literally hundreds of websites and tested and tested and tested.

It time, I really found an approach that worked out great and I have been following it ever since. One of my sites has already produced close to six figures this year, and others are making me a nice residual every month. Now that I understand the process, it’s truly one of the ‘easy ways to make money’ that we have all looked for.

Learning This Approach To Making Money

To help other people to start learning this method, I have written a free report that anyone can download. It provides a basic outline of the methods I’m using and will help you to understand what you will need to do in order to use the approach. Feel free to download - enjoy making your money.

On my last post, The Three Keys To Serious Freelance Writing Income, I received a comment from Andrew that drew me to be honest. He mentioned how hard it had been for him to get noticed by other bloggers after contacting them for help/feedback. To be honest, I am still a little shocked.

While I realize there are many online bloggers who really don’t give a rats bum about others, I find it hard to believe that most are falling into this category. As a matter of fact I have gotten to know many good and lovely people since I have been blogging. Sure, there are those who I rather never meet in person, but I never had a personal problem with any of them.

Andrew’s comment prompted me to write this post. It is about helping the less fortunate, the smaller, the newcomer. I understand we can all do our own small bits to make this world a better place and while most of us are online to earn money, it doesn’t mean we have to be neglecting other people’s needs.

I understand we are all busy. I don’t think I know anybody who doesn’t rush around getting things done, both online and offline. We consistently chase the clock with everything we do. Even on holidays.

But despite this never ending cycle we can still make room to help others, or can’t we?

To be honest, it does become harder, the bigger our business grows. I can very much understand why big name bloggers have got no time to reply to every single email they get on a daily basis. After all, many people do ask the most stupid questions too. Questions that could easily be answered by reading the actual blog or website.

However, I also understand most people are lazy, sometimes me included. If there is a fast way to gain information, we normally choose it. Therefore it is only normal to look for fast answers and what better way to get them then getting in touch with the owner of a site.

Here is the problem though. There is a distinction between asking questions and asking dumb questions. The former one is justified if the person asking is actually a regular reader of the site. By giving some of their time, they are certainly entitled to contact the owner directly if there are pressing matters.

But what happens when we get contact emails asking us to go and read a post from XYZ? I tell you how I react. If XYZ isn’t one of my readers and can’t be found in my comments, I simply hit the delete button.

Sorry, but I just haven’t got the spare time to please those who really don’t bother giving anything in return.

I’m sure big name bloggers get tons of emails like these every day. We as readers do have a responsibility too. We ought to read what the blogger has to say and search for the information on the blog, before we pester them with emails.

Blog owners spend a lot of time giving away free information that cost them a lot of time and money. I’m not kidding, I spent thousands to have the knowledge I have today and while I’m happy to help others as much as I can, there is a line between blogging about it and answering emails explaining something in detail.

For example, I receive quite a lot of emails asking me how to start a freelance writing business. If you were to read my blog, you’d have the answers pretty much all in one place, as I blog about this all the time. To explain this in an email to a new reader who just happens to feel like starting a business at the time would not only be a waste of my time, but probably of his/hers too. Since they might simply act on a whim. [Let’s face it, if they were really serious, they would read up as much as they can, before asking questions to clarify certain points.]

Writing an email like this would take me anywhere from 10 minutes to 20 minutes. Time spent I could actually earn money in my business. Now multiply this by 10, 100, 1000.

Do you get the picture?

So, before you think a blogger has been rude to you, think again. Perhaps this blogger is too busy to spend hours answering emails every single day. By the way, this isn’t meant as a ruse against Andrew. Far from it actually. His comment simply reminded me of a debate I saw on a blog many months ago.

Readers were complaining about the lack of replies they received after trying to contact big name bloggers. While I’m nowhere close to being a big name blogger, I finally understand why.

Do you?

By the way, if you want to know how to setup a money making blog, follow along with Court’s video tutorials.

(original article)

My last post on the topic of freelance writing was titled make money with freelance writing. It garnered some interesting comments from readers. They were mainly to do with setting rates (the never ending topic), as well as how to go about the whole business in general.

I guess, when we talk about freelance writing, rates and getting started, we can keep turning in circles, since we will never agree for sure with regards to what is right and wrong.

In the end you will have to factor in your own experience, your needs and your position in your market to determine your own rates and procedures.

In this post I want to show you what I deem an absolutely necessity - must haves, if you really want to be a player in your market.

What most aspiring freelance writers often forget is, not everybody needs to start out in the Internet marketing, blogging industry. Many write for industry specific markets and earn a quiet fortune along the way.

What really determines your market is your expertise in it. If you are very knowledgeable and passionate about a specific topic, then this could provide the perfect starting position for your writing business.

You could target the health niche, the sports niche, the fitness niche, or even the lawyer/attorney niche. Regardless of the market or industry, writers are needed everywhere.

Once you break into your market, it’s time to make sure you have what it takes to build your business in blocks.

I did exactly the same thing, moving ahead, step by step, until I was able to sack my boss for good. It took me a total of seven months to do this and if I was able to do this, so can you. Also, when you look at the bigger picture, what are seven months in comparison to being stuck for another twenty years in a job that sucks the life out of you?

1.) To be taken serious you need a portfolio site

I’m not kidding. A portfolio site is an absolute must if you want to play your market. It shows prospective clients just how serious you are about your business and instills a sense of professionalism.

I used to be happy with having my blog and a hire me page, thinking it was sufficient enough for my business. I did have a portfolio site too, but it didn’t list rates and only contained my story, as well as a contact me form, very basic. Then once I became involved in the thought process on whether to post or not to post my rates, I had a wake up call while reading a blog post on Copyblogger.

This post was the final straw I needed to move my business to the next level (unfortunately I can’t remember the exact post). I moved my portfolio site from using a free template to a paid one, whilst investing a couple of hundred dollars for the transition. I also paid for a logo and customizations and the result has been nothing but amazing.

Within four days of having the new site up I had a new client. It paid instantly for the make-over. Since then, I have seen a sharp rise in new clients wanting to book my services. As a matter of fact, upgrading my portfolio site was the difference between me trawling various online job sites, looking for work and being fully booked out for 6 months solid, without having to look for work.

In my case, my blog is my voice, while my portfolio site is my profile, telling clients “hey, I’m serious about this, this is my business and I treat it as such”.

2.) Consistency matters

Consistency is key when it comes to your rates. Once you have established your rates to a satisfactory level, keep them consistent. This is why you are posting your rates in the first place.

Potential clients can see whether their needs and your services provides a match or not.

Being too murky here, or swapping them around isn’t good for business. It would be like going to your deli, buying a cup of coffee for $2 today, $3.50 tomorrow and $4 next week. You certainly won’t go back there in a hurry.

If you have established long term clients, keep your rates the same. I’m not saying you can’t ask for a pay rise, but you need to know when and where and be absolute certain you provided value for money to your client before you even attempt this.

I had one specific long term client whom I worked for with beginners rates. Every week I’d write 14 articles for a set amount. I did this for 8 months. Then he asked me whether I’d be interested to do something totally different, I said yes and named my current rate. He obliged.

He could have just as easily gone to outsource this job to India for a third of what he pays me, but because he knows I’m reliable and loves my work, he chose me instead.

Another client paid me the same rates for about 7 months now. I knew I had outgrown them (the rates) some time ago, but didn’t want to lose the client. This month I finally made the plunge and asked for a pay rise. I got it.

These are typical examples that sometimes it does pay to wait. A long term client can be worth a lot, since they often send you referrals too. Having said this, I also get referrals from new clients, which is the ultimate show of trust and appreciation. These people really rock because they show me how much they really value my work, which has nothing to do with money.

3.) Go beyond the call of duty

I pride myself on doing everything I can to make life easier for my clients. This involves sending them the finished work in a easy to use format, depending on what they need it for.

I also provide extra services for which I do not charge a cent. These services are not listed on my portfolio site either, I just provide them as I can. I guess in some ways I see myself as a service warrior. In the age of lost customer service art, I do my best to help rectify this gaping hole.

For example, I gained a new blogging client a few months ago. I got booked to publish a couple of blog posts every week, which I did. But because I was able to self publish I also had full access to the site as an administrator. My client was really busy with other aspects of his business at the time (that’s why he hired me in the first place), so when I saw his massive comment backlog I offered to look after this for him, approving, replying and denying comments - no charge. A simple gesture of service, that’s all. Naturally he was delighted.

These are the little things that really matter a lot!

Whatever it is you can do to make life a little easier for a client, do it. It will come back to you ten fold. I like to call this karma. Being a big believer of karma, I have to say, from where I’m standing, it really works.

What do you need?

If you are a budding freelance writer, stuck or frustrated, not knowing where to turn, let me know in the comments. While I’m far from knowing it all (I learn new things every day), I would be happy to help you as much as I can from what I have learned up until this stage in my business.

To wrap this post up, I have to honestly say; the three keys above have been the three major factors responsible for moving my business to the next level.

(original article)

This video is part of my new starting a blog video series that will include 50+ videos about creating a blog for profit.

In this video, we are going to talk about some of the reasons why starting a blog is a great option for individuals that are looking to create income online.

© Court’s Internet Marketing School

(original article)

Affiliate marketing is very beneficial both for merchants and affiliate marketers. It is a popular method to earn profits from the websites and also helps the merchants to increase their sales.

It is the cheapest business on the internet that can make you the highest profit.

Lets us discuss some important benefits of affiliate marketing to affiliate marketers and merchants.

Benefits to affiliate marketer

1. No Need to create a product!

One important benefit of affiliate marketing is that you are not required create or produce any products. It is the duty of merchants to create the products. So you are only required to select the products to sell, get the affiliate links and start your business in ten minutes. You can focus on selling the product as you don´t need to do anything with the production or delivery of the products.

2. You Can Start with No Money, or with as little as $100

Another important feature of affiliate marketing is that you can start your business with little or no out of pocket expense. This is the lowest possible investment in today’s world to start a business which has a great scope in the market. If you simply don´t have any money to invest, you can always use free tools to start your business.

3. The Easiest Online Business

It is the easiest online business due to the fact that the merchants do all the hard work like making products, delivering products to consumers, handling money transactions etc. Affiliate marketers are not responsible for any of these tasks. They just need to focus on promoting their affiliate links.

4. Make Money While You Sleep

As you have your affiliate links on the website which is available on the internet all the time, you are not required to remain online to keep in touch with your customers. People can visit your site whenever they want and can visit your affiliate links. If they like the product they can easily buy it by just by clicking the given links.

Your only concern will be checking your email to see how many sales you have made from your links.

5. Penetrate Hot Markets Fast!

You can select any hot market at any time to choose the products you wish to sell. If you observe that other marketers are making money with pet care related products for instance, just register with an affiliate program to get some hot pet related products, set up an adwords campaign, and in 10 minutes, you can start to make money!

Benefits to Merchants

1) More Sales in Less Time

The products of different merchants are advertised by many affiliate marketers at the same time. The main website of the merchant is also advertising the products. If the page rank of the merchant website and his affiliate marketers are high, tons of traffic, which are your buyers, will visit the product pages. The website of every affiliate marketer will send the people to merchant websites. This results in more sales in less time.

2) Broader Market to Sell Products

Having new affiliates just expands the market of merchants. Don´t select the affiliates blindly. Do the research to check if the affiliate´s website is related to your business or not. If the affiliate marketer´s website is matching your products theme, then there are more chances of sales. The affiliate´s website will receive hits for the people who need to know about your products and they are more likely to visit your website to make a purchase.

3) Less Efforts Required

Affiliates are doing the hard work of advertising for your products. If your affiliates are doing good work then you don´t need to spend extra time and money for advertising. Just concentrate on improving the quality of your products and launching new products.

Affiliate marketing can provide the easy, fast and reliable money to affiliate marketers. At the same time it gives more sales in less time and money to the merchants.

My blog was started in February, 2007 and has grown to have around 3,500 subscribers and is on track to produce more than six figures this year. During the last 16 months, I have learned a lot of things about starting a blog that makes money.

While we have written extensively about a lot of different techniques that can be used by people that are trying to start a blog, I still don’t feel like we have an efficient road map that can be followed by anyone. I also see a lot of people struggle with their blogs. I believe that most people don’t make much at all through blogging, even though it can be very lucrative. Something is definitely missing…

For that reason and after a lot of thinking on my part, I have decided to release a 50+ part series of videos that will walk you through starting a blog for profit. I couldn’t be more excited because I know that this series will be the most useful project I’ve published until this point!

I’ll be covering everything including choosing a profitable topic, setting up a blog, designing the blog properly, using plugins to increase the power of the blog, writing content that will grab people’s attention, making money with a blog, and more. I’ll be using screen-casts so that you can watch me work and get a better idea of what you need to do.

This post will be added to my Court’s Best Work section at the top of the sidebar, and any video posts included in the project will be linked to here. To make sure you don’t miss the videos, you can subscribe to my RSS feed. The first video post will be published tomorrow so stay tuned!!

~ Court

(original article)

All right, I admit this title is a little heavy, but I did write it for a simple reason. I wanted to shake you awake. Is the the work you are doing at the moment making you happy? Whether you are employed in a secure job, working from home or running a corporate business empire it doesn’t matter. What matters is how you feel about what you do.

It’s a bit like being married, I guess. If the thought of waking up beside your wife or husband leaves you horrified, then it’s time for a divorce. What do you believe?

Sure, we can hang on for the sake of our kids, for the money, the perks but what happens when we wake up one day realizing we lost most of our “active years” to accepting less than acceptable terms?

Fact is, we spent about a fifth of our life at work, therefore dreading to go there would be a crime.

If we take an average of 40 years (350400 hours) to be our working life, with a 40 hour week (83200 hours) we actually work away some 23 percent of our life. This figure doesn’t factor in holidays since most of us actually work for longer than 40 years anyway, so it will balance out again. For many people this figure is actually way higher than this.

The so called modernized nations have become slaves to the system, working for bigger mortgages, more technology toys and a lot less fun than our ancestors had.

Do you really want to waste away 1/5 of your life by following the unhappy path? If not, then this is your wake up call!

I’m deadly serious (here we are again). Most people waste their lives away. Just look around you. How many friends, fellow workers, family members can you see complaining every day. They see nothing but the negatives and their main activities for the day is discussing their job or their neighbor.

Gossip is for poor minded people.

I like to share a quote with you, a quote I read many years ago. This has stayed with me for some 6 years now. It was actually this very quote or saying that changed my life for the better. Unfortunately, I can’t remember who quoted this, therefore please forgive my ignorance.

“Poor minds discuss others.

Average minds discuss events.

Great minds discuss ideas.”

I’m sure you are not average. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be a reader of Court’s Internet Marketing School blog. Readers who stop by here want more from their lives. They are truly fed up with the mediocrities of life and want to find ways to aspire to better things.

You don’t have to accept the common road. The road others have traveled before and will continue to do so in the future.

It all starts with our habit to put things off. This is the worst inhibitor of people’s success.

Instead of complaining why not get active. Now! Not yesterday, not in 10 years, not when the kids finish college, not when you have saved enough to actually do it but without delay.

I challenge you to do it.

Does it always work? Of course not! However, I tell you what it does. By engaging a positive and proactive mind set, we activate our creative genius. This genius is responsible for finding alternative ways to aid us reach a target much faster than if we merely left things as they are.

If you hate your job, get out. If you hate your boss, find a new job or quit. If you can’t stand your life, change it.

You know, I personally wasted about 5 years of my life hating my job with such a passion it made me depressive and very cranky. The irony here is in reality, I’m a very happy and fun person to be around. Therefore, why did I waste all these years you might wonder.

I found many excuses as to why I couldn’t just quit my job. I basically lived in denial. Even so, if I’m totally honest with myself, I could have done this pretty much instantly. This is why I am so taken by my good friend Don’s approach to putting his mouth where his heart is. After experiencing some major upsets at his workplace, he finally pulled the plug and quit his job. He blogs over at Making Sales Making Money and is a frequent reader here on Court’s domain.

What Don, myself and many others have done is to ultimately follow our passion. Neither of us knew whether it would work out. Some still don’t know this. Nevertheless, I can bet my life on it that Don is deliriously happy now. He followed his dream.

Are you willing to follow your dream, come hail or sunshine?

I’m sure most of you are aware that dreams do come with some burden. You could struggle with your discipline, fail your business or even become un-enchanted with it after some time.

Ultimately, regardless of your dreams you have to act now. Life is too short to miss out on all the fun. Every minute you wish for something to happen, your clock is ticking away, never to be in the same moment again.

(original article)

Online case studies have become a frequent showcase here on Court’s Internet Marketing School. This paid service has been designed to help businesses reach the next level by exposing the errors that might hold your business back with our reviews. A featured review here should help you to advance to the next level in your business and if you are interested, you can buy your own review so that I can take a look at your site.

About YesTemplates

Today’s case study lets me look at YesTemplates, a full service web development company that specializes in premium website templates with exclusive ownership rights at affordable prices - prices start at $75 for exclusive ownership rights.

With over 5 years of experience in template design the team at YesTemplates know what they are talking about when it comes to designing corporate templates, logos and web templates.

Plus, any template you buy from YesTemplate will be made available to you only with exclusive ownership. This is perhaps their strongest selling point overall.

The low down

While browsing their website, I was very impressed with the navigation, the speed in which the pages load and the general cleanliness of their designs. YesTemplates have a vast range of website templates and logo designs available to buy right now.

To me it is clear that they truly know what they are talking about according to their about us page.

Finding a suitable website template was actually surprisingly easy. YesTemplate’s navigational menu makes it fast and painless to find a template that fits within your niche. You can chose from a wide range of topics (about 43 in all) such as:

• church
• computer
• family
• fashion
• finance
• health & fitness
• hosting
• media & press
• night club
• personal
• restaurant
• real estate
• sport
• travel
• wedding
• and much more

Each of these topics has a good selection of templates to choose from. Before you buy any template you can hover your mouse over the image and it will show you a larger preview. I like this feature as it was instantly and I didn’t have to click around and open dozens of new browser pages to see a vast range of templates up close.

As you can see from the few screen shots, the quality of their designs is very good. I also liked the way they display the designs and show whether they are still available or not. Remember, once they are sold, they are gone.

Prices are surprisingly affordable. As a general range, most website templates cost from $70 - $85. Unless you want a custom design of course. If I take into consideration the time needed to design these, this really is peanuts if you ask me.

In my time online I’ve seen many other sites who repeatedly sell their website templates over and over again, sometimes 50 times, sometimes more for the same prices. Therefore I think YesTemplates is providing exceptional value for money.

Template customizations

In case you wonder, YesTemplates will customize any of their existing templates for a low fee to suit your needs. Whether it be the color scheme, images, icons, background images or even tweaking the actual content layout, you can have it all.

If you find yourself lost with a worthless template from another company, YesTemplate will take care of you too.

Further services of YesTemplates

Corporate identity: There is a vast selection of ready made corporate letterheads to brand your business with. Available at a low cost of $37, I found that while they are very affordable, they are also a little “old age” for my personal taste.

Having said that I realize that you get what you pay for and if I was to choose a corporate identity from YesTemplates I would actually pay for a custom made design which of course will cost more.

Web 2.0 templates: If the idea of a normal website isn’t one that takes your fancy, how about choosing one of the cool web 2.0 templates from over 14 categories. You will be the envy of your business colleagues with these interactive designs.

Logos: There are also a wide range of ready made logos for you to choose. Just bear in mind that most of them might not suit your business due to their topic and nature. Again, if you don’t want to part with $39, you can always order a custom logo template from the company.

Custom CMS themes and website design: This is what is says, if you found a nifty web template you can get the team of YesTemplates to design you a custom WordPress blog, Joomla or Drupal theme to go with that. A great option for businesses who fell the need to blog but don’t want to lose the look of their corporate website.

My recommendations

One thing I’d like to see is a portfolio of their premium service designs from past clients. While their featured logos and corporate identity designs are ok, I know that the designers of YesTemplates are capable to design more stylish web 2.0 logos. Before I’d order a custom design and part with $200 I would want to see examples from within that price structure.

By featuring these examples on a separate portfolio page perhaps, they could further their credibility online as a valuable and able template design company.

Other than that, I think YesTemplates has managed to come up with an affordable premium website templates service that is designed for a vast range of businesses.

Their website design is clean, easy to navigate and informative enough for anybody who is looking for a template. You can also phone them if you prefer on 1.888.398.4234. Alternatively they have a contact me page and an email listed on their site.

If you still have questions, please visit their FAQ page to find out more.

(original article)

Entrepreneurs and discipline are polar opposites like day and night, black and white or yin and yang. Funny enough, despite their obvious differences they actually fit together like a fit to measure glove to a hand.

The strange thing is that most entrepreneurs struggle with discipline to the extent of failure. I wanted to know why that is and why we can slave away our days for a boss without so much as a complaint whilst we start to throw tantrums at the earliest convenience when we are in business ourselves and work our butts off.

Looking for a case study

I didn’t have to look far. I was the perfect model for my own study since I have battled with discipline for some time in the past before I (nearly) mastered the art. In that time, my business life was like a freaking roller coaster.

One day I would be up near the clouds, enjoying the sunshine, traveling at massive speeds while tumbling down into absolute depression hell the next.

At the same time I tried to build my first business I also happily run into the open hell of my part time job whenever they needed me, because I was paid a good hourly wage. Despite the fact that I hated my job with a passion, I still kept going back for the money.

Funny enough, at work I was disciplined and as usual a perfectionist while all around me other staff threw sick days, came to work late, didn’t show up at all or even moved at the pace of a snail. And these guys had only just started out in the industry mind you. I felt that I should be the one taking it easy after near 22 years in the job and not them. But here I was, running around like an idiot while getting more and more frustrated.

How stupid is that?! Instead of biting the bullet for good with my business I took the easy way out and continued on a path or self destruction that would send me further into depression. Luckily for me I’m strong and quite thick headed and I managed to pull myself out of this hole without any professional help.

But it could have easily gone the other way too. The question remains, why is it that we struggle to make things happen for our own business while we often give everything in a hated day job.

Crunch time

When I was able to be honest with myself (oh yes, I did kid myself some) I realized that the biggest issue I had was the uncertainty of whether the business was going to work or not.

Also, knowing that I had a guaranteed income kept me going back, despite the fact that it ruined me emotionally. Eventually I couldn’t take any more and that was when I seriously pulled myself together.

In fact I saw myself still cooking and half heartedly trying to build a business when I was 60 and that wasn’t a pretty picture. By then I would have truly had to succumb to a shrink and I wasn’t going to have any of it, so pulling together was the only way out for me.

And so I did. That was back in January 2007. I made (for once) a new year’s resolution that I was going to abide by. To be honest I couldn’t stand myself anymore, my half assed attempts of trying and not doing and I’m sure most of us could improve in some areas in their lives right now doing the same thing.

Being an entrepreneur does require a healthy portion of discipline. The really cool thing is that once we master this it really does become a lot easier. I’m happy to say that I go to bed on most days feeling a huge sense of accomplishment, knowing that I have done the best I could on that given day and looking forward to the next.

After all, I am human and do stuff up occasionally doing nothing too when in fact I should, but even then I see those days as well deserved days off. Keeping discipline is not easy, but it can be done. Discipline is also a must ingredient for success.

Once you master discipline don’t forget to add balance in healthy doses.

Make discipline happen for you

If you are one of the thousands of entrepreneurs who struggle with discipline allow me to give you some of my insights.

• Do it doucement (slowly, very slowly) (not sure whether this is a Bond movie line actually). We often fail when we try too hard. Take it one step at the time and incorporate necessary tasks week by week.
• Don’t measure yourself against others in competition. Use them as a guideline if all. You will only set yourself up for early failure when you try to compare what they have and you haven’t achieved.
• If you run a business besides working a day job, invest more emotional energy into your business. After all, it is your future and deserves your full attention.
• Don’t be put off by setbacks, keep persisting!
• Do something for your business every single day, regardless how tired you are.
• Use personal visualization techniques to day dream. They are very powerful.
• Don’t spend your time with negative people and business dream wreckers. They are poison, especially in the early (failure) stages of your business.
• Be proud of your achievements, however small they seem.
• Learn from your setbacks and mistakes and do it better next time round.
• Don’t try to complicate things - keep it easy.
• Have fun.

Discipline mustn’t be so hard

We are often our biggest negative influence when it comes to staying focused and disciplined. Negative self talk is like rape to your mind. Don’t do it.

I’d love to hear about your own trials and errors with discipline and what helped you to master it. Even better, what was the turning point in your life that prompted you to take your business serious?

(original article)