What is Outsourcing?

Entrepreneur Magazine defines Outsourcing as:

” The practice of having certain job functions done outside a company instead of having an in-house department or employee handle them; functions can be outsourced to either a company or an individual”

So for instance, if you spend a lot of time social bookmarking your websites, you can easily contract that task out to a third party.   While outsourcing is similar to subcontracting, the term generally refers to hiring an international company as opposed to a domestic company.  If you want to hire a telemarketing service or appointment setting services to build your book-of-business and lead generation lists, it is important to understand the benefits of outsourcing as opposed to hiring in-house employees.  While you will have to pay for the services, the costs for outsourcing are much lower than the costs of hiring and training employees.

Benefits of Outsourcing

One of the main benefits of outsourcing is the fact that you can save a lot of money, this is especially true if you outsource to overseas companies or individuals.  I outsource some of my article writing to a woman in the Philippines and the cost savings I have achieved by hiring someone overseas as opposed to here in the U.S. has been staggering.  Saving money, though, is not the only benefit of outsourcing.  Outsourcing can help a business to increase their profits as well as their productivity.  When you outsource repetitive and time consuming tasks,  you can spend more time focusing on  ways to  expand your core business model .  When you are able to spend more time on your business as opposed to wasting time on inconsequential tasks, you can really brainstorm and grow your business.

“When small and mid-size businesses outsource work, it allows them to focus more on their core competencies. In many cases, this approach to outsourcing is a smart way for businesses to add value to their operations.”
~ Nancy Pechloff

What do I Outsource

Currently, I outsource the following tasks:

Website Creation/Maintenance – I’m not that fond of WordPress because I always seem to “break” something while I tinker around with it.  Whenever this happens, It used to take me hours to figure out how to fix it.  So now I pay someone to maintain my WordPress blogs (setups, periodic backups, etc..)

Content Creation – I write a lot of article for the purpose of obtaining back links.  This takes up a lot of my time and is also boring as hell.  I now outsource most of this work.  The Filipino woman I hired can bang out hundreds of articles every week.

Video Creation – When I need a high quality video, I outsource this task to a guy I know who makes great videos.

Link building – In the past I have hired people to do link wheels for me.  Most recently, I hired someone to do a backlinking campaign for a few of my niche sites.

Graphics – I suck at creating good graphics, so I have hired people to do them for me.

More on outsourcing in a later post.

Do you outsource?  What type of tasks do you outsource?

“But in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes. “
~Benjamin Franklin

So it’s that time again here in the U.S.  – tax time!  As an internet marketer, documenting all of your expenses is very important if you want to use them as tax write-offs.   This article is aimed at those that do most or all of their business online, but any business that has an online presence should be aware of the expense claims related to their online presence. In this article, we will look at a few things you will want to keep in mind, when getting your information together, consulting with a tax professional being one of the big ones.  Also please note, I am not a CPA, Enrolled Agent or Accountant.  The information I am providing here is for your information only.  Laws vary somewhat from state to state, so you will want to have the professional advice of someone in the know, but these guidelines will help you cover the major bases.

Most importantly, you will need to keep thorough records of every expense and every transaction. I make note of every penny that comes in, and keep receipts of everything.  I use the free online accounting tool Outright, to keep my records nice and tidy. Without an accurate accounting of your income and expenses, it is impossible to take advantage of all the incentives for doing business online. Even if you think that a receipt may be unimportant, if it has anything at all to do with your business, you should keep it and file it. Every cent is important, and when counting your deductions, those pennies add up. Keep track of your mileage, gas expenses, and pretty much every penny that moves in or out of your business.

Brick and mortar business  deduct the rent or mortgage for the property the business conducts itself in, so if you use the internet for your business, you should take advantage of as many internet marketing tax write-offs as you can. Your web presence is rented space as well, with a domain name and a server that are, for all intents and purposes, the virtual location of your internet presence. Deduct it. Your internet service is a business expense as well. Also, if you run your business from home, you can deduct a percentage of your home’s rent or mortgage too. Talk to your accountant about the specifics – there is a complex formula to figure this all out, and a competent professional should be able to help you maximize your internet deductions.

Advertising expenses can also save you money at tax time. If you pay for any marketing, whether it is with adwords, Facebook Ads or any paid advertising on (or off) the net, that expense should be tracked and claimed to the fullest potential. If you run ads in the newspaper or in the yellow pages, you should claim that expense, and if you post flyers in your community, it would be wise to deduct the expense of design, printing and distribution of the advertising materials.

There are other miscellaneous expenses that can make good internet marketing tax deductions. If you purchased a computer in the last year, or if you use a video camera or digital camera for your business and bought one in the last year you should take that expense also. Software, scripts, WordPress plugins, and any outsourced work such as articles used for backlinking should also be included.

Gasoline, business related mileage – even if it is just to the bank, and if you use your vehicle to advertise your website, you can claim some of the car payments on your expenses too. Keep all of your expense records, and claim as much as you can. As discussed before, always take your accounting to a tax specialist or CPA to insure that you are in compliance with the tax laws that apply.

Education is deductible as well. If you spend money on information for the purpose of educating yourself or those who work for you, you can usually deduct all or some of that cost from your tax liability. Some examples of this would be eBooks , seminars or memberships to websites such as The Keyword Academy. If you do a fair amount of business online, there are probably numerous subscriptions that you utilize to gain advantage in the competitive and sometimes confusing world of internet sales.

Want to learn more?  There is a very good book entitled – Home Business Tax Deductions: Keep What You Earn, that is very helpful.  You should definitely check it out!

Here are some of the things I will be deducting this year:

• Internet Access – In order to run a business online, I need internet access, so this is definitely a tax write-off.
• Domain Names and Web Hosting Fees – without these things, I would not be able to have a presence online.
• New Computer – I purchased a new, faster, more powerful computer last year which definitely qualifies as a tax write-off.
• Software – word-processing software, virus protection, and keyword tools are things that can be deducted.
• Link building services – I use Build My Rank and a few other services for link building, so I will be deducting the subscription fee.
• Outsourced Articles – This is a huge expense for me.  I have outsourced hundreds of articles in the past year and will definitely be using this as a tax write-off.
• Subscriptions to paid membership sites – I am a member of the Keyword Academy and will be deducting the monthly membership fee.
• WordPress Plugins – I don’t purchase a lot of plugins, but if you do, you may be able to deduct the cost.
• eBooks – eBooks can be considered to be educational expenses if the particular eBook is teaching you something that is helpful for your business.
• Travel to and attendance at Seminars and Conferences – another great tax write-off.

Did I cover all deductible expenses?  Am I missing anything?  Let me know.

-Diane-

Photo Credit

Next, I did some research on themes. There are so many pretty themes to choose from so this was a hard task indeed. After hours of research, I decided to go with the Headway theme.  Why?  First and foremost, as I mentioned before, I’m not a very technical person.  I needed to go with a theme that would be easy.  I didn’t want to have to mess around with CSS and PHP coding just to get my site to look decent. Well the Headway theme is very easy to use and customize.  Because Headway has a visual editor where you can drag and drop different elements on the page, you can choose font styles, colors and more to get your blog to look the way you want it to very quickly and easily. With this theme your blog does not have to look like everyone else’s.  You can easily transform it to a magazine type blog or a very simple blog just with a few clicks. I was able to set up this blog on WordPress and customize the theme in about 30 minutes.  Not bad for a first time WordPress user!

So as a final note, what I would say to others who are scared to try something new is to just do it!  It may not be as difficult as it looks!

If you are looking to make money from your blog or web site, Google AdSense can be a powerful way to get started. Learning about the program can not only generate revenue, it can help you gain a better sense of your audience and focus your web site accordingly. People who are just getting started with web publishing can get the equivalent of a college course in web marketing just by exploring the possibilities AdSense offers. The difference is that the program is free and, if you play your cards right, could actually pay big dividends and your passive income can explode.

What Is It?

AdSense is an application that scans your web page’s content and finds keywords – words or phrases commonly used by people who use search engines. The application then places ads on your page that match those keywords. To be most effective, you need to be extremely conscious of the keywords on your pages. Before publishing content, it’s a good idea to check for the most common keywords used to search for your page’s topic. AdSense has a free service that allows you to do just that.

Though Adsense can generate image and video ads, content-rich web sites are usually best served by AdSense text ads. People tend to be suspicious of flashy web advertising and tend to eschew banner ads. The wonderful thing about text ads is that they feel like casual, friendly suggestions.

So that’s an overview of how the program works. There are many other ins and outs that you can learn about on the AdSense information page. But in order to get the benefits of the AdSense program, you have to own a web site and it needs to be generating traffic. If nobody is clicking your ads, you’re not making money.

How Much Can You Make?

The potential for profit with AdSense is unlimited. Traffic is one part of the equation; another is the value of your topic and keywords to advertisers. Companies that advertise through Google bid on keywords based on which ones they think will generate the most clicks. Google then pays users of the AdSense program a commission on what the advertisers have paid for the privilege of having their ads associated with those keywords. Depending on how valuable your keywords are, the amount you make per click could be as little as 2 cents or as much as 15 bucks. The more traffic you have to your site, the more this adds up.

There are some bloggers who are very, very successful with Google Adsense.  My favorite make money online blogger, Grizzly earns thousands of dollars every month solely from this program, so it is doable.

How Do You Join?

Because so many people have abused AdSense in the past, Google has tightened its standards for sites allowed to use the program. If you are using a free blogger service or are using a free web hosting service, you don’t qualify for AdSense.

Happily, there are many services out there where you can put up content on their web servers and still earn money from the AdSense program.  One such service is HubPages.   Their interface is extremely user-friendly and includes many free tools and applications that will help you maximize your site’s potential for AdSense profits.

How Do You Generate Traffic?

The best way to get people to visit your site is to find a niche topic that you enjoy writing about and researching. Ideally, this niche will be something that a lot of other people are interested in as well and are seeking information on. If you don’t already have that niche in mind, you will need to do research.  In fact, doing research is the only way you will learn how much you can learn about the earning potential of a particular niche.

Once you’ve found a topic, you should learn about SEO – Search Engine Optimization. This is a style of writing that incorporates keywords into the text. The more keyword-rich your content is, the higher it will rank on search engines. Ideally, you want to be in the top-10 ranking. If your site is about kittens, for example, you want anyone who searches for information about kittens to see your site in the 10 listings on the first page of their search results. People generally don’t look beyond that first page.

It’s also important to update your page with original content on a regular basis. If your site becomes stagnant, it can drop off the search engines’ radar.

Keeping Content Fresh

If you have found a niche market that you enjoy writing about, you may not need to worry about updating your site; writing meaningful, relevant articles will be a pleasure. But if you’re having trouble incorporating keywords into your writing in a way that sounds natural, there are content provider sites where you can purchase articles on your topic for very little money.  Sites likeTextrboker.com and vWorker have thousands of freelance writers, many of whom are adept at SEO writing. For five to twenty bucks you can have original content written to your specifications. These sites also give you full usage rights; you own the material and can even credit yourself as the author if you wish.

Have Fun

By generating ads based on content, Google AdSense allows site owners to make money – sometimes a lot of money – publishing content that is meaningful to them in ways that go beyond profit. Making money online doesn’t have to be a cynical exercise in avarice. With AdSense, you can generate profits by following your bliss.

So this is just a brief overview of the program.  I hope to provide more tips and in depth information in future posts on how to really make money with Google Adsense.

One of the most popular Internet marketing strategies that many marketers do is to create a series of niche websites that focus on a specific product or service to draw in their target market. However, creating niche websites is not as simple and straightforward as one may think. It requires a lot of brainstorming, because you need to choose the right topics for each website, as well as the right keywords and the right phrasing to use so that you will make it easy for your target market to find you.

In order to succeed, you have to have a good understanding of how to make use of keywords. This is of utmost concern if you are working on your niche marketing and need to dominate a keyword or keyword phrase.

Niche marketing is intertwined with keywords; it’s like two pieces of the same puzzle.

To drive customer traffic to your online store or niche website, you need to use the right keywords. Having the right keywords is like money in the bank, and will bring more traffic to your site.

Finding the right keywords can be accomplished, by doing a little research. If you do not have the right keywords, your website will not make money. The best approach is to learn from others who have already made money online, and know the ins and outs of the game.

However, those who have already made it in the business oftentimes do not want to share their information. This could be the difference between your business succeeding or failing.

Lucky for me, I recently came across a great new program, and I want to share it with you.  Although I have been dabbling in internet marketing for quite a while, there were some areas that I needed help with.  Signing up for this program has taught me the exact steps I need to create niche websites and build traffic to them.

The program, called The Keyword Academy, was developed by Mark Butler and Courtney Tuttle. They are full-time internet marketers and full-time internet marketing educators who have been there, and done that, and want to share their knowledge with you.

Mark and Courtney, two experienced Internet marketers, have made it easy for beginners with The Keyword Academy, their own guide on how to create a series of explosive niche websites online that will guarantee you maximum hits, page views and sales.

The program is a comprehensive combination of video tutorials and other powerful tools and resources that will help you get those niche websites up and running in no time. There are a total of 10 powerfully-packed videos in this program, each discussing a specific topic that is relevant to niche marketing.

• Videos 1 and 2 will help you in how to maximize your brainstorming sessions to get ideas that will really work.
• Videos 3 and 4 will give you detailed and step-by-step instructions in building your very first website, which will come in handy for HTML newbies. It will also teach you how to create website content for these sites in the quickest possible way.
• Videos 5 until 7 will teach you about the value of linking to other websites so that you can get the highest possible clickthroughs and web traffic imaginable.
• Video 8 will teach you some simple steps on appearing number one in web rankings and search results.
• Video 9 teaches you all about Google’s free ad publishing program, AdSense, and how you can incorporate this with your niche website to increase exposure.
• Finally, Video 10 will give you tips on how to sell your niche website when it has been established for more money than you actually paid for.

Just a few months after signing up for this course, my income has increased and has become steadier.

I know it can be frustrating when you want to make money online and don’t know where to start, that is why I am here to help you. You can immediately start to create niche sites, by taking the Keyword Crash Course at The Keyword Academy.

When you take the course, you will learn how to effectively and easily make a great living on the Internet. This does not mean you don’t have to work. The truth is you will have to work hard to accomplish your goal of making money online.

However, if you begin by following the step by step system, you should be fine. This is something that once you learn it, you can use it time and again; in any niche you wish to build. This is like hitting the jackpot, over and over again, as you will now have the skills to succeed. I think it is a great course and think that you will like it as well.

The Keyword Academy will teach you advanced and basic techniques on ways to make money online. Plain and simple, if you use the methods they will work.

So here’s a recap of what the Keyword Academy covers:

Keyword Research

This is the where it all begins. You will learn how to pick a niche for yourself and understand the value of the keyword.

Creating Content

How to setup the content on your website, to draw in the right traffic to your site or online store. You do this by using the correct search terms, phrases, and keywords.

Building Links to Your Web Properties

They will teach you to make the best internal linking structure. How to get inbound links to your website.

Article Marketing

Learning how to use the proper keyword phrases to create more traffic to your site.

Configuring the Internet Marketing Tools You Need

Statcounter, WordPress, Adsense, the list goes on and on.

You can try the program at an amazing rock-bottom price of $1. Of course, if you want to become a regular member, it will cost a still-reasonable monthly membership price of $33. The membership is a really great way to learn more from experts around the world as it includes great customer service and a helpful community where you can get more expert advice and tips from people who have been there and done that.

All in all, The Keyword Academy is a highly-recommended program for Internet marketers, as they will learn a lot from the well-executed resources included in the program.

SBI was founded by Dr. Ken Evoy and was launched back in November of 1997.It is touted as “the only all-in-one site-building, site-hosting, and site-marketing product that makes it easy for you to build a professional, popular, and profitable business.”

When I first started out on this mission to earn an online income, I heard about the SBI program.I ventured over to their site and read tons and tons of rave reviews, and viewed many many sample sites.Many of which they advertised as being in the Top 2% of the web.It looked promising and being the newbie that I was, I decided to sign up.Big Mistake!

First of all, they charge a whopping $300 per year to use their services.What do you get for $300?In a nutshell, basically a platform to build and host your website.They also provide some other “extras” all of which you can get for free. I also learned that the reason there were so many rave reviews of SBI, is because of the commission paid to affiliates.Affiliates are paid $75 every time somebody signs up to become a member of SBI.

After forking over $300, I discovered that SBI was seriously overpriced.Building and hosting a website only costs a fraction of the cost that SBI charges.GoDaddy.com offers domain names for about $10 per year.NVU is an excellent free WYSIWYG Website Creator.Several web hosting companies offer webhosting plans that cost less than $5 per year.Plus many of the extra services they provide such as brainstorming, pinging, directory submissions and stats are all services you can obtain for free from places such as Google (i.e. Google Adwords keyword tool, Google analytics).

There are more economical ways to get your first site up and running and hope you don’t make the same mistake I did.  A list of more reviews on SBI can be found at the end of the following review: Site Build It – Don’t Buy It

Here is my story.

I have always had an entrepreneurial spirit and have always been interested in non-traditional ways of earning money.  Unfortunately, I never acted on any of my ideas.  I did what my parents expected of me and went to college and earned a B.A.  I also went on to law school and earned a J.D.

I started working for corporate America and while some may think that this is a good thing, I discovered that I utterly hated it.  I’m not the “yes sir”, “yes ma’am” type.  I absolutely hate being bossed around.   I hated the fact that someone who had half the education than I did was my so called “boss.”  I hated that I had to work 40+ hours a week.  I hated that the top few executives in the corporation make all the big bucks, while all of the real workers at the bottom, were nickeled and dimed. Plus, the work is absolutely BORING!!!

So about 9 years ago, I started exploring ways that I could earn some extra money on the side.  I really needed to build up my savings account.  I tried a few offline opportunities i.e. MLM, but decided that those opportunities were not for me.  That’s when I discovered how to make money with eBay. At first I was only seeking extra money, but I then started toying with the idea of maybe earning all my income online.  I decided that although eBay could amount for a small percentage of my online income, I needed to do something more that would be a little less physically demanding.

This desire became even stronger after I had my son 2 years ago.  Although I have the privilege of working from home a few days a week, on the days that I do have to go into the office, I have to leave the house before 7 a.m. and I don’t get back home until 8:00 p.m.  I have a crazy commute.  That means that on those days, I hardly get to see my son because he tends to fall asleep around 8:00.

Over the years I started learning more about different ways of earning online income.  I came across several forums such as the warrior forum, and digital point forums.  I read countless numbers of blogs; I also spent a ton of money on eBooks, etc…   I would say that I became so obsessed about learning how to make money online, that I didn’t actually put anything that I was learning into action.

That stopped last year.  Last year I finally started taking action.  I built websites, I published content, I submitted tons of articles to EzineArticles.com in an attempt to secure more inbound links, and finally started getting somewhere.  Makes me wonder why I didn’t start taking action earlier.  I guess I’m the type of person who has to analyze everything.

I’m still working  for corporate America, and am pretty far from my goal of earning all my income online, but feel like if I can make it this far, I will succeed.

So what is passive income?

Passive Income, which is also referred to as residual income, is generally defined as regularly received income that is generated
with minimal work from your investments.The keyword here is “minimal”, i.e. very little effort or work required. In other words, passive income is money you earn that doesn’t need much of your time and effort.Most passive income however, requires you to invest some time or money in the beginning. Then you sit back and watch your income grow.

Some examples of passive income are:

• dividends from public company stocks;
• interest earned from bank accounts, CD’s, money
  market accounts or other similar types of investments;
• Rental income;
• royalties from intellectual property such as books, music, or patents.

Passive online income is a little different from traditional passive income.In my opinion, the main difference is that with passive online income, you will have to put up a lot of work up front, but once all the upfront work is completed, it’s just a matter of performing some minimal upkeep to keep the income flowing.

There are many ways to earn a passive income on the internet, and I am definitely focused on multiple streams of passive online income.The more streams the better.

Some of the ways that I am currently earning passive online income are as follows:

Royalties from writing online

There are numerous sites online that will compensate you to write articles.Many of them offer an upfront payment per article submitted, but the way to really make money on these sites is from royalty payments.So far, I have joined 2 of these types of sites; epinions.com and Associated Content.  Epinions and Associated Content pay royalties based on the number of page views the content generates.

The key thing you need to know about these sites is that in order to bring in good online income from royalties, you need to have a lot of content.Simply writing 1, 2 or even 10 articles or reviews will not cut it.I have seen many people bash these programs by saying that they don’t pay much.But this is just not true.To be successful, with these types of programs you need to write at least a few hundred quality articles.If you take a look at their site, you will see that the people who write more articles have generated millions of page views, which in turn amounts to great monthly online income. So the upfront work here would be to create hundreds of articles.The monthly upkeep would be to work on getting inbound links.

Contextual Advertising.

Contextual advertising allows content based web sites and blogs to earn money by featuring targeted advertisements on their sites.Google Adsense is a good example of contextual advertising.I am using Google Adsense on most of my web sites and on this blog to generate some passive online income.The upfront work required with this form of monetization is keyword research, building a website or blog and working on SEO to get my sites indexed high in the search engines to generate more clicks.The monthly upkeep or maintenance in this case would be to continue to work on getting back links, although I do have a few sites that I have not touched for months that continue to bring in Adsense revenue month after month. Other similar type programs would be Chitika and Kontera.

Affiliate Marketing.

Affiliate Marketing simply refers to selling other people’s products and earning a commission for each sale.There are thousands of online companies that offer affiliate programs.The way it works is you sign up with one of these companies, add the referral link that they provide to your site, and earn money when someone buys something after clicking through to their site from your link.One of the largest affiliate programs online is the one run by Amazon.com.

One of the ways that I have implemented this type of marketing into my strategy is by creating content on free platforms such as Squidoo.Squidoo is a platform that allows you to create web pages (called lenses) on any topic you choose. For instance, I just recently created a lens on the High School Musical 3Movie.I like using Squidoo because, it’s extremely easy to use, Squidoo pages tend to get indexed very quickly, and most  importantly, it’s free.Another important thing to note is that Squidoo can be used as a way to obtain backlinks for your other content based websites, which we know is very important for generating more online income.

Blogging??

Some would include blogging as a method for making passive online income, but in my opinion, it’s not really a source of passive income because blogging doesn’t really fit the passive income mold, as you can’t simply set up a blog once and perform minimal maintenance.You have to continually come up with new content and market that new content, reply to comments etc…

So that’s it in a nutshell.What methods are you using to generate passive online income?

Well, it just so happens that a few days ago, I was reading one of my favorite blogs on make money online blogs and lo and behold the blog owner Grizzly, mentioned that he used SEO Elite to track his stats. I had tried a few other free programs such as the SEO for Firefox plug-in, but was never really happy with how they worked. So I again added SEO Elite to my buy list. I had all intentions of buying the software through the link on Griz’s site, since the advice he gives is beneficial and helps me in my quest for more online income, but then a funny thing happened.

I stepped away from my computer for a little while to watch Lost and when I returned, I noticed an email in my inbox with the subject line: “SEO Elite New Version” from Brad Callen Bryxen Software. I thought, wow that’s weird. Here I was just thinking about buying the software, and miraculously out of nowhere, I get an email telling me about the software. I felt as if someone had read my mind, or had somehow hacked into my PC or something. Anyway, seeing this as a sign, I immediatelyclicked through and purchased the software.
(Sorry Griz! It was totally an impulse purchase)

For those of you that don’t know, SEO Elite is a search engine optimization software package. For me, one of the most important features of this software is the competitive analysis tool. This tool will provide you with information on your competitors, and will show you where they rank for certain keywords, and will show you exactly what anchor text they are using for inbound links and help you find their strongest links. This is valuable information which can help you to optimize your own site, move up in the search engines, and as a result, bring in more online income.

The SEO Elite Software package also includes a:

1. Link building tool to assist you with getting get high PR links from a variety of highly relevant pages.
2. Ranking monitor, which identifies where your sites rank in the search engines.
3. An article submitter that allows you to submit articles which contain a backlink to your site to a lot of popular article directories.

The software package also comes with training videos that will help you get started using the program. So far, I have gone through all of the videos and am just now starting to actively use the software. I will post my observations on how the program is working for me in future posts and will let you all know if it’s helped to bring in more online income.

Image Credit :  © Marco Rullkötter – Fotolia.com

What is Kontera?

Kontera is a company that provides web publishers with a method of earning online income from advertising. Kontera provides web publishers with special affiliate links that are tied to certain keywords found on your site. Kontera describes themselves this way on their website:

“Kontera’s ContentLink In-Text Website Advertising Solution lets you monetize your content in real-time, enabling an incremental increase in ad revenue by providing a new source of untapped ad inventory. ContentLinks also enhances user experience by serving relevant and informational ads that match the user’s interest and frame of mind.

ContentLinks are contextually relevant ads and information units dynamically linked to keywords on a publisher’s web page. The keyword is linked to the most relevant and highest paying text ad from among Kontera’s thousands of advertisers.

These ContextLinks appear as links on your page with small ‘pop-up’ bubbles that appear when you hover your mouse over them.”

This is what it looks like:

Visitors click on the pop-up and you earn on a CPC basis. So for example, let’s say your blog post is about Apple iMac computers. Kontera might highlight the words “Apple” and “computers” in your post. If visitors to your website wanted to know more about these topics, all they would have to do is bring the mouse over to the highlighted word and an advertisement bubble or pop-up would appear. If the reader found that ad to be interesting and decided to click through, you would earn online income in the form of a commission.

How Kontera Works

Kontera is very easy to use. Once you have been admitted into their program, Kontera will provide you with a snippet code for your sites. You’ll simply need to install this code on every page of your website and voila! A lot of the words on your website will be converted into contextual advertising links. Once a visitor clicks on one of these links, you will get paid, earning yourself more online income.

Why use Kontera?

If you’re looking for a good way to increase your online income, Kontera may be the solution. Kontera’s ContentLink can be a great source of additional online income and can be used along with Adsense and other advertising programs you may be using, without taking any extra space on your web page. Even though Kontera is a contextual advertising system you can use it on the same pages as Adsense. The Adsense TOS has recently been updated/clarified and states that you can use competing contextually-based advertising systems as long as they do not have the same “look and feel” as Adsense. Kontera is also really easy to set up, all you have to do is insert their code on all the pages of your site and you are all set.

My Thoughts on Using Kontera for More Online Income

I find that Kontera is a very easy program to run. Like I mentioned above, I totally forgot that I was even enrolled in this program, and only remembered after I received their check. I also found that it did not conflict with my Adsense earnings. I will definitely continue to use their program and will experiment with adding it on more of my smaller sites.

This is what I like about Kontera:

• ContentLink is very easy to install. Installing the code on your site will only take a few minutes.
• It’s a legitimate program that pays on time.
• Kontera ContentLinks don’t take up additional ad space.
• Kontera doesn’t conflict with Google Adsense, an advertising network that you are probably already running on your website. This means that you can use Kontera alongside Adsense, which gives you another way to monetize your website. Kontera is also a reliable option for webmasters who do not like  to use blocks of Adsense-style contextual ads on their website.

This is what I don’t like about Kontera:

• I find the pop up ad to be annoying. If I’m annoyed I’m sure that some of my readers are annoyed as well.
• To add more websites to Kontera’s contextual advertising network, you have to email them with a list of the domains you would like added to your account.
• Kontera script slows down loading time for web pages.
• Reporting is not that great.
• $100 minimum payout. While this doesn’t really bother me much, people who don’t receive a lot of traffic to their sites, may wind up waiting a long time before they get paid.

Like anything else, your earning potential largely depends on how much traffic you receive at your site. Higher traffic will inevitably lead to stronger CTR and earnings. Traffic will also compensate for the possibility of getting low paying keywords which can give you less than $0.07 per click. The more traffic you receive, the more online income you will earn.

So how do I get started?

To get started, simply fill out the publisher application form on the Kontera website. There are, however, some qualifications that need to be met in order to be accepted as a publisher

To qualify for ContentLink, your site must:

• Use English as the primary language
• Be content-rich with more than 50 words per page on the majority of the site
• Contain original content, not repurposed content that is owned and created by the sites themselves
• Not be used for domain parking
• Be a live site and not “under construction”

Once your site is approved, you will receive an email containing a JavaScript code snippet that must be embedded into the footer of your website.

If you want to read more about Kontera, or to sign up, go to www.kontera.com

Photo Credit