how you can make $ 100 each month writing for triond

In a recent article, I asked What Are Your Income Goals for Triond? In that article, I offered a general formula based on my own experience. I noted that for every batch of 100 articles, my Triond earnings were approximately $25.00. I then worked out that if a person wrote two articles each week, he or she could double those earnings in one year.

If a person wanted to earn $100.00 each month from Triond articles, they would have to produce approximately 400 articles in one year.

Breaking this down (based on 4 weeks each month), a writer would have to produce: 2 articles each day, which would equal 10 articles each week, which would result in 40 articles each month and that would 480 articles in one year. Or, if you based your calculations on 52 weeks in a year, this would work out to be 10 articles each week x 52 weeks = 520 articles in one year, which would mean you would make $100.00 or more each month writing for Triond.

So, for those who have set a goal of making $100.00 per month from Triond writing, the “2 articles per day or 10 articles a week” formula will help them to reach their objective in one year. That’s seems reachable, doesn’t it?

Read more: http://writinghood.com/online-writing/how-you-can-make-100-each-month-writing-for-triond/#ixzz1YJ4TX8qSIf a person wanted to earn $100.00 each month from Triond articles, they would have to produce approximately 400 articles in one year.

Breaking this down (based on 4 weeks each month), a writer would have to produce: 2 articles each day, which would equal 10 articles each week, which would result in 40 articles each month and that would 480 articles in one year. Or, if you based your calculations on 52 weeks in a year, this would work out to be 10 articles each week x 52 weeks = 520 articles in one year, which would mean you would make $100.00 or more each month writing for Triond.

So, for those who have set a goal of making $100.00 per month from Triond writing, the “2 articles per day or 10 articles a week” formula will help them to reach their objective in one year. That’s seems reachable, doesn’t it?

R

Add an Affiliate Banner to Blogger Sidebar

A lot of people want to make money from their blog and for this reason want to learn how to insert affiliate banners into their Blogger Blogspot blog. In this Blogger tutorial which is the first of a series I will show you how to place a banner in the sidebar of your Blogger blog (Blogspot blog).

Even if you are new to Blogger and have very little technical knowledge this tutorial is still suitable for you as I will guide you through every step in the process of adding a banner ad to the sidebar of your Blogger blog.


How to Add an Affiliate Banner To the Sidebar of Your Blog
It is relatively easy to add an affiliate banner to the sidebar of your blog.

1. Sign up with an affiliate marketing program like Commission Junction and select your merchant

2. Decide on the size of the merchant banner or banners you wish to display in your sidebar making sure that whatever you choose will fit into the sidebar space otherwise your banner ad may not display properly on your blog. Typical sizes suitable for sidebars are:

• small rectangular banners 125x90 or 125x125
  
• square banners 200x200 (if space allows)
  
• short vertical banners 120x200
  
• long column style skyscraper bnnners 120x600 or 160x600

3. Choose your banner and you will be presented with the merchant code to display the banner. Right click to select all and right click again to copy the code to the clipboard of your computer

4. In a new window login to Blogger and navigate to Design > Page Elements

5. Click on Add a Gadget in the sidebar. If you are using a customized template you may have 2 different sidebars so decide which you want the banner ad to display in.

6. Select HTML/Javascript widget from the Add a Gadget menu

7. Place your mouse in the content box of the Configure HTML/Javascript widget and right click. Choose paste to insert the merchant code of your banner ad into the content box 

8. In the title box add a Title like Sponsored Ads if you wish otherwise leave it blank


9. Click on Save

10. Using Blogger's drag and drop feature to pick up your new HTML/Javascript widget and position it where you want your banner ad to show up in your sidebar. 

11. Save your layout

12. Click on View Blog to see you new banner ad in action. 


Add Space Between Your Banner Ads
If you want more space between your banner ad and the previous widget you can add <p> before the code your inserted in the HTML/Javascript widget. If you need even more add another <p>

To Center Your Advertising Banner
If you want to center your banner ad insert <center> before the merchant code and </center> after it.

Add More Than One Banner
If you want to add more than one banner ad to the same widget you can just by pasting the code for the second banner ad below the first lot of code. If you want some white space between the banners ads insert <p> between each lot of code.

Troubleshooting

Your Banner Does Not Display
Your banner ad should appear right away. If your banner ad doesn't display at all then there is a problem with the widget you have just created. Retrace your steps making sure you have got all the code.

Only Placeholder for the Banner Displays
If you see a placeholder but no ad displays then the affiliate website may be off line or there is a problem with the code in some way. Go back and make sure you copied all of the code correctly



In this Blogger tutorial you have learned how to add an affiliate marketing advertisement banner to the sidebar of your Blogger blog (Blogspot blog) and about some common problems that you may encounter. In my next tutorials on banner advertising I will show you how to place a banner in a variety of other spots on your blog including the footer, above the first post and in the header. Why not bookmark this site so you can return easily?

Make Money Add Banners Ads to Blogger

One of the things that makes Blogger such a great blogging platform is the facility to add advertising to your Blogspot blog and make money from it. In this article I will be discussing how banner advertisements on your Blogger blog can make money for you. By banner advertising I mean advertising in addition to Google Adsense or Adbrite that you may have already added to your Blogger blog. For information on adding Google Adsense to your blog please read my articles on Google Adsense.

Banner advertising is FREE. And Banners Do Make Money.
It is no secret that banners make money provided you choose your merchant program carefully and have enough traffic accessing your site. In my experience once you reach around 100 visitors a day is a good time to add a few banners to your blog.

How Do I Make Money from Banners on My Blogger Blog?
Affiliate marketing banners make money for the publisher - that's you. When you place a banner on your blog the affiliate program gives you a snippet of code to add to your template which makes the banner display and identifies you as the publisher. When a visitor clicks on a banner on your website that click is recorded as originating from your site and you make money as a result of that click. Depending on the merchant program that you have signed up for you can earn a commission for providing a lead, or receive a percentage of the sale.

An Example of How Banners Work
After having placed your banner ad on your Blogger blog your site gets 100 visitors in a day. Out of that 100 people 5 people click on a banner which takes them through to the merchant's website. From those 5 people one person makes a purchase of around $100.00. Assuming your commission is 10% of the sale you have just made yourself $10.00. It's that easy.

Making the Most Out of Advertising Banners
To make money from banner ads you need volume as only a small percentage of your visitors will take any notice of the advertising on your blog and only a much smaller percentage of that pool will actually buy anything once they click. That's why it is really important that you focus your energies on building site traffic. If you need to grow your traffic read my articles on tips to increase traffic to your Blogger blog.

Of course you do need to choose your affiliate banners carefully as obviously some advertising will have more appeal than others. To some extent this is a matter of trial and error as you can never be completely sure how a banner will perform until you try it. You can increase the odds of success however, by choosing merchant programs that are related to your blog in some way. For instance if your blog is about cars then advertisers of car accessories like audio units would be a good place to start.

How Do I Add Affiliate Banners to My Blogger Blog?
Adding affiliate banners to your blog is pretty easy. Pretty much copy and paste stuff which anyone can do. Please read my article providing step by step instructions on how to Add Affiliate Banner Ads to the Blogger Sidebar of your Blogger blog if you are unsure. If you want to place a banner in the header of your blog please refer to Add an Affiliate Banner to Blogger Header

Disadvantages of Banner Ads
Too many banner ads can give your visitors the impression you are just in it for the money. So make sure you don't go overboard with too much advertising that will overshadow or detract from the content of your blog. Remember less is more so place your banners ads strategically on your blog. I like a small cluster of about 4 banner ads usually 125x125 somewhere fairly close to the top in the sidebar and a 468x60 banner in the header. The header is a prime position for an effective banner advertising campaign. Read more about how to place a banner ad in the header of your Blogger blog in my adding banners to Blogger series of tutorials.


The other main problem with banner ads is that they encourage visitors to leave your site and as we all know one of the hardest jobs is to attract the visitor in the first place. Do you really want them leaving your site before they have had a chance to look around? I don't think so. Only place banner ads on your blog that you are confident will reap you some rewards otherwise forget it. You might actually lose traffic if you provide too many inducements to leave your site.

Banner Ads Make Money

In this article I have discussed banner advertising as it relates to Blogger Blogspot blogs. You have learned a little about how affiliate programs work and how you might use banner ads on your own blog to make extra money. For tutorials on adding banner ads to your Blogger Blogspot blog please refer to Add Affiliate Banner Ads to a Blogger Sidebar and Add an Affiliate Banner to Blogger Header.

Get Rich with ClickBank

ClickBank is one of the many websites that can help you realize your dream of becoming an Internet millionaire. It is an online marketplace offering ebooks, travel tickets, clothes, and other online merchandise. What is great about ClickBank is the fact that it brings product creators and product sellers together, resulting in a win-win situation for both parties. Because ClickBank helps you process the payments and advertise your products, they receive a percentage for every successful sale.

Successful Internet marketers and bloggers make hundreds of dollars each and every day following This Gogle Sniper Guide, making passive income on autopilot. So, how do they do it? First, some basics..

What are the advantages of using ClickBank?

If you are an affiliate marketer who has absolutely no clue about creating ebooks and cannot write to save your life, ClickBank can easily help you find a product to carry on your website. You can get paid up to 75 percent in affiliate commissions, depending on the percentage pegged by the buyer.

On the other hand, if you are an expert author who does not want to bother with marketing your ebook, you may just choose to pay a minimal fee of $49.95 for product activation, and start earning almost immediately.

What are the disadvantages of using ClickBank?

While ClickBank is a great way to get into affiliate marketing, it is not without its downsides. One common problem that most new affiliate marketers encounter is ClickBank products with poor sales copy. If you are a website designer or a seasoned copywriter, you may want to create your own ebook promotion website so you have better control over this.

Those who do not exercise due diligence may also end up selling products with high return rates. Since ClickBank only asks for a minimal product activation fee, you have people trying to game the system by selling mere compilations of articles already found on the net. The best thing to do is to buy these ebook yourself before recommending it to your customers.

Will ClickBank work for everyone?

The answer depends on your attitude and how serious you are about making money online. Internet millionaires do not happen overnight. If you intend to just place your affiliate link on a couple of sites and forums, expect to make only a couple of dollars here and there.

Remember that if you really want to succeed in marketing ClickBank digital products, you have to put in the time and effort. Try learning about search engine optimization, sales copywriting, and pay-per-click advertising, too. Those who have enough cash to spare may also want to consider hiring copywriters and SEO experts to help them with this. Some of the most successful Internet marketers make hundreds of dollars each day following the Google Sniper Guide, making passive income – on autopilot!

Do this properly and you may actually be the next ClickBank millionaire.

12 Ways to Make Money Online

Making money online doesn’t have to be complicated or costly. There are many simple ways to make money online without the need for expert knowledge or a hefty cash injection. Here are 12 ways to make money online.

1. Sell your unwanted goods on eBay

Using eBay to sell or auction your unwanted items is a simple way to make money out of the things you no longer need. Have a clearout, check the attic and the garage for any old junk, and ask friends and relatives if they have any old items they want to get rid of.

2. Set up your own blog

Blogging can provide a regular source of income. During the first few months of starting a new blog you will need to spend time marketing and publicizing your blog to bring in new visitors. Once you have a steady stream of visitors, monetize your blog with advertising from reputable sources, such as Google Adsense and Amazon Affiliates.

Many bloggers, even newbies, are making large amounts of money on autopilot following the simple but Powerful Money Making Strategy called Google Sniper. Combined with Market Samurai, Google Sniper can help you dominate your niche,earning passive income for years – in large numbers!

3. Get paid to take surveys

Did you know that you can make money online from free paid surveys? Survey sites offer cash or rewards for taking part in their consumer surveys. Payment varies depending on the type and length of the survey, and may also depend on who the survey is being conducted for. Surveys conducted for leading manufacturers are likely to pay the best rates.

4. Try comping

Professional “compers” treat entering competitions like a full time job, and many earn enough money from comping to sustain a good lifestyle. There are hundreds of forums dedicated to maintaining up-to-date lists of the newest competitions. Professional compers spend hours every day trawling the internet for new competitions, and then post their findings on the comping forums.

5. Make handmade goods to sell on Etsy

Etsy allow you to offer almost anything for sale, as long as it’s handmade by you. Handmade jewellery, soap, teddy bears, and chocolates are just a few of the things you can sell on Etsy. Budding artists can use Etsy to sell drawings, paintings, textile art, and anything else they have created.

6. Take photographs to sell on stock photography sites

Fotolia, iStockPhoto, and EveryStockPhoto are among the many websites that allow you to submit your photographs for customers to download. Customers pay a small fee to download and use photographs for their website, newsletter, or other publication. Photographers then receive royalties based on how many times their photographs are downloaded.

7. Sell your freelance services

Websites like Elance, Freelancer, and iFreelance allow you to offer your services to customers on a freelance basis. Whether your skills are in the field of web development, graphic design, marketing, programming, or writing, you can advertise your services on one of the many freelancing websites.

8. Solve problems

Online solution centres, such as IdeaConnection and InnoCentive, offer cash incentives for anyone who can solve specific problems set by their clients. They offer a wide range of problems in a variety of subjects. Payment varies from just a few dollars, to hundreds of thousands of dollars per project.

9. Write reviews

Review sites like Dooyoo and Ciao have a large community of paid reviewers offering their opinion on various consumer goods. Reviewers post their opinions and experiences of consumer goods, services, and companies to help other people make informed choices. Payment will usually depend on the amount of page views your reviews receive, as well as how useful other people find your review.

10. Recycle your old CDs, DVDs, mobile phones, and other gadgets

Recycling sites like Envirophone and Weeebuy offer cash for your old mobile phones, laptops, mp3 players, and electronic gadgets. MusicMagpie and other similar sites offer cash for your old CDs and DVDs, as long as they are still in good working order.

11. Earn cashback

Earn cashback on almost anything you purchase by going through a cashback site, such as Quidco or TopCashBack. Whether you’re doing your weekly grocery shop, buying a new pair of shoes, changing your utility supplier, or looking for a new mobile phone contract, cashback sites have lots of deals to give you some of your money back.

12. Write articles for a share of the advertising revenue

Revenue sharing sites, such as Suite 101, HubPages, and Triond, publish articles and content submitted by their members. Members then take a share of the advertising revenue generated while viewers are browsing their content. Write articles on topics that interest you, and then submit them to a revenue sharing site to generate some passive income.

To Make Money Online For Free?

The best way to make money online for free is to sell an effective solution to people desperately seeking relief from their problems. Far too many people make this complex and confusing. It really is quite simple. If you’re interested in finding the best way to make money online for free, then start with the problem that many people find troublesome and vexing.

Research Your Most Popular “Money Keywords”

This begins with keyword research. Every minute of every hour of every day, millions of people type words and phrases into the search bar of engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. These are people with problems to solve, pain to relieve, “itches to scratch” – and they are desperately seeking for the salve to soothe and comfort them.

As a blogger, you can adopt a simple approach to tap into the best way to make money online for free. Become a solution provider. Find out what bothers your audience. Create or locate a product or service or method or system or person to relieve their worry, lessen their hurt, speed up their progress, heighten their enjoyment, allay their anxiety – and then get paid for sharing it with them.

Your Strategy For The Best Way To Make Money Online For Free

Your strategy begins by finding the right keywords to target. Using a powerful tool likeMarket Samurai or the free Google Keyword Tool, you can identify the “exact match” keyword phrases that are being used by hundreds of your readers on search engines. Knowing the volume and competitiveness of these “money keywords” gives you an edge when you create content tailored to rank high for these exact phrases. This really is thebest way to make money online for free.

Most bloggers use keywords the way some folks go fishing. They blindly cast a line into the water (any water!) and hope for a bite. Smart bloggers who understand the best way to make money online for free take a different approach. They hunt down market niches with audiences desperate for information. They identify the keywords those audiences are searching on. They even have analyzed the intent behind their use of specific keywords.

And so they are able to craft content that is tailor-made for these large audiences. Is it any wonder that they get sky-high conversion rates – as high as 25% – from their readers?

Yes, Making Money Online Is Easy

The best way to make money online for free is to follow a proven formula:

• Find in-demand, evergreen niches
• Figure out what your audience desperately wants
• Build content around the right “exact match” keyword phrases
• Follow basic SEO rules
• Be social (and help spread word about your content)

It’s really that simple! The best way to make money online for free doesn’t cost money. You just need some insight and understanding about how your target market thinks and feels.

Free $75 Amazon Products Ads

Free $75 Amazon Products Ads
thought it can be usefuly for some of you
http://www.amazonservices.com/content/product-ads-on-amazon.htm

How to make money with Amazon

Keyword research

This is the most important step! It doesn’t matter how well you do the other steps if you don’t do this right you will just fail. I use market samurai for my keyword research, it’s a great program and I definitely suggest you get it.

Anyway lets get started whit the keyword research. So we are promoting amazon products, I suggest you browse their site for a while, see what they are selling and you will notice that they are pretty much selling everything! This is great for us since every product has more than 1 keyword so that gives us more than enough keywords to choose from. Now let me explain what I mean with every product has more than 1 keyword.

Lets say we want to sell a digital camera. There are alot of keywords that people search for when buying a digital camera: Digital camera, Digital camera with optical zoom, 4 inch Digital camera, black Digital camera, underwater Digital camera, wide angle Digital camera, etc ( You can hit Generate Keywords in Market samurai and it will come up with all these keywords for you ). So there are loads of different keywords that people search for when buying a digital camera, and it’s our job to find that 1 perfect keyword.

When choosing a keyword you want to look at 3 things: Competition, Searches, Price.

Competition
Market samurai has 2 great functions: SEOC ( amount of sites that have the keyword on their page ) and SEOTC ( amount of sites that have the keyword in their title ).
These are great functions when looking at your competition, I use both of them but I tend to give SEOTC a bit more value.
As a rough standard I only choose keywords with less than 75K SEOC and 25k SEOTC, and ofcourse the lower the score the better the keyword. I give more value to SEOTC than SEOC. So when a keyword has 80k SEOC and 10k SEOTC, I will check that one out.

Searches
This kinda depends on the product your promoting. If you are promoting a $50 product you want more searches than when your promoting a $500 product.
But again if you want a rough standard I would say go for 1000+ EXACT searches a month. It’s very important that you look at the exact searches and not the broad or phrase searches.

Price
I will suggest you only promote products on amazon that cost $50+. So no cd’s, ebooks or anything of that unless you can get huge amount of targeted visitors.

Things to look for when doing keyword research:
- Exact match domain: Exact match domain is great! What do I mean with exact match domain? Well if your keyword is ‘outdoor bbq set’ and you can buy the domain: outdoorbbqset.com/.net/.org than you have the exact match domain.
I would always suggest buying the exact domain name when possible because google give alot of value to this.

Things to avoid when doing keywords research:
- Product names ( example: canon mp250 ): There are 2 major problems if you pick a product name as keyword:
1). Most people who search the product name already own the product and are looking for product information.
Type ‘canon mp250′ in google and you will see that next few searches are: Canon mp250 driver, software, ink, manual.
All of the people who search this already own a canon mp250 and are not looking to buy one from you.
2). It’s most likely that the company of the product already dominates the SERP for the product name and it won’t be easy to beat them on their own company name.
In this case canon.com ranks for the first 3 results on ‘canon mp250′

The site

If you got a keyword with the exact match domain than you should definitely get it! If not I would still suggest you buy a domain with the keyword in it.
I’m not gonna talk to much on page SEO here altough it’s very important. So if you dont know how to optimize your site for a keyword I strongly suggest you read a guide about this.
But just make sure your site has a decent keyword density, and your keyword is atleast once in your title & description.

Content
When I start a site I alway want atleast 3 articles on it. I suggest your write them yourself or have a very good writer do this for you.
These are the article I always start with, I took the product wireless printer as an example:
- A general article about wireless printers: why you need it, why its so much better than wired aprinter.
- Best 3 wireless printers: 3 short reviews about the 3 best wireless printers.
- What to look for when buying a wireless printer: a simple buyers guide so people get more comfortable buying it straight away on the internet.
You can also add more article based on subkeywords like:
- Wireless printer review
- Wireless printer for ipad
And than build links to these pages and get them ranked.
The goal of your site is to get as much visitors to click your amazon link. Here are a couple of tricks I use to do this:
- Buy now buttons: I don’t know what it is but people love to click buttons. I use this button on the Best 3 products article and it works great!
- Make all product pictures clickable and link them to amazon: People also love the click pictures, use this to get them on amazon.
- Text links in your article: this seems kinda simple but there are alot of sneaky ways to get people on amazon with simple text links.
For example in the Best 3 products article I always put a short feature list and at the end I put: Click here for more features ( link to amazon ). And this seems to work great!

Link building

I will show you the exact link strategy that I use to get my sites ranked.

I think this pretty much speaks for itself. But I will still explain everything for the people who want to know more on how to build these links.

Web 2.0 sites: These are sites like: hubpages, devhub, jimdo etc. Where you can create you own blog and post your spun article with a link to your site. There are a couple of programs that can automate this for you ( senuke ) but they require a monthly fee, if you don’t want to pay this you can just create them manually. I useally build around 10 web 2.0 site’s.

Bookmarks: You can use Bookmarkingdemon or autopligg for this. I useally build around 30 verified bookmarks. I don’t think bookmark links give that much value, but it’s nice to have some diversity in your link building.

Profiles: You can use xrumer or senuke to build profiles with a link to your site. In the first month I don’t want to create to much links to my site, so I only create 500 verified profiles. If I do a second blast I useally do more.

Articles: These are spun articles I submit to article directories and they have 2 links at the bottom on the article, 1 link to my site and 1 link to a web 2.0 site. I useally blast around 200 verified articles.

Scrapebox comments: I blast around 20k comments to the web2.0 sites and the articles. I don’t do scrapebox blast to my site in the first month because of the risk of getting sandboxed.

30 Days To Create a Profitable Online Business

Want to Create a Profitable Online Business ? How about this if you can do this with a simple way in only 30 days or less? With Niche Profit Classroom it is absolutely possible and if you’re looking for a simple way to generate income online, then you need to see this once.

Niche Profit Classroom is created by successful Niche Marketers Adam Shortand Alen Sultanic. They trained over 1,000 people on how to start,build, and grow an online business from scratch. Interesting fact is that most of these people had no clue about how to start an online business before going through the training. In Niche Profit Classroom you will learn how to build niche site to generate profit an autopilot. But remember this won’t happen automatically. You have to work in it to make the system work for you.

Before you go over there and see for yourself, I want to tell you the *best* part about Niche Profit Classroom. The best part, absolutely the best (and you’ll see for yourself), is that Niche Profit Classroom is a new type of hybrid site. It has over 400+ hours of videos to show you everything step by step in the most microscopic detail. There are software built right into the site so you can put some serious fire power behind everything you learn.

Anyway, here’s an ‘inside scoop’ on what’s inside.

Things like:

• How to to create a whole profit producing info-product line for pennies on the dollar (70% less than anyone else is paying). Plus these products are such high quality that your customers will be practically begging to buy more stuff from you. This gives you a HUGE advantage over every single one of your competitors.

• How to cherry pick the most profitable markets out there (using information that other companies spend millions of dollars to collect - that you can use for F.REE). You just have to know where to get it..

• How to tap into an unlimited source of F.REE traffic from the search engines and slip right under the radar so that *NO ONE* has a clue as to how much you’re really raking in.

• How to set all this on autopilot so that that the *ONLY* thing you have to do is check sales and collect profits (you don’t even have to spend a single minute on customer service). Plus, a little place to ‘outsource’ your customer service that all the gurus use, yet none talk about…

I got that straight from the web site, but it’s just a small taste of what’s inside. You also get:

• The MoneyWord Matrix Keyword Tool - Yep, better than about 99% of the keyword tools out there, and it’s included with the membership.

• Market Scorecard - Tells you if a market and product is going to be profitable, before you even consider going into the market. Let your competitors burn dollars on losing markets while you cherry pick the profit pulling markets.

• Market Profiler - Let’s you *Profile* a market and know exactly who’s doing what. You get a bird’s eye view of the entire market in a single snapshot.

• Market Checklist - Lets you milk every single dollar out of the market (you don’t miss a beat when it comes to generating profits online with this tool).

• 15 Minute Sales Letter Wizard - Let’s you create a converting sales letter in minutes…yes minutes…and it’s better than what most *professional* copywriters would charge you an arm and a leg for.

But best of all, it has a built in community that’s *always* there for you when you need help to steer you in the right direction. This is the TOP reason 99% of people fail to generate income online, because they get everything from 100’s of different sources rather than finding one good system that works. Then, even if they do find a good system, they don’t have anyone there to help answer their questions (and there are bound to be some).

BY:Chandan Dutta

# BASIC HTML CODE

# EARN WITH AMAZON

make money with amazon

You've probably heard before a lot of hype about how much money you can make with affiliate programs. Maybe you've even set up a site yourself, only to find that after buying the domain, a few bucks a month in hosting, software or a web designer to design your site, etc., that the piddly affiliate fees hardly even covered your cost. Well, here's the hype-free way to really make money with an Amazon.com affiliate site. And it'll only take a day to make the site. The secret? Low cost, low effort.

1.      If you don't already know it, learn some basic HTML. You have to do this to keep your costs down and still get what you want. Even if the site is basically laid out for you, you're going to need to know how to insert images, create hyperlinks, and do some basic text formatting. Our HTML Guide offers a free 10-week HTML class and a great collection of beginning HTML tutorials. Get over any anxiety you have about this. Just do it. You'll thank me for it later.

2.      Decide on your topic. You're going to be doing product reviews and recommendations, so pick a topic that you enjoy and know something about. If you can't stay passionate about the topic, that will show, and it also won't hold your interest. Choose a narrow enough niche to be distinctive, e.g., bands from your city, left-handed guitarists, music for a certain kind of dancing, authors of a certain religion, books about arts & crafts, etc.

3.      Choose your domain name. Make it keyword-rich, not clever. Think how people will find your site in the search engines. Here are some ideas (all available when I first wrote this, though a cfew have been snatched up):
Music: BandsFromTexas.com, BandOutOfBoston.com, SouthpawGuitarists.com, ClassicPsychedelia.com, Non-Stop-Hip-Hop.com, Merengue-Music.com
Books: Mormon-Authors.com, Arts-and-Crafts-Books.com, Books-by-Stephen-King.com, ClassicBusinessBooks.com
Others: Best-Baby-Toys.com, MomsMags.com, FelliniMovies.com

4.      Register your domain name. If you're not technically inclined at all, register your domain wherever you set up your hosting in step 5. Otherwise, you can save a few bucks by choosing a lower-cost provider. Not a big deal for one or two sites, but it can be for ten or twenty. I use GoDaddy, who have great domain management tools and are less than $10 a year. The least expensive I've found from a reputable source is1&1, whose price is around $7 a year last I checked.

5.      Set up your web hosting. This is where most people get burned. For this kind of site, you do not need $10 a month web hosting! Our Online Business Guide has a list ofCheap Web Hosting for Under $10. Some are as little as $4 a month, with unlimited domains, i.e., you can run several sites like this on the same hosting package.

6.      Install blog software. "Blog, you say?" Yes. It will give your site all the structure you need, plus make it easy to quickly post new content. My pick is WordPress, which is open source (i.e., free), easy to install and use, and yet very powerful. Many hosts have a one-step installation process for it, or you can download itand follow their installation instructions.

7.      Make it pretty. One of the great things about WordPress is the huge variety of templates available for it -- they can completely change the look-and-feel. Our Weblogs Guide has a list of 5 Sites for Free Wordpress Themes, where you can find hundreds of free WordPress themes.

8.      Set up categories. Most blog software allows you to create sub-categories to help organize your entries. This will help visitors narrow in even more specifically on their interests. For example, BandsFromTexas.com might have one group of categories for genre — rock, country, blues, etc. — and another for city of origin — Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, etc.

9.      Sign up as an Amazon Associate. It's simple and free. Just visit Amazon and click on the Join Associates link at the bottom of the page (here's a direct link for your convenience). Your site should already have at least the basic setup done, even if you don't have any content there yet, as they'll review the site manually before approval.

10.  Create your blog posting bookmarks/links. There are two links that are going to be essential for you to make this easy. First is the blog posting link. In your blog software, on the posting page (see their instructions), at the bottom of the page there should be a "bookmarklet". Click on the link (and hold the mouse) and drag it up to your Links toolbar in your browser (assuming Internet Explorer), or your Favorites menu. This will allow you to blog a product with one mouse click.

11.  Create your Amazon Build-A-Link bookmark/link. This will make it easy to build the link with your affiliate ID built in. Log in to Associates Central, look in the left navigation sidebar, go to Build-A-Link, and under Static Links, find Individual Items. Click and drag this onto your Links toolbar or Favorites menu.

12.  Build your first link. Go to Amazon and log in with your Associates account. Find the product you want to review and use the Site Stripe (gray stripe at the top of the screen that you'll see when logged in as an Associate) to get your personalized link to the item. They also offer a variety of other options for creating links and banners.

13.  Blog your review. Now click on your blog posting link (Press It! by default in WordPress). If you're using WordPress, you should now see two pieces of link code in your posting form, the first one ending with "Associates Build-A-Link >< /a >". Delete through that point. The second part is a link to the product with your Amazon Associate ID built in. Now just write your product review, choose the appropriate categories for it, and hit Publish.

14.  Build out your site. Before you promote your site, you want to have some substantial content there. Write several product reviews. Have at least 2-3 in each category you've created. You may also want to make a categories for articles, news, and commentary about your topic. The more content your site has, the better. And the great thing is that while you're writing all this, the search engines are getting notified automatically, assuming you turned on the notifications mentioned in step 6.

15.  Promote your site. The best free way to do this is to communicate with other bloggers writing about similar topics, and to participate in online communities where your topic is discussed. See the Online Business Networking category for ideas, as well as theInternet Marketing category.

Tips:

1.      You have to learn some basic HTML and basic concepts about running a web site. It's just not that hard. If you have to rely on purchased software, you won't be able to get exactly what you want, you won't know what to do when things go wrong, and you'll end up spending money you don't need to. Spend the time to learn it. It will be well worth the investment.

2.      I slightly recommend music over books and other products, mainly because you can listen to the clips of an entire album in about 10 minutes and get a good enough feel for it (without buying it) to do a short review. If you have another topic that you're passionate about, great, but make sure you have a unique angle on the topic. People can get reviews about a lot of those consumer products anywhere. You need to give them a reason to come to your site.

3.      To pick up some extra pennies, sign up for Google AdSense. It probably won't generate a lot of revenue, but it's free to sign up and completely effortless to maintain.

4.      Set reasonable expectations for earnings. You've only invested $20. You're going to make 5% on most products. That means that you need to sell $400 worth of stuff to make back your investment. To make $20 an hour, what you write must generate $400 worth of purchases. You get credit for other purchases customers you send make while at Amazon besides just the product you linked to, so it's not as hard as it may sound. It won't make you rich, but it's not hard to be profitable, and it builds over time.