I signed up for Chitika a few years ago and to be honest, I just hadn’t done anything with it. I didn’t invest time in learning the setup or even exploring the advantages. I just signed up, set up a few referral buttons and let it go.

It wasn’t until I got a notice that I had received a payment from Chitika that I even thought about looking into it further – but hey, if someone is paying me, I’m thinking if I made money for doing absolutely NOTHING, I wonder what I could make with a little effort.

Chitika is an alternative to Google AdSense Contextual Pay-Per-Click Advertising. I run Chitika on a couple of my blogs. It performs best on product related blogs, but can achieve good results on blogs such as this on also.

Here is a snippet from the Chitika Publishers website that contains two stats that show Chitika is a respected Ads Publisher:

Fact 1: Chitika has over 70+ power-packed revenue earning ad units, the largest collection of revenue-generating solutions catering to publishers of all sizes.

Fact 2: More than 17000 bloggers and publishers are already using Chitika’s ads to earn revenue.

Fact 3: Chitika passes over 50,000 publishers in June 2009

One of the greatest advantages to using Chitika is that you can use them on the same page as Google AdSense. This allows you to maximize the earning potential of your blog. Chitika tends to have a higher CPC than Google AdSense in alot of the areas I have used it in.

Since Chitika is still kinda sorta new to me, it will be a short while before I can give you much detail on profits – but I’d say $50 for absolutely NOTHING is something. What I can tell you however, is it is currently outperforming Google AdSense on two of my blogs and I’m only a few days into actually using it.

What you waiting for, You should sign up for Chitika Now!!!

Do share your personal views or experiences with Chitika and how it has performed or is performing for you.

So, you want to make money blogging.

But, how?

Which method is the best one?

Here, I will outline what I believe to be the top 10 ways to monetize a blog site in the best order I believe they are workable

1. Membership Programs

The “free” model is a huge and growing trend in online income right now. You provide a great deal of quality content to your audience for free, and provide a premium-level program to those willing to pay for it. You can charge a monthly membership that will provide a steady income stream.

Any blog can be turned into this style of membership program. We’ll cover that a little later.

2. Sell Your Own Information Products

The selling of knowledge is BIG Business! If you build your position within your market, you can then sell quality information to that market. This can be e-books, audio, videos, or all of the above. You can package in bundles or just sell them digitally. If you author the product yourself you keep 100% of the profit.

3. Provide Services

Another great way to make money with a blog is an indirect one. Use your blog to build your reputation, your brand and your audience. Then, make your money by directing that attention into offline services, consulting and/or coaching. I’ve seen many a blogger develop a nice, lucrative business just from coaching. The one drawback is the trading time for money so keep that in mind during your planning stages. How much time can you invest?

4. Public Speaking

If you develop your reputation, brand and audience to the point you can be considered an expert in your niche, you can turn that into a public speaking business that you get paid for.

5. Product Sales

If you have a physical product line to offer, you can use your blog as a venue for promoting your online store. Sell whatever you like. If you are an artist, you can develop an online store to sell your art pieces and a blog to build up audience and a following.

6. Affiliate Programs

Affiliate marketing is a great way to build up your income. You sell other peoples stuff to your audience and get paid when they buy it. In fact, any time I recommend a product or service to my audience, I check to see if they have an affiliate program. If so, I sign up and use my affiliate link. If I’m going to recommend something to my readers anyway, I might as well make a little something for the free advertising I’m giving them.

7. Direct Ad Sales

Banner ads and in-text ads a popular way to make money – but be aware, it’s not the most lucrative unless you have thousands and thousands of readers. This is usually the first method would-be bloggers consider.

However, if you’re going to try direct sales, selling the ads directly will result in more cash in your pocket. You should consider creating a media kit for your blog that includes ad sizes, prices and locations. As for pricing, a general rule of thumb is to aim for twice your eCPM from Google Adsense.

Why twice? Because that’s what Google is charging – you didn’t think you’d get it all did you?

8. Banner Advertising

If you don’t want to sell your own ads, you can still run network advertising from a variety of different sources. Personally, I use Adsense and keep it simple.

You can also direct sell ads and use network ads as filler for unused inventory.

9. Pay Per Post

You can get paid to review products, sites or services on your blog. Sites like PayPerPost, Social Spark and ReviewMe are among the most popular options. I’ve seen some blogs sell this option directly. When doing any type of paid posting, it is imperative to disclose the fact that it is a paid review. You also want to make sure to not challenge your integrity by giving a less than honest review.

10. Develop and Sell

You can build a blog, build an audience, sell it. In fact, some people actually buy blogs which are dead or setting idle. They’ll invest their marketing skills, build the SEO back links, cultivate readership then sell it for a profit. It can work.

I’ve sold three websites now ranging in price from $100 for one that I had that was dying on the vine and being underused to the more lucrative ones at $6,500 and $95,000.

There’s a nice amount of money to be had in flipping websites IF you have the skills to develop and market them to the point they become desirable to buyers.

(Seattle, WA) April 21, 2010 — Marketwire — Mercent™, a leading provider of on-demand marketing solutions for retailers, , today released results for the Mercent eCommerce Performance Index™ ? a quarterly report that measures year-over-year (YOY) aggregate same-seller gross merchandise value (GMV) across online sales channels supported by the Mercent Retail™ channel management platform.

According to the Q110 Mercent eCommerce Performance Index, same-seller GMV for retailers selling online through Mercent Retail grew by 38% relative to the same period in 2009, representing the highest historical reported GMV growth for the Q109 Mercent eCommerce Performance Index since Mercent initiated the report. Same-seller GMV for merchants participating in Amazon’s “Selling on Amazon” program through Mercent Retail also increased in the first quarter, up approximately 58%.

According to Eric Best, CEO of Mercent, “We continue to see steady upward momentum across all eCommerce channels for clients selling through Mercent Retail. The 38% year-over-year sales growth in the first quarter signals strengthening consumer confidence in the stabilizing economy. More important, we’re seeing growth across all retail categories – from luxury brands to low cost providers. Based on this and Mercent’s historical Index data and trending, we expect the retail segment to continue yielding above average industry growth."

Further hope that working from home and earning full time income is entirely possible!

Full Article @ ecommwire.com

Our paths crossed a couple of years ago and like most online acquaintances, we kept touch here and there through social media outlets and of course – Facebook. Recently we began an exchange of emails that resulted in my asking Janet to share her personal work at home experience.

I’m sure you’ll carry something away from her experience. It’s amazing how success can be staring us right in the face and we don’t even see it.

This is her story:

I was a Navy wife, for about 20 years, spent several years moving around from base to base, and I had found that a great ice breaker and way to meet the other wives was to throw a Tupperware party and give a military discount (my cost) to all who attended.

I thought it would be a great idea if "someone" organized a "party" place where a person could have access to all of them.

Wendy Leal has a fabulous site www.HostAPartyOnline.com. I discovered her around 2003/4 when my daughter became an Avon rep.

One of the problems for online Avon reps, was the same problem that all of us as IMers have – where to find buyers, and how to direct traffic.

Fortunately the Avon spot came available at HostAPartyOnline.com and I rented the spot, at a ridiculously great price. Traffic came! Few buyers, but LOTS of women who wanted to be Avon reps!

A potential gold rush was there; however, Avon would only permit you to sign up a rep if you were having face-to-face contact. I don’t know if that’s changed, but it was a deal breaker with my daughter in NY, myself in WA, and ladies begging to hook up EVERYWHERE, but within a days drive of us.

Avon indicated that even though we wouldn’t be able to sign the person up for ourselves, they would contact the local rep and have THEM go talk to them and we’d get about $25 for each person who signed up.

While you can’t expect 100% of them to sign up, one would expect AVON to have 100% follow through to contact the referrals. Avon dropped the ball and there was 0% contact with the referrals!!

Ok, so that’s not working, let’s forget about that and change focus to the locals. ‘You’re paying a fee for the website, let’s get it to work for you’, was my thinking.

I got the idea that branding was going to be important. Afterall who’s going to remember http://www.Avon.com/Long-unusual-spelling-of-a-strangers-first-and-last-name ?

People will stop after the .com and get the same results that they’re looking for.

So, I went to GoDaddy purchased …get this… HotAvon.com! Now I was naive and didn’t realize that I was infringing on trademarks and permission was needed, BEFORE I purchased it, but when I found out my daughter did her best to get a hold of the person who’d be able to ok it.

Never did get permission, but we didn’t get shot down either. It was like there was nobody home at Avon. I hope things have changed over the years with them, because I really like Avon. (I did ditch the url, because I do think I shouldn’t have gone that route).

I went to Vistaprint and had clear address labels created with my daughter’s name and the web address. Each item, in each order had a sticker on it.

Business cards were made up with the address on it. The catalogs were stamped with the web address. The web address, to THIS DAY is still in my daughter’s email signature, because she has yet to take the 30 seconds required to learn how to take it out…???

That wasn’t driving traffic either.

I’d like to stop right here and have everyone take note – that all of this took place in about a 4 MONTH span! And I didn’t KNOW ANYTHING about Internet Marketing, and I was guessing at everything I was doing. 4 MONTHS IS NOT ENOUGH TIME to judge performance of something you are clueless about.

However, I knew that my daughter wasn’t putting much effort into her Avon business, but I was. I wanted her to be successful (A word to the wise – You CAN’T MAKE someone successful).

I had access to the Avon online rep forum, so I looked there to see if I could get some information from them and learn how THEY were being successful.

And THEY were begging for help on how to become successful. Well, that was no help.

LIGHT GOES ON!!! My daughter isn’t ambitious, but these people were. I have ideas that I know will be helpful to someone who is serious about what they’re doing.

I now make a web site with ideas about how to make money with Avon.

First I explained how to get a domain name at GoDaddy and I became an affiliate and put a text link everywhere I wrote their name.

I explained branding, and how important it was to create a memorable domain address for your customers so that they will remember it – provocative, interesting, funny, EASY to spell and remember.

And then I did the same thing with how to use Vistaprint and all the things that you could do with their products.

How to create a website so people can contact you. The advantages of focusing on becoming a specialist and doing fund raising events.

I then went into the Avon rep forum and I posted the link. I got traffic and I made about $300 in those 4 months. That sucked! All that work for a measly $300.

I gave up.

Now, here it is about 6 years later, and I’ve had a lot of failures in IM, and you know what I learned? I learned that I WAS a successful Internet Marketer 6 years ago!!!! And I didn’t know it!

I had thought that people made money fast and easy on the internet. That $300, to me, was not fast or easy. It was, however, a sensational start.

Now that I know what I have since learned – I seed my ideas, patiently nurture them and allow them to grow and blossom.

It’s easy to give up. After all, we are usually surrounded by friends and family encouraging your failure. YOU are the one with the power. The choices belong to YOU. If you believe in what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter if anyone else does, because there is one sure way of failure – giving up.

Remember you can’t toss seeds from an apartment window, onto a snow covered pavement and expect a field to appear the next day ready for harvest.

I never did backtrack and try to restart this ambition. You are welcome to do some research and develop the idea for yourself.

There are a lot of distributorships available which have requirements that are nominal for starting a business. Find the one that interests you the most and do what no one else is doing with it. Make it fun, make it YOU!

Joyfully Janet – Auction Media Press