WebPublishing.me

Sometimes it’s the simple questions that are the hardest to answer. Finding GoDaddy’s FTP location, for instance. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re always trying to upsell you on something, but it seems inordinately hard to find what you’re looking for. So, for my own memory, and perhaps to help some wayward FTPers out there, I’m going to post the path to find GoDaddy’s in-browser FTP location:

1) Log in.

2) Click “My Account” at the top right.

3) Click the domain you’d like to edit near the middle of the screen.

4) Click “Hosting.”

5) Click “Your Files” in the upper left where it says “Manage Site Content.”

Ding dong the witch is dead. You’re in. Good luck.

I was lucky enough to have my computer hijacked by the worm.win32.netsky malware/virus last night. Here’s how the malware works: you start up your computer, and it says, “Your computer has been infected by worm.win32.netsky. Press OK to download antivirus software.” Of course, if you were to click OK, you’d download some fake antivirus software that might send emails on your behalf, steal sensitive information or corrupt your computer.

In my case, my desktop background was hijacked and replaced by a warning page. Worst of all, I couldn’t access my task manager to see which .exe was causing the problem. Because I wasted a good three hours scanning/trying to eliminate worm.win32.netsky, I thought I’d write a quick guide to help you eliminate the pest if you run into it:

1) Go to the Start menu and select RUN.

2) Paste the following (without quote marks) in the RUN box and hit ENTER to reactivate the task manager:
“REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableTaskMgr /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f”

3) Hit Ctrl + Alt + Del to launch your task manager. If you still get an error message, DO NOT close the error message. Instead, leave it open, and try to launch the task manager again.

4) Once you have the task manager open, navigate to the “Processes” tab and – if it exists – close the following program: sms32.exe.

5) Now, your computer should be running better, but you’ve still got to clean up your registry. Go to the start menu and select RUN.

6) Type “regedit” (without quotes) and hit enter.

7) Navigate to the following items and delete them from the registry (just click on the items and hit the DELETE key):

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run | smss32.exe = “C:\WINDOWS\system32\smss32.exe”
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\General | Wallpaper = “C:\WINDOWS\system32\warning.html”
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon | Userinit = “C:\WINDOWS\system32\winlogon32.exe”

8) Delete the contents of your recycle bin.

9) IMPORTANT: Run some antivirus/malware software to ensure worm.win32.netsky gets removed entirely. I made the mistake of not doing this (because I thought I could get around the infection without shelling out any cash), and I paid for it after I restarted my computer. In fact, I couldn’t restart my computer. As soon as I tried to log on, I was automatically logged off. Boo! It took tons of effort and the use of a second computer to get my laptop working again.

So, that said, I can’t stress enough that you’re going to need to shell out $25 or so to zap your malware. I opted to go with Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware, but there are tons of other options out there including Norton.

10) Run a FULL scan of your computer (not the QUICK scan), and delete ALL rogue files. It’ll take a long time, but this will fully clean up your registry.

11) You should now be free of the worm.win32.netsky malware/virus. If not, keep in mind that malware writers can adapt quickly. Your best bet will be to Google the name of the .exe that’s affecting your computer and check forums for more information. Good luck!

P.S. I’ve got to give a shout-out to Dan Fischbach, who helped me solve the Windows XP Log-on/Log-off loop that worm.win32.netsky created. Nice work, Dan (I donated $5, and you inspired me to write this post!).

This is a guest post by blogger and roller derby girl, Lauren Morrill-Ragusea who founded Higher Ed Underground.

My blog, Higher Ed Underground, was conceived after a particularly rough week at my day job. I was tired, frustrated, overworked, underpaid, and just generally burnt-out. I needed to do something in my line of work that was fun, if for no other reason than to remind myself that such a thing existed.

After several years spent working in and around college campuses, plus an advanced degree in higher education administration, I started to have faith in my ability as an expert. Yes, there are people with more experience and more education, but those people tend to be older and boring. They also tend to be people than can barely text message, much less blog. Thus, Higher Ed Underground was born.

It hasn’t been all daisies and roses since I started the site. I’ve made quite a few mistakes along the way (and am probably still making mistakes as we speak), and I’ve decided to share them with you in hopes that your website dreams don’t come crashing down around you.

Starting my blog for the wrong reasons

As I mentioned, Higher Ed Underground grew out of a particularly tough workweek. As a result, my initial motivation was to grow a web presence large enough to rake in the cash, quit my day job, and love life.

Yeah … fantasy.

You see, launching a site thinking you’re going to make a good living off it is the same as sitting down to write your first novel and thinking you’re the next John Grisham. Making money off your site is HARD. So hard, in fact, that if money is your only motivation, it’s going to be damn near impossible to put in the effort required to see a single red cent.

I’ve been blogging for a while on my person blog, Derby Girl, about my life playing roller derby. It’s been easy to keep up with it, because I do it just for myself. I do it because I genuinely enjoy hitting the “post” button each day. That blog has just over 2,000 pageviews a month, which isn’t too shabby, and that was with zero effort or promotion of any kind.

What’s the difference between Derby Girl and Higher Ed Underground? I started Derby Girl because I loved derby and felt like sharing it. I started Higher Ed Underground to make money. Which one do you think is more fun to maintain?

Thankfully, not long after I began working on Higher Ed Underground, this realization smacked me in the face. I threw out the serious, boring, advice-driven content and got back to what I like best: snarky commentary. The content was easier to come by, the daily posting was easier to maintain, and my pageviews jumped considerably. I also abandoned the sheer desire to monetize the site, and am having way more fun with it. It was right about that time that I made my first ten cents from AdSense.

The moral of that story? Find your voice, then blog.

Researching too quickly

If you’re really serious about growing a small business from your blog, you need to do the legwork up front. Research the market. Find out what sites already exist in your niche. Figure out how you’ll be different than the existing market, and if you’re the same, how you can do it better. Figure out what keywords are leading people to sites like yours, and see if you can maximize those keywords to drive traffic. I did all this, but I did it over the course of about three days. This probably wasn’t enough research, especially since I keep stumbling across sites in my niche.

Launching too soon

I still have my day job, and my day job is fairly demanding. There’s not much time to sit around surfing the internet during work hours, much less create meaningful, valuable content. When a site is new, it’s important for it to have strong content that updates frequently. I should have aggregated several weeks worth of posts (at a minimum) before I kicked off, so that when my paying job got crazy, I had content to fall back on. Nothing loses readers faster than infrequent posting or throwaway content.

Buying a theme

Let me be clear: I absolutely love Thesis Theme. It’s easy, customizable, and professional. But the truth is, I could have gotten by for at least the first six months on a standard WordPress theme. WordPress has some great skeleton templates that I could have taught myself to customize over time, and it would have saved me $89 during the whole site setup. This is another example of me diving in to the deep end before I quite knew how to swim.

There’s no need to spend money on your site (other than the domain name and hosting) until you’ve started to see a little bit coming in. Sure, you want your site to look professional, but until you’ve got a readership that demands professional, there’s no reason to put out any money to get there. The look of your site, though important, is not what will keep readers coming back. Invest your effort in producing quality content, and the rest comes later.

Monetizing too much, too early

Don’t clutter your page with ads. Yes, it’s hideous and distracting, but it also makes you look like you care more about money than content. Once you have a dedicated readership, they’ll understand why you put ads on your site. They won’t mind, because they’ll be conditioned to pay attention to your kick ass content. But if the only thing readers see when they visit your site for the first time is an AdSense banner, affiliate links, and those stupid in-text links, you’re pretty asking them to click away. You look like you’ve created your site to steal their money, and they won’t stay, much less come back.

So there you have it. Feel free to let me know of other mistakes I’m making. One thing I’ve learned from entering into the world of blogging is you have to have a thick skin. You’re going to post silly things, make typos, or simply draw the ire of a reader or two. And guess what? Someone will probably send you a nasty email. It happens to the most well-intentioned blogger. So if you don’t think you could put all your mistakes out there like I did … well, then blogging just isn’t for you.

Lauren Morrill-Ragusea is the guru (ha!) over at Higher Ed Underground, where she blogs about college life, admissions, news, and academic success. She also blogs at Derby Girl Blog and is a roller derby blogger for Skirt! Please hire her so that she can quit her job, write, and play roller derby for a living.

Top secret FYI: Roller Derby Girl, Lauren Morrill-Ragusea, posted a blog post of mine on her education blog, Higher Ed Underground. It’s about making money on the Internet, and it’s geared towards college students. We swapped posts, and, I have to admit, it was fun :)

Even getting a single visitor to your blog is no small feat, but that doesn’t mean making money online is dead. It’s growing, and it’ll keep growing until every man, woman and child in the world has an Internet connection. The bigger the Web gets, too, the better the opportunities for making money online. Here, then, is our list of the Top 51 best ways to make money online:

1) Blogging. $Unlimited.

It’s the new American dream – writing about what you love and getting paid to do it. Not only are you your own boss, you can work from anywhere there’s an Internet connection. There are two central ways to make money blogging:
•  Pay Per Click ads (using a service like Google Adsense or Adbright). With pay per click ads, you rely on a high number of visitors to read your blog. While reading your content, they might see a text or image ad, and click on it. If they do, you get paid.
•  Affiliate Blogging. Affiliate blogging refers to writing product reviews and posting links to those products. If one of your blog readers clicks a product link and buys the product, you get a commission. See No. 2 below for more information. A great way to test the waters is to set up a free blog using Google’s Blogger or Wordpress.

2) Affiliate Marketing. $Unlimited.

Affiliate marketing turns you into something of a salesperson. You refer to, describe or talk about products, and – in the process – you include links to buy the product on your site. If a user clicks one of those links, and buys the product you mentioned, you get a portion of the sales. Popular affiliate marketing brokers include Commission Junction, ShareaSale and Amazon.com. To get an idea of how it works, check out one of my affiliate sites that lists The Top 100 Best Self-Help Books of All Time, www.selfhelp.fm.

3) Mahalo.com. $10-$15 per search result.

Mahalo offers a “human-powered search engine.” Unlike Google, which generates search results based on algorithms, Mahalo taps a metaverse full of part-time employees who write search results for cash. www.mahalo.com. $10-$15 per search result.

4) Infolinks.com. $Unlimited.

A relatively new way to make money online, Infolinks is a text-based form of advertising that automatically selects keywords on your Web site. When users hover over the underlined keywords, a small ad pops up. If users click on that ad, you get paid. www.infolinks.com.

5) ChaCha.com. $3-$9 hr.

Like Mahalo.com, ChaCha’s attempting to use human brainpower to outwit computers. Using cell phones, or their browsers, ChaCha fans can submit short questions in the form of text messages or voicemail. A few minutes later, a real-world “guide” will send the questioner a free text message answer in response (i.e. What time is “Twilight” playing at XYZ Movie Theater in New York?). You can serve as a guide (someone who answers the sometimes bizarre, sometimes informative questions ChaCha gets) and pull in $3-$9 an hour depending on your speed. ChaCha.com.

6) Writing eBooks. $Unlimited.

Got some specialized knowledge in a particular field? Throw it together as a pdf and sell it online. eBooks can be found on almost every topic imaginable, and they sell particularly well when the knowledge offered by the author is specialized. Don’t let that deter you if you don’t feel like you don’t have any specialized knowledge, though. You can do as much research as time allows. The more in-depth it is, the more you’ll be able to charge. Centerville Web Design in Dayton, Ohio can build you a Web site to promote and market your book.

7) eBay. $Unlimited.

It’s almost a cliche by now, but there are people out there who make six-figure incomes selling products on eBay. Go to auctions or flea markets to try to find overlooked goodies, then mark them up and sell them online. The trick is to find rare products that don’t have much online competition. You might even be able to find a drop shipper (i.e. Doba.com), so you can sell products without the hassle of packaging and shipping them. Ebay.com.

8) Email Newsletter Subscriptions. $Unlimited.

Already got a Web site with lots of excellent content? One way to make some extra money is to offer a premium weekly newsletter only available to members. Several reputable Web sites do this, including Fool.com and Marketing Profs. Of course, you can start from scratch, too, you’ll just have to be prepared for a lot of work with little payoff at the start.

9) Language Instruction. $Unlimited.

One of the most overlooked skills that a lot of people have is the fact that they’re bilingual. You can leverage your language skills by working for an online tutoring service like VerbalPlanet.com. Better yet, you can start your own online language course, giving away early lessons for free, then charging for more advanced lessons.

10) LiveOps.com. $0.25 per minute.

Like to have a more steady paycheck? LiveOps.com gives you the opportunity to serve as a customer service agent taking phone calls from your home computer. Receive orders for pizza, infomercial products and an assortment of other goods that LiveOps has been contracted to take calls for. You could max out at $15 per hour (as they pay $0.25 per minute of talk time), but it’s unlikely you’ll be on the phone for an hour straight. LiveOps.com.

11) Trading Stocks. $Unlimited.

OK. I was hesitant to include this option, but trading stocks from home via the Internet employs several thousand people across the country. They take a variety of approaches (from value investing to daytrading to options and commodities trading). There’s a huge learning curve that market pros refer to as “market tuition” (since you’ll likely loss money at the start), but it is possible to make money trading stocks once you have enough equity built up. I recommend Zecco.com for $4.50 trades (Scottrade charges $8.25, and eTrade charges $12.99). Fool.com offers a great “virtual” exchange in their CAPS community. There you can try you hand at trading stocks before you actually put any money on the line.

12) Domaining. $Unlimited.

Domaining refers to the practice of buying domain names, filling the home page for ads, and waiting for users to click them. It doesn’t sound that sexy, but it’s made a handful of millionaires around the world – all guys and gals who realized that the Internet was going to be huge long before anyone else did. They were the people buying up names like, hotels.com, usedcars.com, planetickets.com, etc. (and, of course, some less toward domain names as well). I was lucky enough to interview one of the heavyweights in the field, Rick Schwartz. Read it for more on the art of domaining.

13) Web Design. $Unlimited.

So nowadays it seems like anyone can throw together a simple Web site, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to look good – and more importantly it doesn’t mean it’s going to be functional. Throw together a Web site that showcases your design skills, and run a few ads on Google. After you build your first few sites, word of mouth should bring you more. Having trouble getting traffic on your Web design site? Build a few for free for schools or nonprofits with condition, of course, that they let you link back to your site. A little goodwill goes a long way.

14) Video Tutorials. $Unlimited.

Some people are auditory learners, some visual, and some things just lend themselves to learning by watching. If you’ve got a talent that makes you a little bit of money, why not show others how to do it, and make even more money in the process. Put together a few hours of video of you rebuilding carburetors, sewing quilts, or putting together secret humus recipes. Chop half the footage up into short clips you can give away on YouTube, MetaCafe or MySpace, and always include a link back to your site where you sell your full downloadable video. If it works, make more! Then hire other people to make even more.

15) iPhone apps. $Unlimited.

If you haven’t heard about the hundreds of programming wizards who have quit their dayjobs after writing incredible iPhone apps, consider yourself lucky. It’s kind of sickening actually; write a single bestselling app, and you can put in your two weeks notice after you get your first check. Ok. It’s not sickening. It’s incredibly awesome. If you don’t have the skills to write an app yourself, you’ve got the brainpower to come up with an idea. After you’ve gotten that far, outsource the development of the app using a Web site like rentacoder.com or elance.com to bring it to fruition.

16) Get a head start on Windows Mobile Apps. $Unlimited.

Maybe the iPhone App market is a little over-saturated. Good news! The Windows Mobile App Store isn’t even open yet. Get your app in early for the best chance of getting noticed. As I mentioned earlier, you don’t have to be a coder to get in on the app market. You just have to have some capital to hire the right coders. Plenty of sites exist where you can do just that (and you’ll even retain the copyright to the code). Try elance.com, rentacoder.com or project4hire.com.

17) Virtual Assistant. $3-$18+ per hour.

I fell in love with the concept of virtual assistant’s after reading Timothy Ferriss’ incredible book, ‘The 4-Hour Workweek.’ There, Ferriss talks about all the bizarre things he’s had his assistants do – mostly to free up his time for living; but occasionally just for fun. He uses them to order flowers for his wife, to put together itineraries, to answer emails. He uses them for just about anything he possibly can. You might be able to use them to streamline your business, or, you could become the virtual assistant who helps other people and organizations get things done. There are plenty of sites out there to get started: odesk.com, officedetails.com and virtualassistants.com are just a few. DumbLittleMan has a great post with more places to hire a virtual assistant.

18) Currency Trading. $Unlimited.

I was even more hesitant to list currency trading as an option than I was trading stocks, but, hey, there are a lot of people who do it. In fact, more money changes hands every day in the currency trading market than any other exchange in the world. Positions are extraordinarily leveraged (since you have to capitalize on fractions of a penny), and that means you can make a lot of money fast. You can also lose far more than you’ve got, too. It’s a fast-paced, sweaty-palmed sort of living, but some people do well. Forex.com is the most well-known currency brokers. I’d ALWAYS recommend a practice account if you’re just starting out.

19) Mechanical Turk. $0.10+ per HIT.

One of the most interesting concepts I’ve come across in recent years, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is designed to allow computer programs access to human intelligence. Using an open API (Application Programming Interface), programs can generate “hits” for humans. HITS are small, often-repetitive tasks that computer programs are unable to do on their own (i.e. describe what’s going on in a photograph). Humans perform the tasks based on what sounds appealing to them, and they get paid for it. The HITS don’t have to be created by computers, though. A lot of businesses and entrepreneurs use HITS to improve their efficiency. Wikipedia’s got a great article on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, or you can start doing HITS right away at Amazon.

20) Online Tutoring. $10+ per hour.

There are hundreds of online-tutoring services out there, from Sylan to Brainfuse to Tutor.com. Sign on to teach whatever topic you know best. Requirements range from “not much” to having a masters degree, and the pay ranges almost as dramatically. Google “online tutoring” to find potential employers or start at Brainfuse.com or Tutor.com (as of this writing, Tutor.com is looking for tutors in Chemistry, Physics, Resume Writing, English, Essay Writing, Vietnamese and Spanish).

21) Write Software $Unlimited.

If you’re well-versed in some popular programming languages (i.e. Python, PHP, C#, ASP, Perl, or the iPhone SDK), there are countless freelancing opportunities online; from rentacoder.com to elance.com to odesk.com. Pay varies wildly, but goes up based on your online reputation. The more positive reviews you’ve got, the more likely someone will be to take a chance on you. Just keep in mind, you’ll be competing with programmers from around the world.

22) Online Consulting $Unlimited.

These days, just about anyone can label themselves a consultant. Making money at it is a little trickier, though. You’ll do best if you’ve got some marketing skills or some extremely in-depth knowledge on something with a big learning curve (i.e. Javascript, Routers, Crystal Reports, Fibre Channel, etc.). Go the traditional route and partner with an online consulting service like ONLC.com to leverage their existing marketing platforms against your skills, or go the new age route on bid on consulting projects at Mavenlink. The most exciting new development in online consulting, though, is Skype Prime. Still in Beta, it’s like the new-age version of the “1-900 number”. It allows you to initiate charges after an introduction with a client who contacts you via Skype.

23) Play Video Games. $Unlimited.

A new trend that’s showing some extraordinary growth is the sale of video game assets. The biggest market is for World of Warcraft where players sell their “gold” and “levels” to well-heeled, time-strapped gamers who would rather pay than play to advance in the game. Other games where you can sell your goodies? Ever Quest, Ever Quest2, Final Fantasy XI, Guild Wars, Lord Of The Rings Online, Lineage 2, Maple Story, Star Wars Galaxies and Warhammer Online. A number of gaming brokerages have sprung up: PowerLevel.net and Gmlvl, Power Leveling to name a few.

24) Web Hosting Reseller. $Unlimited.

One of the allures of making money online is the fact that you can make money while you sleep, and an easy way to get there is by offering a service that clients have to pay for every month. Internet hosting is one of those ways, and you don’t even have to have your own servers. You can now buy “reseller” accounts that allow you sublet your server space to others. Once you get enough clients to cover your costs, you’re making money. The hard part is getting the clients, but it can be done with clever marketing and hard work. Check out reseller accounts at two of my favorite online hosts: Hostgator.com and Greengeeks.com.

25) eLance.com. $Unlimited.

eLance has leveled the playing field for independent contractors. Here, writers, Web designers, programmers, lawyers, and accountants compete with their peers from around the world to get project-based jobs. Business and individuals who need work done post job listings on the site, and contractors (you!) bid on them in an eBay-style auction. If the employer picks you for the job, you get some money up front, and the rest comes in stages or upon completion of the job. If you’re just starting out, remember that reputation is everything. If you haven’t done any jobs on the site yet, it’s going to be a lot harder to win your bids than if you’d completed 50, all with rave reviews. Learn more: eLance.com.

26) Mail-order Transmission Repair? $Unlimited.

This one’s kind of tricky to get your mind around, but I’m trying to convince you that the Web is like the Wild West. If you can think it up and follow it through, you might succeed. So, this story comes from a friend of a friend. Based in Toledo, Ohio, he started a mail-in transmission repair business on the Web. He didn’t know a lot about repairing transmissions, so he partnered with a local auto repair shop. A year later, he was getting transmissions mailed to him from around the world. He had them sent to the body shop who would repair them, then mail them back to the customer. Soon, he was making a nice profit, and not long after that, he sold the business and made an even nicer profit. Now, I think he’s traveling and trying to figure out what to work on next. He’s living up to Timothy Ferriss’ concept of a “4-Hour Workweek” (and I’m kind of jealous).

27) Freelance Writing $Unlimited.

When you get down to it, the single most important currency on the Internet is content. It’s king. If you have the most functional site in the world without any descriptions, no one’s ever going to find it. Content is how you get people to your blog, Web site, even your Facebook page. Because of this, a lot of sites are willing to pay decent money for you to create content for them. Pay ranges from borderline-sweat-shop to excellent, and – if you’re good – it can have a snowball effect. Once you get your name out there, people will start finding you to write for them. The following sites offer lots of writing opportunities: elance.com, guru.com, odesk.com, hubpages.com and squidoo.com. Hongkiat.com also has a great post on 26 sites that pay you to blog.

28) Etsy.com $Unlimited.

Back in 2006, when Etsy.com was finally getting a foothold in the mainstream, I got the opportunity to interview Robert Kalin. Etsy.com was his baby – a site he was working on as much as 18 hours a day, seven days a week. The concept was simple: an ebay for handmade goodies. It dovetailed nicely with the anti-mass-produced DIY culture that’s been catching steam, and now the site pulls in nearly 3.5 million unique visitors every month. “Where you get your goods has a direct impact on the world,” Kalin said. “Humans can go either one way or the other way and find a sustainable way to help the world grow. I think Etsy can sort of help that along.” As the DIY marketplace grows, so too do the potential customers for your goodies. List your handmade items, and you just might pocket some cash at the prices you set. Online at etsy.com.

29) Sell dropship/wholesale products $Unlimited.

One of my friends in Florida started making a decent side income using dropshippers to sell skateboard and hunting supplies. Here’s how it works: you build an online store. You do all the marketing (i.e. buying Google Adwords ads), and you process orders for products. When someone orders an item from you, you place an order with your dropshipper (sometimes this process can be automated), and they take care of packaging/shipping your product. It works particularly well for niche Web sites. The best three dropship/wholesale sites are Worldwide Brands, Salehoo, and Doba.

30) Start a Social Networking Site $Unlimited.

If you’re truly passionate about something, you might have the stamina and drive necessary to get a niche social networking site off the ground. There are lots of services (some paid, some free) out there that let you build your own version of Facebook or MySpace. Target very specific audiences – i.e. elderly Linux lovers – and, best of all, serve up ads on all the pages you deem adworthy. Get started at Elgg.org, Ning.com, Spree, or Mahara. Vivalogo also offers a list of the Top 40 free downloadable social networks.

31) Bartering $Unlimited.

If you haven’t heard of Kyle MacDonald and his red paperclip, prepare to be enlightened. On July 12, 2005, he traded one red paperclip for a fish-shaped pen. Fourteen trades later, he moved into a brand new house – all from one paperclip. Yes, bartering is the new black, and you can do it, too, especially with all the barter sites that have cropped up, from U-Echange to Craigslist to Freecycle to Trashbank. Check out Discovery.com for The Best Online Sites for Bartering.

32) Build a Niche Store $Unlimited.

One of the biggest hurdles to starting an online, product-based business is getting your products in front of the people who want to buy them. That’s why it makes sense to operate within an existing framework. One good service is BuildaNicheStore.com. The service works hand-in-hand with eBay’s Partner Network, so that you can build a store around the products already being sold on eBay. You’re basically acting like an eBay affiliate, but their software makes it easy to target niches and present it in a pleasing way. If someone buys a product after clicking one of your links, you get money.

33) Tourism Web Site $Unlimited.

If you leave in a medium to large-sized city, you probably know the lay of the land a lot better than out-of-towners. Why not start a blog then that you update regularly with reviews, lists and photographs of the top tourist attractions in your town? Tourism ads pay particularly well, especially if you start reviewing hotels, restaurants, airports and car rental facilities; in addition to the museums, and historic attractions you love. It’s a great way to leverage your existing knowledge and provide something very worthwhile for other people. You can get rolling free blog hosting platform like Wordpress or Blogger.

34) Online Contests and Sweepstakes $Unlimited.

So, this might not be the most practical way to make money online, but there are definitely some reputable contests out there that can put some cash in your wallet. Some of my favorite contests are the Threadless T-Shirt Contest (earn $2,500 if your shirt design gets picked), the ThinkGeek Action Shot ($100 for a photo of you with a ThinkGeek product), and the ThinkGeek T-Shirt/Logo Contest ($250). The trick is to pay attention to offers like this at your favorite online Web sites/vendors. Often, there isn’t as much competition as you might think.

Also: About.com regularly updates their Contest and Sweepstakes blog and OnlineSweepstakes.com posts some 200+ contests per day, many of which just require an email address as an entry fee. Be careful of scams, however, and never give out sensitive information (i.e. credit cards, SSN numbers). I’d also recommend setting up a free alternate email address to link with your contest entries.

35) Multilevel Marketing $Unlimited.

I’ll be honest, multilevel marketing seems like a painful way to make money. I hadn’t put much time into investigating how legit it is, but it seems like everyone talks about it, so I thought I’d do just enough research to write something intelligent about it. MLMs are companies or providers who reward people who sell specific products. Sellers are highly-motivated to get other people to sell the products, too, as they’ll get a cut of those sales. In this way, it’s got a hierarchical rewards structure. If you get a lot of people to sell products for you, and they get a lot of people to sell for them, you’re going to start making a lot of money without a lot of effort. Here’s an independent MLM ratings company (they base evaluations on the number of search queries performed on specific MLM programs each month): MLMRankings.com. At the moment, Avon, Tupperware and Longaberger top the list.

36) Freelance Graphic Artist $Unlimited.

The Web’s fueled by text and art, and while just about anyone can produce text, not everyone can make art. If you’re skilled at Photoshop, Illustrator, AutoCAD, Corel or any other advanced graphics program, you can probably find steady work through some of the bigger pay-per-project sites like elance, odesk and guru.com. If you’ve already got a lot of high-quality images (particularly vector), you can upload them at sites like iStockPhoto.com, and, perhaps, make some passive income on the side.

37) Audiobooks $Unlimited.

As we move further away from radios and CDs, Audiobooks and podcasts are quickly becoming the preferred method for taking in audio-based text. If you’ve got a lot of great content on your Web site, why not turn it into an audiobook to sell on Amazon, iTunes, and on your own site? The competition isn’t as fierce as it is in the book world, and you’ll quickly find that’s it another great avenue to get your name out in the world. You’ll have to get a copyright and sign up as an artist at CDBaby.com to get listed on iTunes, and Audible.com requires that you’ve published at least five audiobooks before you can sell with them. As a huge audiobook fan (with an iPhone), I can tell you they’re addictive. I’ve even paid up to $18 for audiobooks in iTunes.

38) Amazon.com $Unlimited.

The 16th most-visited site in the world, Amazon.com is one of the best selling platforms in the world (eBay ranks at No. 9). If you’ve got a large collection of books or CDs, or even other goods like clothing or printers that you could stand to part with, Amazon offers a good way to do it. Sign up for a seller account, and start shipping your goodies across the country. One word of note: Amazon’s particularly competitive when it comes to popular/well-known books. If you’re looking to sell books online as a long-term income source, then, visit flea markets, auctions and classified listings where you can find rare, out-of-prints books with odd titles. A book on African blue parrots might not sound great, but it’s probably worth 20 times as much as your copy of the Da Vinci Code (you just might have to wait longer to find a buyer). Get info on Amazon Seller Accounts.

39) Podcasting $Unlimited.

Podcasting provides an intimate to reach a passionate audience in your niche. Think about it; if someone’s willing to take the time to download and listen to your podcast, they’re pretty motivated to learn about your particular topic. That means, it’s a great place to talk about some of your other products (so long as you’re still providing great content in your podcast). Better yet, though, the value of podcasting grows over time. After you’ve built up a library of podcasts, you’ll have something you can package for sale. A great example of this is the Internet Business Mastery Podcast by Sterling and Jay. They give away a podcast every week, but you gain access to their full collection of podcasts after joining their “academy.” Once you’ve recorded several episodes, you’ll be ready to upload your feed in iTunes.

40) Tech Support $10-$12.

If you’re the one your friends turn to when they have computer problems, you’d probably be perfect for online tech support. Companies like Accolade Support pay virtual tech support agents $10-$12 per hour to help frustrated clients figure out why their Internet connection isn’t working or their software isn’t behaving properly. “A key component of this is assuring the customer that you will help them, calming them down, and resolving the situation for them when possible,” Accolade says.

41) Mystery Shopper $Unlimited.

This isn’t an online only job, but mystery shopping does get you out of a cubicle and into your car – not to mention cruising the aisles of some hopefully swanky shopping outlets. In fact, I work with a guy who regularly performs “shops” at some nationally-known steak and seafood restaurants. He even lands weekend resort trips in the mountains. It’s important to note that you will have to do a lot of legwork on your jaunts (i.e. writing down names, times, prices, appearances, etc.), but it’s a great way to get free food, vacations and products. Advanis, based in Canada is a good place to start. Read the description here, or visit their careers page here.

42) Conduct Phone Research $Unlimited.

Here’s another offering from Advanis (mentioned above): conducting phone research calls. A job that pays hourly, you’re required to have good customer service skills, high speed Internet, a headset, and typing speeds of 30+ words per minute. You also might be able to write off a portion of your mortgage or rent. Not good for late sleepers, as Advanis’ interviewers start work at 5 a.m. EST.

43) ClickNwork.com $Unlimited.

ClickNwork’s a lot like eLance.com (jobs on a project-by-project basis), but you’ve got to pass an in-depth test to land a spot on their squad. Once you’re in, you’ll have access to all sorts of home-based opportunities that are tailored to your background and experience; things like performing Web queries, providing analysis, consulting, data entry and phone interviews. Try the test today.

44) Ether.com $Unlimited.

Ether.com provides the framework for you to sell your knowledge to others. It works in two ways: 1) You can sign up for an Ether phone number. With it, clients will be able to prepay for one-on-one phone consulting time with you before they actually call. Alternatively, you can lock content behind a password. If users click to buy your content, they’ll pay Ether who will route most of the money to you (they charge a 15% commission), and then Ether will display the content. Essentially, they’re worrying about payment processing and backend storage of your content, while you worry about marketing and serving clients. Learn more about Ether.

45) Verify Phone Calls $8.50-$9 per hour.

When a telemarketer calls you with an order and you decide you’d like to buy what they’re selling, that company is required to get third-party verification – namely, someone else to verify who the customer is and what they want to buy. BSG, based in Colorado, has been providing third-party verification for 23 years. If you’ve got customer service experience, they’ll likely hire you to work from home verifying orders. Pay is $8.50 per hour for English verification and $9 for bilingual verification. Learn more on their careers page.

46) Musical Transcription $Unlimited.

If you’re good at reading and transcribing music, there are a handful of companies that hire freelance music transcribers. Among them? Cherry Lane Music, and they’re currently looking for pop/rock guitar transcribers and piano arrangers. The company also hires editors, to verify transcriptions, then they throw together books you’ve probably seen in your local music shop. They have titles like, “1,001 Blues Licks” and “Monster Book of Rock Guitar Tab.” Learn more at Cherry Lane Music.

47) Extended Warranty Calls $9 hour.

Ever wonder if those lifetime product guarantees are legit? Looks like they are because there’s at least one company that provides call centers to handle inbound warranty calls. New Customer Services Companies, Inc., pays $9 for home-based customer care reps. The company offers paid training so you learn how to handle customer queries and complaints for the various products NEW serves. Apply online.

48) Review Software $1-$50 per review.

Software Judge pays techies to review software, from games to in-depth Windows crash protection software. Download it, use it, and review it honestly, and they’ll pay you when they publish your review. Be warned, though, if you’re only landing $1 or so per review, it’s going to take a lot of work to get your first check. They require that you have at least $200 in your account before they pay out. Still, if you’re a software geek, I imagine you’ll be more than happy to review new goodies. Learn more.

49) Become a Guide at About.com $1,000+ per month.

About.com’s guides are among the best-paid freelance writers on the Web. They actually get a base pay, with incentives for things like page-view growth. You’ll be required to maintain a blog that’s updated 3+ times per week, and you’ll have to crank out a major article every week. Some guides even clear six figures. Still, it’s not that easy to get in. They prefer hands-on, professional-grade experience in writing or working in a particular field. Learn more on their “Be a Guide” page.

50) Design Greeting Cards $Unlimited.

Recycled Paper Greetings adds more than 3,000 new cards to it’s product line every year, and all of them are created by freelancers. The cards are just like the ones you see at your local Drug Mart – each revolving around a specific event: a bday, perhaps, Valentines Day, anniversaries, etc. Put together up to 10 physical cards (5″x7″) and mail them in (digital submissions not allowed). If they like your design, they’ll be in touch to discuss payment and procedures.

51) SEO $Unlimited.

Search Engine Optimization refers to the process of improving a Web site’s “visibility” to search engines with the goal of giving a site a higher page rank. Work on a job-by-job basis through sites like eLance.com or oDesk.com, or – since the nature of the work takes place online – you can find work-at-home opportunities at specific companies. One source: PartnerCentric.com in Santa Barbara, Calif. Their job board is updated regularly with spots for sales reps, SEO experts, and pay-per-click specialists.

It’s difficult to grasp the power of XML without understanding what metadata is. Metadata is simply data that describes data. A good example of this is HTML (the Web code that’s allowing you to view this blog). If you’ve seen HTML at all, you’re familiar with some basic tags; these include things like <head>, <body> and <p>. These tags are simply data or information that a Web browser uses to decide how particular lines of text should be formatted. Words that fall between an open bold tag (<b>) and a close bold tag (</b>), for example, are displayed as bold text by the browser. That’s pretty basic stuff. But there’s power in it.

Think about it: why do people bother making text bold? They do it because the words in bold are important. They represent titles, dates, names, etc. So, if you have a document that’s filled with plain and bold text, you’ve got a very rudimentary form of metadata. The plain text is probably less important than the bold text. And, since you’ve got <bold> tags in your data (and content between those <bold> tags), you can manipulate the important text.

This is where things start getting exciting. What if you had a document filled with information, but somewhere inside that information were a bunch of important dates that had been made bold? Suddenly, you could use some search tools (like Ultraedit) to extract all the dates from that document. Then, you could import those dates into a spreadsheet, and use them as a dayplanner.

XML takes these baby steps and starts running with them. See, XML is extensible. That’s where the language got its name: Extensible Markup Language. Once you make a form of metadata like HTML extensible, you’re no longer forced to use very simplistic tags like <b>. You can actually describe the data that’s you’re wrapping inside tags.

For example, if you have a bunch of important dates in your document, you can suddenly wrap them in much more useful tags. Instead of <b>, you could use a tag like <date>. Then, for all of your titles, you could use tags like <title>. See, XML doesn’t lock you into using one set of standardized tags.

Wait a minute, you’re saying, that’s all good and well, but a Web browser can’t interpret tags like <date>. You’re right there, but the lovely folks who brought us XML thought of that, and they came up with a way for us to “transform” our XML documents into whatever format we want whenever we want to transform them. We can do that by using XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations).

Now, let’s say you’ve got an XML document filled with tens of thousands of lines of text, information and tags. You want some of that text to get formatted for your Web page, but you also want some of it to be formatted for a PDF book, and yet more of it you’d like to use as a database. No problem. If you’ve got some stylesheets laying around and an XSLT processor (of which there are free versions like Saxon), you can alter your data easily.

You can write a stylesheet to transform all of your data into HTML. For example, you can convert your <date> tags into <b> tags and all of your <title> tags into <i> tags for italics, and you can keep adding from there. You can wrap everything in <body> and <p> tags, and suddenly you’re ready to throw your data on the Web. You can also format your data for PDF (by outputting XSL-FO), or you can simply use your XML document as a database and query it whenever you like.

Sooooo, the beauty of XML is that it can be used in multiple ways. HTML is good for the Web, but pretty lousy when it comes to using it in other media. Also, HTML doesn’t truly describe the data it’s displaying. XML does, and it still lets you manipulate your data with ease.

These factors are why XHTML is getting so much hype these days. XHTML (which stands for Extensible Hypertext Markup Language), can be used for Internet browsers, but it’s also valid XML. That means, it can be used by other data processors as well (such as Saxon, which I mentioned earlier). Once you allow for that, you’re suddenly able to manipulate your data much easier and put it to use in other media (often with minimal effort). Therein, lies the full power of XML.

Thirsty for more on XML? Check out XML.com, one of my favorite resources when I’m stuck on a problem. Or get a book like Beginning XML (published by Wrox, 2007).

If you’re at all interested in making money off your Web site or blog, you should have a good idea of what you can expect to make. Some of the most successful bloggers and site owners have been pretty forthcoming about their income:

1) PlentyofFish.com, $3.6 million+ per year. Marcus Frind, the founder of dating site www.plentyoffish.com, entertains 900,000 visitors a day. That makes his site more popular than giants like eHarmony and Match.com in the U.S. (presumably because his services are free … at least for now). Frind wrote his own code and handles all technical support. His only employee? His wife who answers customer emails. Starting in 2009 he plans to hire a database administrator, and more support staff as mentioned on his blog, The Paradigm Shift. (Original source: JohnChow.com).

2) Shoemoney.com, $1.6 million+ per year. Regarded as the most-read Web site on making money online, Shoemoney.com has captured 20+ percent of the industry market share (followed closely by JohnChow.com). See the pic at left for an indication of how much he’s made on Google ads in the past. He’s branched out now, though, and makes a large chunk of his income off his own internal marketing of Shoemony Tools. (Original source: JohnChow.com).

3) JohnChow.com, $360,000+ per year. JohnChow.com is run by an Internet entrepreneur who makes it his business to tell others “how to make money online.” I’ve based my $360,000 figure on Chow’s October 2008 “Blog Income Report,” when he made $34,000. I averaged down to $30,000 and multiplied that number by 12 months. In all likelihood, his income fluctuates up or down, so the figure is a rough estimate. According to his report, the bulk of his money comes from affiliate ads.

How likely is it your site will be raking in that kind of cash? Not very, of course, but it’s helpful to know what’s possible. In all reality, monetizing your site will depend on a number of factors, which I’ve ranked in order of importance below:

1) Powerful, targeted content. Yes, powerful, targeted content is more important than high traffic. When I interviewed “Domain King”, Rick Schwartz, he said he’d buy a domain if it got six hits a year, so long as they were the right kind of hits. He used the example of one of his low-traffic domains, www.cubiczirconia.com. It doesn’t get a lot of traffic, but the people who type that domain into their browser know what they want, so they’re likely to click one of the cubic zirconia-related ads he serves up. For one thing, his audience knows how to spell cubic zirconia. And, more importantly, when they buy cubic zirconia, it’s not cheap. That means the money he gets when he ads leads to a conversion is quite substantial. If you’ve got powerful, targeted content, you can offer relevant ads, and that’s the surest way to get clicks and conversions.

2) High traffic on a sticky site. We’ve seen that low traffic is OK in some, highly-targeted instances, but if your blog or Web site is geared at a general audience, say gamers, you’re going to have to compete with a lot of big-budget sites. Slowly and surely building a large audience should be your primary goal. As with any form of advertising, it’s a numbers game, and in the online realm, you’re doing exceedingly well if you can 5% of your visitors to click on an ad. Most sites get about one half of one percent of visitors to click-through. The stickier your site (meaning the longer people stay) will also determine how effective your ads are. If a visitor swoops in for 10 seconds and swoops back out, you’re just throwing away bandwidth.

3) Ads with pricy keywords. This is one of the most important factors in monetizing your site, and, unfortunately, it’s a factor noobs tend to ignore. If your site is about rubber bands, then the ads you serve up need to be related to rubber bands. If one of your rubber band ads results in a sale, you might get 10 cents to add to your bank account. If your site is about diamonds, and someone buys a wedding band through your ad, you could have $50 or more to add to your bank account.

One of the first sites I built in an attempt to make money online was a holiday gift guide. I filled 10 Web pages with 100 of the hottest gifts for the holiday season and linked out to other sites like Amazon.com. Then, I bought Google ads to generate traffic (at the ridiculous cost of $2 per hit) and waited to see what happened. Even with that highly-targeted content and lots of traffic on Cyber Monday, I still ended up with just a four percent conversion rate. That’s when I realized that you can’t expect to buy traffic and convert it all to sales (especially when you go after a broad audience). You’re going to get visitors the old-fashioned way: with great niche content, innovative marketing, and a lot of work.

If you’re not happy with your current ad conversion rates, just visit one of your competitors sites — one that gets more traffic than yours. Chances are, they’re doing something (or a lot of things) better than you, and nothing’s stopping you from using their ideas … so long as you don’t pilfer their content. Genius, after all, is the child of imitation.

To learn more about domainer Rick Schwartz, visit my post, “What is Domaining and How Can It Help Me Quit My Dayjob?” If you’re already up and running, don’t neglect the power of blog titles in driving traffic to your site. Check out my post, “How to Write Blog Titles that Get Clicks; Confessions from a Former Journalist.”

Blogs are often written by one- or two-person teams with little professional editing or oversight. Newspapers, on the other hand, are staffed with droves of editors. In fact, some of the biggest papers in the country push stories through eight editors or more before publishing them on paper. Somewhere on that totem pole of newspaper editors sits the noble copy editor.

In a former life, that was my job at the Dayton Daily News in Dayton, Ohio. Responsibilities? Lay out stories on the page (we were using Quark at the time), edit stories for length and content, and write headlines in the space allotted for each story. That last part about “space allotted” is key. Sometimes in a newspaper, you’ve got room for five-word headlines, sometimes 10, and sometimes two. In the parlance of the time, it was our job to make the headlines “pop” no matter what the length.

If I wasn’t able to write a headline I was happy with, I’d lean over to one of my coworkers (many of whom had been in the industry for 20 years or more), and ask for help. Sometimes, there would be a group of us standing around a computer screen trying to figure out the best headline for a story featured on page A1.

I tell you all this to stress the eternal and undying importance of headlines. Newspapers have this figured out in their particular niche. Bloggers often don’t. Your headline isn’t just a descriptor of what’s inside your story, it’s a call to action. It’s a flag that tells the reader something important lies inside, and they’d be remiss if they didn’t check it out.

Of course, newspaper headlines and blog headlines are different machines with different goals. In a print product, you don’t have to convince the reader to buy your newspaper, since it probably showed up in their driveway that morning. Bloggers need to sell themselves with each and every headline. Newspaper headlines are hampered by design goals. If you can’t fit five words in a headline, you’re going to have to make do with the space for the two words you’ve been allotted. Bloggers have more space and flexibility to say the things they want … and that means their headlines should be BETTER than anything they read in print.

As newspapers struggle to make the transition to the online world, one of their biggest failings is to capitalize on the power of headlines. Too often, they simply take the headline they used for print, retag it for the Web and run. Big mistake. The rules have changed. It’s like getting drafted by a professional baseball team and showing up for practice with an aluminum bat.

It takes time to make the transition, though, and some newspapers ARE reworking the way they approach headlines in the online world. For instance, I tromped over to the New York Times and looked at their “Most Popular” stories. One headline in particular jumped out at me, “Heaven for the Godless?” I followed the link and found an opinion piece on a new survey that showed that 70 percent of Americans believed you could make it heaven by “following a religion other than their own.”

Contrast that headline with this particularly repugnant one: “Bob Herbert: Stop Being Stupid.” I haven’t clicked through to figure out what “Stop Being Stupid” is about because I don’t want to be told I’m stupid. My guess is no one else wants to either.

So, we’ve come to a crossroad: what makes the first headline better than the second? For one, the first headline probably appeals to Americans more than any other nationality. We’ll always choose the path of least resistance to get a grand reward. So, if there’s a way to get to heaven without having to practice a religion, well, I’d like to know about it.

Perhaps the most important thing that makes the first headline better than the second, though, is the fact that it’s controversial. It presents a paradox that feels like it’s daring us to learn more. There is no wiggle room for free thought when you’ve got a headline that says “Stop Being Stupid.”

That brings me to the reason for this post, a guide to writing good headlines from a guy who spent two years doing it five days a week:

1. Intrigue the reader with the promise of more knowledge. We read for one reason: to educate ourselves. It doesn’t matter if we’re seeking info on the gravitational pull of Neptune or the hip gyrations of Shakira, we read because we want to learn more about a particular topic. If you promise readers they’re going to learn about something they’ve never encountered, then they’re far more likely to click your link.

2. Don’t make the reader feel stupid. Of course, this applies just as much to the content of your post as it does to the headline, but readers don’t want to be berated about anything. It’s like a teacher who believes humiliation will help slow learners. You’re more likely to produce the opposite effect. Positive headlines are always more effective than negative ones.

3. Accentuate the controversial. We live in a postmodern world. Nothing’s cut and dry anymore, and it’s easy to find two sides to any story. If that’s the case, don’t shortchange your readers by choosing one side of the story. Find the gray area of the pool and dive right in. That’s where the juicy stuff is.

4. Stay away from puns. I’ll never forget when I was a cub reporter at a small daily paper in North Carolina, The Rocky Mount Telegram. One of my co-workers wrote a military story he was particularly proud of. It had something to do with a soldier recounting his days on the battlefield. After he turned the story in, he came over and said, “I hope the copy desk doesn’t write a cheesy headline for my story. I think it’s one of the first stories I’d be willing to put in my portfolio.” When we finally saw the headline, he groaned, and I started laughing. It read, “Tanks for the Memories.” Puns are the easiest ways to trivialize any topic. If you’re afraid you might be dancing on the line of propriety, you need to pick something more direct.

5. Choose words that “pop.” OK. I’m not a big fan of the word “pop,” but it gets the idea across. Your headlines need to use powerful, active words in the present-tense. Sometimes, all this takes is a trip to the thesaurus at Merriam-Webster. Replace lackluster words with words that punch your readers in their bellies. Another way to find intriguing headlines, is to go to the New York Times Bestseller lists. The books that stand out there not only have unique content, but they often have unique, brandable titles, too. Books like Barack Obama’s, “The Audacity of Hope,” or Artie Lange’s, “Too Fat to Fish.” Both of them use words that don’t crop up that often (”fat” and “audacity”).

6. Accept that you’re a writer and words are your only tool. Too often bloggers look at things in terms of numbers: how many posts they can produce, how many readers they can get, how many clicks they garner. But you’ve got to remember that first and foremost, you’re a writer. I’m going to repeat that again, you’re a writer. The only tool writers have at their disposal are words. So since you’ve chosen to be a writer, you’re going to have to use words properly. Writing a headline in a hurry means you could end up with typos or missing prepositions. There’s no better way to get ignored than by posting something that looks like it was cobbled before you collapsed in bed. Take time to craft your headlines. Newspapers do it because they realize that headlines are the single most important entry point to any story. Bloggers would be well-served to do the same.

Just getting started in Web publishing? Check out my post on picking your domain name, “How to Pick a Domain Name that Ruins Your Web Site.” Your domain name is the only that might be more important than your headlines. Contact Fred Marion at fred(at)webpublishing.me.