Some Knowledge

The common business card originated in 15th century China as a calling card presented when visiting some important person.  The idea caught on in the western world in the 17th century.  Today, almost any business person is likely to have a card with contact information and basic information on the business they are in.

The business card is a very basic form of advertising.  It can be used to promote a business to potential customers.  The kind of information you will want on a business card depends on what you are trying to achieve with the card.  You will of course want to have the name of your company.  You will want the name of the representative who distributes the card and his or her contact information such as phone number or email.  Depending on the impression you are trying to achieve, you may also want to have some background graphic or fancy illustration.

There are many companies that produce business cards.  A simple web search will turn up thousands.  Many sites offer introductory deals on cards that will provide a certain number for free if you pay shipping.  Most office supply shops sell pre-punched business card blanks that you can print on your own printer.  If you are really cheap, like me, you can buy blank card stock in reams and cut the cards out with a razor knife.

It is a good idea, once you get your cards made up, to make a habit of carrying a supply of them with you wherever you go.  When you are involved with a new client in your business dealings, be sure to offer them a card so they will have your contact information for future reference.  You might go to different places and strike up conversations with different people, then offer them your card.  In some countries, such as Japan, there is a standardized procedure for exchange of business cards.

Depending on your business, you might have different venues for distributing your contact information.  Comic book shops might send a person to a comic book convention to distribute business cards.  A writer might go to a writing conference and distribute his email and website on a business card.  There are conferences and conventions for many different businesses.  You want to find places where you can make contacts with associates, competitors, and customers.

You might consider making up some simple business cards if you are thinking of promoting a website.  The card might have the website’s name, the URL, and a line describing the site.  You may or may not want to include your own name and contact information on this card.  You might pass out your promotional cards in the streets, or you could approach different businesses with bulletin boards and ask them if you might display your cards.  It is important to be polite when distributing cards to strangers who may have no interest in your business.  Do not appear pushy.  If you are promoting something that will be useful to people, they will be happy to take your information.

The business card is an established means for maintaining contact in the business world.  It is a handy reminder of a company that has provided services to you in the past.  If you receive a lot of cards, it might be helpful to have a file folder for them where you can organize your contacts.  A wallet can become overcrowded with cards quickly, and is not the ideal way to store these cards.  If you are going into business for yourself, or if you work for a large corporation, consider having some cards made.  The simple business card can be a valuable tool for growing and promoting your enterprise.

eBiz-U is a company that offers Amazon.com affiliate marketing websites.  They give you a selection of online stores and host the websites.  Right now they are having a Spring special, with the usual $75 setup fee being reduced to $40.  Hosting for your site runs $19.95 a month.  You can have your own domain name or use one from the eBiz-U site.

I read over the FAQ and some of the other info and looked into what kind of store this place sets up for their customers.  It seems they set up a site that sells just about anything offered by Amazon.com.  Amazon also handles the credit card payments so you will not need a merchant account.  The site includes Google Adsense ads, and you get revenue from clickthroughs on advertising as well as commission on affiliate sales.

If you are looking for a simple way to set up an online business, this seems to be a pretty good opportunity.  You will have to handle promotion of your site and the day to day running of finances, but pretty much everything else is included with this service.  Amazon handles all shipping and returns, and unless you sell your own products, which is also possible, you will not have to handle customer service.  You will of course have to take care of taxes and the subscription costs for this service, but aside from that this seems like a simple solution to going into business on the Internet.

There are many markets and venues for articles you might write.  In the old days, before the Internet, the few places to publish articles were newspapers and magazines.  You would contract work from an editor and produce an article on a given topic, and then you would get a check.  Things work a little differently today.

There is a much larger market for articles in the online world.  The billions of websites all are looking for content.  The hundreds of millions of blogs all post and generate content of various kinds of writing.  Then there are ezine distribution sites and all the commercial sites that all publish a lot of articles.  If you look for article marketing in any web search you will find an endless stream of data.  It seems everybody is looking for interesting, original content to publish on the web.

How does a person get paid for writing articles on the web?  It all boils down to the same strategy of selling something.  Money enters the equation when there is some product that you charge money for.  You might only use the article as bait to draw a customer’s attention to some product.  You might offer to sell a person an ebook you have created after they look at your original article.  There are many angles to the economic aspect of writing articles.

One website I saw today sells link-building articles.  They charge a lot of money to write an article that has something to do with your website, then promote and post that article to many online article directories.  A 750 word article might cost $700 from this agency.  If I could get $700 for every article I have on this blog I could take a year off and go on vacation somewhere expensive.

The idea behind writing articles for money is to write good articles that attract attention to your income-producing website.  If you want to look at writing as a job, you can always try to sell articles to websites and magazines for some cash.  There are many freelancing sites online that list writing jobs.  The problem with these is that they often advertise work that does not pay well.  I have seen people advertising a job writing an entire book for some publisher that pays as little as $100 for an entire book.  Some of the advertisements do not even list a price, but tell the writers to bid on projects.  This is just not profitable.

One place you can get paid for writing is Helium.com.  They give a small percentage of their profits from ppc advertising on their site after you post an article.  You can also bid on jobs for magazines and other article buyers that are listed in the marketplace.  The problem with Helium is that it pays very little money.  It is a good place to get some practice writing, though, and you can get feedback on your articles from other writers.

Writing is an enjoyable thing to do.  You can learn a lot about the world just by trying to write articles about various things.  It is good practice in the use of language for communication.  You might have to look into various business schemes if you are going to try to make money with writing.  There are many opportunities to cash in on creating content these days, and you are no longer limited by the restrictions of working for a paper publication.  Use the tools of the web to find your own way in the business of writing, and you will be able to enjoy your work and make some money.

If you have a business and you are looking for publicity for your product or service, you might consider issuing a press release to the media.  You will need to target the editor of the news media to which you want to send your release.  This will take some research.  Find the person who handles stories in your field.  You might want to make a phone call to the agency to find out who this person is.  You will also need to get enough information on your product that will allow a writer to write an article based on your information.

Say for instance that you have a new product that you are trying to sell.  What about this product makes it new or different from what is already available?  Where can people purchase this product?  How much does this product cost?  What are the advantages of owning this product compared to owning something sold by a competitor?

You will want to answer any questions that a consumer of your product might ask.  You will want to have an angle that shows your product as something new and newsworthy.  Once you have your press kit together, it is time to start approaching the media.

News agencies are always looking for stories.  They sell advertising to make money.  You will want your story to be a bit different than an advertisement.  The fact that you sell some product is not necessarily news.  That your product has some new or different feature, that is news.  Write up a press release detailing what is new or different about your offering.  State what it is about your situation that would be interesting to readers or viewers of a possible story.  Give contact information so you can meet with the media to further promote your story.

You will always want to be honest in any news release.  If you are caught promoting something based on bogus information, people will not want to talk to you.  Do not get the reputation of promoting vapor, or pointless news stories.  Be honest about what you are promoting and give good information.  When you are meeting with the reporter offer all the helpful information you can so that he can write a good story.

If you have a news story about your company that might appeal to a wider audience, you might consider sending a press release to a news agency like Reuters or the Associated Press.  If your story is picked up by a news agency it might be carried by a lot of different papers and television stations.  News agencies are the big time in the press.  They are the distributors of information to a hungry media.

Even if you do not work for a big time corporation, you still might consider using a press release to promote your business.  It is a bit like free advertising, getting a story in the press.  A press release can generate more results for you than an advertisement though, because people give a higher authority to a news story than they do to an advertisement.  Just tell the truth about what you are offering and provide useful, interesting information.  A news story, a favorable news story, can generate a lot of business if it is done well.  It will take some effort and interaction to get something published with a press release, but the results might be well worth the time invested in this pursuit.

If you are looking for keywords to ask Google to “find scam” these are some good ones.  The economy is not doing so well.  People are losing their jobs.  Gasoline is going up every day.  It would be nice to work from home and make enough money to provide for your family.  It would be nice to have the security of running your own business.  People know this.  It is obvious information.  That’s why there are so many scams when you look for these terms.

If you want to make a profit in any business you will have to take in more money than you spend on procuring your product.  What you do as a business depends on what you are interested in.  I have spent a lot of time looking for such business opportunities and all I have found are people wanting to take advantage of persons who are maybe not doing so well financially.  If you want to go into business from your home, get a book on business at the book store and read.  You might even want to take classes at the community college in business.

It’s a sad state of affairs when you are looking for some way to support yourself and all you find is people wanting to sell you useless information or take your money from you for nothing.  There are still work-at-home scams being run that ask you to buy parts for some product you assemble at home, then don’t pay you for the products you make.  I’m surprised that with the open nature of information on the net that law enforcement doesn’t shut these scammers down.  It would not take a genius to find any amount of interstate fraud.

What’s most disturbing about some of these sites is that they try to lure you into running scams yourself.  They are making some money by selling some useless information or system to people.  Then they try to sell you a package where you can sell the same kind of useless information or system to other people.  There are a lot of people who take part in these scams.  That’s why there are so many bogus websites on the net.  If you want to make money from your home set up your own business, obey all the tax laws, and keep track of all your finances.  Learn all you can before you start.  If you are clueless try the SBA for more information.

Trolling along on the net yesterday afternoon, I came across another free ebook.  After supplying an email address and a first name and waiting a good long time for a reply, I finally downloaded this trove of information.  As Adobe opened up the PDF file I noticed that the entire plan was summarized on page two of this document.

The money making plan went like this:

• Open an account with Clickbank.
• Represent some product that is offered.
• Offer this product as an affiliate on your website.
• Take money from product sales and buy advertising from Google.
• Keep buying advertising with profits until you reach high levels of sales.
• Siphon off profits to generate income.

This seemed like the standard plan purported as a business model for any get rich on the net program.  I can’t believe there is that much money in sales of an ebook.  After all, I got this ebook for free.  Anyone who goes to the Clickbank website can get the same business plan directly from Clickbank.

I have looked at some of the products offered on Clickbank.  I would not feel comfortable selling any such products.  This is why:  I wouldn’t use any of these products myself.  If they sold ebooks of fiction, I might see myself as a distributer.  If they sold products that were anything but get rich quick schemes, I might consider affiliate sales.  If any of the software that is offered by Clickbank seemed actually useful, I might think about selling it.  As it stands, the entire scheme seems shady to me.

Here’s an alternative business plan for personal wealth building.  Go to Monster.com and find a job.  Sure, you will have to work for your money, but it should be honest work.  When you save enough money from your job to start considering making investments, think about starting your own business.  The SBA has all kinds of resources available if you are interested in going into business for yourself.   You might even start a legitimate Internet business and make your fortune on the net.  Good luck.

A quick search of Google returned over 17 million hits on the terms “content creation.”  There are many companies starting up or that have been in business for a while that provide content creation services for websites.

One of these businesses, SEO Content Creation and Linkbait Services sells content for between $35 and $250 a page.   You can either specify topics for this place to generate copy on or leave them to create pages on their own.  The buyer gets copyright to whatever material they contract for.  Apparently, writers are being organized to sell material to online services.

Of course it was only a matter of time before writers started to cash in on the Internet.  There is so much material available online that nobody would have the time to read or catalog it all.  That’s why there are search engines.  Still, it’s interesting to realize that the pages you post to your blog could be sold as copy for a decent price.  If you are interested in writing material for a targeted market you can always go to Helium Marketplace and attempt to sell your work.   Then again, there is always the possibility of starting your own content creation business.  You would probably need to recruit writers, who could be found by trolling through the various blogging communities online.

With all the websites online it is not surprising that copywriting has gone digital.  You can even take online courses to learn the tricks and skills of copywriting.   If you are writing articles and content for your blog now there is the potential to get paid for the writing you are doing.  Of course there are also Pay Per Post operations that will pay you a fee to write reviews and advertisements for products on your blog.

The world is becoming swamped with the quantity of material that is available on the Internet.  You can now buy content for your websites right online.  Writing is an occupation that fits in well with the kind of instant communication that has made the net possible.  In future, I think more opportunities will become available for people who like to write.

Over the last several months I have researched this subject intensely.  Aside from a standard business model where you would sell some product online for a certain amount of money, making some profit, there is only one way to make money with the Internet.  The secret to making money on the Internet is to sell an information product that tells people how to make money on the Internet.  And the way to make money on the net is to sell this product.  In other words, it is a recursive wealth building scheme.  You will sell people some product that tells them to sell a product about how to sell a product that tells people how to make money by selling an information product…  It could go on forever, but it only requires two steps.

Every “make money fast” website sells some kind of information product.  Oddly, none of these products describes how they really make their money, which is selling products telling people how to make money.  There are so many of these different moneymaking schemes it is ridiculous.  You can even get resell rights for free to a lot of the old products that are not selling well.  Most of these information products tell you how to set up a website that sells advertising to Google or sells affiliate products.  Unless you’re getting a million hits a month on your website, you are not going to make money this way.  The business you really want to be in is selling information products.

Everybody wants to get rich.  Nobody wants to work for a living.  If all you had to do was set up a website to take payments from people and give them some PDF file in return, wouldn’t you want to do this?  That’s just what all these Internet Millions websites do.  What they don’t do is tell you the truth about how the owners make their income.  They make their money selling copies of some absurd system they concoct for making money on the web, which is all nonsense.  What they really should be selling you is information on how to sell information on how to get rich.  This is exactly the information I am going to give away to you, my loyal readers, for absolutely nothing.

That’s right, you heard me right.  For no money and no obligation, for all time, you can make yourself rich with a turnkey automated income stream that has only minimal operating costs.  All you need to do is copy this page and sell it to people.  For you see, all the knowledge you need to make untold millions has already been revealed in the opening paragraph of this blog entry.  All you need to do is to sell people the information that they only need to sell information to people on how to sell information on how to sell information on how to get rich without lifting a single finger.  Does this sound complicated?  Well, it isn’t.  It’s the simplest thing in the world.

What you get from my system is honesty.  You only need to tell people that they have to sell a simple computer file full of information on how to sell information to people.  You will need to set up a PayPal account so you can take payments.  You will need to set up a website that has a shopping cart.  No problem, you can get that from PayPal too.  You will need to make this page into a PDF file.  No problem, that’s available for free as well.  Then you will need a host for your site.  Why pay when you can get that for free?  Then all you need to do after you set up your site is to promote it.  Now you have all the information you need to start selling your information.

Does any of this sound crooked?  Why should it?  You are just selling legitimate information on how to make money by selling information.  You’re not breaking any laws telling people how to make easy money.  You’re keeping track of your profits so you can pay all your taxes, aren’t you?  There’s no reason you can’t sell your ideas to people who want to find a better way to make money.  Well, what’s the problem?  I’m being totally honest with you.  If you really want to make money on the Internet you have to sell information on how to make money to people who are looking for ways to make money on the Internet.  It’s a very simple idea, and it’s the idea being used by thousands of get rich quick websites, only, they don’t tell you the truth.  They don’t tell you that if you want to make money on the net you have to sell information on how to make money on the net.

The Internet is a great medium for communication.  Unlike broadcast radio and television, the Internet is a two way channel.  Because of this you can not only advertise items or services that are for sale, you can make the sales of these items and collect the money from your customers.  People from all over the world can make purchases from your company and you don’t even need to maintain a retail store to make sales.

What do the big companies do to make money on the net?  Obviously, they sell stuff.  Take Amazon.com as a for instance.  Amazon started out selling books.  Books are commonly available from publishers.  You buy the books from the publisher, you advertise the books on a website.  You sell the books to customers at a profit.  You ship the books, the customer is happy, they come back and buy more when they want more.  Making money on the Internet is the same as making money in any other area.  You need some sort of business organization.

Now look at another big player, Google.  How does Google make money?  Simple, they sell advertising.  Companies want to promote their products or services, so they go to Google and buy a text advertisement.  Google displays the advertisement on search results pages that match the keywords that were sold to the advertiser.  You have a targeted customer for the advertiser.  Somebody who is already interested in some product gets directed to your website.  Google also places ads all over the Internet through its Adsense program.  How do they make money?  They provide a service.

The essential point in any moneymaking venture is that you provide some product or service for an amount of monetary compensation.  In order to do this you will need to set up your own business.  Business is how the whole economy operates.  There are many kinds of businesses, and the one you set up will depend on not only what you intend to do, but also where you happen to live.  There are rules and regulations affecting any business.  You have to pay taxes on the money you make.  You have to keep records.  You have to supply some legitimate and legal product or service to your customers.  This can all get very complicated.  That is why they teach business in schools.  You might want to take some classes in business at your local community college.

Both Amazon and Google have what are called affiliate programs as part of their businesses.  You can help them do what they do for a part of the profits.  What you would be doing for these companies as part of these programs would essentially be advertising on your own website to sell their products or services.  To find out about these programs go to the websites and look for Amazon affiliate marketing or Google Adsense advertising.  You will need to sign up and get approval for your site to participate in either of these programs.  All the information you will need comes from these companies.  I say this because there is a whole industry on the Internet that sells information on how to participate in these programs as some kind of get rich quick scheme.  You will need a lot of traffic on your site to make any money from these programs.  You may be better off going into business for yourself.

The Internet is fairly new, and there have already been thousands of companies that have gone broke trying to capitalize on it as a source of income.  Do your research.  Find out what works and what doesn’t.  Make up your own business plan, even if it is just business as an affiliate.  Whatever you do, you will have to perform a considerable amount of work if you hope to make money using the net.  Even if it is just keeping track of all your customers and sales, this can add up to a lot of time.  Successful companies tend to have lots of people working for them.  Running a big operation takes skills and knowledge you had better have before you start.  If you want to make money on the Internet you will have to know what you are doing and have adequate resources to achieve your goals.

We live in a world in which we are surrounded by hype.  Advertisers and other people trying to change our opinions or attitudes are everywhere in the media.  Politicians, salesmen, sports stars, celebrities and news people all want to change the way people think and act.  How do they go about this?

Since the invention of the printing press, man has had access to some method of mass media.  Any form of communications that can reach large numbers of people can be used to generate hype for some person or product.  Today we not only have books and newspapers, magazines and radio, television, movies but also the vast sea of knowledge that is the Internet.  We are surrounded by mass communications on all levels of our lives.

In order to get a message out to large numbers of people you will need a channel that is viewed by many persons.  This usually means a medium with an established customer base, like newspapers or television channels.  The usual means of approaching these services with some story you want to tell is with a press release written for an editor.  The editor of a paper, magazine, or television channel has say in what gets placed in his publication.  You may want to call the different services you are thinking of promoting to in order to ask where you should send a press release.  A press release is just an article detailing what it is about your product, service, or person that is of interest to a general audience.  What benefit will the thing you are promoting have for the readers of that particular paper?  You must be clear and specific with your information.  Point out reasons why your offering is valuable to this publication’s viewers.

If a news service or television program is interested in your release they may have a writer contact you to get more information on your product.  You should know everything you can about what makes your service so interesting to people.  Tell them how you started out, or how many people already own your product, or what it is about your offering that is different from anything else.  If you are promoting a person for political office you should know their policies and opinions on the key issues, as well as know things about their personal history that will appeal to a voting public.  It is important to have concrete information that can be used by the writer to generate a story.

Any medium that reaches a lot of people can be used to generate hype.  This includes popular websites.  If you are promoting your own website, surf around the net for similar sites.  Send email to the webmasters of the different sites and ask them if they would be interested in trading links on their page with your site.  Cross-linking to popular sites in this way can generate a lot of traffic for your site.  You want to get your message out to as many eyes as possible.  Think about where people might go who are interested in your product.  If you sell coffee you might approach coffee shops to see if they will let you post fliers in their establishments.  Post classified advertisements for your product in newspapers and in free online ads.  Post comments in forums online and leave a link to your page.  It’s a lot of busy work doing small time promotion like this, but when the word starts spreading and your promotion goes viral it will all pay off.

The general principle in generating any kind of hype is to have a message and then convey that message to as many people as possible.  If you are trying to end world hunger you can certainly generate interest in this idea by writing a compelling story and suggesting a cure for this condition.  If you are trying to sell crystal fairy statuettes, think of an angle that will make people want to own your product, such as how happy it will make them to have such a beautiful article in their home.  If you are running for president, try to convince people that you will be the best person for the job.  The news media is constantly searching for items it can report on.  If you can make your offering seem worthy of a spot in the national news, you will generate a lot of interest and free publicity for your product.