Extra income

Everyone could use a bit of extra income, and there are some excellent opportunities available online - if you know where too look. Before I started earning money with freelance writing online I spent several months doing research and learning which systems would work best for me. Now I successfully earn a part-time income from working online, and know that it is possible even though the Internet is filled with scams and opportunities that promise hundreds and only pay pennies or nothing at all. So how do you earn money online and never have to spend a dime?

Associated Content

Associated Content has been the best freelance writing opportunity for me since I started working part-time from home. They offer the best of both worlds - upfront payments and PPC (pay per click) opportunities. On average you can earn between $3 to $5 per article, but this can vary based on the quality of the article. Once you have written for a period of time, and proven you can write quality articles some higher paying opportunities can become available. Also, because of the upfront payment system, you can earn money freelance writing immediately rather than having to wait for your PPC earnings (also called passive income) to build up.

Helium

Originally Helium offered PPC opportunities only, but recently that has changed - in fact they have made a number of changes that have improved the quality of the site. They now offer upfront payments in addition to PPC, but the upfront payments are not nearly as lucrative as Associated Content. Upfront payments start at 50 cents and can go as high as $2.50, based on the number of articles and writing starts you have. Also, they hold contests and have a marketplace looking for specific freelance articles giving you a chance to earn more per article. It takes a bit of effort to earn money on Helium compared to other sites, but once you start and gain a bit of momentum it can be a worthwhile opportunity. And like Associated Content, your earnings are immediate making it easy to reach their minimum payout of $25.

eHow
When I started with eHow I was a bit skeptical on how much you could earn on advertising PPC only, especially if you only have a few articles. On average a how-to article will earn between $1 to $5 a month, with some earning nothin g and others exceeding the average. This is another site where it takes some time to earn income - because you are earning a passive income rather than getting upfront payments. However, this does have an advantage. Passive income will earn you income without any additional work - and will continue to earn income from month to month. So ever though you may not see a large monetary reward immediately, after a few months of effort your hard work will pay off.

Hubpages

Allows you to determine if you want to earn income for posting articles or "hubs." Hubpages lets you choose to earn with Adsense, Amazon, Ebay, and other options. Similar to eHow, it will take some time for your hubs to gain momentum - the best rule of thumb to follow is the more hubs, and the higher the quality, the better. Once you have some hubs going, average earnings can be from $20 to $50 a month. Some do earn more but the highest earners have hundreds of hubs written, and write high quality hubs - it is possible to earn a lot of money with this site with the best earning $1000 or more a month. However it will take a longer time for your efforts to show in your account, but if you are willing to work hard your efforts will show.

Today

Gives a take on freelance writing by paying you to start a blog, and as most bloggers know if you start a blog yourself it can take months to earn your first dollar. Today pay you $1 per 100 word post (you are allowed only one paid post a day) with the opportunity to earn more, once they evaluate your blog each month. Now, $1 per post doesn't seem like much but if you write one post a day you will earn your $50 payout in 2 months, and they work on a PPC system as well. And if you write quality posts and get a pay increase in a month then it may take less than 2 months to earn your payout. It is a slower way to earn income, but compared to writing for other freelance writing sites which require a minimum of a 400 word post or article, your writing time will be significantly less.

How Do I Get One Million Page Views?

"I want one million hits per day on my website!"

"How do I get them?"

"Can i get one million hits per day for free?"

"Can I Google or Yahoo my way to one million hits per day?"

Does this sound familiar? Have you asked this question? Of coarse you have or you wouldn't be looking at this article right now!

There are many ways in which you can grab yourself one million page hits. choosing the right method is another story. I have found that unless you put in the right amount of time and effort, then you can write off your chances of hitting one million per day all together. I mean for a lot of people one million in one year is hard.

One thing you must have got yourself clued up on is keywords. These are almost as important as chocolate in a chocolate bar. You will now ask yourself a question... What are the correct keywords to use? Well I'll get to them shortly!

The next thing you are likely to run into is SEO.

What is SEO?

I found that answering this question can get very complex. So this brief run down of the answer I found on About.com is put in as simple wording as possible, so we all can understand... SEO!

SEO is the process and practice of optimizing your website so that it ranks well on search engine results pages (or SERPs). When someone types a word or phrase into search engines (like Google) looking for your product, you want to appear on the first or second page of the search results.

It's intellectually interesting to know that there are 917,846,342 different websites that are relevant to the search query, but really, if your website doesn't appear in the first 10 pages (or first 100 results), it's invisible to the world.

So by now you should be pretty clued up as to what SEO is!

Now back to Keywords.

What are keywords?
Keywords are an art themselves. You can look then up to your hearts content, but you will always find yourself thinking, are they the right words to use. The thing is with keywords that is important, is relevance. Are they relevant to the article, blog, product, website you are trying to get out to the masses. Keywords are usually what you use when you are trying to direct traffic (people who surf the internet) to your website, page, whatever it may be.

You can find lists of keywords when you search for them. But you have to know how to use them, for them to be effective. For instance if you are advertising a popular vacation in Jamaica, it would not be beneficial to you if you just put in the words... Jamaica, vacation, good time.

You would need to make your keywords stand out and be more broad on your subject. Remember different countries may use different search terms, like in England people hardly use the word vacation. They usually say go on holiday! (I know that was helpful.) Maybe include a very brief searchable sentence. Such as: Visiting Jamaica for a vacation, Caribbean, destinations, flights, holidays, short stay vacation vacations, dream holiday, sun, surf, hot temperatures. The list can go on. But be careful because you can over do keywords.

A trick I have found to be useful, is to keep tabs on your website. Useful tools such as Google Webmaster can help. You can keep an eye on hits to your webpages or websites. Chop and change keyword density and keywords until you find which keywords work. Use this tool from Google Adwords .

Keywords as Google portray them are:

The keywords for your Custom Search Engine should describe your search engine's content or subject matter. Google uses this information to tune your search results to ensure they are as relevant as possible and to promote the most relevant pages for your search engine. Good keywords are words and short phrases that describe any of the following:

The topic of your search engine.

Tthe content of the pages you want promoted.

Simple in a nutshell... yes?

Once you have fine tuned the art of SEO and keywords you will be well on your way. It won't happen over night, and you will have to put a lot of work in.

Can I get 1 milliion hits for free?
If you discount your own time, then the answer is yes. There are many ways to get one million hits to your website. You can try banner swapping, submitting your site to various search engines, handing out your website url, posting on social sites. (Be wary of spam laws on some sites) You can join si tes that will offer advertising trades. E.g. They will give you generate some traffic to your site for advert space on your pages. Which is similar to banner swapping.

Lets not beat around the bush here. If you have the right blog, article, bla bla bla, which people are interested in. Then they will find their way to your page, product etc. You have a lot of competition out there, so unless you have a one off niche market. Then you are going to have your work cut out.

Don't be put off if you are not getting anywhere fast. Unless you are really lucky, then it is going to take time. Remember Rome was not built in a day! Would you have bought your car if you had not seen it advertised or heard about it? Would you buy a 'Trident MVR22 5 liter Sports Coupe' if I was offering it you at a mark down price of $3000? Of course not, you have never heard of it, never seen one. Not only that I just made it up, but you get my drift...

I wish you luck... I hope I helped you a little... Just remember... Put in the work, time, effort, and don't be put off with slight pitfalls. Then hopefully you will get your million page views per day.