Today’s blog post is all about list building and is written by David Walker. As a dad-to-be, David understands the pressures to succeed online and the cornerstone of any successful business is a large, responsive mailing list. Here, he discusses using JV Giveaways as a method of adding new subscribers to your list.

JV Giveaways have been used in internet marketing circles for several years but are making something of a resurgence. A giveaway is essentially a time-limited free membership website where marketers and information seekers meet to trade free products in return for an email address.

The marketers, known as “contributors”, submit their free products such as PDF reports, audio interviews, video training, scripts etc. to the giveaway and if a prospect, known as a “member” wants to download them, they need to opt in to the contributor’s mailing list first.

All you need to get involved in a giveaway as a contributor is a free gift, an autoresponder and a couple of basic web pages.

Your free gift can be anything as described above, e.g. a report, video, audio etc. but make sure it is of high quality that somebody will actually want to download and not be disappointed when they do!

It is a better idea to create your own product rather than just give away somebody else’s that you have resell rights to because you can make it all about you. With your own product you can add your personal story, your own examples and experiences about using the information presented in your product and even add some affiliate links to make money online.

Also, nobody else will be submitting this product to all of the other giveaways because it is 100% original and there is no danger of potential prospects already having a copy sitting on their hard drive.

If the thought of creating your own product is too overwhelming then you can use a Private Label Rights (PLR) product but make sure you rewrite it thoroughly to make it more personal to you.

You will need an autoresponder account, e.g. Aweber or Get Response which collects your prospect’s email address and also delivers the product to their inbox automatically.

Here’s an extra tip. Instead of sending your prospect a direct download link, send them a link to a download page where they can obtain their free product but you can also present them with a series of “bonus” gifts, all of which are embedded with your affiliate link for some easy, extra passive income!

Finally, to enable your prospect’s to find out more details of your product, submit their email address and download it, you will need to create a basic squeeze page and an optional download page. Don’t overload the prospect with information – an intriguing headline and some bullet points are fine.

Giveaways are a win-win situation for both parties involved and as such, there are more events running at any one time than there ever has been – increasing your chances of adding new subscribers to your list and better still, for free!

These events are promoted via word-of-mouth, with contributors sending their contacts a sign-up link containing their unique referral ID. If you are not on any marketer’s lists but want to stay informed of the latest events, you can use a website such as the following which updates with all of the most recent JV Giveaways currently seeking contributors and members.

This all sounds awesome but there is one downside. As a contributor, you are also expected to promote the giveaways. If the script does not detect you have referred anybody to the giveaway then you may be “downgraded”.

This means your contributor status will be changed to that of a member, your gift removed and as a result, nobody will be able to join your mailing list.

If you are new and don’t have a list to promote to then it can be difficult. You will need to promote your referral link on Twitter, Facebook, in forums and even to your contacts directly via Skype or other instant messaging services to get the sign ups required to preserve your contributor status.

In time, as your list grows, it will be easy to get referrals but in the early days you will need to get them by whatever means necessary!

One thing you have to remember is that the age of the site is an important consideration. Brand new domains will usually have a more difficult time in gaining the “trust” for rankings. On the other hand, putting regular fresh content and consistent links can see you rank near the top in no time at all. Consider also the technical infrastructure. You need to be able to support crawling of your web pages by search engine bots and understand your content if you are to get quick results. If you do not take into consideration the technical aspects of your site, you are dead before you even start, because all your efforts at optimizing will just hit the wall. A well-designed sitemap will usually help with this.

A lot of SEO professionals are also not aware of the search engine optimization tips for page redirection. Search engines have come up with ingenious ways of ridding themselves of old and abandoned URLs and 404 errors. In other words, if you have links and pages that are no longer accessible, you could be losing marks when it comes to your online rankings. You cannot afford to loose those marks when your competitors are gaining the upper edge or closely catching up on you. If you move published content, keep the original URL and redirect it to the new one. If you delete it, keep the original URL and redirect it to something current.

Among the most common search engine optimization tips is that of maintaining high-volume keywords. This still offers some of the best chances of getting high traffic rankings. Whether you are working with an internal SEO or a hired company to perform SEO work on your behalf, developing trust in new pages by use of high-ranking keywords, and trying to see them as the search engine sees them, will still remain one of the search engine optimization tips that work for old and new domains.

When starting out, branding is as important as the optimization itself. After that, SEO takes precedence and should become an endless endeavor. As with all things, it takes time and patience to build up something worthwhile. Taking a similar approach to SEO will produce the same amazing results.

Right now, many people are looking for at home jobs. What could be better than working from home in your pajamas and earning a paycheck? You can determine your own hours and decide how much you do and don’t want to work. It sounds like the perfect situation, right? Having an at home job could be absolutely perfect for your situation. The problem with at home jobs may be the reality that you need to find one that is legitimate and will be a good match for your personality and abilities. There are a lot of work at home jobs and opportunities. However, before embarking on an adventure to find that ideal and surreal opportunity, make sure that you are prepared to use every ounce of common sense that you possess. If the concept sounds too good to be true, chances are, that job opportunity really is too good to be true. Don’t be too eager to pay money for those at home jobs. Jobs should be paying you; you shouldn’t have to pay to work for them. Enter into any new idea that you find on the internet with a great amount of caution.

Do your homework and make sure that you will not simply be falling prey to another scam.

Instead of falling for those at home job scams, take some time to think about what will actually work for you. Stuffing envelopes, taking surveys, mystery shopping – they all might sound good and some may pan out in some minute ways, but they will not provide a full-time income that will allow you to live comfortably. Is there a hobby that you have that could possibly be turned into a business? A large amount of at home jobs are based on some sort of hobby or passion that has turned into a career. Are you good at baking or cooking? Why not try your hand at catering? Love the idea of planning events or parties? Maybe you could look into becoming an event planner or a wedding consultant. Enjoy being around animals? There is always a need for pet sitters, dog walkers, and “pooper scoopers“. Believe it or not, even as the economy struggles, people still cater to their pets, and that probably will not end anytime soon.

The key to finding a successful work at home job is to figure out what you are good at and truly like to do. People have been successful at making a decent living selling on ebay or on other auction sites. You may have to take a hard look at ebay fees, selling fees and other costs to make sure that you can still make a profit, but it may turn out rather well for you. No matter what your reason for looking for at home jobs, make it a grand adventure that will not only pay your bills, but will also put a contented smile on your face.

Blogging for money is not something you can do every once in a while. If you only post once a week, or a few times a month, you are not going to bring in much traffic, therefore you are not going to make much money from your hobby. Instead, you have to be willing to make time every day to do your blogging, and you also have to make sure you know what you are doing before you start. Google Adsense has made some people a lot of money, but not from just one blog. However, if you want extra cash here and there, you can earn money over the long run by understanding how it works.

Google Adsense will place relevant ads on your blog. This means they are going to match advertisements that mirror what you write about each day. If you want to start blogging for money writing about cars, the ads on your blog will be related to cars and other vehicles, insurance, accessories, and auto related services. Make sure that you have chosen a topic that is going to generate a lot of ads or you can not make much money blogging about your interest. You may have to decide on something else. Put your topic into Google’s search engine and see if you get ads when you hit ‘search.’ What you see there will reflect what comes up on your blog.

Without ads, blogging for money is pretty much going to be a failure. You make money because people click on those ads. At times the clicks earn you money, but you can make more if people click through the ads and actually make a purchase or sign up for something. As you can see, without a lot of relevant ads, your income potential from blogging for money is going to be very limited. Sometimes choosing a very wide open topic will help. Don’t go with something with a very narrow scope and very small audience.

Blogging for money does not mean putting up a few posts and then sitting back and waiting to see how much you get paid. You should make sure you make a post once a day, or at least a few times a week. If you cannot post every day, make sure that fresh content appears appears every day (e.g. Twitter or Facebook status updates) .That keeps people coming back and also gives more chances for the search engines to pick up your blog. You can do research on using keywords that the search engines like to increase your chances of a listing on a top search engine even better. Don’t forget to use good grammar, spelling, and to keep your posts interesting but not too long. The average Internet reader does not linger long, so get to the point without rambling on too long.

…It affects your bottom line!

You’ve no doubt visited many websites which bombard you with huge, flashy banner ads and other advertising which is only vaguely related to the content of the particular page. For example, you might click through to a web page with an article on children’s birthday parties. The distracting banner, proclaiming you to be the one millionth visitor to that page, offering a prize if you only click and claim it, runs the entire width at the top of the page. This type of banner ad has no relevance to the information you’re looking for and is probably not legit anyway. The blinking and flashing annoys you, so you scroll down until it’s off the screen and read what you came to see. This is a perfect example of what contextual advertising is not.

Good contextual advertising is organized on a page by page basis, so that every ad your reader sees relates closely to the content on the page. You know about Google Adsense. When you sign up for this program, Google’s spiders go out and examine each page’s content and then determine the most relevant ads to place on your page (this is why keyword density is extremely important, but we’ll save that for another time). The latest trend in the big search engines, especially Google and Bing, is to deliver to the user the most relevant content pages when the user conducts a search.

It’s most likely that you’ll have other ads, such as affiliate links, on your web pages. If every single ad on the page is closely related to the content, you’ll enjoy a much better ranking with the search engines. You’ll certainly run circles around a competitor who is running the ‘one millionth visitor’ banner!

This is why you want to hand pick your ad placements for every single page on your site. Google Adsense picks ads based on algorithm-based programs and does quite a good job. Think how you can zero in on ads with even more refinement, in terms of contextual advertising! For example, your organic gardening blog has a page which has a detailed article on how to grow tomatoes. Perfect ads that are well qualified as powerful contextual advertising might include a book on tomato varieties, or garden tools used for seeding. An ad for more generalized products, such as garden lighting or pathway paving stones are not going to engender the same amount of interest. You’ll get far lower ROI on such ads and suffer in page rankings as well. Moving these ads to a page with content related to garden landscaping or decorations is a better choice.

Keywords are another important factor in optimizing every page. If your ad links to an affiliate, check out the page title and keywords the affiliate product is using. Matching up keywords will also do your site good from the standpoint of relevance.

Well thought out contextual advertising brings more visitors to your sites through better search engine rankings, and you’ll enjoy an increase in revenues. Contextual advertising is an art, well worth cultivating and refining to the Nth degree. Relevance and context are where it’s at and it’s all within your grasp!

We live in the “virtual age”, and there’s virtually nothing more crucial than advertising on the Internet…all the more so if you have an online business, website or blog. The primary reason why is that you can advertise online so much cheaper than you can advertise on television or even the radio. The World Wide Web offers so many wonderful opportunities for anyone and everyone. Even if you’re just thinking about starting an online business venture, remember that advertising on the Internet is crucial to your business’s success. The fact is that millions of potential customers or website visitors are connected to cyberspace at any given time from all around the globe. The web opens up a myriad of doors and opportunities.

A large majority of business owners resort to advertising on the Internet these days. A perfect example of this can be seen with the past success of the low-budget film entitled “The Blair Witch Project.” You probably didn’t see this “reality” style horror flick trailered on TV before it became a success. That was because the student film makers who came up with the idea thought it would be more cost-effective to advertise on the Internet. They could do this by building a website that would essentially cost them next to nothing. Once the word got out, everyone was jumping on the Blair Witch bandwagon. Furthermore, regardless of what you thought of the film, it still made millions and millions of dollars. This is amazing because it’s pretty much all profit since few funds were put into the film. This is just one example of how advertising on the Internet can be excellent for your business or website’s success. Even a mere blog can pull in serious cash if you put a little bit of effort into it.

For those who like to build websites and create blogs, one great way to earn a little extra money is by selling affiliate products via your websites and blogs. Earn a percentage by advertising on the Internet with someone else’s product. Hey, modern companies appreciate the extra business. That’s also more money in their pocket every time you sell. But, let’s not forget about companies that have a stellar business going in the real world. Not everyone operates online. Take a walk through some of your local strip malls and local downtown, take note of the names of local busineses, and try to look them up online. You’ll be surprised how little online advertising they do. However, advertising on the Internet can seriously assist any business of any kind, which means profit potential for you. This route offers a great deal more exposure and therefore more sales. Take full advantage of the web today!

You have many choices if you want to make money on the internet; all it takes is a little time and effort. You can sell things via classified ads or auctions, or you can create your own web site to sell your product. If you have no idea what to sell, consider selling access to information in the form of e-books or reports. Selling or providing digital access to information online is a no-hassle way to promote a product that doesn’t have to be manufactured or shipped. Simply build a website for your content, set up a few simple marketing campaigns, and you’re on your way to becoming an e-publisher, providing the information that people desire. If you have the skills to communicate an idea to another person in writing, then you have what it takes to be an online publisher. People want to become enlightened and educated about topics that appeal to their basic needs.

Another way to make money on the internet is with affiliate programs. You may have heard a lot of hype about how much money you can make with this type of marketing. The hype is not far from the truth if you become an affiliate for the right products. Amazon.com is one of the original affiliate programs, offering a hype-free way to really make money online. It’ll only take a day to make the site, and it’s low cost and low effort. Another great site to visit is Clickbank.com offering a wide variety of e-books, training programs, and related products. You’re paid a commission for each visitor that purchases their product or service from the link on your website.

The various tools that you’ll need to make money on the internet include AdWords, AdSense, affiliations, e-mail auto-responders, banner exchanges, link exchanges, opt-in mailing lists, pay-per-click advertising, merchant accounts, submission services, and software, just to name the basics. If you’re not a computer geek, this may all seem a little overwhelming at first, especially if you’re intimidated by learning html and basic website upkeep. Learning how to do these essentials yourself will save you a ton of money, it’s fairly easy to do, and you’ll have complete control over your internet endeavor. Save all your hard earned cash and use your innate skills and abilities to supplement your income online.

Go to WorkingFromHomeDads.info for more information on how to make money on the internet without breaking the bank, the tools you need to get up and running quickly, and priceless strategies to become an online success!