Really, I would argue that anybody can make their income online.  There are lots of different ways to make money online, to be honest with you.  There is, though, one big question that you must answer.

Are you willing to do what must be done?

Do What It Takes

Yeah, that is the question you need to answer.  Earlier I said that many people think that earning money online is magic.  A lot of folks think that if you put up a website, the next day or the next week, money will start showing up in your bank account.  Sorry folks, it ain’t that easy.  In fact, there is a secret that I am going to let you in on.  This is something that few people know, and many who do know it don’t believe it’s true:

If you want to make money online, you have to work!

Yes, work.  Spend hours doing the thing that have to be done.  When I tell people that I make my living on the Internet, many people think I sit in front of the computer playing games, or chatting.  Sorry, it isn’t so.  In fact, I don’t play games.  I don’t consider my computer to be a toy.  My computer is a business tool.  For a carpenter, the tools of his business are things like hammers and saws.  A dentist uses a drill and other tools to do his job.  A salesman uses his phone, his knowledge and such as his business tools.  I use my computer.

So, what do I have to do?

Well, the list is long.  To get started, you have to spend a lot of time to build up your profile online.  Depending on how you intend to make money on the Internet, you might need to write articles, or you may need to search for products to sell online, you might need to promote your websites.  There is no limit to the things you need to do.

Your biggest thing, though, is that you have to develop a plan to increase your footprint on the Internet, and you have to do it.  One thing is that once you have the plan in place, you have to keep doing it and not give up.

A lot of people that talk to me about how to earn a living on the Internet end up starting blogs.  I tell them that they need to post a new blog post every day, or a minimum of 4 or 5 articles per week, and they have to keep doing it.  In my case, when I got into blogging to earn an income, it took about 3 years to become successful.  A lot of people stop trying after a few weeks.  Most people stop after a few months at the most.  In my case, I wrote 2 or 3 articles per day for 3 years before I hit it.  Once I hit on success in blogging, I was able to cut back a bit on my tough schedule, but still had to continue with regularity, just not as often.  This is what you have to do.

You know what happens after you reach a certain level of success?  Money starts coming to you, instead of you going out looking for money.  In other words, people come to you and offer you deals.  They want to advertise on your site.  They want to do partnerships with you.  That sort of thing.  For the first few years that I blogged, I never got any offers like that.  Today, I’ve been blogging for many years, and such deals come to me nearly every day.  Many such deals, while they could make me money, I turn down, because it doesn’t fit in with the person I am, or just is not the right match for me.  Maybe somebody wants to advertise on my site, but his site is really not something I want to advertise for or link to… I’ll turn it down.  How could I turn down money like that?  Well, because I get enough offers that I don’t have to take every one of them, only the ones that I feel good about.

But, if you quit blogging after a week, a month or even a year, these kinds of offers will not come to you.

So, you want to make money online, right?

Are you willing to do what it takes?

In the past 6 months, though, I found a way by which I increased my eBook sales by nearly 40%.  Want to know how?  Read ahead then!

Giving people a special offer

Digital Coupons

You see, I get many e-mails from people who ask questions about my various books.  Sometimes they are asking questions, needing that extra little push to make them buyers.  Sometimes they write to me asking questions, not even knowing about my e-books on the topic they are asking me about.  There are lots of different reasons why people write to me.

In the past, I would write back and let them know about my e-books and that the answer to the question they are asking is available in my book.  Over the years, I would estimate that only about 10% of people that I had e-mailed with this information would actually buy the book.  Starting about 6 months ago or so, I tried an experiment to see if I could increase that 10% response to a higher number.

What did I do?

For every such e-mail I sent to people, I started offering coupons for money off on the books, but the coupon was good for 24 hours only.  So, for example, if somebody wrote to me and asked how they could live in the Philippines like I do, and still be able to earn a living, I would write back and tell them that I have an eBook on that topic.  The books is $39, but if they buy within 24 hours they get $10 off.  Guess what… now, about 7 out of 10 people who get a message like that end up buying the book!

So, let’s say that in the past 25 people sent me such an e-mail inquiry in one week.  That would mean that on average it would result in about 2.5 sales, or revenue of $97.50 for me (2.5 books at $39 each) that week.  Now, if the same number of people inquire, the resulting sales, on average would be about 17.5 books per week, resulting in revenue of $507.50 (that’s 17.5 books at $29 [remember I give $10 off]).  That’s a big difference in revenue generated!

But, Bob, why do you make the coupon only good for 24 hours?

Well, think about it.  Let’s say I made the amount of time open-ended, or I gave them 2 weeks.  Probably 75% of the people would think to themselves “Oh, that’s great, I’ll do it tomorrow (or next week, or next month, etc).”  Problem is, once they delay the purchase the vast majority of them will never make the purchase.  They will forget, or they will have moved on to some other item they want to purchase.  With a 24 hour time limit, it gives a sense of urgency, so that they think to themselves, “Oh, I want to take advantage of that deal, I better do it now.”  Giving the potential customer the sense of urgency is very important, and it makes the sale happen.  I mean, they can still buy the book anytime they want, but they can save 25% if they do it now, or within 24 hours of me making the offer.

So, if you want to do this, you need to be using some kind of shopping cart business that allows you to offer coupons, and in particular time sensitive coupons.  For this, I use e-Junkie for my e-Book sales, and it gives me such flexibility.  There are certainly lots of shopping cart methods that will offer this, I just mention e-Junkie because it is inexpensive, reliable, and I have been very happy with their service.

Give this a try, I hope you have great success as I have.  Not sure how to publish and sell an e-Book?  Check out my e-Book which will tell you everything you need to know!

Today, I want to revisit security, but from a different angle, mostly.  I have two other friends who are currently experiencing security issues on the Internet, and I would like to visit those and offer some tips for you.

Friend #1

Internet Security

My friend who is currently experiencing the most serious security issue on the Internet is a close friend with whom I have daily contact.  He, like me, is an Internet Entrepreneur, albeit on a smaller scale than me, in other words he has fewer websites than I do.  In the past, this friend has been one who always enjoyed tinkering with using different Themes on his WordPress blogs.  He liked playing around with giving his sites different looks regularly.  In the past year or so, he has kind of given up on doing that, though, and stuck with a single theme.  Problem is, apparently, he left a lot of those old themes up on the site, just sitting idle in his WordPress files doing nothing.

Why would it be a problem if the themes are on the site?  Well, to be honest, a lot of those “free” themes are chocked full of viruses and insecure code.  Some actually have malware included in the theme.  Others are just so insecure that they leave a wide open door for the black hat people in the Internet to exploit your site.

It is my belief, and his based on what he has told me, that somebody exploited his sites through an open backdoor left in one of these themes that he was not even using.  Terrible.  His sites have been offline now for 4 days, and still not back.  I have offered to help him get things back up and running, and I believe that I will be helping him shortly.

Nothing wrong with tinkering with new themes, but be careful.  If you are intent on using free themes that you find on the Internet, I would strongly advise you to only use themes from the WordPress Theme Repository.  All themes you find there are free, and should be checked out for security before WordPress allows them to be put there.  Better yet, in my opinion, use a premium paid theme from a trusted source.  In my case, I use only themes from StudioPress, and have been using them for years now.  You can use themes from trusted companies without fear, in my opinion.

Friend #2

With my second friend who is experiencing security issues, it all goes back to password management, as I wrote about before in the article I linked to above.  Recently, I was doing some work for this friend, helping him out with some computer issue (non-security related.  During this work, I had a need for some of his passwords, which he gave me.  Turned out, every site had the same password!  Oops… red lights started going off and sirens in my head.  This is a huge security risk.  On top of using the same password on all sites, he had a short easy to figure out password that he was using.  This makes matters even worse.

Well recently this friend got hacked, and now somebody has access to every site for which he has a password.  A big issue with this is that the hacker will take your password, log into the sites and change passwords on you, leaving you no longer able to access your sites.  Bad news.  Use long secure passwords  Use strong passwords on our sites.  You will never regret using a strong password, but you may regret not using a strong enough password!  Do yourself a favor and save yourself the grief that is inevitable.  Use a strong password!

Don’t leave your front door unlocked!

Think about it like this, if you use a weak password, or if you do insecure things with your websites, you are leaving your front door open for anybody to come in if they want.  If you are an Internet Entrepreneur who makes money via his Internet presence and websites, you are putting your livelihood at risk by not being security conscience.  Even if you are very conscience about security, it is still possible to be hacked, but why not make it harder on the hackers by making your sites more secure?  If you have a secure enough site, most hackers will move on to an easier target rather than waste time trying to break into your site.

Good luck to both of my friends!

No, I didn’t make a TV show!  I actually made 3 different spin-offs of a website that I own.  When I first decided to do the spin-off, I wrote about it here, Time for a Spin-Off?  Only about 2 weeks later, I wrote a follow up article on the topic to report that the spin-off was already making money!  To be honest, it is very rare for a brand new website to be earning money in just the first 2 weeks or so if it’s existence.  I was quite happy.

Spin Off

Well, because that first spin-off was so successful, that is why I decided to do two more spin-offs last year.  I did my second spin-off about 2 or 3 weeks later, and it was also a great success for me, earning money within only a few days after I started the new site.  My third spin-off came much later, just a few weeks ago in fact.  I wanted to make my 3rd spin-off site before the end of 2011, and I finished it just a couple of days before the new year was upon us.  Again, it started making money almost immediately.

Why do I call these new sites Spin-Offs?

Spin-Off leads to Pay-Off

Well, because that is exactly what they are.  You see, what I do is that I scour one of my existing popular sites to see what topics are garnering higher than normal amounts of user interaction.  Articles that have a lot of Facebook shares, a lot of shares on Twitter, or a ton of comments.  If an article has huge numbers in these interaction areas, that means there is a great interest in the topic, and it is ripe to have a site of it’s own, instead of being buried in the archives of an existing site.  You see, on the existing site, the article loses it’s luster, and loses it’s interactivity, because people no longer easily find the article on your website.  When the article is fairly new and still listed on your home page of your site, people come across it naturally, but when it is buried 700 or 1,000 articles deep on your site, only a few people will even find it.  That’s why a spin-off  is a natural thing to do.  And that is why I call these sites spin-off sites, they are much like spin-off TV shows.  Remember Happy Days, the TV show about life in the 50′s?  Well, Happy Days spun off a lot of other TV shows too, and those shows made money.  My popular website is also spinning off new websites that are making me money, so calling these sites “spin  off sites” is only natural!

Plans for future spin-offs

I do plan to try to spin off at least 3 more websites this year.  I have already started searching my existing websites looking for posts that have large numbers of interactivity, which is my criteria for a topic that will make a great spin-off site.  I am sure I will have no trouble finding multiple sites that are ripe for additional spin-offs, and I will follow through and capitalize on those posts that give me spin-off possibilities.

How about you, have you tried a spin-off?

WooCommerce comes from the people at WooThemes.  WooThemes is a long time player in the WordPress Themes market, but now they are venturing into eCommerce too.  I’m glad they are, because competition always brings a better product.

Woo

As anybody who has been reading my writings for a while knows, I am a big advocate of OSCommerce, which is what I currently use on all of my eCommerce stores.  OSCommerce is very powerful and can do most anything I need to do, but it is a tough program to learn.  Making changes can be a real tough challenge too.  Truth is, for the past several years, I have been wanting to shift my eCommerce platform to WordPress, it’s simply a great program.  However, to date I have not found an eCommerce plugin for WordPress that is really “ready for prime time.”  I have tried many different WordPress eCommerce solutions, but the truth is that none of them really turned out to be a solution for me.  Either they did not work with the payment gateways that I wanted to use, the flow of the checkout wasn’t quite right, or some other problem always kept me from migrating to a WordPress solution for eCommerce.

I have yet to try WooCommerce, but I intend to start playing with it in the next few days.  From everything I have read so far, though, it seems that it will be a good solution for me.  While investigating WooCommerce, though, I found something really cool at the WooThemes website.  Did you know they have a WooThemes Playground?  That’s right, if you go to the WooThemes Playground, you can set up a test site of your own, which will be live for 14 days, where you can try out WooThemes, WooCommerce and anything else from Woo to make sure you like it before buying!  This is extremely cool, and other theme developers should really do something like this.  So, I have set up a test site in the Playground where I can play with WooCommerce until I know for sure if I like it, before developing a live store using the platform.  I am really hoping, though, that WooCommerce is going to be good enough that I can move to WordPress as my eCommerce platform.  I use WordPress for a lot of sites, and getting my eCommerce sites under WordPress would make my life so much easier too!

Woo Commerce

I have never used WooThemes before.  I have long been a strong advocate for StudioPress Premium Themes, but Woo has some nice themes too, and if their commerce plugin is effective and I like it, this may just sway me to become a member of WooThemes and put some of their themes to use on my other sites too.  We’ll see.

Another nice thing about WooCommerce is that it is free!  There are, however, modules that are for sale which would really be needed for a live site (payment gateways and such), but at least you can set up a test site and test it out before spending a penny.  Nice.

I’ll report back after I have an idea whether WooCommerce is a good solution for my needs.  Until then… I’m headed for the WooThemes Playground?  Anybody else want to play?

Paywall

Over the years, I have thought seriously about using a paywall on one of my sites.  That site where I have been considering that is my most popular site by far.  In the end, I decided to abort my thoughts of setting up a paywall, because I thought that it might ruin the popularity of my site, and even damage all of my online efforts.

I am very glad that I aborted my thoughts of doing the paywall.

However, that does not mean that I am against paywalls or membership sites!  Not at all.  In fact, this very site (WaysToMakeALiving.com) will soon have a section that will be behind a paywall.  More on that down the road.  But, what I am against is putting up a membership site as your first site, or putting your most popular site behind a paywall.  Why?  Because that is the site where you make your name.  That is the site where people get to know who you are and what you are all about.  Without that site, people don’t know the quality of your work.  If your very first site is behind a paywall, I predict that you will not do very well, because people will have nothing to judge you by, and you are asking them to pay when they have nothing to go on in the way of knowing whether the information you can provide is worth paying for.  They also don’t know your writing style, how well you write, etc.

Over the weekend, a friend sent me a link to an article about paywalls, and why most newspapers who go the paywall route are failing.  While the whole subject of paywalls has been off my mind for a while now, this article was a good one, and gave me a number of thoughts on the topic.

One of the things discussed pretty thoroughly in the article was on the top of using a threshold system of charging people.  What does this mean?  Well, it means that they set a number of articles per month that you are allowed to read for free.  Maybe they say you can read 3 articles each calendar month without paying, or maybe it is 10 or 25 articles, it’s just up to the publisher to decide that.  As long as you stay below the threshold of articles, you will never have to pay for the site.  But, if the threshold is 10 articles per month, when you try to read your 11th article, you might get a sample of the article and a request to join the site and pay a monthly charge.  This is becoming very, very common among newspapers.  Most of the big papers are doing this now, people like the New York Times and the Financial Times, and many others too.

Setting up a Membership Site

According to this article, the papers who have tried using paywalls have lost as much as 95% of their readership!  Can you imagine?  So, 5%, and often much less than 5% are actually paying for access to the paper.  Do you know what that means?  It means that revenue generated by the website usually went down significantly.  You may be wondering how it went down, since they were giving it for free previously.  Well, any good site that is commercial is also placing advertisements on their site.  In the past, pre-paywall, they had a certain number of people who were reading the site, and thus exposed to the advertising.  Suddenly, when they put up the paywall, 95% or more of their readers were gone, and their advertising revenue took a dive. Do you think that membership payment from only 5% or less of the previous audience can pay what they were earning for the advertising on the site?  No way.  It won’t even come close, to be honest.

So, if you are interested in Membership sites, I would encourage you to go read the article that my friend sent me.  It’s quite enlightening, and interesting to learn more about how the major newspapers are doing with this.  Additionally, if you think you want to do a Membership site to earn a bit of money, I have an e-book all about setting up a Membership Site, check it out here.

If you use AdSense on your sites, it is important to keep up with the latest rules or policies from Google in conjunction with AdSense.

Let’s have a look at some AdSense policies or ideas that have come out lately.

Font Settings for AdSense

A tree of fonts

When you set up an AdSense ad to put on your site, Google gives you a bunch of default settings for the ad, which you can accept or edit.  Some of these settings include things like the ad colors, corners (rounded, square, etc) and the font used for the ad text.

When it comes to the Font settings such as font selection, font size and such, in the past Google had a single setting, which you could change.  Now, though, Google recently changed that.  Based on other  selections you make for the ad (such as ad size and others), Google now sets the default font to the best performing font settings to fit with the other choices.  You can still customize the font settings, but instead of just using one default for everything, the Google default now is set to what has shown to be an effective combination.  Not only that, but Google will change font choices “on the fly” whenever a different visitor comes to your site.  So, if Google has data that people using an Apple computer react best to a certain font, they will use that font when somebody with an Apple OS comes to your site!  Pretty neat, huh?

If you specifically set the font yourself to match the other settings on your site, keep in mind that none of these Google defaults will be done when Google displays ads on your site.

Different e-mail address

Over the years, I have had a bit of a problem (a problem of my own making).  I have my Google AdSense account set up with an e-mail address that I rarely use.  Because of that, sometimes I hear from others about AdSense policy changes that I was unaware of.  They tell me, “didn’t you get the e-mail?” and when I go check that “unused” account, sure enough the e-mail was there!  Well, now, if you just log into your AdSense account, you can set an alternate e-mail address for receiving e-mails from Google in regard to your AdSense Account.  In my opinion, this was a long time coming!  Thanks, Google.

More Channels

No, no, Not TV Channels!

Do you use Channels on your AdSense ads, so that you can know which ads are being clicked on?  If you don’t, you should.  Labeling each ad with a different channel will really help you to pinpoint where you are making your money.  In the past, you were limited to a maximum of 200 channels on your AdSense account.  If you had a lot of sites, this limit was, well, quite limiting!    Recently, Google increased the number of available AdSense channels to 500 per account, more than doubling the number of channels available to each of us, and giving us a lot more flexibility in labeling the ads!  Another great move by Google, and very helpful to those of us who have a lot of sites.

So, this gives you a roundup of some of the things that I think are important for AdSense that happened over the past month or so.  Taking advantage of of these changes might help you make a bit more money from AdSense, and making more money is always a good thing.  Don’t you think?

I tend to be a fairly productive person.  If I decide that something needs to be done, I get it done.  I don’t usually procrastinate much, if at all.  It is one of the “good things” about me.  But, I do feel that I can still improve in the area of time management, and I am taking steps to do so in 2012.

What does this have to do with business?

Well, being more productive and better managing our time is one of the best things we can go to improve our business lives.  If we procrastinate and get little or nothing done, our businesses will suffer.

One of the areas where I feel I need to develop better time management is in the area of publishing content on my various websites.  I have a lot of websites, as many of you know, and on most of my sites I have published in a more half-hazard way than I would like.  Generally, I write an article if I feel like it.  If I don’t feel like it… well, you know what happens!

I do have one website that I follow a schedule on, and I follow that schedule very religiously.  You know what?  That website is my most successful website by far!  Gee, I wonder if one of the reasons for that success is that I have new content being published every single day, 365 days per year?  I bet there is some relation there!

But, on my other websites (I have several dozen sites in all), many are still quite successful, but I feel that those sites could become much more popular if I can get a posting schedule set up, and follow the schedule.  It’s easy to forget, so I need a way to remind myself to get it done.

So, what am I doing?

Google Calendar

Actually, it’s such a simple solution.  I am using Google Calendar.

One of the things I really like about Google Calendar is that I can set up events, schedules and such, and I can actually let Calendar automatically generate an e-mail reminder which is sent to me that says something like – “hey, don’t forget to post a new article on your blog for tomorrow.”  When I get such a reminder, I can easily and quickly go write an article and have it ready for posting on schedule.  I feel that this is very simple.

Not only have I set up such reminders for myself, but I also set up reminders for my employees to do certain scheduled jobs.  In other words, if one of my employees is scheduled to backup a database for one of my websites, that employee gets an e-mail reminder so they don’t forget to do it.  I also get an e-mail reminder so that I can go and double check that they did the job that was assigned to them.

Here is a little training video that will show you how to set up and use Google Calendar:

All in all, I feel like Google Calendar is going to make me a lot more productive in 2012, and help me get a lot more done.  I’ll post an update on this in a couple of months and let you know how I am doing with my time management improvement.  I hope that I will be doing great and that Google Calendar was the right solution for me.  Right now, I don’t see any way that it won’t solve my relatively minor time management challenge.

Happy New Year to you!

In both of my business books, 49 Ways to Make a Living and 99 Ways to Make a living on the Internet, I talk about eBay selling as a great way to make money.

I have made my living, off and on, through eBay for almost 15 years now, pretty much since eBay went into business.  When I first started out on eBay, it was still a relatively small site, at least in comparison to what exists on eBay today.  Things were a lot “looser” too, meaning that back in those days eBay didn’t have nearly as many rules and such.  In fact, a lot of people back then were selling fake, pirated type stuff.  I remember that the first thing I bought on eBay was a full copy of Microsoft Office, and it was like $20 or so.  Obviously not genuine.  To be honest, these days eBay is pretty strict on this sort of thing, and selling pirated type goods is one of the fastest ways to get kicked off the site.

eBay is a great way to make money

Out of the questions that I have gotten in the past couple of weeks, three areas of discussion are the most asked:

1. What to sell on eBay
2. Drop Shipping
3. Shipping Issues

What to sell on eBay

OK, let’s be honest here.  The truth is that of all the questions I get about selling on eBay, this question of “what should I sell on eBay” is the only question that I do not answer for people.  Why?  Well, it is a personal choice as to what you should sell.  It also depends on other factors too.  For example, I don’t know what is available in your area.  For example, if you live in Hershey, Pennsylvania, perhaps Hershey chocolate memorabilia is a good choice, since it is readily available in your area, and may not be available to collectors in San Diego, California.  Again, if you live in the Northeast USA, or in Canada, maybe Maple Syrup is cheap and available in your area, and that guy in Florida just can’t get the “good stuff” that is cheap and easy to get where you live.  See what I mean?

Another variety of this question is that people ask me, “Bob, what do you sell on eBay.”  I don’t answer that question either.  Why?  Well, for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, and most obviously, if I have found a nice niche selling a certain product, I don’t want to give my idea away and have a half dozen new competitors selling the same item.  Secondly, I just feel that what you sell should be based on what your interests are, where your expertise is, and what is available in your area, especially at a good price.  Another part of my reasoning on this is that I don’t always sell the same things.  If I find good items, I sell them most all the time, but I also look out for good deals on items that I don’t normally sell.  I remember one time when I still lived in the USA (I live in the Philippines now, and have for more than a decade), I went to a surplus store and saw that they had a buy out of Santa Claus Coffee Mugs.  They had something like 500 of them, or so, and they were like $5 each.  I convinced the store owner to sell me every one of them at a price of $1 each.  This was like in July, or one of the summer months.  I brought my purchase home, stored them in my garage until November or so, and sold them for something like $12.99 each, making a great profit.  But, I didn’t normally sell coffee mugs, especially Santa Claus coffee mugs.  It was just a special deal that I happened upon and snatched it up.  That is a good reason why I cannot really say what I sell on eBay, it changes all the time.

Drop Shipping

eBay Drop Shippers

There are companies you can find online who are like wholesalers of various merchandise.  Basically, you get a catalog or a selection online of several hundred different items, or even more.  You can then sell those items on eBay, and when somebody buys the item from you, you just notify the company to ship out the item to the person who made the purchase.  You never have to touch the item at all.  Sounds great, right?  Well, I disagree.  I think it is very dangerous to sell through a drop shipper.

Why would I say it is “dangerous?”  Well, for a couple of reasons.  First, you don’t really know the quality of the goods.  Maybe they are shipping your customer very low quality merchandise.  That reflects on your business.  The customer doesn’t know or even care that it is a drop shipper, they know they paid you for a quality item, and what they got did not measure up.  The second and most important reason that using a drop shipper is dangerous is because you have taken your control of your reputation and given it to somebody else.  What if the drop shipper waits 2 weeks before they ship the goods?  Well, you will get negative feedback from your customer, and your reputation will go south.  And, it’s all out of your control.

A couple of other reasons why I think using a drop shipper is a problem:  Firstly, usually you don’t make much profit on the items.  Maybe you make 20 or 30%.  On eBay, I personally like to sell goods that I can make huge profits on, like those coffee mugs that I mentioned earlier.  Another reason why I think drop shippers are not the way to go is that there are generally a lot of people on eBay selling the exact same products.  I like to find unique things that I am the only person selling, or that there are only a few people selling.

Shipping Issues

For a person who lives in the USA, or lives in the same country where they are selling to, shipping is not a huge concern on eBay.  But, because I am an American who lives in the Philippines, many of my followers online are also Americans (or other westerners) who want to live abroad, mostly also in the Philippines.  They want to live in the Philippines but sell items to customers in the USA, like I have done.  This can present issues.  So, I get a lot of questions about this particular area of interest.

While I am not going to get specific on this question here on the Virtual Earner Blog, because not all readers have the Philippine connection, I will share some general observations with you.

• When shipping from overseas, it is important that you keep your customer informed that shipping will take extra time because it is coming from overseas.  Let them know before they make the purchase.  Put it right in your auction that it will take 2 weeks, or however long, for the item to reach them because you are in a different country.  This is very important.
• You can get an advantage by selling products that are more expensive, because you will make a larger amount of profit.  When you do this you can “subsidize” the shipping cost with your extra profit.  So, if you are selling a $50 item, and making a profit of $20 on the item… let’s say that the shipping is $18.  If you charge $18 on a $50 item, people will not buy, they will think you are ripping them off on the shipping.  But, you could charge $10 on shipping, and then take $8 from your profit to cover the shipping overage.  This way you still make $12 on the item and will sell many more than if you tried to charge the full $18 shipping.
• If you are shipping from overseas, it is very advantageous to be able to provide a tracking number to your customer, so that they can go on the internet and see where their item is.  If you are selling low cost items, this may not be possible, as tracking may be too expensive, but if possible this will be a real life-saver for you.

Selling on eBay is a great way to earn your living, or supplement your regular income.  I had a regular job when I first started selling on eBay, but within 6 months or so, I was making more on eBay than on my regular job.  You can do it too!  Give it a try!

To get more information on eBay selling, check my books, 49 Ways to Make a Living or 99 Ways to Make a Living on the Internet.

So, here is what my friend had to say about online business:

It amazes me at how many people (wrongly) believe how money can be made on the internet, or don’t believe at all money can be made on the internet.

Here is what I think. It’s all about three things: A) Giving people what they want, B) Being able to be found, and C) The right strategy.

I want to tackle the last part first. It seems apparent to me, that you don’t make a million dollars with one website, you make a dollar with a million websites! Of course the milion part is not real, but you should get the point!

What do YOU think?

And here is what I think….

I think that business is business.  Business on the Internet compared to business on Main Street is like comparing having a business on Main Street compared to having business over on 12th Avenue.  It’s just two different locations.  The same practices still apply.  The same needs apply.  Yeah, there are a few differences, but when you boil it all down, there are a few hallmarks of business whether it is virtual business on the Internet, or if it is a brick and mortar store down on Main Street.  What are those hallmarks of a good business?

• Offer value for your customer.
• Offer great customer service.
• Offer fair prices.

Safeway vs. your Internet Grocery - the Playing Field is almost level!

Sure, there are other things too, but if you get these three things right, you will experience success.  You will succeed, whether your business is on the Internet or on Main Street.  You’ll even succeed on 12th Avenue as well!

What I am saying is that there is nothing magical about the Internet.  The same rules apply on the Internet as what apply on Main Street.

One thing that the Internet does, though, is that it levels the playing field in many ways.  Let’s say you have a grocery store.  You can set up a website that equals Safeway’s website, even if you are a small player.  You can’t do that in the real world unless you have a ton of money, because Safeway has a ton of stores, and the money to do things that you can’t dream of.  But, on the web you are a lot more equal.

Want to make money on the Internet?  One thing is for sure.  You can’t make any money unless you actually do something though.  Talking about it is not enough.