When you surf the internet, are you able to tell the difference between a blog and a website? If you do, congratulations! If you don’t, don’t worry, you are not alone. There are different views about this subject but many web developers and internet marketers maintain that a blog is actually a website. let’s discuss more of that later. Blogging is fast becoming a household word for internet users. According to Wikipedia, as of February 16, 2011, there are over 156 million blogs in existence. Top blog hosting platform,  WordPress.com,  says there are tens of thousands of news blogs created daily by ‘wordpress’ users.

People are motivated to blog for many reasons. To enumerate these reasons with basis, different bloggers ran a survey find out “why people blog.” One of these surveys was conducted by internet marketing and blogging expert Chris Garrett of chrisg.com with results as follow:

Survey Question: Why do you blog?

Responses (in ranking)

1. For pleasure

2. To promote business

3. To make money

4. For my employer

5. To get paid

(chart from chrisg.com)

Looking at the responses, we can establish that the respondents’ primary reason for blogging concerns their interest in writing and sharing to the global community information, ideas, or simple thoughts. The other responses maybe merged into blogging for work and business, in short, blogging for money. This survey established the fact that there is money in blogging as a lot of bloggers are able to turn their blog sites into money-making machines.

The question now is how do we make real money from blogging? Although a lot of bloggers are claiming they have made hundreds and thousands of dollars from blogging in a short period, the opportunity to actually make some seem easy. Don’t get fooled though. Making money — either through blogging or through other strategies — requires time, patience, and ability to learn and apply that learning. The good thing about blogging is that minimal financial investment is required. Sometimes, only internet connection is needed if you know the right strategies.

Ready to learn? Let’s go through with the basics of blogging first.

While website designing and development seem arduous and too technical, blogs are simpler to create and manage, uses simple interface that are friendly even to non-geeks and ordinary internet users.

Trivia:

Jorn Barger coined the term “weblog” on December 17, 1997. He used the term to describe the process of ‘logging the web’ as he surfed.

Peter Merholz in 1999 jokingly used the word ‘weblog’ in his website, breaking the term into the phrase “we blog,” or still according to him, “blog” for short. The term blog became popular after Pyra Labs released “Blogger” which success was phenomenal.

Blogs are usually created and maintained by an individual but a lot of blogs today are developed and sustained by informal groups, companies, and organizations. Active blogs contain regular entries of articles (also called ‘posts’) or other materials such as graphics (photos, illustrations, artworks, and others) or videos (short clips, documentary, commercial-type, or full-blown films). The newest contents are usually found at the top of the page.

Blogs are usually interactive allowing the readers or visitors to leave feedbacks (or ‘comments’) about the blog, the article, or the material uploaded. The ‘comment button’ may also be used to send  message to the blog owner, the article writer, the owner of the graphics or videos, or even to reply or comment about earlier feedbacks.

More about blogs and blogging on Part 2 of this article.

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Browse through the introductory articles on Work-at-Home and Make Money Series:

• Introduction: Work and Make Money At Home Opportunities for Moms. Click Here to read the article.
• Direct-Selling Opportunities for Moms, Part I. Read the article Here.
• Part II of the Direct-Selling Opportunities for Moms containing Industry insights. Read it Here.
• Know the Work-At-Home Online benefits and disadvantages Here.
• The Top Online Work-At-Home Employment and Businesses disclosed Here.
• More strategies and ways in Making Money Online Here.

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If you have any questions about the presented ideas or wishing to share your experiences and thoughts on Working and Making Money at Home, please drop us a message by using the comment section below or send it to us through the contact form or through our email at newmoms101 (at) yahoo (dot) com.

The part 1 of this article offers a lengthy discussion on web content or article writing as a home-at-work opportunity for moms and others who wanted to make money right at the convenience of their homes.

As a content and article writer, you may choose to become a regular and full-timer, a freelancer, a part-timer, or a per-contract writer. You may work on a per-hour or per-article basis. Oftentimes, your writing skills would determine your worth in terms of wages. Remember though, as a content writer, your ability to put SEO (search engine optimization) principles in your written article is vital and would count in lobbying for your desired pay.

Now that you are convinced that your writing skills can make you financially liberated, you’re ready to go and enter the world of content and article writing. The next step is to actually find writing jobs. The good news is that there are so many opportunities online for people who are “grammatically sound.”

WordPress.com alone revealed that tens of thousands of blogs are created everyday by regular bloggers, by companies and by large media publishers. What if you count those created by other blog hosting platforms or website applications? Although there’s no known statistic on the number of new websites and blogs created daily (since we can’t count the number of closed, expired and abandoned websites each day), the popularity of internet has grown to incredible heights that we can probably assume that there are hundreds of thousands of new websites and blogs published on a daily basis. The internet is now more than a resource of information, it is also accessed and used for different causes such as advertising and marketing, communication, and data transfer.

Many of the uses of the internet — particularly as a source of information and as a vehicle for promotion of products, services, and ideas – bring in the need for web writers. Web site owners, publishers, and editors need this special kind of writers to produce contents for websites and blogs, and produce materials of different kinds for marketing and advertising purposes.

There are several ways to advertise self as a for-hire content and article writer.

• By creating your own blog and stocking it with high-quality articles. Your blog will automatically become your writing portfolio and use it too as a tool in advertising yourself for content or article writing job(s).

• By writing blog posts or articles for other websites and get paid through a revenue sharing model. Associated Content, Helium, and Suite101 pays for page views from visitors your article gets while eHow pays according to click on ads on the article’s page.

• By writing blog contents for websites which in turn would list them for sale. Buyers of web contents may republish, tweaked, or get the exclusive rights for your articles. Some of these sites are Constant-Content and Skontent.

• By becoming a contributing writer in content producing websites. About will pay you on a regular basis by writing definite number of articles on specific niches or topics while DemandStudios pays per article ranging from $3 for 50-word tips up to $75 for special writing assignments.

• By joining an online marketplace. There are different strategies that web owners or administrators use to enjoin freelance writers and companies/individuals seeking for writers. Sites such as Guru, Freelancer, Elance and Craigslist make employers post freelance writing jobs and writers bid, submit quotations/proposals, or apply for the job to win them. BrightHub pays writers per article at the same time provides revenue sharing scheme for page view of articles.

• By joining organizations of online writers and registering in online forums relevant to web content and article writing. Clients who want online writers are posting or advertising their need in these sites.

• By bookmarking websites which regularly posts online writing jobs such as Online-Writing-Jobs andAsiaWriters.

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Browse through the introductory articles on Work-at-Home and Make Money Series:

• Introduction: Work and Make Money At Home Opportunities for Moms. Click Here to read the article.
• Direct-Selling Opportunities for Moms, Part I. Read the article Here.
• Part II of the Direct-Selling Opportunities for Moms containing Industry insights. Read it Here.
• Know the Work-At-Home Online benefits and disadvantages Here.
• The Top Online Work-At-Home Employment and Businesses disclosed Here.
• More strategies and ways in Making Money Online Here.

…

If you have any questions about the presented ideas or wishing to share your experiences and thoughts on Working and Making Money at Home, please drop us a message by using the comment section below or send it to us through the contact form or through our email at newmoms101 (at) yahoo (dot) com.

If your written communication skill is very good and among your passions is writing, this work-at-home and make-money strategy is for you. Content and articlewriting is a quick and easy way to makemoney online. While writing for magazines and newspapers requires heavy writing and high-quality contents, writing for online publishing offers a lighter and relaxed atmosphere.

There is a growing demand for content andarticle writers. Not only companies and entrepreneurs these days are using the power of the “new media” (such as the internet) to promote their products and services to the public; institutions, groups, and individuals coming from various sectors and industries (such as medical, education, and entertainment field) have also recognized the need to establish their online presence to grow their clients and develop business prospects.

To do this, the job of the content or article writers is important. Content or article writing in itself is a specialize field. It deviates from the usual journalistic style of writing and focuses on the promotion of a particular content of a website under the principle of internet marketing method called search engine optimization (SEO). This strategy attempts to boost the ranking of the website in search engines which in return would make it more accessible to prospective visitors. Such articles are quality written, easy-to-read, to the point, and short (usually ranging from 200 to 500 words, but can be longer if the topic is profound).

This kind of writing was born because usability expert Jacob Nielson discovered that about 79% of web users simply scan the contents of a website instead of taking it all in and reading everything. They skip information they regard as unnecessary and jump from site-to-site trying to find what they’re looking for.

“Why is it challenging to become a content writer? You only have 10 seconds to grab the webuser’s attention with your web site content and 55 seconds to develop in them an understanding of your company or product.” Entheosweb.com

The job of the content writer is to use targeted keywords in well-written articles that will put its ranking high in search engines so it will reach more readers, thereby, promote the website, product, or business further.

Content articles are usually produced to sell a product or service, promote a company, business or individual, give relevant information to readers, or to simply provide new materials for a blog or website. To produce regular and quality contents, hiring or outsourcing of content and article writers is imperative. Contracts or agreements for writingmay be on a freelance or permanent basis.

There are different types of writing materials and tasks a content writer may be asked to do. Some of these are:

• ghost writing
• article writing
• writing of business letters
• internet research
• writing of SEO copyrights
• production of press releases
• writing of technical articles
• write travelogues
• produce newsletters
• write e-books and e-catalogs
• write sale documents,
• write articles or reviews for blogs and article directory sites

Good content writers are paid well because they are hard to find. Yes, many can blog, but not many bloggers can becontent or article writers. For one to become a good content or article writer, your command of the English language should be very good, you must know how to proofread your own writings, and you must learn how to do research well.

Before you find a work-at-home job in content and article writing, you must create writing samples for your prospective clients. These samples will speak of your skills and quality as a writer and how much you should be paid for writing. Start building your writer’s portfolio following these tips on content and article writing:

• keep your paragraphs and sentences short, a study shows that people read 25% slower web materials than those in print.
• use the inverted pyramid style (or front-loading content), write the most important point(s) or conclusion first before the explaining the details.
• use bullets or numbering to stress several points for easy readability.
• use the active voice to have your readers’ imagination wander with your writing which will keep them reading on.
• use objective words rather than overstated expressions such as amazing, marvellous, great, and such, if they don’t genuinely apply.
• highlight  words and texts by using bold or colored font.
• use simple words that anyone from different age groups (teens to elderly) can understand and appreciate.
• avoid using flowery or complex language.
• almost all topics have been written about online and the key is for good content writers to “rewrite” the contentusing their unique style and own words.

Part 2 of this article will feature further discussion of the work-at-home opportunities for potential content and articlewriters.

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Browse through the introductory articles on Work-at-Home and Make Money Series:

• Introduction: Work and Make Money At Home Opportunities for Moms. Click Here to read the article.
• Direct-Selling Opportunities for Moms, Part I. Read the article Here.
• Part II of the Direct-Selling Opportunities for Moms containing Industry insights. Read it Here.
• Know the Work-At-Home Online benefits and disadvantages Here.
• The Top Online Work-At-Home Employment and Businesses disclosed Here.
• More strategies and ways in Making Money Online Here.

…

If you have any questions about the presented ideas or wishing to share your experiences and thoughts on Working and Making Money at Home, please drop us a message by using the comment section below or send it to us throughthe contact form or through our email at newmoms101 (at) yahoo (dot) com.

Celebrations during the Christmas and New Year holidays can be quite costly. It’s time to get back to work and make money to fill the household fund again. If this is your target for the New Year and you’re looking at the internet as the potential medium for money-making strategy, you came to the right place.

Before proceeding with the part three of the articles on Online and Work and Business Opportunities, you may want to check out the previous posts on the series:

• Part 1:  Benefits and disadvantages of working online
• Part 2: Top online work and business opportunities and requisites for becoming a successful online worker

Aside from the top opportunities in making money online, there are still a lot of strategies on augmenting one’s income through the internet. These are the less popular ones but remained to be good strategies especially if you do not have the usual technical or administrative skills required to become a blogger, a VA, or a web designer and developer.

1. Answer online surveys. Companies outsource websites to conduct online surveys for them so they can develop new products or services or to further develop existing ones. What you need to do is find these websites which pays good money for filling out surveys. Just be careful as there are a lot of posers — websites pretending to be legit but will just waste your time and not pay you at all. It’s important that you read reviews from other websites or blogs about the survey sites to find out if they have good reputation. The fee for filling out surveys is not very exciting, it may range from centavos to $20 per survey.
2. Sell photos and graphic designs. Now you can turn a good hobby into a money-making strategy. For photography enthusiasts, take good shots of people and stuff with themes or subject and sell them through photo websites like Shutterstock and Fotolia. Bloggers and web owners are usually looking for photos they can use for uploading with articles. If you are into digital scrapbooking, you may want to design scrapbooking kits and embellishments and sell them at websites where you can register as a member or put up your own website to market your designs.
3. Get paid viewing advertisements and emails. Another make money scheme is called “paid to read” where you will get paid viewing advertisements and commercials in emails or websites. What you need to do is register as a member of “paid to read” sites, view the advertisements or commercials you like which will be sent through your email, and wait for your payment, either monthly or when you reach the minimum payout amount. Usually, in this scheme, the longer hours you devote watching ads, the more money you earn. There’s even a get-paid-to-read site which offers a sign-up bonus of $10.
4. Provide online tutorial. If you are good in academics or whiz in a particular subject, sign up with sites that provide online tutoring to, usually, college and high school students. You just have to define the number of hours per week (and the specific time) you are available for tutorial. You can assist learners solve their math homework, help them ace their English midterm exam, guide them breeze through a science experiment, and more. What you need is genuine fondness for helping others and patience for questions, sensible or not, that may be asked during the tutorial.
5. Play “Jury” and get paid! If you are a la student and needing some income to pay the school, or a lawyer hoping to practice the profession and become more familiarized with handling simple to complex cases, register with sites such as eJury.com or TrialJuries.com. Such sites stage mock trials where online jurors get paid depending on the simplicity or complexity of the case. If you’re good enough or you pay attention while doing jury work, chances are you’ll be called again for another jury assignment.
6. Share files online. If you have created a file that you think may be useful to others such as an online game, a software or application, calendars, greetings cards, movie or video clips, a powerpoint presentation or pdf file on a topic, an excel database, etc., register with websites where you can upload your files and get paid per download of your files.
7. Become a mystery shopper. Mystery shopping is a strategy employ by companies wanting to find out how their customers feel about their services and products, evaluate their employees’ marketing and customer service skills, and measure their customers’ experiences with their company. To do so, they hire companies which send mystery shoppers to shop or dine at the clients’ stores/boutiques or restaurants. This is a job that goes well with people who loves to shop and eat and get paid for actually doing so! One caution though, there are a lot of fraud companies that pose as legitimate mystery shopping sites.
8. Earn by proofreading. If you like reading and is quite good in noticing grammatical and other errors in writing, you may enjoy the job of a proofreader. You may be asked to proofread or manuscripts, books, ebooks, articles for websites or blogs, marketing or promotional materials, signages, and anything written. Pay usually depends on the number of words and complexity of the material you are going to proofread.
9. Enroll in reward programs. Making money with “get paid to” or GPT programs is another proven strategy. You will need to sign up with a GPT site to earn money by registering with other sites, clicking links and banners, enrolling in programs, posting in forums, answer surveys, and other stuff. In return, you will get freebies and gifts, earn commissions and sign-up bonuses, among other things.
10. Advertise your skills with an online marketplace. Maybe your skill is not writing or web development related but hey, you still have skills, right? It’s about finding the right marketplace to sell your skills to people, may it be your prowess in electronics, plumbing, carpentry, tailoring, marketing, accounting, etc. There are sites where you can register your skill and people would contact you for your services. You’ll get to have an online presence for free or by paying a minimum fee for registration.

Bear in mind that every make money online opportunities provided in this site requires your time, may it be a few hours a day or a few hours per week;  your patience to learn and develop your skills; and your commitment to plan your goals and strategies on how to become successful.

Await the succeeding articles discussing in length every work-at-home employment and business opportunitiesavailable for stay-at-home moms, and even dads, out there.

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If you have any questions about the presented ideas or wishing to share your experiences and thoughts on Working and Making Money at Home, please drop us a message by using the comment section below or send it to us through the contact form or through our email at newmoms101 (at) yahoo (dot) com.