Getting your brand a Facebook page is like getting a shop at the prime location of the newest mall in town. Footfalls come in automatically without making much of an effort. People of all age groups, ethnicities, income groups, etc are on Facebook. So are their friends, family and acquaintances.

The chances of your marketing campaign going viral and gaining a word of mouth momentum are immense with this mammoth audience. At the same time, even a small slip will derail the campaign and people notice that too. So what are the right ways and key steps that make a marketing campaign on Facebook a success?

Get a Facebook Vanity URL

Just like a domain name, vanity URLs and usernames are very important in protecting the identity of your brand. People will remember www.facebook.com/brand rather than e854ca07d80ae3817. If somebody else is sitting on your brand identity, ask them nicely or  contact Facebook if you have a copyright. If nothing works, go for a cool suffix or prefix with the brand name.

Complete your Profile

Complete Your Profile

Leave nothing out. Add as many details as possible about your brand on the Facebook profile page. After all, your customers can get to know that you are for real and professional and not a scam artist. Do not forget to link your other social media profiles. A clear and crisp description of what exactly your business does is important too.

Design a Custom Facebook Page

Custom Design

Facebook offers a lot of tools to customize the business page of your brand. There are also additional third party tools available to help you spice up your Facebook page without having to do any coding. Done carefully, your Facebook page could be as good looking as a custom webpage design.

Join Related Groups

No, do not join your direct competitor’s Facebook page and start a flame war. Join the special interest group of your industry, professional associations, charities of interest etc. and be visible. Engage in meaningful conversation and do not be a chatter box.

Buy Facebook Advertisements

Facebook Advertisement

Promote your brand with targeted Facebook advertisements. Write a great copy, create a cool banner, link to a landing page and wait for the traffic to come in. Facebook is so huge, your webpage traffic will surge so be prepared to meet the server load. For the same reason, but only Cost per Click (CPC) ads instead of paying based on impressions.

Offer Exclusive Facebook Discounts

Lot of brands offer exclusive discounts and freebies to members of the Facebook fanpage. This helps in getting a ton of new users. To retain the existing fans, keep a long term discount running ensuring brand loyalty and positive word of mouth.

Reward Referrals

Social networks and Facebook in particular are the hotbeds of referrals. Make it easy and compelling for your fans to recommend your brand to their friends. Offer kickbacks, discounts or gifts when there is a successful referral. You can really benefit from the network of your fans without having to embark on a costly marketing campaign.

Run Promotions

Promotions

Bundle products and run promotions at steep discounts. Offer discounts when a bunch of people but together in true Groupon style. A valid reason like reaching 1000 customers or founding day or Black Friday will yield better results.

Giveaway Your Product

Sponsor giveaways at regular intervals and place your brand at the center of attraction. Giveaways spread like a wildfire and you will benefit from word of mouth and positive attention.

Conduct Trivia and Quizzes

Post a weekly quiz about your newest products or a trivia to find the email address of the brand’s CEO. Make sure your fans get to know something about your brand with this exercise. Mix and match the questions with pop culture stuff to make it more interesting.

Host Contests

Contests

Host contests and reward the winners. Rewards could be a combination of your products and popular third party products, say iTunes or Amazon gift cards. Even people who are initially not interested in your brand will jump in at the opportunity to win an iTunes card. That’s lot of opportunities at your doorstep.

Engage Your Fans

Talk to your fans and talk back. When someone asks a question or expresses concern, address it at the earliest. Point them to the appropriate help resource at the knowledge base or to the right person to talk from the support team.

Add Fresh Content

Just like a blog, your Facebook page needs to have fresh content too. There is no point in setting up a great Facebook page and letting it gather dust. Link diligently to content posted in your corporate blog. Summarize press releases instead of dumping them in their entirety and liven up product updates with a great copy with a fresh voice.

Keep the Conversation Going

Ask for feedback or post a question of interest to your fans and keep the conversation going. The longer the conversations, more engaged your fans will be. Conversations help foster the sense of being a community and that will do wonders to your brand.

Organize Group Chats

Group Chat

Virtual meetups with audio and video chat apps are great way to connect with your community. Members from the product or development teams can interact in a friendly and informal manner. If you have got a brand ambassador with atleast some star power make them participate in the chats too.

Share Interesting Content

Your news feed does not always have to be all business and no fun. Share interesting developments in your domain, latest breaking news (relevant or otherwise), occasional funny videos that are not NSFW and so on. The idea is not be serious all the time and balance is necessary to ensure that the content is not junk and slapstick.

Have an Online Helpline

Ensure that you have atleast one person from your support team online at Facebook for helping users. Be it may potential customers or existing ones, it is a great way to show that you care about your customers. Round the clock efforts may be overkill but do clearly mention the timings of support availability prominently.

Avoid Clutter

Tabs

Move content from multiple sources to their respective tabs avoiding clutter and confusion in the news feed. Unclogging the news feed avoids noise and makes people stay on the page longer and know more about your brand. Make use of the tabs features to differentiate between things. For example, you can have dedicated tabs for your Twitter stream, trivia, contests, promotions etc.

Post User Experiences

First hand accounts by existing customers is a great way to market your brand. Ask users to come forward with their stories as to how your brand helped improve things for them. Reach out to your repeat customers and those who do not have the time to write and post the transcript of the conversation. The key here is openness and try not to edit or chop the user experiences submitted.

Decide on the Privacy Settings

Privacy Settings

You can either set your Facebook page fans only or for all the world to see. This is purely dependent on what your business is and how openly you want to interact with your customers. For example, if you are offering a discount only to your fans, you will have to lock your page down till the user becomes a fan. There is a risk of losing users but be sure to let those who are visiting the landing page what benefits are awaiting them once they join as your fan.

Listen to Your Customers

Before  a product launch or update, conduct a poll among your fans to rate their top feature expectations. Since those are the people who will be buying & using the products, there is no harm in listening to them. You might not be able to incorporate all of their ideas, but ensure to incorporate atleast some of them and inform them regarding the same. Tell them why some features did not make it and if they will show up in the future product map.

Invite People to Join You

Importing Contacts

Shift through your address books and contact lists of email accounts to create a consolidated mailing list. Send them a neatly designed and brilliantly written email with link to your Facebook page. You can also try importing the list directly and expand the network. Remember, being part of the social is gathering a crowd and with crowd comes more potential customers.

Be Mysterious

Before announcing anything major, tease your audience with bits and pieces of details to evince interest. Reveal the USPs one by one at regular intervals. A fitting launch will then complete the circle and there is a possibility of getting good street cred if you do this right.

Integrate a Shopping Cart

Shopping Cart

There are a number of ways to integrate a shopping cart to your Facebook page. Once the Facebook page visitors are convinced that your brand is good enough, a shopping cart could seal the deal right away. Do not make the customers go through a lot of hoops to complete the transaction as it will kill impulse purchases.

Don’t Boss Around

People are unique and so are their characters. Some of your fans may be a bit more aggressive or foul mouthed or mischievous than the rest of the flock. Just because they are your fans you do not get to boss them around and tell them to shut it. Politeness goes a long way and if somebody says something offensive or shares something NSFW, do not ban them right away. Tell them nicely not to engage in acts like that as it tarnishes both his/her image as well as the brand’s. Give them fair amount of warning before kicking them out.

According to various reports, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is considering instituting a “do not track” list, similar in concept to the Do Not Call registry, for Internet users who want their browsing activity hidden from online advertisers.

If implemented, this registry would keep advertisers from tracking your browsing and shopping history via cookies and serving customized ads based on your behavior.

This opt-out solution would be great for consumers who’d rather not have the commercial version of Big Brother watching their every online move while still allowing those more lax in matters of online privacy to benefit from increasingly sophisticated e-commerce technologies.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz told members of the Senate Commerce Committee recently, “We may explore in the context of behavioral advertising… a do-not-track mechanism that’s more comprehensive and easier to use than the procedures currently available. Under such a mechanism, users could opt out of behavioral advertising more easily rather than having to make choices on website-by-website basis.”

Back in 2007, similar legislation was proposed. At that time, the Center for Democracy and Technology, Consumer Action, the Consumer Federation of America and the Electronic Frontier Foundation were among the registry’s advocates. These groups also suggested that advertisers should give consumers details about exactly what data they intended to track.

We’re unclear on exactly why this idea wasn’t implemented three years ago. What we do know now is that it’s going to be difficult for the FTC to make these changes when it might not have the deep and wide control it would need to institute such a registry. Moreover, this list is guaranteed to be extremely unpopular in the online ad industry, which itself is one of the main arteries of Internet revenue.

We won’t know anything about the fate of this idea for quite some time; whether or not it’s even feasible will be explored in a comprehensive report on online privacy due to be released later this year. If the online ad industry takes proactive steps toward explaining and protecting users’ privacy and data beforehand, the legislation may not even be necessary, Leibowitz noted.

What do you think about the concept of a do-not-track list for online advertising?

Ian Wilkes, left, and Ginsu Yoon are the founders of Bynamite, which is testing software that monitors what ad networks and Web sites collect and assume to know about a user.

LIFE, as they say, imitates art. And the way things work commercially today across much of the Web recalls that chapter in “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” where Tom cajoles his guileless friends into whitewashing Aunt Polly’s fence. They supply the labor, but he gets the reward.

On the Internet, users supply the raw material that helps generate billions of dollars a year in online advertising revenue. Search requests, individual profiles on social networks, Web browsing habits, posted pictures and many Internet messages are all mined to serve up targeted online ads.

All of this personal information turns out to be extremely valuable, collectively. So why should Google, Yahoo, Facebook and other ad businesses get all the rewards?

That is the question that animates Bynamite, a start-up company based in San Francisco. “There should be an economic opportunity on the consumer side,” said Ginsu Yoon, a co-founder of the company. “Nearly all the investment and technology is on the advertising side.”

Bynamite, to be sure, is another entry in the emerging market for online privacy products. The business interest in such products, of course, is being fed by worries about how much personal information marketers collect. Also playing a part are recent outcries after Facebook changed its privacy practices and Google introduced a social networking tool, Buzz, that initially shared information widely without users’ permission. Venture capital has been pouring into Web-based monitoring and privacy protection products like ReputationDefender and Abine, as well as services that help parents protect children’s privacy online, like SafetyWeb and SocialShield.

Bynamite brings a somewhat different perspective to the privacy market. “Our view is that it’s not about privacy protection but about giving users control over this valuable resource — their information,” Mr. Yoon said.

Both the protection and the value approaches to the privacy market could well pay off, says Randy Komisar, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture capital firm. “What’s intriguing about Bynamite,” he said, “is its emphasis on privacy as revolving around choice and ownership of data, and ultimately a notion of an exchange of value.” (Kleiner Perkins is an investor in ReputationDefender but not in Bynamite.)

Although Bynamite is a tiny start-up, it points toward larger issues about privacy transactions and pricing of personal data. “In reality, we constantly make transactions involving our personal information,” said Alessandro Acquisti, an associate professor of information technology and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

Every search on Google, Mr. Acquisti notes, is implicitly such a transaction, involving a person “selling” personal information and “buying” search results. But people do not think about, or are unaware of, the notion that typed search requests help determine the ads that Google displays and what its ad network knows about them.

Bynamite, Mr. Acquisti said, is “simply trying to make these kinds of transactions explicit, more transparent to the user.”

Last week, Bynamite introduced an early, or beta, version of its software, a downloadable plug-in for browsers. That software and its Web service monitor what ad networks and e-commerce sites collect and assume to know about a user. A user’s interests are then assembled on a Web page, grouped by categories like “news and current events,” “general health,” “travel,” “technology” and “shopping.” The categories are weighted by how often you visit different categories of sites or make purchases at some online merchants.

The information tracked by Bynamite is steadily updated, and, at least for me last week, a small pop-up alert at the bottom of my computer screen appeared every day, informing me of new information about me from ad networks. Mr. Yoon calls the product’s early version mainly a “mirror,” showing users how the commercial Internet sees them.

Users can change that mirror to represent their interests more accurately. For example, I don’t own a car, but my “automotive” folder soon had several entries, saying I was interested in Mercedes-Benz and other brands, presumably because middle-age men who visit the Web sites I do are typically attractive targets for car ads. I deleted the auto interests, suggesting to advertisers that I’m not necessarily a good prospect. Still, I saw a few car ads on sites I later visited.

Bynamite is by no means anti-advertising. It does not block ads. Its Web site recommends free tools, like AdBlock and NoScript, for people who want ads blocked.

In essence, the company has a libertarian, free-market ethos. If consumers have more power and control, it says, personal information should flow more efficiently to the benefit of both consumers and advertisers, who will be able to more accurately aim their ads.

Like most start-ups, Bynamite faces long odds. To succeed, it must be easy to use, and users must trust it as a reliable middleman handling their data. It has no business model yet, though it could offer product recommendations, based on interests, and collect fees on resulting sales from merchants. It hasn’t ruled out accepting ads itself. To start, its free plug-in software works only on Mozilla and Chrome browsers.

IF Bynamite gains momentum, Mr. Yoon predicts that individuals will be able to use their portfolios of interests as virtual currency. He calls the idea a “consumer’s preference wallet.”

Mr. Yoon and his co-founder, Ian Wilkes, are former business and engineering managers at Second Life, the online community where trading virtual currency for digital goods is common.

In a few years, Mr. Yoon says, a person’s profile of interests could be the basis for micropayments or discounts. A media company, for example, might charge a monthly subscription fee of $10 for news or entertainment programming, but offer it for $8 to those who exchanged their preference wallets.

The discount, in theory, would be justified because advertisers would pay more to market to people whose interests they knew precisely and thus were more likely to buy.

“I may be wrong about the product and our company,” Mr. Yoon said. “But I’m absolutely convinced that the direction is right, giving people a way to identify and use this store of value that is their personal information.”

“I’m setting the example, and it’s going to be puzzled over and studied and followed, from now on.” – John Doe, Seven.

Although Wieden + Kennedy had a very different aim than the homicidal “John Doe” character from David Fincher’s thriller Seven, this is probably what the advertising agency behind Old Spice’s latest marketing campaign must be thinking right now.

The campaign, in which the “Old Spice guy” — as actor Isaiah Mustafa, who starred in most of Old Spice’s recent commercials, has come to be known as on the Internet — ended today. In his final tweet and video, Mustafa says that “like all great things this too must end.”

And then he catches a giant fish that falls from nowhere.

The team behind this amazingly well-run campaign managed to engage half of the Internet, and provoke almost unequivocally positive results from social media sites such as Reddit and Twitter. Hell, even the comments on YouTube were overwhelmingly positive — and that never happens. The Old Spice Twitter account accumulated tens of thousands of new followers and the YouTube videos amassed hundreds of thousands of views.

Everything was run perfectly. The Old Spice guy recorded his video responses in rapid succession, an amazing feat in itself which cannot be truly appreciated if you’ve never been in front of a camera. His answers were a key mix of coolness and the stuff internet memes are made of. The actual brand — Old Spice — was never shoved down viewers’ throats. Most importantly, all of it was incredibly fun to watch.

The team behind the campaign took great care to engage celebrities, influencers, common folk and popular social media sites in balanced quantities. And it knew exactly how to talk to them. In his penultimate video, the Old Spice guy talks directly to his daughter, explaining that until recently, he was just a struggling actor no one has ever heard of. When was the last time a marketing campaign spoke directly to you in such a frank way, making you laugh and cry at the same time?

Wieden + Kennedy have set a standard marketing experts will admire and follow in the years to come. This is the future of marketing.

How taking others'' online content for your own use is no longer considered stealing

Way back when GeoCities and 56k were respected terms and not the punch lines of tech geek jokes, plenty of website coders got rich by stealing content and throwing it online with a few advertisements. But then Web surfers and search engines revolted against them, making recycled content a taboo practice (and the bottom of search queries). Times have changed though, as recently we've been seeing a huge boom in reblogging, with online aggregators and digests that resemble glorified bookmark pages having become accepted - and in the case of Tumblr's "reblog" button, welcomed - forms of blogging. Below are a couple of excellent reblogging sites to show you how the pros do it, as well as the plug-ins you need to get on board the trend:

Katherine : An expertly curated collection of vintage advertising graphics, women's fashion, great music that you've never heard, hilarious videos, and beautiful images; this Chicago-based site is a perfect example of how reblogging should be done on Tumblr. Katherine lets her posts, like this one on cartoon hair , speak for themselves; she rarely writes much more than a sentence or two, letting you decide who she is for yourself, instead of her telling you who she wishes she was, as do so many bloggers today. Our guess is that she's an unabashed Jo Bros fan , with an appreciation for the minds of 1950s tweens .

This Recording : Editor Alex Carnevale has also mastered the fine art of online curation in this Tumblr companion to his online magazine of the same name. Carnevale's posts run the gamut, but examples include dramatic Western images, film stills, vintage black-and-white aerial shots of Manhattan , and stunning nature photography - just what we need with the solstice looming. He posts not to lay claim to the images, but rather to share with readers what he finds inspiring in the hope of doing the same for them. And for anyone into art, fashion and striking imagery, you'll be finding great stuff that you can reblog in your own aggregator or, if you still don't have one, your Facebook page.

Reblogging Plug-ins: Most rebloggers use Tumblr because it can automatically source posts from other Tumblrs. But even if you don't use Tumblr, you can use plug-ins that will help you start defining yourself with other people's work in no time. WordPress' is probably the simplest one; just follow these easy directions to install a reblogging tab into any WordPress account. Then there is the free reBlog hack , which creates an RSS feed of your favorite sites that will let you reblog posts, complete with site credits and links. Now, wasn't that simple?

Why do you in your articles, not to mention numerous online marketers and webmasters alike, avoid linking out to other websites? Do you feel you’re doing yourself a disservice by including outbound links to other websites and other articles? Do you fear that you will somehow lose your Google Page Rank by doing this? Or are you just too lazy?

Whenever I read articles on Triond, Bukisa, Xomba, and other publishing sites that operate in the same manner, I am amazed that people writing articles miss out on the most obvious links they could include in their articles to make them more interesting, to make following up on a theme more easy for the reader (which I consider common courtesy toward the reader who wants to know more), and to improve your Google Page Rank

Some of you may believe that outbound links will add little if nothing to your ranking and that those links are inserted at the expense of inbound links. The arguments run along two lines: on one hand that outbound links drain your Google Page Rank (by somehow metaphysically jumping to other pages, I suppose); and on the other hand that the massive reciprocity of all those sites you linked to will result in enough inbound links to cause Google to think you’re using magical black hat techniques.

Neither of these arguments holds water.

First, outbound links do not somehow inexplicably cancel out the good that inbound links do to your articles. Let’s suppose that the Google Page Rank of Socyberty is at 4 and you are writing an article for that site containing external links. This will neither affect nor actually harm Socyberty’s Page Rank. It might help the PR of another site (for example Quazen), but not at the expense of Socyberty. The amount of Page Rank oxygen you’re blowing into a site you link to is equal to Socyberty’s PR divided by the number of outbound links on all Socyberty. The amount of oxygen going out is minimal as per link, as there are thousands in all the articles, but the sum of all oxygen going out is always equal to the total Page Rank; it can’t go into the negative, draining Page Rank out. What goes out to individual sites is marginal, but it is a little like positive karma. As with plants, the oxygen given off by a site is not harmful to its source.

This logic applies to internal links, too, and the link oxygen they carry between Socyberty’s pages.

Second, the argument that if you have outbound links resulting in a flood of reciprocal links will make Google think you’re using nefarious tactics has little truth to it, too. First of all, you should be linking out to sites that are relevant to your article’s theme. If you are very lucky, these sites might give you a back link in return, and that will only improve your ranking. If you’re linking to good, non-spam, non-link farm sites, reciprocal inbound links will not harm your Page Rank. The incoming karma is just as marginal as the one you give out, but all those bits and pieces will add up over time.

Make sure your outbound links don’t cause problems. Choose links that are relevant to your article, and keep the outbound links spread throughout the body of the article. Don’t build an interminable links’ list full of outbound links because such are not well received by Google.

If your article is considered a useful provider of content, the more high-quality and relevant outbound links will help you. While it may seem counter-intuitive to be giving other sites extra exposure, the truth is that you will profit from wisely chosen links. Apart from using inbound links (Socyberty to Socyberty, Bukisa to Bukisa, etc.), using outbound links (Socyberty to Quazen, Socyberty to Bukisa, etc.) will profit all concerned.

This is why you will find that my articles always contain links not only to my own articles that are relevant, but often to other writers’ articles and outside sources, if available, relevant, and worth reading.

The idea of making money online is attractive to many, primarily because of the benefits it offers. Two main incentives are motivational factors here: The lucrative potential of the internet as well as the personal freedom that comes with working without a fixed schedule or geographic location.

One doesn’t need to suffer through monotonous day jobs which offer poor returns for the time invested.

Indeed, why make $7 an hour selling coffee behind a counter when you can easily earn the same amount by spending 10 minutes to write an article on your blog?

Even if you’re not looking to work full-time at home, the internet offers a viable source of money which can help to supplement your regular income.

Cataloging the Different Ways to Make Money Online

A basic search on Google will reveal many ways to make money online and most of the websites listed in the search results pages all seem to focus on the same methods of making money.

I thought it’ll be a good idea to categorize and compile a list of the online money making methods available so that future visitors to Dosh Dosh will have a reference point which provides them with all information they need.

This list uses a rather broad categorization, which I believe covers most of the ways to make money online. More methods and examples of how to make money online will be added to this list, which can be considered a work in progress.

1. Set up a Blog or Website for Profit

One of the best ways to make money online is to create a website or blog which allows you to earn money from the display of advertisements or the sale of products and services.

There are many different types of money making blogs which will help you to make money and you’ll need to pick a model that suits your interests, schedule and skill levels. A simple no frills blog will allow you to easily pull in at least several hundred dollars in a month through the use of paid blogging websites alone.

Apart from blogs, other websites can easily help you to generate passive income as well. These can range from e-commerce websites, social communities and information portals to basic landing pages for affiliate programs.

2. Learn about Affiliate Marketing and The Art of Selling

This involves promoting a specific product or service and earning commissions whenever the referred user makes a purchase based on your recommendations.

Affiliate marketing is a big and profitable industry that covers a wide spectrum of topics and fields. If you’ve got an interest in fitness, you can make money promoting fitness videos or courses. In terms of fashion wear, you can earn commissions by recommending friends to clothing or t-shirt companies with affiliate programs.

The amount of money you make depends on what you are selling. Done correctly, affiliate marketing is one of the most powerful ways to make money from the web. Amazon, Commission Junction and ClickBank are three of the biggest affiliate marketplaces you can use if you’re branching out into affiliate marketing.

3. Start an Online Business

Starting your own online business or company allows you to make money off the provision of specific services or products you may have. Some examples of popular online trades include web design, copywriting and internet marketing.

It isn’t difficult to start a business. It’s all about hiring the right people or having enough knowledge and connections within a specific industry. You should do some in depth research before you decide to settle on a specific niche for your business. Entrepreneur.com has a good collection of tips on how to start an online business.

4. Try Out Domaining and the Online Real Estate Trade

This is the business of buying, selling, developing and making money from domain names. A domainer purchases many domain names and sells them to interested buyers. This is similar to real estate investing offline and domainers also make money by developing websites and reselling it to a buyer.

This practice is known as site flipping and can make you a tidy sum of money if you know how to build an attractive and profitable website. For a rough estimate of how much money you can earn from site flipping, check out the SitePoint Marketplace to browse through the collection of websites for sale.

5. Participate in Get-Paid-to Websites

There are hundreds of websites out there which you pay you to read emails, do surveys, sign up for trial subscriptions and surf the web. Websites that pay you to complete offers are worth examining because they usually include affiliate programs with recurring commissions to be earned.

The benefit of get paid to websites is that you don’t need to have your own website or any personal skills at all. The downside is that there are a lot of get-paid-to scams around and finding websites that are legitimate can be fairly difficult. Scam.com is a forum you should visit to learn if the get-paid-to website you’re interested in actually pays its members.

There are also several Web 2.0 or social media websites out there that will pay you to participate in their community. This collection of social media websites usually operate via a revenue-sharing system, which allows you to earn a share of the overall ad revenue. How much you earn depends on how much your submitted article, video or image is viewed.

6. Find a Virtual Job or Make Use of Your Expertise

Not only limited to data entry jobs, online jobs in the new economy include virtual assistants, gold farmers, online life coaching and support for open source software. Mini consultation networks like Bitwine and Ether allow you to easily set up shop and offer advice on specific topics through the web.

Most of these virtual jobs involve direct communication through electronic mediums like internet telephony, instant messengers and emails. Which means that all you need to get started is a home computer with an steady internet connection.

If you are an expert in a specific topic, you can offer consultation via websites like Jyve or Just Answers. Other skill or knowledge based vocations also include participation in online competitions in areas such as photography, writing, designing and even gaming.

7. Freelance and Work on a Contract Basis Online

If you have a skill such as web design, programming or copywriting you can offer your services online in exchange for money. Traditional freelancing jobs include transcription, proofreading, translation services on top of the ones already mentioned above.

Online marketplaces that you can use to offer your services include Guru.com and Elance. One of the best ways to find freelance jobs is to visit webmaster forums because webmasters usually require a variety of web-based services, which range from programming and content writing to design work.

If you’re focusing on writing and don’t own your own blog, you can still make some money by registering for websites which will pay for your content. Another alternative is get paid to write for other blogs either as a staff or guest writer.

8. Create Your Own Product and Sell it

Products you can create include website templates, sound clips or even your own ebook. Websites like Lulu allow you to easily develop and sell your own collection of electronic products like calenders, brochures, artwork, images and ebooks.

If your specialty is images and photography, citizen journalism websites like Spymedia and Citizen Image will pay for your images. You can also try using Shutterstock, the most established and lucrative micro-stock photography website. Illustrators and videographers are also welcome at Shutterstock.

This also ties in with the concept of creating your online business, which will allow you to sell the products you create or own without resorting to a third party website which will usually take a commission of the sale.

9. Get Involved in the Online Retail Trade

Ebay and Craigslist are the two of the most popular websites you can use if you are planning to get into the online retail trade. You can purchase products from either website to sell to the other.

Alternatively, you can specialize use site-specific methods of participating in the online retail trade. For example, Ebay dropshipping and arbitrage is a method whereby you’ll with offline retailers or exporters in other countries, or buy from one seller and sell to another.

Future Updates

In the future, each of the points listed on this list will have it’s own webpage with more in-depth information for each specific topic.

Hopefully, this article will serve as an helpful introduction for anyone looking for information concerning ways to make money on the internet.

Even more ways to make money online here

Visitors often visit websites and perform keyword searches in order to find the information they require. One way to make money from this often repeated user action is to display targeted advertisements on your search results pages.

Ideally, you want to monetize while adding value for your visitors and a means to achieve this aim is to use Google’s Adsense for Search, which places text-based ads next to your search results

What is a Google Custom Search Engine?

Simply put, Google Custom Search Engine is a tool which allows visitors to search your website by using Google’s core search technology. This enables you to list search results according to the sites and pages you specify. According to Google, the Custom Search Engine also allows you to:

• Apply your Website’s look and feel to the search results page.
• Provide search refinements within results pages to make it easier for searchers to find the information they’re looking for.
• Make money from your Custom Search Engine by participating in Google’s AdSense program.

There are two main ways for visitors to experience your Custom Search Engine. One way is to direct them to a Google-hosted results page when they type in a search query and the second way is to integrate it by hosting the search results on a page within your website.

Example of an Integrated Google Custom Search Engine

Currently I’m using Google’s Custom Search Engine for Dosh Dosh and you can see it on the top right hand corner of every page. Typing in a search query and clicking ‘search‘ will bring you to a search results page on the left, where the content section is currently located.

Here is an example of a search for ‘make money blogging‘. Note that the Adsense ads appear at the top (this is changeable) and the search results show up below it.

Why I am Using Google’s Custom Search Engine

I am using Google custom search instead of the internal Wordpress search function because I feel that Google’s search results are far more relevant and precise. I also choose to use Custom Search because it allows me to make money from Adsense for Search, which allows you to monetize your search results pages with ads.

A look at my Adsense stats shows me that I’ve earned approximately $20 in this month. It’s not a lot of money at all but it is still an additional source of income, particularly if you are already running Adsense on your site.

Like the traditional Adsense units, how much you earn might vary depending on the ad placement and traffic levels. If you like Google’s search results but don’t feel the need to monetize, set up the custom search engine without advertisements.

How to Set up Google’s Custom Search for Your Site

While writing this article, I found out that SEOmoz had a similar post on how to perform the same steps. I’ve decided to use my own commentary instead, as some readers have been asking me how I set up the google search box on Dosh Dosh.

There have also been some changes (additional features) within Google’s Custom Search function so this will be a more current post on this topic.

Here are the exact steps needed to successfully set up and integrate Google’s custom search engine into your website. This will teach you how to make the search results show up within a designated page on your site.

1. Create a Webpage for Custom Search

Start first by creating a web page on your domain for the search results page. If you are on Wordpress, simply click on ‘Write’ and then select ‘Write Page’. Name the page by using ‘Search results’ or something similar as the Page title.

Leave the text box blank and publish or save the page. Note down the URL for the webpage as you will need to use it later.

2. Create Your Custom Search Engine

Visit the Google Custom Search Engine homepage and click on the ‘create a custom search engine‘ tab. After which, fill in the name of your search engine, along with the keywords. Be sure to select the ‘Only sites I select‘ option and then list your site URL in the Sites to Search box.

Also remember to select ‘Show Ads on results pages‘ if you intend to run ads.

After creating your custom search engine, you’ll be asked to test it by entering some keywords. Type in some keywords related to your site to see the results.

3. Determine the Look and Feel for Your Search Engine

After you’ve created your search engine, go to your control panel and click on the Look and Feel link. This is where you will able to determine the branding style for your search box, along with the style of the search results page.

Choose the right colors so that the results pages fit your overall design.

You can also choose to add a logo to the Google hosted results page but in this case, it won’t be necessary as you are hosting the search results on your own site.

4. Set up Adsense for Search

If you want to make money from your custom search engine, you’ll have to set up Adsense for search by clicking on the ‘Make Money‘ navigational link and connecting custom search with your Google Adsense account.

If you already have an Adsense account, simply check the appropriate box and then type in the email, zip code, phone and location details associated with it.

After doing this your custom search engine profile will be connected to your Adsense account. You can then set up a custom channel to track the amount of searches and money you are earning from it.

Simply do this by typing in a name for your custom channel. For example, I’ve used ‘Dosh Dosh Custom Search‘ as my channel name. This means that the same name will show up in my Adsense Dashboard reports as well.

5. Insert the Code on Your Blog

After you’ve completed the above steps, its time to insert the code on your blog. Go to the ‘Code‘ section of the control panel and select the iframe option.

The new Overlay option will allow the search results to show up in a nifty Ajax-style overlay but unfortunately only the first 8 search results are displayed and you cannot make money through Adsense for Search.

Only consider the overlay option if you are not planning to run ads. After choosing the hosting option, specify the search results details by inserting the URL where you want the results to appear. This would be the page you’ve created in step one.

Then scroll down to the second half of the page to grab the search box code. Take the first code you see and place it where you want your search box to appear. After which, copy the search results code in the lower frame and place it where you want the search results to appear.

Which means you’ll have to paste it on the new page you’ve created.

For Wordpress blogs, simply open up your new page, insert the code in the empty text box and publish.

And That’s All You Need to Do

After completing all the steps above, you should have Google Custom Search set up perfectly for your website. One possible drawback I think of when using ads on the search results pages is that users will click away from your website.

I don’t think this is really that big a problem because users who actively use your website to search for a specific items are people that are interested in your opinion or content. I would believe that these visitors would return to your site eventually.

An easy solution to this would be to run no ads at all. The choice is yours.