Digital Content is Perfect for Passive Income

Selling digital content is an ideal passive income stream. The reason is, once you've written, designed, photographed, recorded, or otherwise created your content, it's there for good and you can sell as many copies as you like. Unlike selling physical tangible objects, you have infinite stock and so long as someone wants to buy your item, they are able to.

Some examples of digital content are: eBooks, audiobooks, music albums, photographs, computer programs, smartphone apps... The list goes on. Think about what you're good at or what you enjoy doing, and try to think about what sort of digital content fits into that category. Are you a crafty person? Think about instruction manuals or patterns. For instance, I like to knit - so I sell knitting patterns for items I've designed.

If you can set up a shop front, and an automatic delivery system, you're all set. You don't really have to do anything else, and with some luck your sales will start rolling in.

But of course, you need an audience, and you need people to want to buy your product. So, you need a quality product, first and foremost. It needs to be original, interesting, or helpful - and for god's sake, don't copy someone else's work! Don't just slap something on a page, either. It may take quite some time to produce quality digital content, but once you've created it, it will always be there for you to sell. You never have to worry about taking inventory or restocking!

You may also want to do some promotion for your digital content. If you already have a blog or website readership, you already have a potential audience for your product -- so long as it's relevant. Well-placed links on your webpage layout could lead to some sales from people who were visiting your website anyway. If you've got a large web audience already, this may be all you need to do to generate enough sales for passive income.

Otherwise, you might need to expand beyond your own site. Check out websites that sell your particular flavor of digital content - be it eBooks, mp3 albums, craft patterns, whatever. These will expose your content to a much wider audience, usually for a small cut of your sales. If your content is well-presented and high-quality, it has the potential to sell well on outside websites.

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Cash for your opinion on Make Money Online sites (and a BONUS!)

I've been exploring lots of ways of making money online, but it's hard to know what's legitimate or worthwhile. The folks at Internet Marketing Report Card are compiling a site full of reviews for services like Entrecard, Adgitize, paid survey sites, web hosts, and much more.

IM Report Card needs people who have tried out various internet marketing programs and products to give their opinions on them. If you've read ebooks, signed up for programs, or anything to do with making money online, you can give your opinion and get rewarded for it too. IM Report Card gives between 50 and 150 points for each 100+ word review you write on their site (one point = one US cent). You also get points for rating reviews and grading products, and extra points if people think your review is helpful.

I think that Internet Marketing Report Card has a lot of promise in becoming an authoritative resource for what sites are scams and what are legitimate for promoting websites and making money. Plus it's fun! :) Who doesn't like giving their opinion?

There are a few limitations set by the website's owners to ensure a quality site. First, if you click through things too fast, they make you stop and slow down. You have to actually read the reviews before clicking the 'helpful' button. Second, you have to write reviews before you can rate things. Once your review is approved, then you can grade websites and mark comments as helpful or unhelpful. Other than those few pitfalls, this site is easy and enjoyable to use.

I'm going to offer a bonus to anyone who signs up under my referral. After your first cashout (the minimum cashout is $20), I will send you a bonus $5. Just email me at echidna.caribou at gmail.com after you've made your first cashout and I'll send you 5 more dollars via PayPal. You must sign up under my referral link, here. It's my way of thanking you for helping me!

I highly recommend you give Internet Marketing Report Card a try. You don't have anything to lose, and you'll probably learn something too. Good luck!

~Joy

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Leaving Quality Comments to Help Your Blog

Blog comments are key to being visible and forming relationships in the blogosphere. As a blogger, you should not remain silent. Write posts on your own blog, and seek out others to comment on. There are a number of reasons why you should leave comments on other people's blogs.

Community. Your blog does not occur in a vacuum. There are millions of bloggers out there, many of which have blogs on the same topic as yours. Get out there and introduce yourself, to build up a sense of blogging community. Say hello to your neighbors, so they will recognize you. You may even get some requests for guest posts or link exchanges.

Introducing new people to your blog. When you leave a blog comment, you're not just introducing yourself to one new blogger. You're leaving your blog's link for anyone to see. This backlink usually shows up in the form of a link on your username. So if you leave a quality comment, all the other people reading that post will be more likely to click on your link and visit your blog. It's a small way of building up traffic.

Pagerank. If the blog you're commenting on is a dofollow blog (What are nofollow and dofollow?), your comment will create a dofollow backlink that will contribute to your site's pagerank (Why is PageRank important?).

Friendliness! Bloggers are people too, usually quite personable people. Be nice to them, and perhaps you'll find a friend. Build relationships with other bloggers, not just for the benefit of your blog, but because it's a fun thing to do.

Leaving blog comments is beneficial to both bloggers. People love to receive comments on their posts, and leaving them will help your own blog. There are even groups that support people striving to up their commenting, such as the monthly comment challenges. Many blogs also display their monthly top commenters with (dofollow!) links to their blogs.

Be visible in the blogosphere, and leave quality blog comments to get your name out there and show other bloggers some love. Just make sure that the comments you leave show some thought: no one likes spam comments, or comments that just say "hey great post".

~Joy

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Keeping organized as a blogger - Write your posts in advance

The best advice I ever learned about blogging was this: Write your articles in advance. It's a lot easier to blog several times a week (or every day) when you have a big pile of drafts waiting to be polished up and posted, rather than having to pull a post out of thin air when it's time to publish.

I try to keep 2 or 3 fully-written articles on deck, between my three blogs. Besides that, I keep at least 10 fragments and dozens of one-line post ideas to further develop. The trick is to get blog posts written when you have time, so you're not rushing to write something when you need to update.

There are varying opinions on how often a blog should update - some people say as many as 20 times a day! Personally, I think a blog should update at least twice a week, with more often being better, but more than once a day is generally overkill. People aren't going to be constantly refreshing your blog for new content, and do you really think you can write 10 quality blog posts a day? Unlikely. So do your writing when you have time, and reserve those quality blog posts to publish another day.

Your organizational skills don't have to be anything fancy - just type some things up in your favorite word processor, or leave articles as unpublished drafts in your blogging software. I personally use the Yahoo Notepad that comes free with my email account. I have one file for each of my blogs, along with a general to-do list.

I start my new blog posts with ideas - just a phrase or short sentence, like "generating passive income" or "best new summer reading". I don't expand all the ideas I write down, just the good ones. I expand them paragraph by paragraph, until I have a full blog post. I like to hop from article to article, filling in ideas as my "inspiration" strikes. You can do that if you like, or you can write an entire article in one go. It all depends on your preferences, and what provokes the best writing from you.

The best way to build a valuable blog is to take blogging seriously - have fun with it, of course, but treat it as a priority. By writing your blog articles in advance, you'll always be prepared with a post even if you're busy. You never have to apologize for not updating regularly.

(By the way, that is about the most horrible thing you can post in a blog: "Sorry, this blog has been kind of dead lately"... Don't ever do it! And don't ever give yourself a reason to.)

To keep people coming back to your blog (or any kind of website), update often. And the easiest way to update often is if you've already got your posts written in advance. I can't recommend it enough!

~Joy

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