Online video is nothing new.  But not everyone knows how to effectively use video. 

• You can use video to get more traffic to your sites – Post humorous or entertaining videos on YouTube and display your site link.  The viral effect of a good video can launch your site’s traffic.’
• Create free video content for your website and incorporate some good keyword-rich article content on the same site.  Search engines will index your videos to improve your ranking.
• Turn your old articles and ebooks into videos and sell them on your site.  You can set up a membership site and provide new videos each month for a monthly subscription fee.  Use a membership script like AMember or DLGuard to protect your video downloads.
• Use videos to promote your own products or promote others’ products as an affiliate.  Provide some useful bit of content in your intro video, and give the link to your product at the end – or better yet, redirect to the product automatically at the end of the video.
• Use videos to encourage visitors to sign up to your mailiing list.  Fewer people want to give away their email addresses due to spam, so a creative and useful video can help to persuade them to trust you.
• Link to your videos and sites with video content from twitter.  But be sure the content you provide is actually useful.  if it’s obvious that you’re simply promoting a product for quick profits, you may just lose some followers.

There are numerous ways to use video content.  And if you’re not comfortable in front of the camera, you can create a PowerPoint presentation or a screen-capture tutorial video with Camtasia.  If you’re the creative type, you may also enjoy creating your own cartoons with a tool like Toon Boom Studio.  With the right approach, you could become the next YouTube celebrity and have all the traffic you can stand.

And of all the ways you could possibly make money online, I think the fastest and easiest way to go from zero to profitability as quickly as possible would be to start a niche store.  This is especially true throughout the holiday season.  I’ve operated several of them for well over a year, and they continue to provide a nice monthly income.  Although they’re fairly easy to set up for someone with a little computer knowledge, they can be tricky for newcomers. The niche store site provides some good reference material to help you get started, but feel free to ask me a question if you get stuck.

I’ve learned some interesting ways to create sites that attract visitors and keep them coming back.  And I continually look for ways to add value to my sites beyond just the products that are available to purchase.  This is very important because anyone can set up these niche stores and compete with you.  You have to find a way to stand out from the crowd.  And you have to know how to get the visitors to your store in the first place.

That’s why from now until the end of the year, I’m going to be offering lots of tips and tricks for getting the most from your online niche store. There are several store scripts out there, so you don’t necessarily have to go with the one I recommend.  In fact, I’ll cover a couple of the others as well.  But I happen to have my preference simply because I think it’s the easiest to set up and maintain.

Go ahead and subscribe to my online niche store blog to be sure to get every tip as I post them.  It’s time for the holidays, and you’ll want to be ready for making some good holiday cash.

Here are a couple of earlier posts that may be helpful as you begin to build your new store:

Choosing a good web host 

Getting content for your niche store

Reasons for starting an online business

Finding good niche keywords

Getting traffic to your online store

Plus, this is also great news for anyone selling on eBay.  With an army of affiliate marketers working day and night to promote your products, you’ll likely sell more with less effort.  If you haven’t heard, the number of web publishers promoting products on eBay is growing like wildfire.  That’s because eBay pays a percentage of their take on each transaction that is referred to their site via a third party publisher’s site.  And, what’s even better is that, as an affiliate publisher, you can promote products all around the globe through eBay’s partner sites in countries all around the world.

I’ve been making money as an eBay affiliate since last summer, and my income has grown steadily as a result.  I’ve enjoyed working with Commission Junction, and I plan to continue working with them to promote their expanding list of products.  I’m equally excited about the new eBay-managed affiliate program.  I’ve checked it out, and it looks very promising.  As I transition my sites to the new system, I’ll report my results.  You can see an example of one of their new affiliate web widgets in the sidebar to the right.  There are several different types of widgets available, and many more are on the way.

In the meantime, be sure to give the new eBay Partner Network a look.  It might just be the ticket to your online success.  And be sure to subscribe to the Profit with Your DotCom feed to stay on top of new and exciting ways to grow your new online business.

1. You must know if the niche you want to target actually has a market.  You wouldn’t want to try to sell products in a niche where there was little or no interest.  Remember the online grocery store delivery sites?  It may have been a great idea, but no one was interested. Creating new markets requires time and money.  Unless you have large amounts of both to spare, you should target existing markets.

2. You need to know what customers in your selected niche are searching for.  You may think they’re looking for product A when they’re really looking for products X, Y, and Z.  Or they may really want more information on a specific topic.  If you provide the information, they just might pay your site a visit and make a purchase.

3. You need to know how much competition you will be facing.  You can almost always find something within any given niche with little or no competition.  But if you don’t do the research to find these hidden gold mines, you could very well be competing with some large established online businesses.  I’m not saying you couldn’t compete with the big boys, but if you’re just starting out, it would be much easier to build a following around a specific element of a niche and expand from there.

So, how can you do the necessary keyword research to successfully compete online?  There are dozens of free keyword tools, and there are dozens of sites that provide historical search information.  But, if you’re really serious, you’ll want to buy a subscription to WordTracker.  WordTracker is probably the best keyword research tool available.  The free version of WordTracker is very basic, but it’s a great place to get started.  The paid version offers far more information, so you may eventually want to give it a try.

Okay, so now that you know where to find a few good keyword resources, let’s talk about how to use them.  First of all, you’ll want to begin with some keywords that you have in mind for searching within your niche.  For example, if you’re wanting to create a website about antique tractors, you would begin with the keyword phrase “antique tractors.”  From there, WordTracker will return a list of related terms that your potential visitors might use to find your site.  Along with the words, you’ll get the number of searches made by visitors for each keyword and the projected number of searches for those words over the next 24 hours.  Drilling down, you’ll get information for each of the major search engines, such as the number of competiting web pages for any given keyword.  You’ll also get the KEI (keyword effectiveness index) number, which compares the count of searches for a keyword with the number of competing web pages.  This number helps identify words that you could target with the best chance of getting a top spot in the search engines.

To summarize, don’t fly blind when it comes to creating content for your website.  First, find out what your potential visitors are looking for.  Then find out how much competition you’ll have for your selected keywords.  And finally, create content for publishing on your site that incorporates those keywords that will provide the best chance for getting located by potential visitors.  In an upcoming post, we’ll look at this in more detail.  Plus, we’ll look at some interesting ways to use what you learn from your keyword research to really boost traffic to your sites.

How to know if a work is in the public domain

Copyright laws vary by country, so you will need to become familiar with the laws in your country before you utilize public domain works.  In the United States, there are three general rules for evaluating the public domain status of creative works:

1. Works published in the United States before 1923 are in the public domain.
2. Works created after March 1, 1989, even if not published, are copyright protected for 70 years after the author’s death. Works made for hire (corporate authorship) after March 1, 1989 are copyright protected for 120 years from creation or 95 years from publication, whichever is sooner.
3. Works published in the United States between 1923 and March 1, 1989 are also copyright protected, provided that the formalities are observed.

To help clarify the rules, use the following guidelines when determining the public domain status of a work.

A work is in the public domain if it was:

• Published before 1923 
• Published between 1923 and 1978 without a valid copyright notice  
• Published between 1978 and March 1, 1989, without a notice and registration 
• Published between 1923 and 1963 with a copyright notice but author failed to renew it (According to a report, only 7% of copyrights issued through 1958 were renewed)

A work is not in the public domain if any of the following conditions apply:

• Published between 1923 and 1963 with a copyright notice, properly renewed before its expiration for the first 23-year protection term 
• Published between 1963 and March 1, 1989 with a valid copyright notice 
• Published or created any time after March 1, 1989 (Works after this date are deemed automatically under copyright protection)

Where to find public domain works

1. Using your favorite search engine, search for the following keywords. But, always be sure to double-check any results to be certain the works are actually in the public domain.  Failing to do this can land you in hot water for copyright violations.

• public domain music
• public domain images
• public domain books
• public domain movies
• public domain works
• public domain library
• public domain software

2. Check some of the more well-known online public domain sources:

• bartleby.com
• ibiblio.org
• readprint.com
• gutenberg.org
• retrofilm.com

3. Research for available books at your local library that meet the public domain criteria.

Once you’ve found some material that you can use to put together a product of your own, there are many ways to go about creating a great product.  You can produce ebooks, audio CDs, videos, newsletters, membership websites, etc.  The sky is the limit.  So, do some research up front to find a good niche, dig into the public domain and find some material to make a product for that market, produce the product, and make some money. 

Of course, this is an oversimplification of the steps involved.  But it should provide you with enough information to get you started in the right direction.  Public domain works have created fortunes for many individuals and businesses throughout the last century.  You, too, can utilize the public domain to build your own information product empire.

It’s true that the store script will create SEO-friendly URL’s that will help you to get traffic from search engines using long-tail keywords.  This is because the affiliate listings included in your store will typically include products closely related to your site topic.  These items will have titles and descriptions that provide content for the search engines to index.  When I first checked my site logs, I was surprised to see all of the keywords that were bringing visitors to my sites.

But, you must first make your site visible to search engines or you won’t have any traffic at all… 

To begin, I used the included WYSIWYG tools to add a few content pages.  I did some research on my site topics to create several articles that would be relevant to my visitors.  If you prefer not to write the content yourself, you may also use PLR content or articles from an article directory.  You could also hire someone to write the articles for you through a site like Elance.com.  Just be sure that the keyword you intend to target is mentioned in the article a few times in a number of different ways.

Next, I used the script’s page listing tool to add relevant product listings to each of the pages.  You can do this by selecting the specific product category number from eBay’s category list, or you can enter your own custom search term.  (Just be sure to check eBay to make sure the search term you use will actually return a list of products.)  Adding these listings will add relevant content to your page that may include some keywords you may not have even considered.

Next, I used IBP to submit my sites to all of the major search engines.  Because it often take weeks for your site to be indexed, you want to be sure to do this as soon as possible.  I know that you’ll often read that you shouldn’t do this because search engines will rank you higher if they find you through links into your site like from blogs or forums.  I’ve tried it both ways, and I find that submitting the sites up front with a good tool like IBP works best.  At least I haven’t had any problems getting my sites indexed – and quickly.

Finally, I write articles related to my sites’ topics.  I’ll make a few different versions of an article and submit them to sites like EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com, and ArticleCity.com.  You can usually submit 3-4 unique articles on your topic to the top article directories to begin getting a few good links into your site.  You don’t really need to submit to hundreds of directories, especially now that search engines are smart enough to ignore duplicates.  Be sure to include a link to your site in your author bio because that will drive traffic back to your site.

You can then follow up by making relevant posts to blogs and forums, wihch include a link back to your site.  You’ll also want to alter the anchor text on the links when possible.  For example, if your site is about model airplanes, you might want to change between the anchor terms model plane, model airplane, or model aircraft.

NOTE: If you’re not familiar with the term “anchor text,” it’s the word shown in the browser that is linked back to your website.  The HTML looks like this: 

<a href=”http:\\www.profitwithyour.com\”>Make Money Online</a>

You replace the website address with your own, and the words between the >< brackets is the anchor text.  In this case, the anchor text is “Make Money Online.”

There are dozens of ways to get traffic to your site.  Using the technique I’ve outlined here will get you going quickly without a lot of effort.  You can always write more articles and continue to post in blogs and forums to increase the number of links.  Add to this numerous ways to get traffic from sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Squidoo, MySpace, and YouTube, and you see just how quickly you can start building a steady flow of traffic to your new online store.

I bought the system myself a few months back after reading a testimonial by a top online affiliate guru.  I know she’s made millions as an online affiliate, so when I read her testimonial of the product, I became interested in checking it out.  After buying it, I found it to be a bit clunky and difficult to install.  But I was able to get help in their forum to get my first site running that first day.  But that was an older version.  The new version is excellent.

They provide free upgrades to new versions, and I picked up the latest version a few weeks ago.  It’s slick because installation is quick and painless and the interface is very nice.  You can build a complete website using WYSIWYG tools and you can quickly and easily add SEO-friendly affiliate product links for any niche you choose.  You can also easily add AdSense code to the content pages for some additional revenue.

I feel good about telling you about this one because I’ve tested it myself, and I know it really works as advertised.  In fact, I’m so confident in the system, I’ll make you an even better offer.  If you buy the niche store system using my link and click here to send me a copy of your receipt, I’ll send you a detailed blueprint for finding a good market and getting your new site ranked in the search engines.  Plus, I’ll provide you with a link to a video where I’ll show you step-by-step how to install and manage your new store.  I’ll even show you how to customize it to make it uniquely yours.  There are so many other people using this system that you’ll definitely want to make your site unique. 

If you’re interested in checking out the system for yourself, you can find the details at:

www.profitwithyour.com/buildaniche 

You can check out one of my quick example sites at http://www.learntoplayguitarnow.com.  I built that site and had it online in under 30 minutes.  I have many other examples that I can share with you if you’re interested.   And I’ll say again that this is the first system I’ve used that was this simple to set up and that actually started bringing in money within the first couple of weeks.

The problem with that method is that it actually is usually a full-time job.  That’s because you must locate, purchase, and warehouse the products.  Then you must ensure prompt and safe delivery.  Then you have to deal with unhappy customers.  And you often have to contend with criminals trying to “game” the system.

In my opinion, a much better way to make money online is to set up membership websites in hot niches for which you get a monthly subscription fee.  You can include tips, resources, ebooks, audios, videos, and more to provide value to your subscribers.  You could have an exclusive forum for members only, and you could offer special members-only offers on products of interest to them.  With a nice list of monthly subscribers in your group, it would be easy to attract vendors willing to provide incentives in exchange for the traffic.

How do you set up a membership website?
One of the simplest ways to get a membership site set up is to use a membership script that already includes everything you will need.  A good membership site script will handle recurring payment processing through PayPal or your own merchant account, multiple levels of membership, simple method of securing areas of your site to only allow paid subscribers, and integration with other systems such as AWeber, 1ShoppingCart, and popular CMS packages.

With the membership script in place, you can put your site together as you normally would, while securing access to certain files on folders within your site.  This means you could use a tool like DreamWeaver to build the site front-end, or you could even use a CMS such as Drupal or Joomla to make maintenance even easier.  A good membership script will integrate with those systems to synchronize member details and to handle logging into both the CMS and membership system.

With the membership script installed, you may begin to sign up affiliates to help you promote the system.  They will then share in the monthly revenue while you continue to grow and improve the site.  Because the typical customer will remain a member for only 3-6 months, you will want the extra assistance of affiliates to help you maintain a steady stream of new subscribers.  This will help you to build an extra source of recurring income that you can continue to build on.

So, what can you do to make extra money with PPC ads when the game seems to keep changing?
Obviously, the best way to make money with anything is to provide a quality product or service.  For website owners, that usually means providing high-quality information on a specific topic.  And by high-quality I mean fresh, original content that isn’t something you’ve purchased for a few bucks and republished.  But that doesn’t mean you have to spend hours at your keyboard writing content. 

You can let your visitors add to your content.
There are many ways to do this.

• Request articles. Some writers will provide content just to get their name published. 
• Create forums to discuss topics that interest your visitors.  
• Allow visitors to place ads for buying and selling products related to a specific niche.  Just make sure the ad script is SEO-friendly or you won’t benefit from the ad content. 
• Create a dating site just for people interested in a specific topic.  There are free and inexpensive scripts for this as well.
• Add cartoons or jokes on your site and update them frequently.
• Add online gaming (not gambling) to your site along with quality content.  The games will keep visitors coming back, and the content can include ads that may be relevant to their interests.  Be careful with this one because competitive gaming is governed by law in many areas.  If the games are just for fun, you should be safe.

I’ve used a few of these methods to build sites, and they provide me with a constant source of income.  The key thing to keep in mind is that you must provide quality content or a valuable service to keep visitors interested.  If you intend to make money with PPC ads, you want your visitors to be just interested enough to come to the site.  Then you want them to click away to something that catches their eye in an ad.  If you’re providing good content, it’s more likely that they will be really interested in what your advertisers have to offer.  That will keep your ad payment rates higher, and it will also help to prevent advertisers from asking to have their ads removed from your site.

The toughest part of building a community site is attracting those first visitors, so expect a bit of work up-front to get things rolling.  No one likes to be the first person to comment on a forum, so you may need to help your visitors feel more comfortable by “seeding” your forum or ad site with a few comments of your own – or from friends.   I don’t advocate being deceptive, but you really have to be creative in order to get a conversation started among your visitors.  When I started my first classified ads site, I simply included an ad that said “Place your ad here to sell your…  It just might get results. After all, you’re reading this aren’t you?”  That’s all it took to get things rolling.  Within a few weeks, I had dozens of ads – all getting indexed by search engines.