How To Make Money With Your Tablet or Smartphone

A lot of changes have occurred since I first started this blog nearly ten years ago. (Wow, how time flies!)

The internet has grown into something seemingly larger than life itself - even available for free in many "hotspots" that offer free wifi.

Google has become a household word and the most famous search engine of choice, even being used as a verb for finding whatever information you're looking for.  No need to wrack your brain to try to remember any details from the past or present...just Google it in seconds.

Computer hardware itself has changed a lot, too.  The equipment has become smaller and wireless, and memory storage is not only smaller in size but huge in capacity.  In fact, computers have almost been replaced now by laptops, tablets and even smartphones.

I know I titled this blog "How To Make Money With Your Computer", but now it seems appropriate to turn our attention to ways you can make money with what everyone is using NOW:

Tablets and Smartphones!

One of the most obvious ways to make money with your tablet or smartphone is designing and creating new apps.  No doubt, there is a lot of competition in this field now, but there's always room for more.  Nobody can get enough apps, and they're usually free to download until you buy a more expanded version, so everybody loves to try new ones.

However, unless you're an actual programmer, you'll need to hire someone to do the hard part and get your app idea created for you, so you'll need to invest some money to do so.  But hey, it takes money to make money, and all businesses require at least a small amount of money to get started, so this is no different.  Look to negotiate a fair price with a private party so it's a win-win deal for both of you.

Some good websites to find people to work with on your app ideas are freelancer.com and elance.com, and also fiverr.com for smaller jobs.

There are also quite a few existing apps that are designed to help you make money in various ways. You can easily find them yourself by "Googling" for them, of course, but here are just a few good ones that I've found:

Gigwalk, GigGo, Field Agent, Fiverr, Earn Money/Recharge, QuickCash, InBoxDollars

You can also sell your stuff with apps like Wallapop, Letgo, OfferUp, Etsy, VarageSale, as well as CraigsList and Ebay. (Some things never change!)  And some of the worlds most popular social networks like Facebook and Instagram are being used by many people to sell things.  Facebook even allows placement of highly targeted ads based on whatever reader interests you want to sell to.

There are tons things people are doing to make money, so you can do it too!  The more ideas you look for, the more you can find.  So dive in and give a few of these a try to get started!

Good luck, and have fun making money with your smartphone or tablet!

BlinkWeb.com: A New, Free Website Builder by Matt Callen

I just found out about a new, free website builder site that's really worth recommending called BlinkWeb.com. It's a free website builder that you can use online to create your own website. And it's been designed to be so easy to use that there's really no more excuse for anyone who's been wanting to build a website to continue putting it off.

BlinkWeb was created by Brad and Matt Callen, who are well known in the internet marketing world. Just Google their names and you'll see that. BlinkWeb uses a "drag and drop" kind of interface where you can choose the type of site you want to create, whether it be a blog, a sales page, or just a regular content type of website. Then you can choose from many different layouts, or templates, and start inserting the stuff you want, wherever you want it to appear on the page. And then - "Presto!" - you have a website built within minutes in whatever style you'd like.

They also have an actual mini-course right on the site on internet marketing, and creating niche information products, etc. There's probably more information and good advice there than you'd find find in so many of those get rich schemes that are always being advertised with high price tags...and yet they give all this information away for free, just to help you get started after you sign up.

But the best news is that BlinkWeb is actually totally free to use and play with all you want. And when you're satisfied with the site you've created, you can either have it hosted right there on their own servers very inexpensively, or you can download your new website as a zip file and save it to your own computer, ready to upload to your own web server.

If you're like me, you're probably wondering how they make their money though, since it's totally free to use. The answer is that they also offer very reasonably priced web hosting, and a big percentage of users will probably opt for that, since they make it so easy to do.

But even if you don't use their hosting, they still get you for a subscription fee to be able to download your completed sites, which you don't find out about until you hit the download button.

So the truth about BlinkWeb is that it's not really totally free to use, like they claim. It's free to join and use - but if you want to keep what you create with it, you do have to pay a small fee to do so. But I think that's fair - especially since you don't have to pay anything before you see what you can create with it first.

They have several different "subscription" options to chose from for downloading. As of this writing, they offer unlimited downloads by the day for only $9.95, or one month for $19.95. (That gives you plenty of time if you have a bunch of sites you want to create.) Plus, they even offer a lifetime subcription for totally unlimited site downloads, all for a single one-time fee. Then you're set to create all the sites you want!

So I think it's pretty brilliant the way it all ties together. Even casual users can now create their own professional looking websites with no help from expensive web designers; and BlinkWeb makes some money on the back end from subscriptions and the huge number of sites that are sure to be hosted right there with them.

It just launched earlier this year (2008), and they say over 27,000 sites have already been created with it - so word must be spreading pretty fast. That's what happens when somebody comes up with an idea that lots of people have been waiting to see.

So if you've been looking to do what I've been dabbling with myself, and that's create some websites to build a business around, this BlinkWeb could be a huge help to you. It's totally free to join and try out, so why not give it a whirl and see what you might be able to create?

Good luck with carving out your own little corner of the internet world!

Pay Per Click Advertising - It's Trickier Than I Thought

Pay Per Click advertising is something I always thought was the easiest, most sure-fire way to get an avalanche of instant traffic to your websites...and always there, whenever you're ready for it. (And willing to pay a little bit for it of course, too.) So until the last couple of weeks I had never even dabbled with it at all. Since I do have a handful or so of websites put together now, I figured it's time to direct some traffic to them and see what happens. Should be a piece of cake, right?

As it turns out, there's a lot more to pay per click advertising than I realized. I had the introductory credits to use toward Google, Yahoo and MSN that you get when you open an account with BlueHost, so I figured that using those would be a good excuse to get started. I'm not used to spending ANY money on these little business experiments of mine, but you've got to start somewhere I guess!

I was pleasantly surprised that MSN only requires you to put $5 of your own money into the account to get the $30 credit added when you open it. Even I didn't mind that, being the cheapskate I am! :) Yahoo calls for more like $30, but they add another $50 to it. I haven't tried Google yet, but it's similar to Yahoo I think. And it's surprisingly quick and easy to actually open the accounts; it's all done entirely online.

Quick is the keyword, though, because before you know it they start prompting you to enter your first text ad to start with. Suddenly you find yourself thrown into the ad writing business - which is like a whole art of its own. Right on the spot I'm sitting there, trying to draw on all the ad writing tips I've ever learned to come up with an ad that makes some sort of sense.

Then, of course, they ask you to enter all of the keywords you want to have your ad matched to, and even offer you the option to write several more ads to test against each other, which I was totally unprepared for as well! :) The good news is that you can always change your ads, add more, delete some or all, or even just scrap them all and start over again anytime you want. So there's really no pressure.

It's pretty cool though. I find it to be a lot like placing regular classified ads. Except these ads go live within minutes - so you can start seeing results almost immediately. It's kind of neat how websites that have been sitting, unknown to everyone in the world other than myself, can almost instantly begin registering visitors. (And even Google AdSense clicks, which is much more exciting!)

The volume of traffic from the pay per click ads, however, hasn't been what I expected so far. (In the little bit I've tried so far, anyway.) I was expecting more, although I'm sure the popularity of your subject matter makes a huge difference, and also how much you're willing to pay per click. Pay more and your ad appears at or around the top of your competition; pay only the minimum bid amount (which is what I did) and your ad may hardly ever appear, depending on how many competing ads are out there. But the minimum is only 10 cents per click for Yahoo, and a mere 5 cents for MSN. Prices like those do give you a fair chance to make a profit, even if you don't get as many visitors.

The real challenge is...AdSense ads sometimes don't even pay that much per click. You never really know what they'll pay until they're clicked. Some ads might pay a dollar or more on the same site as other ads that only pay a few pennies, so it's hard to predict. Naturally, the idea is that hopefully in the end you receive more than you pay for all those paid visitors. But when your sites rely mostly on AdSense for revenue like the ones I've made so far, it looks like it might be tough to turn a decent profit. Add in a few affiliate sales to the mix here and there, or maybe sales of your own products, etc., and it should get easier.

So you need to bid at or near the minimum per click to give it a chance to be profitable, yet at that rate the amount of traffic you receive just isn't very impressive. I guess the answer to that still goes back to my original idea of just creating LOTS of different sites until it all starts adding up to something worthwhile.

So while pay per click advertising is a super fast way to direct some traffic to your websites...unless you're willing to pay a higher amount per visitor, there are probably better ways to create traffic. I haven't tried paid banner or text ads on other websites yet, but those might be a better choice in some cases. For now though, I'm going to continue experimenting with these pay per clicks and see what else I can learn. (And hopefully earn!)