With the economy still on shaky ground, many common investment vehicles have taken a beating over the past several months. Stocks, bonds and commodities have all been affected, most experiencing steep price declines. Even precious metals such as gold and silver have not been untouched. In the case of gold, prices have recently started to break out to the upside over the past several weeks. If you’re considering investing in the precious metal, you’ll need to decide how you will purchase your gold holdings. Below are four common options to invest in gold and advantages and disadvantages of each:

Gold Bullion

This is the actual metal, typically available in the form of bars or coins in various weights. Bars, available from Credit Suisse and other suppliers, are generally the least expensive option in owning the actual metal. You can also opt for gold coins which will normally be more expensive if they are part of a collector’s series.

Pros: Owning gold in this form is the purest form of ownership and offers a hedge in the event of a financial collapse.

Cons: The biggest risk of owning the actual metal is theft or other catastrophic loss if it is kept in your home. It is advisable to rent a safety deposit box to store your gold to guard against theft.

Pooled Accounts

These are like a gold bank account in that your gold is held in a vault along with other owners. Fees are generally lees than 1% of the market price of your holdings making this a cost efficient method of owning bullion. Depending on your provider, accounts are either “allocated” or “unallocated.” In an allocated account a specific number of gold bars are allocated to you. You also pay additional storage and insurance fees. In an unallocated account, you’re asigned a sum of gold, not the actual bars. There are generally no additional insurance or storage fees with unallocated accounts.The markup per ounce is usually less than 1% of gold’s current market price, making this cheaper than owning physical bullion.

Pros: Generally recognized as the most secure form of owning gold, since the metal is securely store in a vault and regularly audited. You also retain the option of having your gold shipped to you upon your request.

Cons: Fees paid in allocated accounts will add up over time. In unallocated accounts, the gold is held in the providers name and is at rick in the event the provider goes under, including your gold.

Exchange-Traded Funds or ETFs

Shares in ETFs trade like stocks on an exchange. Each share represents a pre-defined factional ounce of gold. These shares are backed by the actual metal which is held in vaults in locations throughout the world. The price of these shares closely track the actual price of gold.

Pros: A low cost of entry and high degree of security are the two main advantages of owning shares in gold ETFs. Liquidity is another benefit since buying and selling is easily handled through your stock broker.

Cons: Taxes. The government taxes capital gains on gold ETFs at a flat 28%, almost twice the normal log term capital gains rate on stocks. You also pay managements fees of approximately 0.4% which adds to the cost of this form of ownership.

Mining Stocks

Another option is to consider the common stock of the gold mining companies. While you don’t own actual gold, you do participate in the success of the companies that actually acquire the gold Also the risk in associated with rising an falling prices are spread across all the available gold the mining company has, both mined and still in the ground.

Pros: This options generally gives you the most bang for your investment dollar. You will usually have to commit twice as much money in bullion or ETFs to get the same level of exposure as you get with the stock of mining companies.

Cons: As with investing in any company’s stock, you are exposed to the overall financial performance of the company in addition the the fluctuations of the gold itself.

Is investing in gold something you’re considering? I welcome your comments.

Source: http://moneymakertimes.com/

Selling product through auctions is better way to start affiliate business. If you’ve tried selling products through auctions you soon learn that finding junk in your home to sell runs out quickly before you have to start finding wholesale products to stock and sell. This is expensive when you have to buy in bulk. Maybe you’ve tried MLM, trying to convince your friends and family that your latest business is the best one, yet.

Affiliate Marketing is a cat walk compared to the options above. Here are just six of the many benefits on your affiliate marketing.

1. You don’t need your own product. You do not have to develop or produce a product. There are no production costs. The product has been developed and produced for you at someone else’s expense.

2. There are lots of products to choose from. Everything is sold on the internet. If you can’t find it on the internet, there is probably not a market for it in the first place. Programs like Clickbank make it easy to find thousands of affiliate products in a variety of categories that are near and dear to your heart.

3. Start-up costs are minimal. You can start an online affiliate marketing business right now for less than $100. Try to start a brick and mortar business for that. All you need is a computer to get started and if you are reading this, chances are you already have one or at less access to one.

4. There’s no inventory to stock. You’ll never have to turn your garage or bedroom into a storage room.

5. The sky is the limit for potential income. In most jobs you know going in what you will make no matter if your performance is exceptional or poor. In today’s economic times some of the highest paid salary earners are let go, first. With your own affiliate online business your potential income is only limited by your own efforts and only you can fire you.

6. There are minimal risks. If you choose a product that isn’t making you money, scrap it and find another one. There are thousands to choose from with no binding contracts.

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to start building an online business with almost no money. You don’t have to have your own product or website. You can start making money quickly and it can be quite easy to start if you have the right information and tools.

If your just starting out in business as an affiliate marketer, you need and must have advice from other experienced affiliate marketers. They have a wealth of knowledge to share with you. Believe me, experienced affiliate marketers are your lifeline. You can not put a price on their valuable advice.

As a new affiliate marketer, you probability have many ideas on how you should go about making money with your business. Let these experienced affiliate marketers critique those ideas of yours. You will be surprised how many of your fellow marketers have “been there, done that”.

Where do your start with your networking? In one word, FORUMS. Affiliate forums to be precise. Start with the affiliate program that you signed up, with if they have a forum. Who would know better about how to make money with that affiliate product? Start right in reading what they have to say and post what you want to say. Start with introducing yourself to the forum members. Before you start posting, read the forums rules.

Your affiliate program does not have a forum? There are hundreds, even thousands of other affiliate programs you can sign up for. Networking is actually easy and fun.

No matter what forum you sign up with, read as much as you can. Other than introducing yourself and telling your fellow forum members a little about yourself, do not post anything just yet. Read what the other forum members have to say before you post anything. Get to know something about your fellow members. By reading the past entries, the topic you have a question about probably has been covered and answered on the forum.

Search the forum for any topics that interest you, that way you will start to know what affiliate marketer(s) share the same interest and you can go to that person and ask questions that you may have and could not find answered anywhere on that forum. That is called networking!

Most of the people you will meet in the forum are already full time affiliate marketers. Many of them are successful affiliate marketers. When posting, always be courteous and professional in your questions as well as your statements.

Remember, you are asking these successful people for help in making you successful. Do not burn any bridges. Most affiliate marketers are people that will not hesitate to share and exchange ideas as long as the question presented to them is presented in a professional and courteous way.
By networking in forums, you will get a chance to know some very successful affiliate marketers which you will be able to “talk” to directly.

When you start posting, do not forget to create a signature for yourself. Your signature will tell the other forum members what you do. If you are networking in a forum that is not part of your affiliate program, just put something like the following: Thank you for letting me post my question, Curtis @ http://www.xxxxxxxx.com or Thank you for letting me post my opinion, Curtis @ http://www.xxxxxx.com. Do not, I will repeat, do not try to sell anything to your forum members. You can be banished from the forum. Knowing the forum rules is very important.

Each forum has an affiliate manager who looks after the forum. The affiliate manager reviews all the posting and even jumps in from time to time to help out with a question. The affiliate manager of your affiliate program has a very high interest in your success. Now there is a person who has a wealth of knowledge you can tap into, providing help with your promotions and marketing ideas. Never, ever be hesitate to email your affiliate manager. The affiliate managers livelihood and the products is related directly to your success. The affiliate manager can even direct you to the right successful forum members to contact for advice.

You will run into a lot of webmasters by being an active member of various affiliate forums but that does not mean you have to limit your contact to just those. A well written professional email to a webmaster can invoke a response and if done properly the results will almost always be positive. As you grow your business, relationships with other webmasters will be very important. They can provide vital linking partnerships and could be potential partners for future projects.

No one can be a successful affiliate marketer by themselves. There is no reason to do this by yourself with so many successful affiliate marketers out there who will be more then willing to help you. Create relationships, ask questions, and be professional and you to will become successful.

By Curtis James LaPiere

Go to any seminar on work from home business opportunities and especially internet businesses and you will learn that content is king. It is like the new buzz word. However it is the truth.

For that exact reason it is easy to understand that writing articles is one of the most utilized internet marketing from of advertising, for any work from home business or internet business.

Internet surfers are searching for all kinds of things on the internet every single day 24/7. So if there is a demand for information, then there is going to have to be a demand for information providers. By writing good content with keyword filled articles you will drive quality traffic to your website.

Let’s take a look at the benefit of writing articles can give your internet business.

1. The first benefit and probably the best, It Is Free! Yes to write articles all your will need are your thoughts and our computer. Now there is nothing stopping you now from writing an article related to your website or product.
2. Once you have your article written, you will then have to submit your article to the article directories. The best article directories to choose are the directories that get the most traffic. Then in a very short time you will start getting traffic to your website.
3. One of the great aspects of submitting your articles to the article directories is that other internet marketers could use your articles and therefore as according to the terms and conditions of use of the articles they have to keep the author details and url in tack, which will generate traffic to your website.
4. You will also be able to start creating some bragging rights. If you are just display a few products on your website, your conversion rate will be very low. (The conversion rate is where traffic to your website becomes sales.) However by writing articles about your products and services, you are showing that you are a bit of a professional in the market and are able to start generating the traffic to your website.
5. By writing the articles related to your products or services, you will also be creating a sense of trust with your customers. If they have come to your website after reading an article related to your products or services they are already trusting you enough to take a closer look and visit your website.

by Roy Kruse

What is online and offline business all about?
It is pertinent we separate these two terms although both are talking about business but their activities and places of practice differs. Lets first know the meaning of offline business.

What is offline business?
The term offline was coined out of the word ONLINE. Offline businesses are businesses that are not internet oriented i.e companies that are not using the internet to carry out their business ventures e. g plumbers, brick layers, the road side traders/hawkers and so on. Although with the advent of the internet some of these businesses are now being done online. The other subject here is the ONLINE business, lets also check into the meaning of this kind of business.

What is Online business?
Online businesses are businesses done on the internet. These kind of business is made possible and is accessible through the help of a website without which Online business can not be possible. e.g amazon.com, eBay.com, yahoo.com to mention but a few. Whether you are an online or offline business man the good news is that your business will function well if you utilize the opportunity in both business kinds. There are numerous benefits you will derive if you take that business of yours from offline to online. Benefits like:

1. easy & fast delivery of services
2. improvement of customers relationship
3. increase in company`s revenue
4. increase in business patronage
5. decrease in cost of transaction
6. bringing your company to the international market
7. introducing your company to new businesses online etc

Talking about the last benefit I mentioned here, is the one that numerous people have benefited from including my humble self. This opportunity doesn’t require you starting up a company first before you can benefit/enjoy its lovely packages. Some of these opportunities are what I will bring to you in a jiffy. These businesses as you know are done online and they are as follows; Forex trading, affiliate marketing, freelancing, survey, domain name creation, blogging, online sport betting etc.

* Forex trading: This kind of online business base on trading currencies, just like the stock exchange market, the forex market deals with the trading of international currencies online. For one to start up this kind of online business you need to have a domiciliary account with any local bank in your country, have an online account with one of the forex trading companies online as well and then fund the accounts{both your local account and the forex account}

* Affiliate marketing: This kind of online business is an online joining of the producers and promoters i. e the manufacturers and online advertisers. The manufacturers who have checked the cost of paying an advertising agent to advertise there products come online in search of online marketers who are usually cheaper than the advertising agents to promote there products for them. The online marketers in return get paid for their services and I tell you it is usually huge. An individual can earn close to $170 on just one assignment. For you to carry out this kind of business you just need to sign up in the sites and carry out one or two tasks and you will get you pay sent across through cheques, you then go pay in into you own bank account{usually current account}

* Freelancing; This kind of online business is almost similar to the previous one I have discussed{Affiliate marketing} but with slight difference. In this case companies come online to out- source jobs to the online freelancers and at the end pay them on the job they have carried out effectively. This assignment ranges from graphic designing, website designing, software development, typing, editing, proof-reading and so on. For you to get started with this kind of online biz you must log-on to one of the sites that deals with freelancing like getafreelance.com and register, nothing more nothing less.

By Chris Otunsieme

There are evidences on the net that kids studying in high school are making money with Google AdSense. Retired people, male, female, anybody of any age can make money with AdSense. Google approves your application if you are above 18 years of age. There is no upper limit on the age for generating AdSense revenue.

You have a website with good content centered on specific keywords and you are approved to place AdSense ads by Google. You have set up everything and ads are coming up in your site or blog nicely. But is that all enough to get paid by Google? You need clicks from your website visitors. More visitors mean more clicks. To generate more clicks you must first attract visitors to your website.

Internet is an ocean. You will always have live people searching for information. You will have thousands of people who want more information on your website’s theme. They will be searching for keywords that are close to your theme. You need to get these visitors to see your website so that they will get the information they want and also you will get the clicks you want. This is where internet advertising comes into picture.

The best way to attract visitors is to give them something of value and invite to your website. When they get something valuable from you, they will build trust and enter the website you are showing. Once you attract visitors to your content rich site, you will get guaranteed clicks as they will be navigating your website to gather information.

Article marketing is the best way of internet advertising that is still found to generate success. You need to write articles and place them in the article websites and provide the link to your website in the resource box. The targeted keywords in your article and your website will be similar. So, people who read your article will visit your website to know more. Your website will contain contents that are related to the targeted keywords and hence will contain AdSense ads that are related to keywords. People with the thirst of information will click on the links and generate cash for you.

Google loves original content websites. The market of article writing is booming in the internet industry. When your website contains original content targeting certain keywords and if you have placed the links of your website under the articles you have written, the page rank of your website will increase. Original contents and links are the major factors influencing page rank. When your page rank increases, your website will come in the first page of search results which increases the traffic to your website. The traffic generated from search engines are targeted traffic as you will get readers who are searching for the keywords that are used in your website.

Your website content must be fresh and original to increase the page rank. Also you must have many incoming links to your website. Article marketing is the best way to generate valid incoming links to your website. Anybody who has writing skills can design a website with keyword rich content and place AdSense ads. If you can write original content, then it will be very easy for you to write articles targeting your keywords and place them in many article websites with a link to your own website.

The webmasters will generally design the website. They will hire article writers to write articles on targeted keywords. These articles will then be posted in different websites with a resource box containing link to the website designed by the webmaster. Now when a user searches for information, he will read the article and follow the link to the website to know more about his interest. This is a perfect Win – Win situation for all, for the webmaster, for the article writer and also for the website visitor.

It is free to join and easy to set up.
I hear you ask, if it’s so easy why isn’t everyone making piles of money by slapping Adsense code into the pages of their websites.
Well there are a number of factors that contribute to a webmaster’s success with Adsense not least of all having a contextual website.

If you base your quest to make $500 dollars a day with Adsense on the following, you stand a good chance of sustained success.

1. Don’t build a site for Adsense

Apart from being against adsense’s TOS, site’s created purely to carry adsense ads don’t work in the long term.

They will in all likelihood get banned by Google, won’t make money as well as making it difficult for you to open another Adsense account.

2. Build a Site with Content

Sounds obvious doesn’t it, but sites that are interesting and packed with compelling content are more likely to be revisited and related ads are more likely to be clicked upon.

Be sure to use your own original content – sites that duplicate content get penalized by Google.

Remember that rubbish sites generate rubbish income.

3. Choose Your Site’s Topic Carefully

Whilst your site should be based on your business interests or your hobby to keep your motivation levels high, just keep in mind that certain topics will attract higher value Adsense clicks than others.

For example a website on the mating habits of the north sea clam probably won’t attract any advertisers and therefore no Google Ads to display, let alone traffic.

Making money online and web hosting are topics that will never be short of advertisers, however the competition is higher and therefore more difficult to attract website traffic.

4. Niche Market

Your best bet is to target a niche market that does not have the competition in terms of fellow webmasters but still has a certain amount of interest.

Therefore if your website is cameras, targeting “digital cameras” would be a very competitive term, whilst targeting “underwater digital cameras for scuba divers” would be less competitive and will attract targeted traffic as well as related Adsense ads.

It is important that you understand that the text and keywords you use and the placement thereof will influence the type of ads that are served up by Google.

5. Type of Ads and Placement

The placement of your ads on your web page has a direct influence on your CTR (Click Thru Rate) – the higher the CTR the more clicks your ads are generating and the more money you are making.

To this end, take special note of the heat map provided by Google that shows the best positions for your ads on your web pages.

Also decide carefully on the type of ads and the colors that you choose – the type that blend in well with the look, feel and flow of your site will probably be best in silently persuading your visitors to click on them.

6. Traffic Statistics

Finally analyze your adsense traffic stats as they’re packed with useful information – Google provides such a tool for this purpose with your Adsense account.

To make money with adsense you need to know what your stats are telling you and what you need to know.

The amount of traffic your site generates will obviously influence your adsense income but that is a whole separate subject just on its own.

The point is that for 2 sites generating the same amount of traffic, the site that is optimized for adsense, as above, will earn for more in adsense income than the site that isn’t.

By: Mark Bellinger

Here are 3 main types of affiliate program: pay per sale, pay per lead and pay per click programs. Each type of program has its advantages and disadvantages, and each is relevant to different sites and situations.

Commission-based Affiliate Programs

Commission-based programs are by far the most common type of affiliate program. They are nearly always pay per sale programs, i.e. they pay a predetermined % commission on the revenue generated by the sale of products or services to a visitor who came from your site.

Flat Fee (Pay Per-Lead / Pay Per-Sale) Affiliate Programs

Pay Per Sale (PPS) The title says it all. The company only pays the affiliate when a visitor referred by the affiliate make a purchase.
Pay Per Lead (PPL) is a little different to PPS. PPL affiliate programs usually used by finance and insurance companies. In this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate will be paid a fixed commission whenever a visitor referred by him/her to the merchant’s website requested a quote or filled up an online application form.
Pay Per Click Affiliate Programs

Pay Per Click( PPC) Associate Programs

PPC associate programs have been many renouned. You should have listened them a lot. PPC programs have been substantially a easiest approach for web publishers to have income from their websites as well as blogs. A associate gets paid a sure volume($ 0. 05 to$ 0. 80 customarily) at your convenience a caller click a ensign or content ad displaying upon a affiliate’s website. PPC typically used by contextual promotion companies similar to Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Networks, Adbrite and much more.

Step 1 – Join an Affiliate Program

Clickbank.com is one of the best places to find an affiliate program that interests you as there are a ton of sellers looking for people to promote their e-books and info products.

Step 2 – Promote an affiliate program

You need to have a website to promote your affiliate programs. Creating a website isn’t difficult nowadays. You can use an easy website builder to create a website with little or no technical knowledge.

Step 3 – Decide the Content on Your Website

As you are promoting e-books, you can write a review on each e-book with an affiliate link to the sales website of each e-book. If you do not wish to write reviews, you can create a product recommendation list on your website (e.g., ‘Top 5 Cooks e-books,’ ‘Top 3 Horror e-books,’ etc.).

Step 4 – Drive Targeted traffic/visitors to Your Website
To earn affiliate commission you need to drive targeted traffic to your website. The more traffic your website gets, the more likely you’ll generate more sales. There are several ways to drive targeted traffic to your site in short period of time (2 to 5 days). Here’s how……

Pay-per-click (PPC) Advertising
You can get a lot of targeted traffic using PPC advertising. The most popular and effective PPC advertising programs are Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing and Adbrite.

Post Messages on Forums
Another way to get free traffic is by posting messages on community forums with a link to your site on the signature of each message posted by you. Here’s a technique I learned from an affiliate marketer.

1) Run a search on Google to find out forums and message boards that are related to your affiliate products and try to join as many forums as you can.

2) Make sure that each one of your forums profile is edited to include your website link within the signature option.

3) Spend a few hours navigating the pages of the forums. You can ask questions and post informative and helpful replies to other peoples’ questions or messages to build your status. The more people trust you, the more likely they will click your link.

Buy Links / Sticky Threads on Blogs and Forums
This is actually totally new method. You can easy find text link on good PR2 sites with 4000 unique daily views for 10$ – 15$. Other even never method is to buy Sticky Topic on popular forums, this method is not cheap but can bring u huge traffic within month and price for can rise up to 50$ but mostly this will increase your traffic and sales incredible.

Submitting posts to DDL sites (Katz.cd & PhazeDDL.com)
Write Your own e-Books or use Free Tutorials, e-Books to share on this DDL sites to gain extra traffic to your site. This traffic will probably not be focused on sales but some of them will probably read and go truth your site, this way you can increase your sales to.

You are not alone. I was scammed a lot myself when first starting off in internet marketing. I bought a lot of those E-Books that promised me I would make at least 5k per week ( Yeah Right). The sad truth is that a lot of people fall for these tricks simply because they need money. And it sounds good when someone says, ” Buy my E-Book for $29.99 and learn how to make $200 per hour”

Now I am not saying that every single E-Book ever created is a waste, just most of them. So please avoid getting scammed by these people. I would hate for you to be spending your money on things that are not going to help you much in internet marketing.

Also try to stay away from paid surveys, even though I know a few people who have made some decent money, I still wouldn’t recommend you doing paid surveys. Why? because this entire niche is full of scammers. Again not every single site is a scam, but the odds are not on your side.

So, I just wanted to give you a quick heads up of what kind of things you need to stay away from. You can still try these money making ideas just make sure that you also understand the risk involed