Month: September 2017

How to Run a Successful Domain Flipping Business

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Domain flipping isn’t as popular today as it was a decade ago, but it remains one of the ways people make money online.

You might be wondering whether this is still a viable online business, especially now that all the good domains seem to be already taken. Is it too late to make money from domain flipping?

Today, we’ll delve into the basics of domain flipping, how to successfully turn this into a business, and some challenges you’ll have to consider when you start your business.

What Is Domain Flipping?

Let’s start with what domain flipping is.

Domain flipping, in a nutshell, means buying and selling domain names for a profit.

But you can’t just do it with any old domain name. It needs to be a domain name that has the potential to be valuable; that is, someone will be willing to buy it for more than you paid for it.

Buy low, sell high. It’s the same principle.

How to Flip a Domain

There are four basic steps to flipping domains.

1. Search for a domain.

The first thing is to find a domain worth buying.

Domain providers like Namecheap, GoDaddy, and Hover are the first websites you normally look at.

Another tool to find domains is a drop-catching service, which allows users to bid on a domain name that’s about to expire. The service then selects the user with the highest bid and attempts to register the domain on their behalf.

This doesn’t guarantee that you end up with a domain, but it’s your best bet when you have an eye on a domain and want to get it once it’s available.

2. Register the domain name.

If you used a drop-catching service, then they would be registering the domain for you.

If you searched using domain providers, You’ll need to register it from them. The process is usually quick and painless.

3. Find a buyer.

This is the crucial step in domain flipping.

Because you want to profit, you’ll have to find a buyer willing to buy the domain from you for more than what you paid for it.

There are different techniques you can apply here.

You can adopt a buy-and-hold strategy, which is exactly as it sounds. Hold on to the domain for a while and wait for people interested in the domain to contact you.

If you’re doing this, make sure your Whois privacy is turned off so it’s easier for potential buyers to contact you.

A more straightforward approach is to create a landing page for your domain to attract people wanting to buy it. Indicate that the domain name is for sale and include your contact details so they can get in touch with you to buy it.

A more aggressive approach would be to sell your domain in a domain auction, like ones from GoDaddy, Sedo, or Flippa.

4. Sell the domain.

When you’ve reached an agreement with a buyer, the last step would be to exchange their cash for the domain.

Since you likely haven’t met this person and don’t know if you’re going to be scammed, it’s highly recommended to use an escrow service like Escrow.com.

6 Elements of a Successful Domain Flipping Business

Now that you know the basics of domain flipping, here are the 5 requirements or elements to be successful in this business.

1. Money

Domain names don’t come cheap nowadays, and to increase your luck in selling these domains, you’ll need to acquire a portfolio of domains.

So to make money, you’ll need to invest a huge chunk of money in building that portfolio of domains.

If you plan to create landing pages for each domain, you’ll also need to invest in landing page software to make it look professional. Examples of this software include Unbounce, Instapage, and Leadpages.

2. Knack for finding valuable domains

Luck plays a part when you’re looking for domains to flip, but you can’t luck your way every single time.

You’ll need to spend some time evaluating domains and finding out if these are potentially valuable enough to sell for a profit.

Look at things like the length (the longer it is, the harder it is to remember), brandability (does it roll off the tongue? Can you easily spell it?), relevance (is it connected to an industry at all?), and search friendliness (does it have keywords that internet users will be searching for?).

Another thing to consider is the extension. The .com extension is the ideal, the gold standard when it comes to domain flipping. All the other popular extensions like .net, .org, or .co are a far second, but can still be desirable, especially if the .com equivalent is already taken or is far too expensive.

Don’t forget local top-level domain (TLD) extensions, which are local to the geographical location of where the website is at. Popular ones include .uk and .us.

There are also tools out there, such as GoDaddy’s Domain Name Value & Appraisal Tool, that can help you when doing your due diligence.

3. Time

You can’t make money with domain flipping if you’re impatient. When you buy domains, you can’t expect to sell them within an hour or even within a day.

There is an element of sitting on them for a bit so they go up in value. It may take a few months to work up a decent deal on a domain.

This is why you need money to build up an entire portfolio of domains; play the numbers game instead of placing your hopes on finding a unicorn of a domain name that will have a 6-digit payout.

4. Openness to Diversify Your Business

Domain flipping can be lucrative over time, but may only be exciting up to a point.

When you’ve earned enough profit to expand your business, you can either hire a team of domain flippers to widen your portfolio even more, or you can go into another business.

Website flipping is kind of similar to domain flipping in that you invest in domains, but in website flipping, you do a lot more than just sell the domain.

You actually create a website that goes with the domain (as in, you wouldn’t expect to read about crafts on a website called dressdiva[dot]com, for example) and then make it an income-generating one.

Write excellent content for this website and get it up on search results pages through SEO and link building techniques. Utilize social media marketing and Google Ads as well.

Once it has plenty of traffic, it’s time to find potential buyers or auction off this website.

5. Solid Business Plan

Just like launching any kind of business, you’d have to perform a lot of market research and planning.

Learn everything you can about parked domain names, finding potential buyers, and the auction process.

You would also need to draw up a budget that you can realistically work with, including capital for buying domains as well as your business expenses, such as advertising and marketing.

If you decide you want to be serious about domain flipping as a long-term business, make sure you register as an LLC and start your own website.

6. Business savvy

Buying and selling domains is not a passive income business. You definitely have to have the stamina to constantly look for domains to flip.

But you also need to learn how to cut your losses and recognize when a particular domain just isn’t going to be profitable.

Also, when your business grows, you’ll need to have an efficient system for keeping track of all your domains.

Risks and Challenges in Running a Domain Flipping Business

To be able to run a successful domain flipping business, you would also need to learn about the risks and challenges so you can work with them or around them.

1. The get-rich-quick mindset

Cars.com was the most expensive domain name ever sold at $872 million. Insurance.com was worth $35.6 million, while Voice.com was worth $30 million.

Reading about these stories probably got you interested in domain flipping in the first place, but you need to switch your mindset from get-rich-quick to the long haul.

Going in with a “I’ll buy one domain and sell if for millions tomorrow” is a sure way to get you burned out quickly.

Focus on buying a number of affordable, high-potential domains and selling them at modest profits.

Practice makes perfect, and the more profitable domains you’re able to sell, the better you will be at it. Eventually, your profit margins will get higher.

2. Buying a trademarked name

It might be tempting to buy a domain like starbucks.net and then try to sell it back to Starbucks, hoping for a big payday.

Nope.

Buying a trademarked name can get you in a lot of legal trouble.

Best case scenario? They ask you to hand over the domain without paying a single cent, so you lose out on your investment.

Worst case scenario? They sue you and you end up paying legal costs in a battle you’ll surely lose.

Bottom line? Not worth it.

3. The ethics of domain flipping

Many people feel like buying up domain names and then sitting on them, waiting to go up in value so you can sell them, is an unethical practice.

Web developers, entrepreneurs, and even those who own larger businesses, frown upon this practice because these are the ones who are looking for domain names, only to find that someone else is holding that domain name.

But don’t fret. Domain flipping is as legal, legitimate, and ethical as real estate flipping, and no one bats an eyelid about that.

Just because some entrepreneurs had the foresight and the skills to recognize a valuable domain name before others did doesn’t make them bad. Besides, if they aren’t buying from you, they’re going to buy that domain from someone else.

4. Almost all the good .com domains are taken

There are almost 100 million .com domain names that have been registered thus far.

It’s a large number and it can be overwhelming enough to make you wonder if it’s too late to get into domain flipping at all.

But the truth is millions of them have not been used and are bound to expire at any moment. If you catch them, then you have a potentially valuable .com domain in your portfolio.

Also, these aren’t all the .com domains on the internet ever. There will be two to three word .com domains still available for you to buy at an affordable price.

Is Domain Flipping For You?

You now know about the basics of domain flipping, what you need to be successful, and the risks and challenges you are likely to face.

Hopefully this is enough for you to consider whether domain flipping is a business that’s right for you.

If this doesn’t sound like a good fit but you’re still interested in starting a business, get inspiration from our list of small business ideas.

Planning to start your domain flipping business today? Share your plans with us in the comments below!

5 Ways to Become the Jack-of-all-Trades Virtual Assistant

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Virtual assistants are the modern-day equivalent of an executive secretary. They should be the jack of all trades, helping their bosses reach important goals, while fulfilling all 101 small, daily tasks that keep most businesses afloat. The VA industry is a competitive work-at-home niche, particularly since most employers are only looking for a single person to fill in the position.

If you’re a virtual assistant and want to get an edge over your competition, here are 5 ways to make your profile irresistible to employers:

1. Be Different, but Learn Everything

The most common tip to stand out from the hundreds of people offering virtual assistance online is to pick a specific skill set, such as SEO. While this is true and an effective technique even today, it shouldn’t keep you from learning new things.

Generally, virtual assistants usually perform duties within a specific category, such as content writing, SEO, digital marketing, social media, audio/video editing, web development, and general assistant tasks that fall under what bosses 1) hate doing, 2) can’t do, and 3) shouldn’t be doing.

If you’re a content writer VA, it’s easy to jump to other categories like social media, admin tasks, SEO, and marketing. After all, most of these categories include some type of research and writing, such as publishing posts on Facebook, hashtag analysis, and off-page SEO (blog commenting, forum posting, responding to posts).

Web developer VAs are a highly tech-savvy bunch. They would be perfect for on-page SEO tasks, graphic design, video/audio editing, e-mail marketing campaigns using advanced tools like Infusionsoft and more.

The best thing about learning new skills as a virtual assistant? With the number of free courses available online, the areas you can specialize in are endless.

2. Portfolio-Building: Document Your Skills

Every work-from-home employee dreams of a stable, long-term employment. Unfortunately, this isn’t the norm for many virtual assistants. As such, you should be prepared to seek another job if and when your current employer decides to let you go. The upside to working with different bosses is that you’ll learn something new, regardless if you had a good experience or not.

Building your portfolio should always be on your mind. It’s best to create a free website from hosts like WordPress.com and turn it into a professional calling card online. Aside from a snippet of your CV, skills offered, and rates, you should also create a portfolio page where you could show off your skills.

For example:

• Web design – logos, avatars, graphics, etc.
• Web content – sample articles, links to published work
• SEO – case studies on link building campaigns, etc.
• E-mail campaigns – A snippet of the campaign made
• Video creation – Embedded video of your work

Some employers include a clause on employment contracts that they own rights to all projects you’ve participated on. Honor this clause. You can still show off the skills you’ve learned by creating your own project.

3. Work On Your Personality

No one is a perfect VA. The earlier you acknowledge that there could be something about your personality or work ethic that you can improve on, the better.

One of the most common problems of working from home is that you literally work alone. If a job requires you to be a team player and work with other VAs and employees, find a way to push forward and learn to provide value as a team member.

Ask yourself these questions as honestly as you can:

• How do you handle criticisms?
• Do you feel threatened with co-employees that do better than you?
• How do you deal with failure?
• Are you willing to leave your comfort zone?
• Can you spot and solve problems without supervision?
• Do you take pride in your work?
• How self-motivated are you?
• Can you easily communicate with people you’ve just met?

Did you discover something about yourself? Don’t worry much about these weaknesses, but give extra effort to improve them from here on out:

4. Learn How to Market Yourself

Marketing yourself doesn’t just involve showing off relevant work samples and your portfolio. You’ll need a bit of planning if you want to get the attention of the right employers. Here’s what you’d need:

• Target market – Find job boards and forums that would showcase your work to interested employers. For example: web designer virtual assistants can go to the Smashing Magazine job board, writer VAs can lurk at the ProBlogger Job Board, and more.
• Unique Selling Point – Determine your USP and take advantage of it. If you’re offering a very specific skillset, such as creating augmented reality Android app, then focus on this USP when marketing yourself.
• Master the art of copywriting – The best way to show your personality, writing capability and marketing skills in one go is to practice writing copy.
• Be up-to-date with trends – When writing a profile, cover letter, or other methods of marketing yourself to potential employers, drop some bits of knowledge that would show how well you are up-to-date with developments in your industry.

5. Be Loyal

Once you land a job you like, be loyal. The wide range of opportunities available for virtual assistants makes it easy for workers to hop from one company to the next. Even if employers don’t say it, loyalty is a highly-regarded trait. If you go well and beyond what is required of your job as a virtual assistant, your loyalty can be rewarded tenfold.

The Bottom Line

Virtual assistants can provide value to a business without the big investment required in hiring traditional employees. VAs know this. Employers are aware of this. But as a virtual assistant, this shouldn’t stop you from reaching new heights, upgrading your skill set, and improving your weaknesses to be the jack-of-all-trade VA no employer could resist.

Pros and Cons of Using Shopify for Your Dropshipping Store

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A dropshipping store is like any other ecommerce store, except the business owner doesn’t have to rent a warehouse, pay for lease on a physical store, or stock the products. This means before you could “sell” products, you have to build an online store using one of the many ecommerce platforms available in the market today.

If you’re comparing ecommerce platforms for your dropshipping store, your options may include Magento, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, YoKart, Shopify, Big Cartel, Open Cart, Zen Cart, Symphony Commerce, Drupal Commerce and a whole lot more. But if this is your first foray into the world of dropshipping and ecommerce, here’s why Shopify should be your top choice…

Why Choose Shopify?

The number one reason why over 350,000 online shops have chosen Shopify as their ecommerce platform is because there’s no need for programming, or web design knowledge to set-up a Shopify store. You can basically launch a new store in minutes.

Shopify is best for beginners because of these reasons:

1. Template availability – Shopify has a ton of free, ready-to-use themes to choose from. These themes are professionally made, mobile-ready, highly responsive, and designed with the customer in mind. There’s also option for paid templates, if you want better customization and more features.

2. Massive app store – Shopify has its own collection of extensions and plugins, which help expand the functionality of an online store. Example of tools available at the Shopify app store include tools on stock and inventory, reporting, shipping, customer service, store analytics, and social media, among others.

There are over 1,500 free and paid apps available, all of which are already compatible with Shopify and are easy to install. You can cherry-pick only those that would best fit your business, or experiment on new tools that could skyrocket your sales to newer heights.

Shopify even gives its members a way to connect to mobile app developers, who can customize their apps for you (for a fee, of course).

3. Quick-connect to Facebook and other Cross-Channel Selling Capability – One of the best things about Shopify is that it allows you to connect your store with a Facebook page, and sell directly from the largest social media network today via the Shopify Facebook App. You can also sell in other platforms like Pinterest, Houze, Twitter, and Wanelo for a wider reach of your target market.

4. Huge Community to Help – Even if Shopify is aimed at beginners and designed to set-up a store quickly, problems could still arise. What’s great with Shopify is that aside from its 24/7 livechat and phone support, the community forum is also home to many friendly and helpful people who are (or have been) on the same boat as you and are ready to guide you with Shopify questions you may have.

Shopify also publishes tutorial posts, case studies, and success stories regularly.

5. Built-in SEO Functions – Competition is fierce in ecommerce, which is why it’s a big plus that Shopify has SEO functionalities available. By taking advantage of these features, such as adding tags, editing meta tags, adding product descriptions, arranging collections, etc., your Shopify online store would be “seen” by search engine crawlers and indexed. This means that when someone searches the tags you used on search engine, your store could be one of the results listed.

Shopify Isn’t for Everyone

The benefits of using Shopify for your dropshipping store are numerous, but not everyone could succeed with this platform. Here’s why:

1. Shopify Payment – Members are basically forced to use Shopify Payment since every transaction made from your store would incur 2% transaction fees if you choose another payment gateway like PayPal. This is on top of the 5% transaction fee PayPal deducts from every payment you receive.

Unfortunately, you can’t just skip PayPal. It has been proven by multiple testing and testimonies that adding PayPal to an online store increases conversion rates for up to 30%. That’s a huge percentage to ignore.

2. Expenses Add Up – Shopify lets you try the platform for 14 days without charge, but if you decide to subscribe, you’ll have to pay monthly charges of $29/month (Basic), $79/month (Shopify Plan), $299/month (Advanced Shopify), or $2,000+/month (Shopify Plus). Other expenses could also add up, such as customization of themes and apps, and turnover fees (from between 0.5% and 2.0% of the product amount).

In addition, if Shopify decides to up their subscription plans in the future, you’ll have no choice but to continue, or move to another platform completely.

3. Limited CMS Capability – Shopify may seem like WordPress with its availability of themes and plugins, but the limits begin to show once you’re inside the Shopify platform. Content management systems (CMS) like WordPress are popular for a reason – the potential for development and customization are endless.

4. Shopify only lets you create two types of content – a blog post, or a page. It can be hard to create additional text fields for products, or link posts to products. The cheapest Shopify plan also doesn’t have the best search mechanism, and no advanced filtering for product searching available.

5. Scalability isn’t an Option – It’s good to start small, but if you plan to expand your dropshipping store in the future, it would be a pain financially and emotionally because:

  • Everything is hosted on Shopify. All customizations, uploads, and other content will be hard to export to a new host.
  • You’ll lose Google rankings. If you started with Shopify, but want to move to your own hosted site, the search engine rankings your Shopify store has earned will be all for nothing. Your new site would have to be re-indexed, causing your original site to lose traffic.
  • Exporting data is hard work. All customer data and order details are stored on Shopify. You’re able to export this data, but it is a lot of hassle to do so.

The Bottom Line

Shopify is a great choice for company online stores that house only limited items. If you’re planning to build a dropshipping business, you’d find more success buying a domain name, using a full-featured CMS like WordPress, and be in full control of your website.

Plus, since scalability is key to dominate the dropshipping model, your best bet is to learn how to build a store from scratch, and not be tempted with Shopify’s plug-and-play solution.

6 Ways to Make Money from Memes

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I think it’s safe to say that memes are now part of our collective Internet culture.

A meme is a catchphrase, idea, hashtag, and any form of media (image, video, songs, etc.) that reflects the current culture that spreads quickly from person to person via the internet.

While the popularity of memes exploded with the rise of forums and social media, the word “meme” was coined in 1976 in the book The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, as he explained how cultural ideas and memories spread.

By the late 90s, with the help of online forum members of 4chan and Reddit, memes have become part of the internet culture.

Memes mostly include an element of humor, but they can also have shock value or have themes like drama, urban myths, psychological/philosophical ideas, and more.

The most popular examples of memes include:

  • Photos – “Futurama Fry,” “Drake Hotline Bling,” “Kombucha Girl,” and “Padme and Anakin” are some of the most memorable memes in recent years.
  • Videos – “Walmart Yodel Boy,” “BBC Dad,” and “Julian Bass Superhero Transformations” are prime examples of video memes that continue being shared around today. Viral videos are also major sources of image and animated GIF memes.
  • Animated GIFs – “Roll Safe” (also known as the “think about it” meme), “Guy Blinking Nervously” (also known as the “excuse me” meme), and “Woman Yelling at a Cat” are popular GIFs that are used as reactions and memes.
  • Songs – TikTok has a way of making little-known songs or remixes become go viral. Recent examples are Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat) by Jawsh 685 and Jason Derulo, Oh No by Capone, and Wipe It Down by BMW Kenny are very familiar to those who keep up with TikTok trends.
  • Expressions – Statements like Paris Hilton’s “That’s hot” or “OK Boomer” can also be considered memes.

And as with probably anything on the internet, people have found ways to cash in on memes.

If you think you’d be an awesome meme-maker, but don’t know where to start in monetizing this modern skill, read on for some of the most common methods of cashing in.

7 Ways You Can Make Money with Memes

Get ready to start amassing a following.

Here are the best ways you can turn your memes into cash.

1. Build an Instagram Meme Page

This is the easiest starting route out of the other items on this post, but this has also been done to death and is thus insanely competitive.

You can create a meme account to quickly gain followers and fans. Then, when you have enough followers to be considered an influencer, reach out to brands so that you can get paid to promote their brands through memes.

If you’re lucky, they might be the ones to reach out to you.

The way to stand out from your competitors is to have an Instagram page with a distinct personality and not just another page of random memes just to be hilarious.

Brands and companies are constantly looking for ways to take advantage of social media to reach a wider audience, and if your Instagram meme page attracts a certain type of demographic that they’re looking to attract as well, then your chances of being sponsored by that brand increases.

The good thing about it is that you don’t even have to be a creative genius to run an Instagram meme page. You can create your own memes, sure, but don’t knock curating other people’s memes.

You can take memes created by other people and still show off your own personality on your Instagram meme page. It can be difficult and challenging, but it’s certainly worth the effort.

An example of a success story that started with an Instagram meme page is Claudia Oshry, who started with her Instagram @girlwithnojob that was a hit with female millennials and is now a podcast host, stand-up comedian, and has even released a single.

2. Create and Sell Products Based on Memes

Another way to leverage your Instagram meme account is to use it to sell your own products based on popular memes.

Many crafters take inspiration from memes that have gone viral to create handmade products, which they then sell over at Etsy or other online marketplaces.

If you started with an Instagram meme page, you can sell real products based on the memes on your Instagram page. You can set up your Instagram as a business account so you can use Instagram shopping to offer your products on your organic posts as well as through your Instagram Stories.

Another way to sell them is to set up a separate online store or sell in a marketplace, which you can then link to on your Instagram profile.

3. Get Paid to Create Corporate Memes

Meme marketing is one of the most powerful social media marketing strategies available to companies today. Because memes are shareable and transcend social media networks, brands have been using them to increase their social media following or to promote a specific product.

Netflix is one notable example of a brand that has harnessed the power of the meme to promote its upcoming movies and shows, although it’s not without the occasional backlash (remember the chaos that #BirdBoxChallenge created?)

You, in turn, can harness these brands’ needs and make money with a meme-making career. You can either proactively reach out to a company to commission you for a meme-making project or wait for them to contact you.

In some cases, companies opt for authenticity and hire professional meme-makers for the job. Such is the case for Gucci’s highly successful Instagram-based campaign titled #TFWGucci (“That Feel When Gucci”). This collaborative project was commissioned to multiple Instagram influencers, including @decorhardcore, @rozalinaburkova, and @youvegotnomale (real name Sebastian Tribbie Matheson), who said he got paid $2,000 for the starter meme pack he created for Gucci.

Fortunately, in today’s gig economy, it’s possible to offer your services as a freelance meme-maker whom companies can hire for small projects, maybe even for only one to two memes. Check on Fiverr and other freelancer job boards to find small meme-making projects.

4. Apply For a New Media Job Opportunities

Many companies are hiring skilled people with a healthy dose of humor, pop culture knowledge, and advanced internet skills to handle new media marketing.

In fact, dank meme-making is often listed as one of the responsibilities of a new media professional.

If you’ve got the image editing and video editing skills, a great sense of humor, as well as that uncanny ability to predict what’s going to be popular with a certain target market, working as a digital or social media specialist with a focus on new media can be a great opportunity.

You may even be lucky to make money with memes by working from home! Start your job search with Indeed and seek out a social media manager role.

5. Start a Meme Compilation Channel on YouTube

YouTube may seem like a strange place to make money with memes, but actually, video memes work so much better with YouTube. Like other social media networks, YouTube videos are easy to share and spread like wildfire.

If you have a keen sense of humor, a spider-sense of what will become viral, and a knack for video editing, you can go into compiling video memes and posting them on your YouTube meme channel.

Of course, creating your own video memes will work even better, if you manage to make it viral. Original memes have more potential to be monetized.

Promote your content as much as you can to your followers on social media or through your blog, if you have one. Once you have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours within 12 months, you can link an Adsense account with your YouTube channel and apply to join the YouTube Partner Program so you can start cashing in.

Another way you can make money with memes on your YouTube channel is to sell real products based on the video memes you’ve been posting on your channel. Link to your online store right on the video or in the video description so that your viewers can buy your merchandise right when they watch your video memes.

A popular YouTube success story is Grumpy Cat. Before Grumpy Cat died in May 2019, she earned somewhere from $2k to $20k from YouTube alone. What’s interesting is that this amount wasn’t even half of what this feline and her owner Tabatha Bundesen actually made.

The Washington Post estimates that Grumpy Cat earned six-figure sums from her Friskies sponsorship, a book deal, Lifetime movie “Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever,” and a widely successful merchandising business.

An older success story is that of LA-based deep-voiced singer Tay Zonday (real name Adam Nyerere Bahner), whose original song entitled “Chocolate Rain” went viral on YouTube in July 2007. The song, which is super-catchy, isn’t even a parody – it’s a song about racism.

He initially made money through video ads and a promo song for Dr. Pepper called “Cherry Chocolate Rain.”

When the fame died down, his earnings didn’t.

At some point, he earned a sizable monthly income from ringtone and music sales, although it didn’t translate to a vast fortune.

The most important takeaway you should have here is that your YouTube monthly views may peak and then die down, but being a popular YouTuber can open so many more opportunities for you than just earning a trickle of dollars from YouTube ad revenue.

6. Teach Others How to Make Money With Memes

For as long as the internet exists, memes are here to stay.

Why not teach others the art of meme creation?

You can create a video course and sell them on sites like Udemy, Skillshare, or Coursera. You can even try to sell it on LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda). Meme creation may not seem like a professional skill, but digital marketers recognize how effective meme marketing is for certain target audiences and will want to learn how this works.

Of course, you can also target those who want to learn how to create memes for their own products.

Either way, creating and teaching a course is an effective way to make money with memes.

Start Making Money With Memes Today!

Who would’ve thought that these charming, annoying, hilarious, philosophical, passive-aggressive, and sometimes thought-provoking memes could actually lead to a career, monthly income, or huge sponsorship deals?

The rise in social media and globalization has turned memes into a massive communication tool by people of all generations and cultures from all walks of life. And brands have started to notice too. So if you feel this niche best fits your skills and personality, it’s never too late to try and cash in from the opportunities meme-making has to offer.

But before you go off creating memes and waiting for the cash to roll in, a word of caution: Making money through memes is not a guaranteed stable and reliable source of income. Competition is only increasing with each new year and each new set of memes that become popular.

If you want to be involved in something creative and earn money online, here are some of the articles we’ve written before to give you some inspiration.

3 Underrated Tips to Help Double Your Dropshipping Revenue

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Dropshipping can be a lucrative business due to the low investment involved, but your success in this field depends largely on how much work you put in. If you’ve set-up an online store with the idea that “if you build it, they will come,” you’re bound to fail. Because this business model has plenty of competition, what makes you different from all the rest who are doing the exact same thing is how smart you handle your business from inside and out.

For online store owners who have had mild success with dropshipping, but are experiencing roadblocks, here are 3 unpopular tips that could help double your dropshipping revenue:

1. Automate the Process, but not Customer Service

Dropshipping has been a business model for decades, even before the web existed. The difference with today’s online dropshipping version is that online store owners don’t need a warehouse to stock products because the wholesaler/manufacturer/dropshipper does everything from fulfillment to shipping for you. The downside is that you receive a smaller profit per transaction. The only way to succeed with this business model is to scale, and in order to sell as many products as possible, you have to automate operation.

Using automation software is a widely-known and extremely effective dropshipper technique. With a dropshipping automation software, you don’t have to:

  • Forward sales orders every time a customer places his/her order
  • Manage inventory by connecting to your supplier’s inventory system
  • Choose which suppliers to fulfill a product (if you’re dealing with multiple suppliers offering the same products)

Automation is the key to scaling your business to another level, but in order to double the number of return customers, you have to leave the customer service side of your business as human as possible. If your budget permits it, hire someone to handle e-mails, live chats, or other contact options. Customers feel better if they know a real person is trying to solve their concerns.

2. Offer as Many Payment Options Possible, but Skip Bank Deposits

You won’t believe how many people cancel a potential sale when they discover that their chosen mode of payment is not available.

There are plenty of payment gateways that can be used for your standalone ecommerce site, Shopify store, or other third-party hosted stores. Examples of payment gateways that accept cash, credit card payments, Bitcoin, and other currencies include Authorize.net, 2Checkout, Payza, Payever, Stripe, and PayPal, among others.

As many dropshipping businesses would point out, it is best to choose a payment gateway that offers would-be customers numerous ways to pay. However, an uncommon tip is to stay away from the bank-deposit option. Here are several reasons why:

No more impulse buys

When customers choose bank deposit, many of them don’t follow through in transferring payment. This can be due to various reasons from procrastination to buyer’s remorse. Whatever their reasons may be for not fulfilling payment, the result is the same: your business suffers from unfulfilled orders left open.

Checking bank payment is a lot of work

You may argue that online banking makes it easier to check bank deposit payments, but here’s where it gets tricky. Some customers use their spouses’ bank accounts for deposits; others don’t include notes when fulfilling a payment, which means you’d have to check with customers every time a payment arrives.

If given a choice, customers will choose bank deposit over credit card payment

Everyone knows that the bank deposit option is one of the safest ways to pay, so if you give customers this option, they are more than likely to choose this route, even if they have PayPal or an active credit card.

3. Learn all about On-Page SEO

SEO should be a part of any website, but not many dropshipping online stores implement these useful techniques to increasing traffic. If you’re trying to double sales, or increase visitors to your store, why you should be learning all about on-page SEO because:

  • Planning keywords give you an edge over your competition
  • Using a manufacturer’s product title and description not only limits your store’s potential to be seen as “different than the rest,” it can also cause Google to label your store as ‘spam’ and not include it in search results.
  • URLs, META tags, internal linking and planning site navigation based on a comprehensive keyword research can dramatically improve traffic to your store.
  • Usability is a deciding factor for most site visitors. The more user-friendly your online store is, the higher chances a customer would trust your store and make a purchase.
  • Bad links may cause customers to leave your store completely.
  • Search engines love sitemaps – build one for your store.

The Bottom Line

Follow these three underrated tips seriously and watch how your sales improve over time. What’s great about these methods is that they’re long-term: implement them on your dropshipping biz now and you’d still be reaping what you sow for months or years.

10 Characteristics of an Effective Social Media Manager

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Social media is a blessing to many companies. The potential for “free” marketing on social media is limitless, which is why all companies big or small should be taking advantage of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more. Behind any successful social media account is a person (or sometimes, group of people) who manages the accounts in behalf of the company.

Choose the right person for this job, and your company can benefit from free press and increase in sales. If you’re looking to hire a social media manager, assign this position to an existing employee, or man the accounts yourselves, here are 10 skills, traits and characteristics you must consider:

Copywriting & Communication Skills

The web is fast-paced and people online lose interest within seconds. The right person for the job must know how to catch the people’s attention. Whether you’re assigned to manage the 140-character-restricted Twitter or Facebook pages, writing is a huge part of the job.

While automation tools like Hootsuite are available to make posting to different networks easier, every social media platform follows specific rules, which means you can’t just re-post something you published on Facebook to Twitter, or Twitter to Instagram.

A person with exceptional copywriting skills would know how to write for the 65+ year-old market (who are mostly active on Facebook), for the college kids and young professionals (LinkedIn), or for the teens to below 30s (Twitter/Instagram). On top of copywriting guidelines, the social media manager should also be familiar with social media etiquette, writing headlines for every platform, and hashtags.

Knowledge in graphic design, video creation, and Web 1.0 to Web 2.0

In 2016, Hubspot conducted a Consumer Behavior Survey and found out that posts with images are received better than text-based posts, and that 43% of consumers want to see more videos in the future. You don’t have to be the best artist in the world as a social media manager, but some skills in graphic design and video editing would give you an edge over the rest.

Outstanding Customer service skills

Sprout Social reported in mid-2016 that about 35% of people choose social media for customer care, beating out those who still prefer live chat (24%) and e-mail (19%). This means that even if your goal is to promote products and services on social media, it is inevitable that you’ll receive inquiries, complaints, and other messages from existing or potential customers.

Humor and empathy

In order to facilitate community engagement, a social media manager must be able to address a wide range of people armed with information and sometimes, empathy. The people who follow your brand’s social media must feel that the one publishing posts is human.

Social media managers with a good sense of humor would go a long way in this field. Many companies have benefited from banters between two brands (Wendy’s vs. Burger King, Taco Bell vs. Old Spice, and more) that have turned viral for days. Many people follow companies on social media for the laughs. It doesn’t mean you should throw in dadjokes every day, but be on the lookout for opportunities to join friendly banter online and enjoy a dramatic increase in followers and free press.

Multi-tasker

As you’d notice by now, a social media manager wears the hat of a writer, graphic designer, customer service rep, and even company mascot. It can be a stressful job for the wrong person, but a fun and challenging position for someone who meets all these requirements.

Meltwater published an interesting “a day in the life of a social media manager” post with an infographic listing down the numerous tasks that this job entails.

Up-to-date with trends and pop culture

Social media managers must work like a journalist – posting timely news that bring value to its audience. Not only do they have to be updated with social media policy changes and trending topics, they should also have an ever-so-growing knowledge of pop culture. People on social media absorb information and relate more to a brand when its social media posts also include what’s happening in the real world than just serious marketing-infused talk.

Detail-oriented

It’s not just fun and games for a social media manager. Time management plays a big role in this detail-oriented position. The business side of this job requires you to keep track of a content calendar, where company promotions are often included.

You have to really dig into the details because aside from creating content, you’re also scheduling pre-written posts, responding to messages, answering e-mails, engaging with the company’s audience, and more. Of course, there are office-related tasks as well (such as meetings and reports) that you have to deal with.

Authentic

Knowing your brand’s mission, vision and “voice” is important because the social media manager will become the official representative of a company. You don’t have to use slang to sound cool. What’s great about social media is that you can use a casual tone while being professional. It’s important that the person manning a company’s social media knows exactly who the target audience is in order to make the brand’s voice as authentic as possible.

Analytical

Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms provide users a comprehensive report, which includes metrics (likes, comments, shares, re-tweets, etc.), and useful metrics like traffic and revenue. A social media manager has access to all these information, which he/she can use to improve the social media account’s performance, such as discovering what topics the audience engages to the most, or what time there are more active followers. If a company is using social media to drive traffic to a website, these reports can help achieve this goal.

Budgeting skills

Sometimes, a social media manager will also handle a company’s paid advertising and other expenses (images, graphics, social media management tools, etc.) required in managing a brand’s social media effectively. If this is the case, you’d need basic spreadsheet skills to list down every cent spent on any given month/quarter.

The Bottom Line

The job of a social media manager is relatively new, but it’s becoming a highly in-demand job. For many small businesses, hiring a resourceful, multi-tasking, creative and effective social media manager could be all it takes to drive more sales. For bigger companies, an active social media presence bridges the gap between corporate and customers.

Financial Freedom Sites: A Scam to Avoid

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By now I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of the 1% – the supposedly small number of people in the world that own most of the money in the world.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be part of that minority of people? To have as much cash as you’ll ever need.

That’s the premise of Financial Freedom sites (AKA Cash Tracking System).

Well, sort of, they state that it’s 3% rather than 1%, but let’s not split hairs just yet.

Financial Freedom Sites 3 percent

What is Financial Freedom Sites?

The initial sales page doesn’t really tell you anything about Financial Freedom Sites barring how wonderful it is and that you can get free instant access.

This leads to a chain of web pages each showcasing a different part of the system including several videos.

It’s these pages that suddenly change from Financial Freedom Sites to Cash Tracking System.

If you manage to get through all this information it becomes clearing that Financial Freedom Sites is a recruitment pyramid scam.

Financial Freedom Sites recruitment pyramid

The idea is that after you join you can invite other people to join the system as well, and depending upon the level and the downline, you get to keep some or all of the money that the person spent in order to join.

That’s right, it isn’t actually free!

What made me laugh was the video the FAQ titles, “Is this a pyramid?”. It states that because the structure of the system is not pyramidal in shape, then it’s not a pyramid scheme.

This is utter BS, as regardless of how it is structured, the system does not have products to sell and there is an up and downline. In fact this video stated that all the money from your recruits goes to you yet in a previous video it clearly stated that because someone isn’t at the right level money is passed up the chain.

However you look at it, Financial Freedom Sites is a type of Pyramid scam: a cash gifting scam.

Levels and Lines, Oh My!

When you make money online, it’s usually a pretty simple process: you take a product or service and sell it.

Financial Freedom Sites uses various levels that you buy into that range from a few hundred dollars to $3500 and maybe more.

If the people who you recruit buy a level higher than you, you only get a fraction of the money.

Financial Freedom Sites recruitment levels

As well as that there is a complicated system which decides where your commissions go. This level of complication is unnecessary and is often seen in scams, making it sound like a really clever system when the intention is to baffle and confuse.

As well as the levels that you need to pay for, there is also a onetime fee of $25 and a monthly $39.95.

You receive nothing in return for these costs, except the privilege to try to sign up other people.

Cookie Cutter Websites

If you were to take part in Financial Freedom Sites how exactly do you get your message out there? Well, you will be provided with a website to do it!

Not only that, but the website is premade for you.

Sadly the “website” is merely an automated page on the Financial Freedom Sites website.

No matter how many people sign up, everyone gets the same page to send new recruits to.

This means you have no way to stand out except in your initial conversation, which means you will be competing with all the other suckers, erm I mean fellow members.

Not Successful?

Talking of the websites, I did a search on the Financial Freedom Sites site in Google and discovered page after page of premade websites.

Unfortunately I could not find a single one that was active.

All I saw was this (email and phone number obscured for privacy):

Financial Freedom Sites failed sites

This strongly suggests that many people have tried thus system and not one of them has continued with it for any length of time.

If all these “sites” have been closed, how do you think you will fare? Probably about the same; you’ll spend your money, alienate friends and family trying to convince them to sign up and ultimately you will lose your money, time and probably respect.

Who is Behind Financial Freedom Sites?

Your answer would be as good as mine. There is no company information on their website, nor are there any terms, privacy policies or refund information.

This is highly indicative that this is a scam.

As well as that they are definitely breaking several US laws by not including basic information.

The Bottom Line

Cash Gifting, Pyramid Scheme, or dodgy MLM system. Whatever you want to label Financial Freedom Sites with there is one underlying theme: it’s a scam!

Sure you could pay your money and if you’re wily enough you could get people in and maybe even make some money, but the reality is that this system is not a long term business. It will collapse as all of these schemes eventually do and the people at the top will get rich off the hardships of others.

Avoid Financial Freedom Sites at all costs!