Month: November 2017

How to Make Money on Twitter: 5 Legit Ways to Try

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Any effective social media marketing strategy involves Twitter, and it makes sense that individuals and businesses want to learn how to make money on Twitter.

While its reach isn’t as widespread as Facebook, its users are made up of a specific age demographic, and that makes it attractive to brands, advertisers, and people who want to work in social media marketing.

Twitter appeals to the millennial and Gen Z audiences; more than 80% of its users is under 50 years old (Source). For brands who want to get this target audience, Twitter is the social media platform of choice.

Here are some ways you can make money from Twitter.

Set Up Your Twitter Account

Before we dive into the different ways to make money on Twitter, you need to build your Twitter profile and build a following on Twitter first.

Create A Killer Twitter Profile

Of course, before you can hope to earn money on Twitter, you’d need to have a Twitter profile.

But creating just any Twitter profile is not going to cut it. You need to set up a Twitter profile for success.

For starters, your username and your Twitter handle (that is, your @ name) should be your professional name, your company name, or at least connected to the business or products you’re promoting.

Next, you need to use a professional profile photo. It can be your headshot (something you would use in a resume or on a company website), your personal logo, or the logo of the company you’re tweeting for.

Your header photo (or your banner) needs to look sleek as well. This is the perfect opportunity to showcase the products or brands you’re promoting. A collage of product photos or a photo that tells the story of the brand you’re promoting would work here.

Never leave either your profile photo or cover photo blank. No one trusts opinions and links from a Twitter profile with a picture of an egg and a blank cover photo.

Lastly, work on your Twitter bio. You’ll need to introduce yourself, set the mood, and engage your audience, all in 160 characters or less.

Add a brief description of your products or services, or whatever you’re promoting, tell people what to expect, and include the right keywords.

Don’t forget your location and a website, which you can link to your ecommerce website or the website of your company or grand. Don’t put an affiliate link here; there’ll be plenty of opportunities to do that on your actual tweets.

Grow and keep your followers

Once you’ve created your Twitter profile, the next thing to do is build your followers based on your target audience.

Your followers are where most, if not all, of the money to be made on Twitter will come from, so this is absolutely crucial to your success.

Post, share, and retweet relevant content that aligns with your target audience’s interests and activities. If it’s useful to your target audience, they’ll like it, retweet it, and share it.

Find the optimal schedule for your tweets. The ideal number of tweets a day ranges from three to seven, spread out throughout the day. Streamline the process by using scheduling software such as Hootsuite, Buffer, or TweetDeck so you can compose all your tweets and then go about your day while they get posted on schedule.

It takes some trial and error as well as research to find out the best times to tweet; that is, when your target audience is likely to see them. It’s usually around 12 noon to 1 pm on your audience’s local time on weekdays, but this may vary.

Whatever you do, don’t buy fake Twitter followers. Fake Twitter accounts equal zero real engagement, and that’s no good. It’s never worth it.

If you’re willing to pay for followers, look into Twitter’s Followers Campaign instead. It’ll display tweets you choose on home timelines, search results, and Who to Follow based on the settings you indicate, and you pay per Twitter account that clicks or taps Follow on those displayed tweets.

The ideal number of followers is around 50 to 100 to make money on Twitter.

5 Ways to Make Money on Twitter

When you’ve optimized your Twitter profile and you reach the ideal number of followers, you can try one of the following methods to make money on Twitter.

1. Sell your own products or services.

Just to be clear, Twitter doesn’t have a marketplace where you can sell your products or services.

But this can be a tool for you to promote yourself and your business.

Provide samples of artwork if you’re an artist offering custom designs, graphics, or paintings, links to a website if you’re offering web design services, or photos of products you’re selling on Etsy or Amazon.

Don’t overdo it since like in the real world, people hate annoying salespeople.

However, like in the real world, people hate annoying salespeople who get in your face all the time. Don’t overdo the promotion. Make sure you tweet useful content as well.

2. Get paid to tweet about other brands.

If you don’t have products or services to promote, the simplest way to start making money on Twitter is to get paid to promote someone else’s products and services.

This works if you already have hundreds of followers, as this is one of the first things that brands look at when considering you.

You can also check out websites like Sponsored Tweets or #paid to sign up as a creator and get connected to brands and ad agencies looking for influencers.

Pro tip: Keep a file of all the sponsors you’ve ever done business with and don’t burn bridges. If you’ve worked successfully for a brand before, they might want to work with you again in the future.

3. Get into affiliate marketing.

Another way to get paid to tweet is through affiliate marketing.

What you need to do is join an affiliate program, check out what products you could promote that would be appropriate for your followers, share links directing them to the products, and cash in every time someone buys.

Twitter does allow you to post affiliate links, as long as you label them correctly and make it clear that you may earn commissions when they follow that link.

However, that makes it more challenging to make your followers click your affiliate links, so get creative and never lose the value of your content.

For example, you can buy the product you want to promote first, take a picture or video of the item, and showcase it in a way that would interest your followers. Make it funny, or inspirational, or shocking, as long as you’d know your followers would appreciate the work you just did.

Also, make sure the affiliate programs you’re joining allow you to sell products that your target audience will find useful to them. For instance, if your target audience is mostly teenage males, you probably won’t earn a lot from promoting period underwear.

4. Generate leads.

Twitter can help you find potential customers based on their tweets. Use the Twitter search feature with keywords specific to your business and connect with people mentioning a product you’re promoting.

You can crowdsource ideas, offer coupon codes, or just simply know of your presence by saying hello.

This is useful whether you’re selling your own product or service, promoting a company’s products or services, or offering lead generation services for third-party companies.

5. Become a social media manager.

Earning commissions is a good way to make money on Twitter, but if you want a more stable income, being a social media manager or Twitter manager can be another option.

More and more brands are using Twitter to provide quick customer service, interact with their customers, and broadcast news, updates, and promotions.

I recommend looking at FlexJobs for legitimate job openings. You can also try other job search sites like Indeed or ZipRecruiter.

Tips for a Money-Making Twitter Strategy

Whatever method you choose to make money on Twitter, there are a few pointers you can apply to create an effective Twitter strategy.

Select your Pinned Tweet carefully.

A pinned tweet is a regular tweet that you can “pin” on your profile, such that when Twitter users go to your profile, this pinned tweet is the first thing they see.

Choosing the right tweet to pin may be nerve-wracking, but the rule of thumb is to pin one of your popular tweets or a tweet that talks about an ongoing promotion or an upcoming event.

Of course, if your most popular tweet is off-brand, off-color, or just off, choose another tweet that may not be as popular but fits your branding well.

Use hashtags strategically.

Create a hashtag that’s specific to your brand so you can get recognized and discovered by your audience. Similarly, your hashtag can also help you identify who’s tweeting about you and discover a new audience.

You can also use keywords related to what you’re promoting as hashtags on your tweets to get more views on your tweets.

However, don’t use more than three hashtags in a post. Overdoing it looks spammy and will turn a lot of followers off.

Post images and video.

High-quality visuals in tweets make them more memorable and encourage more people to engage with either a reply or a retweet.

Also, tweets that have photos and videos take up more space on the screen, catching their eye and making them work to scroll down.

Balance these out with text-based tweets with valuable content so your timeline is an interesting mix of different types of tweets.

Engage with your audience.

Scheduled tweets are good, but if your timeline is only made of scheduled tweets, it’s going to look like a bot Twitter account.

Let your followers know that there’s an actual human behind the Twitter account. Learn the arts of tagging or mentioning, replying, and retweeting to engage with your Twitter followers.

Interact with your followers’ tweets as well. Reply to their tweets and maybe even quote tweet a

Get into the habit of asking questions once in a while (you can even schedule this once a week) and replying to the answers and retweeting the best ones.

Twitter Polls are another great tool to engage your followers and know how they think.

Take advantage of Twitter Analytics.

If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.

Twitter Analytics is Twitter’s in-house analytics software that allows you to see which tweets are popular and which aren’t so popular, how many profile visits you’ve had, and so on.

All this information comes in handy when you assess your own performance so you can tweak your strategies and tweets.

Start Making Money on Twitter Today!

As you should have learned at this point, making money on Twitter isn’t easy, but it certainly is possible.

However, Twitter isn’t the only social media platform where you can make money. You can also make money on Facebook and on Instagram.

Are you making money on Twitter? Tell us your stories in the comments below!

8 Tech Subsectors with Increasing Work-from-Home Opportunities

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The tech industry is among the first industries to embrace telecommuting and remote positions, but majority fall under helpdesk or customer care jobs. Today, you can find a plethora of work-from-home tech jobs as varied as social media management to cloud engineering with pay rates almost comparable to their office-based versions.

The benefits of work-at-home tech jobs over office-based positions are obvious. Aside from skipping the hassles of daily commute, these jobs allow flexibility to students, single-parents, primary caregivers, or other types of employees that couldn’t support their lives’ special requirements if they’ve stayed behind a cubicle.

The downside though is that pay rates for home-based work are often lower than their office counterparts. But if you’re OK with this fact and you’re after the flexibility of working in your pajamas full-time, discover what kinds of jobs are in store within these 8 underrated tech sub-niches with increasing work-from-home opportunities:

8 Work at Home Tech Opportunities

1) App development – The world of apps has a long way to go. Even if it seems that iOS and Android is already saturated with apps, you have to understand that as long as smartphones exist, there will always be apps that need updates and apps that need developed. Read up more about an app developer’s job here.

2) Consulting – Consulting is the best gateway to home-based work and can be a career path chosen by any senior IT employee. Consultants are paid for their opinions, assessment, and any other input an organization requires. This can be as simple as being quoted in a magazine, or as contributor of a third-party project. Consultants may earn up to $80k/year or more depending on the amount of projects.

3) Cyber security – Ever read on the news about kids hacking Facebook or discovering Google bugs, only to get rewarded in the end? The field of cybersecurity is a lot like consulting, since experience and skills weigh more than education. You can go about this as a freelancer or “bug bounty hunters” as they passionately call themselves, or find a work-from-home position instead.

4) QA – The tech industry is big on quality assurance, from assessing relevancy of search engine results, to testing websites or apps before launch. If you love perfection and have the skills to put to good use, the QA route will give you a ton of options. The SQA (software quality assurance) team, for example, is responsible for monitoring engineering processes and methods used to ensure end-product meets guidelines set by the customer. QAs are available in every subsector, so discover opportunities in your line of work first before anywhere else.

5) ecommerce and mcommerce – ecommerce will continue to get a huge chunk of the business sales pie. With this continuous demand, expect many home-based opportunities for web designers, creators, internet marketers, and other related fields. The cool thing about the ecommerce/mcommerce industry is that job requirements would vary significantly depending on the type of ecommerce store.

6) Cloud – The demand in work-from-home cloud engineers will increase, as more and more companies adapt to changing infrastructures and server virtualization. The roles will depend on the type of cloud-based technology and programming languages used, but expect to be paid higher than ordinary computer engineers. Of course, you should be very familiar with leading cloud-based tech such as Windows 10, Office 365, Azure Active Directory, and more.

7) Software and web programming – Like app development, software and web programming remains an in-demand field regardless of how saturated it may seem. IBM, Apple and Microsoft often entice highly-skilled programmers with telecommuting options for their office-based positions. But if you’ve been handling projects on your own for years, it will be more lucrative if you go freelance and work under two or more clients at a time.

8) IT project management – There will be a 15% projected growth in managerial positions as more IT teams are assigned on telecommute and work-from-home jobs. Salaries of IT project managers or “virtual managers” are in the $120k range, but can go higher depending on the number of team members assigned to the manager.

The Bottom Line

More and more people prefer work-from-home careers because they are able to reduce stress, juggle parenting with work, manage a chronic illness, and generally find more time at home, or play. And since the opportunities available for home-based tech jobs now go beyond helpdesk and customer support, people with varying levels of experience have more choices.

If you’re interested telecommuting to one of these careers, FlexJobs or Indeed.com are probably the best job search sites to begin your search and find something that would fit your skill set.

12 Places to Get Search Engine Evaluator Jobs

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We live in a time when one only has to type into a search bar on Google (or Bing) and you’ll get almost exactly what you’re looking for, almost 100% of the time. Aside from the search engine algorithms, keeping these search results relevant is a job for a search engine evaluator.

If you’re looking for a work-from-home or a flexible job that requires basic research skills and minimum training, being a search engine evaluator might be a good fit for you!

Today, you can learn all about working as a search engine evaluator: what it involves and where to find jobs.

What Does a Search Engine Evaluator Do?

Search Engine Evaluator Jobs

About 90% of online activities begin with a search engine query, and Google processes over 8.5 billion search queries every single day.

Search engines work with advanced algorithms and crawlers, but these can still have occasional bugs and glitches and may not always work as expected.

Search engines hire contractors as QA analysts because bots cannot detect such errors on their own.

Search engine evaluators are responsible for searching various terms (sometimes given by the company or sometimes based on your own search history) and judging the quality of results obtained.

Other companies may also require you to check the format, relevance, and quality of online ads displayed for specific search terms.

Whatever the main task assigned, your job of checking the relevancy and usefulness of searches aims to improve user experience.

The job requires the evaluator to provide feedback with details about spam, accuracy, relevancy, and timeliness, among other factors.

Google is the leading company that offers this kind of job. But in some cases, Google hires third-party companies to perform search engine assessments.

This job is seasonal, but since it is usually a remote position, you can apply as a search engine evaluator whenever slots open up. Depending on the company hiring, this position may be called internet judge, internet assessor, ads quality rater, or other variations.

How to Become a Search Engine Evaluator

Anyone interested in this position must have a working desktop or laptop and a stable high-speed internet connection. Most positions allow you to be a work-at-home search engine evaluator.

A college degree is preferred, but often not required.

Requirements for this job may vary, but for local-based openings, the job may require you to speak the local language and be familiar with local culture to be able to assess local search inquiries properly. This is often indicated in the job listing, so take note.

Some companies require you to take a search engine agent exam or go through unpaid training before getting started.

The perfect candidate for this job is someone who has exceptional research skills, is a member of the top social media networks, and is familiar with both foreign and local events and pop culture.

Of course, you should be very familiar with how search engines work, especially Google.

Do note that most companies only allow one job per IP address, so two people from the same household may not be able to apply for the same job.

Once you pass the exam or training, you have to commit to at least 10 hours weekly until the project expires. For jobs that require you to use your own search history, you shouldn’t have privacy issues.

Payments are normally done through PayPal or Payoneer, so make sure to set these up before you apply to these jobs.

12 Places to Find Search Engine Evaluator Jobs

Whenever you want to find remote jobs, the first place to start should be FlexJobs.

With thousands of verified companies posting legitimate opportunities, you can save hours of research and rest assured that your job search is ad-free and scam-free!

As of this writing, there are over 90 openings for search engine evaluator on FlexJobs. Join now so you can start applying for these jobs.

1. Appen

Appen Butler Hill, known simply as Appen, is an NSW Australia-based company that’s heavily invested in crowdsourcing, search technology, social media engagement, and language technology.

They offer localized positions for search engine evaluators that require 10 to 15 hours of weekday commitment.

The application period can take 1 to 3 weeks and involves a three-step set of exams (search engine test, English test, and technical skills test). Pay depends on where you live, but all are sent via PayPal.

Look out for projects called Project Yukon, Project Arrow, and Project Shasta.

2. AI Community by TELUS International (formerly Lionbridge AI)

Lionbridge has sold its AI division to TELUS International in 2021 and has since become TELUS International AI Data Solutions.

The AI Community is a group of remote workers who provide services to customers of TELUS International AI Data Solutions.

Currently, there are open positions for search engine evaluators, raters, and personalized ads evaluators.

Occasionally, there are openings for internet analysts, social media search assessors, online map quality analysts, and other related jobs that are advertised, so bookmark the page and check back.

3. KarmaHub

KarmaHub is a service provider that partners with companies that need to collect and analyze data. They provide solutions involving artificial intelligence, cloud-first development and deployment, and the Internet of things. They count Microsoft, Pfizer, Novartis, and AIG as some of their clients.

They periodically offer internet analyst positions on their job portal. Pay rates are vague, but external sites and forums seem to indicate a starting wage of $10 to $11 per hour, which might go up to $27 per hour for internet analyst positions that require speaking another language.

If there are no openings for internet analysts on the site, you can email your details to leads[at]mykarmahub[dot]com and they’ll be in touch with you.

4. mTurk

Amazon Mechanical Turk, or mTurk as it’s more commonly called, is different from the others in this list in that it’s more of a database of microjobs from many different companies.

Most of these jobs take only seconds to complete, and when you get good at choosing quick jobs that pay well, it’s possible to earn $15 an hour by accomplishing a variety of these small jobs.

There are hundreds of search evaluator tasks available at a given time.

The bonus is that if you ever get tired of search evaluation, or if the available jobs run out, there are thousands of other tasks you can choose to do.

5. Google

Google usually outsources their search engine evaluators from other companies, but they do hire directly, albeit rarely.

They periodically have openings for search quality raters. This position rarely opens (and it’s one of the company’s few work-at-home positions available), but if you’re lucky, you can apply for either an English-only or localized job.

Search quality raters evaluate websites and webpages that are displayed on search results pages and determine if they are relevant to the search query.

The most common task is to give an overall rating for Page Quality, which is determined by many factors, including the purpose of the page, content quality, the EAT (expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness) of the creator of the main content, and many other factors.

Bookmark the Google Careers page and check back for openings.

6. Teemwork.ai (formerly Isoftstone)

Teemwork.ai is an IT jobs company offering crowdsourced tasks.

Related positions available include Search Engine Evaluator, Online Search Evaluator, and Online Ad Evaluator for various languages. Other positions include Information Researcher and Localization Researcherl for many different languages.

7. OneForma

Pactera EDGE’s online platform, OneForma, is a community of freelancers from all over the world that provides services in AI and digital technologies.

They’re currently recruiting participants for Project Milky Way, a search engine evaluation project aiming to produce more accurate maps for applications.

You might also find search or ad evaluation microtasks under the Internet Judging category.

8. Welocalize

Welocalize helps companies scale up globally by transforming content and data across different languages, platforms, and delivery channels through translation and AI training.

Current job openings include Ads Quality Rater (various languages), Maps Quality Rater (US-based only), and Search Quality Rater (US- or India-based only).

9. Rater Labs

Rater Labs used to be a separate company, but was bought by Appen a few years back. It still performs projects under the Rater Labs banner to this day, but it is owned by Appen.

As such, if you’re already working for Appen, you can’t apply to Rater Labs anymore.

Also, you need to be eligible to work in the United States to join the program. You also need to commit at least 15 hours per week, and a maximum of 26 hours a week.

Payment for search engine evaluators at Rater Labs range from $11 to $13 per hour. Earnings are paid once a month though.

10. Yahoo!

Yahoo! was one of the OG search engines in the world, so it’s only fitting to include the company on this list.

Sure, Google is more popular, but Yahoo! still holds about 3% of the industry market share.

When you work as an evaluator at Yahoo!, you receive a competitive benefit package. The downside though is that search engine evaluation jobs are pretty in-demand and you rarely see it being published on Yahoo!’s career page.

11. Bing

Bing, owned by Microsoft, is a great place to work as search engine evaluator.

You know why? Because Microsoft is just as serious with its AI technology of its search engine.

Search engine evaluators at Bing are paid $75,000 per year. Senior-level evaluators earn over $100,000 a year.

Note that you can’t work with other companies once you begin work with Bing. You’ll have to sign a non-compete and non-disclosure agreement with the company.

12. BONUS: SwagBucks

Bonus cash!

Swagbucks is less of a job, but a fun way to pick up spare money doing stuff you already do online. They pay you to use their search engine and since you’re going to be doing a lot of searches anyway, this is a nice way to make extra money.

It’s quick, easy, and free to join. One of the best. And they will give you $5.00 just for signing up.

How Much Do Search Engine Evaluator Jobs Pay?

Remote search engine evaluators earn between $3 and $20 per hour, depending on the company, country, and work hours of the position you landed.

This position falls under seasonal or part-time jobs, so you can expect at least 10 hours to 30 hours a week of work on average.

If you’re accepted into any of the search engine giants (Google, Yahoo! or Bing), you’ll be joining the company as a full-time employee complete with awesome benefits and a competitive pay.

Is Hunting for Search Engine Evaluator Jobs Worth it?

Search engine evaluation is a work-at-home opportunity that can be a great way to earn money, especially since the offer is better than the minimum wage in most countries.

However, openings can be unpredictable, so you may need to apply to two or more companies at a time.

Pay rates also don’t reflect the actual work hours you spend on the task at hand. Instead, your hourly rate depends on the hours a company expects you to finish the task, so it’s likely your final pay-per-hour could be less than the number of hours you’ve spent working.

If you’re efficient with your time and have the right skills for the job, being a search engine evaluator may just be the career you’re looking for.

Other work-from-home opportunities to try

Being a search engine evaluator is not for everyone. If this isn’t your cup of tea but you’d still like to work from home, here are some suggested articles for you:

Advanced Ads Review: The Ad Platform You Have Been Looking For

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Off the back of our recent review of AdRotate Pro I thought you might like to know about some of the other options there are when it comes to adding adverts to your WordPress site.

Today I’m going to review Advanced Ads by Thomas Maier, a fully featured plugin that has some interesting takes on advertising.

Advanced Ads

Advanced Ads

Like most premium WordPress plugins nowadays, there is also a free version of Advanced Ads that you can pick up to try. It is fairly feature filled on its own with only advanced features being reserved for the premium plugin.

The plugin has been around for 3 years with regular updates. It has also been downloaded over 800,000 times and has over 50,000 current installations.

This might not be quite like AdRotate, but unlike that plugin Advanced Ads scores an excellent 4.9 out of 5 on WordPress.org user reviews with a similar number of reviews (about 100 less).

The premium version is itself split into several plugins: the core premium version and additional addon plugins.

What do you get?

  • Advanced Ads Pro (the core premium plugin)
  • Ad Tracking
  • Responsive Ads
  • Geo Targeting
  • PopUp and Layer Ads
  • Selling Ads
  • Slider
  • Sticky Ads

There’s also another addon called Genesis Ads, specifically for Genesis theme users, but this can be gotten for free from the Advanced Ads site.

Some Requirements

Unlike a lot of premium plugins, you are still required to have the free version of the plugin installed and activated. Why I don’t know as surely the premium version could have been self-contained.

As well as that if you are looking to use the Selling Ads addon, you’re required to install and activate Woocommerce – more on this later.

Initial Setup

Barring needing to have the free version installed and active, installing Advanced Ads is pretty simple and can be done via a manual upload like most plugins.

The settings are fairly detailed, especially with the addons active as they add to the settings.

General

These are the core setting and should be reviewed. They cover a wide variety of things from settings to beat ad blockers to disabling ads in different areas.

AdSense

As AdSense is one of the most popular ways to add adverts to a site, it makes sense there are specific settings for it.

Selling

Basic settings related to selling adverts.

Pro

Focusing on advanced features like cache busting, click fraud protection and lazy load.

Tracking

Advanced Ads provides some good stats and this settings area allows you to fine tune what you see and what’s tracked.

Creating Adverts

Adverts in Advanced Ads generally require three things: the advert itself, a group and a placement.

Placement

Advanced Ads placement

Placements set where the advert will be displayed and there are a lot of different options especially with all the addons active:

  • Manual placement (shortcode or PHP code)
  • Header area (code)
  • Footer area (code)
  • Before content
  • After Content
  • In Content
  • Widget
  • Header Bar
  • Footer Bar
  • Left/Right “Sidebars” attached to the content area
  • Left/Right bars attached to the browser windows
  • Background
  • Random Paragraphs
  • Above Headline
  • Exact Middle of content
  • Custom Placement
  • Post Archives
  • Popups

These placements will help you position your advert exactly where you want them to go and once set up can be used with any advert or group.

Groups

Groups are optional but are very handy for keeping adverts organized. They can also be set to randomize adverts or show a specific number of ads, amongst other features.

Adverts

Adding a single advert in Advanced Ads is simple yet can be a little bewildering when you first get started due to the sheer number of options available.

To begin with you can add a title and the type of advert to be shown. The types are quite straightforward with Plain Text and Image being the most commonly used.

Advanced Ads adverts 1

The ad parameters section is where you’ll insert your add code, whether this is plain text or the JavaScript provided by services like AdSense. You can even insert PHP code.

Advanced Ads adverts 2

The layout options allow you to tweak the placement by adding margins and alignment, and also to add specific IDs and Classes should you wish to make further changes via CSS.

The Display Conditions section allows you to target this advert based on numerous different options such as geolocation or what page the visitor is viewing. You can add multiple conditions giving you a very granular level of control which is excellent.

Advanced Ads adverts 4

Finally there are stat related options specifically for the advert.

As I said earlier, there’s a lot going on when you create a new advert but most of it isn’t necessary for day to day advert creations. Minimizing the various sections helps but I feel like there are too many options shoved in front of you and some of these could be hidden better to help feeling like you’re wading through options.

Features

When it comes down to it most advertising plugins will have quite similar features, so expect to see a lot the usual when checking out Advanced Ads.

Some of the more unusual features include the following:

Ad Blocker Beating

Advanced Ads has a built in system that you can tweak to help get past ad blockers. After all you’re not going to make money if no one can see your advert.

AdSense Violation Warnings

When using third party advertiser networks, there’s usually a lot of rules and it’s often easy to fall foul of them.

AdSense is no different so Advanced Ads has an in built system to notify you if your adverts are going to cause issues, potentially saving you from having your account banned!

Visual Composer Compatibility

This isn’t the right place to weigh the pros and cons of page builder plugins, but if you use the popular Visual Composer plugin be assured that Advanced Ads will integrate with it.

AMP Ads

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a Google initiative to serve pared down versions of site to mobile users.

Being pared down means a lot of features on a site are removed. Advanced Ads does its best to make sure you AMP ready pages are also monetized with ads.

Addons

When you buy Advanced Ads you can just buy the core premium plugin and any addons separately, but it’s really good value to just buy the bundle of everything.

In this bundle you get the following add on plugins:

Responsive Ads

This addon allows you to set what size adverts appear at different screen resolutions, and even disabling the advert if needed.

While most themes will reduce the size of an image in order for it to be responsive, this might not be suitable from an advertiser’s point of view. Instead swapping it to a different size can provide a visible and therefore clickable advert.

This plugin also handles AMP adverts.

Geo Targeting

Allows you to show a specific advert or hide them for people coming from specific locations. This can be useful to target specific countries with country appropriate adverts.

PopUp and Layer Ads

One of the weaker Advanced Ad plugins, this addon allows you to add an advert or other content to popups. While this can be useful in that you can pop up any content and advertise on it, most existing popup plugins are more feature rich.

Advanced Ads popup ad

A VERY basic advert showing how you can add basic HTML and advertising code into a popup.

Selling Ads

This plugin allows you to sell advertising space on your site. It does a great job of making it easy to sell adverts because it is connected to Woocommerce.

That is also it’s down side. If all you’re doing is selling a couple of advertising space then having to install and set up Woocommerce as well as the advertising platform is a bit much.

If you already have Woocommerce installed and sell other products you also need to be aware that you’ll need to remove or separate the ads from other items on sale.

The requirement of Woocommerce aside, it really is quite simple to set up a product as the plugin integrates directly with Woocommerce.

Advanced Ads woocommerce

There are a couple of other issues I had with the selling ads plugin.

First is a minor one: there was no simple link option. While most people might not need this, selling links for local businesses is fairly common and the Advanced Ads plain text option is simply not restrictive enough.

Secondly the Selling Ads plugin does nothing to the ads overview section. This means it can be quite difficult to find which adverts were purchased by which customers as you have to click the advert, and then click the link to go to the Order in Woocommerce.

You can go in via Woocommerce and click through to the order but it would have been nice to have been able to look at the advert list and see which adverts were for which customers.

Slider

This allows adverts to be shown in a slide show manner effectively rotating them. This is quite a useful feature as you can show multiple adverts in the same spot plus the movement attracts the eye. That being said it would have been nice if this was just built into the pro plugin itself rather than as a separate plugin.

Sticky Ads

Oddly enough this addon allows you to create adverts that stick in place even as the user scrolls. There are other features as well such as backgrounds and header/footer placements.

Support

Support for Advanced Ads is excellent. I had a couple of questions after I bought the plugin and sent them off on a Friday expecting to hear back Monday or Tuesday. Instead I got a response on the Saturday and even had an email conversation throughout the day.

Obviously that might not be typical but I also checked the WordPress.org support section and all questions have been answered and most of those were answered in less than 24 hours which is excellent!

Statistics

Selling or just using adverts on your site means you need statistics. After all there’s no point showing an advert if it doesn’t perform.

Advanced Ads stats section provides details on impression and clicks and is broken down by date and by advert so you can get a general overview or more specific data.

My only bugbear here is that the chart used is not responsive so smaller screens (even laptops) will need to scroll to see data.

Developer Friendly?

Advanced Ads has a basic codex on their website and has enough hooks, filters and functions to achieve most things.

It’s still not really easy to extend, but I found with some work it’s still possible – for example I managed to create a single link option for the plugin with a few hours of digging into the code.

As such it beats a lot of other advertising plugins simply by allowing you access to it on a code level.

The Bottom Line

Advanced Adverts is a solid advertising plugin with a heck of a lot of features and so many options you can fine tune things to your specific needs.

The bundle price for the premium plugin and addons is a reasonable €69 for a single site (about $82) and this includes support and updates for a year. There are more options that further improve the value such as 10 sites for €199 (about $234).

Usability wise, the plugin could be a little more streamlined and easy to use, with unnecessary or uncommonly used settings hidden away but that’s a minor point.

Most light users would likely get away with just using the free version, but those that require more complex setups or more control (or those simply wishing to support the developer) should pick up the Pro version as it definitely adds those advanced features.

My only real gripe is the required integration with Woocommerce in order to sell adverts. Yes it makes it easier to use an existing and popular ecommerce site, but not everyone will want to add a full blown ecommerce system in order to sell a few adverts. It would be nice to see a simple in built sales system in the future.

The question you most likely have is: does it do what I want it to? The answer would be yes. Advanced Ads built in features will cover pretty much any eventuality and if you’re looking for an advertising platform plugin for your site you should definitely consider this plugin.

How to Start a Calligraphy Business on Etsy

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Cursive writing has been slowly becoming extinct for decades, but a surprise comeback has ignited a passion in the form of calligraphy. So I put together this quick guide on how to start a calligraphy business to help you cash in on your exquisite handwriting.

If you’ve always loved gliding your fancy pens onto paper and create classy handwritten posters, greeting cards, invitations, envelopes, menus and other creative letterings on a wide range of media, now’s the time to get started.

How much do calligraphers make?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, calligraphers and other fine artists earned abour $49,000 in 2018.

Many calligraphers also sell ready-made products on top of their custom orders, which ensure that even slow periods could produce money in the end.

Like any business, marketing will also dictate the sales you’ll receive, so learn how to spread-the-word (both offline and online) your calligraphy products and services.

Here’s how to setup your business and get started:

How to Start a Calligraphy Business in 6 Steps

1. Practice Makes Perfect-for-Selling

Calligraphy is a skill not many people have, but if you practice often and take time to learn from books, online courses and workshops, you’d find your artwork getting better by the day.

It could be feedback from your friends on social media, or a 100-piece wedding invite gig offer from an acquaintance, but you’ll definitely know when your work is store-worthy.

2. Gather Your Startup Capital

Let’s face it:

You may have started calligraphy as a hobby, but once you turn it into a business, you’ll require some kind of startup capital to buy more equipment and supplies, such as pens, markers, ink, paint, brushes, calligraphy pens and stocks of specialty paper (parchment and calligraphy paper).

If you’re going to promote your work online, you’ll need extra cash to set-up a website, produce business cards, invest in a good camera and set aside marketing funds.

Depending on the amount of supplies you already have before you decide to put up a calligraphy business, your startup capital could be as little as $100 or as high as $1,000.

And since you won’t have an employee or a brick-and-mortar store, almost all your sales would be for profit.

3. Decide on an Angle

In order to get the attention of customers, you have to develop your own style.

There are tons of resources online to get inspiration.

Check Pinterest, download as many fonts as you can, visit websites of other calligraphers to see what kind of classic and modern calligraphy styles are out there.

Fortunately, handwritten calligraphy can be so similar that no person can copyright their work.

Using quotes, lyrics, and other copyrighted words and then selling them for profit, on the other hand, is against the law.

Once you’ve decided on a calligraphy style and practiced it to perfection, you then have to figure out a game plan to market your handwritten work. Do want to focus on the wedding industry, or diversify and try out various markets?

4. Price & Sell Your Product on Etsy

(If you’re new to Etsy, be sure to check out our guide on how to setup a store and sell on Etsy before continuing.)

The minute you’d decide to sell calligraphy, you have to be ready with pricing (even if you don’t have any customers yet).

There’s nothing more off-putting to would-be buyers than when they catch you unprepared.

It can be tricky, since this industry doesn’t follow a “one size fits all” pricing. However, you can compare prices of other sellers on Etsy and go from there.

Many calligraphers start with a lower price than market prices, but don’t go too low that you’ll end up losing money.

You can increase prices as your skills improve. As a starting point, note that calligraphers charge about $1 to $5 per wedding invitation, but those would longer text can be priced a lot higher.

Before you market your product on Etsy, make sure you have your own ordering system in place.

Set up a work calendar, so you can easily check if you can accommodate orders as they come in.

When creating an Etsy listing, ask customers to fill-up a quick questionnaire that includes deadline, number of orders, writing media (watercolor, ink, markers, etc.), colors, and information about the text that will be handwritten.

Do the math and send your customer a quote. If he/she agrees with the price, create a new Etsy listing specifically for that customer. Begin the work once your customer buys that customized listing.

5. Join a Community of Creatives

The comeback of calligraphy also resulted in various communities popping up both online and offline.

Join a calligraphy group where you can learn from people who have successfully turned their craft into a profitable business.

It’s also a great way to discover new calligraphy styles, develop marketing skills, and seek feedback from people who knows best.

Aside from regular contests, these groups also hold calligraphy exchanges which are a popular pen-pal-like activity where participants send and receive handwritten postcards and other artwork by mail.

Both contests and exchanges are a fun way to practice your skills and receive much-needed feedback, especially for those who are just starting out.

6. Master Your Craft

It doesn’t matter if you’re busy with customer orders or not, but you have to spare time to master new skills, new calligraphy techniques, new media, and more.

Adding specialties to your offering could double your earnings significantly.

The Bottom Line

You can thank Instagram and Pinterest for the rise in calligraphy over the past few years and this is creating huge opportunities for people to launch their own businesses fueled with nothing but their own creativity and the power of Etsy.

While you’re here, check out these 29 other online jobs for artists to see how you can put your other artistic talents to good use.

9 Profitable Ecommerce Ideas You Can Try in 2018

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It’s never easy to pick a business niche, especially when there are tons of great ideas already in development. But if you’re planning to set-up an ecommerce business in 2018 (Proven Amazon Course will show you how), you can take a cue from technology trends, in-demand products and customer-centric preferences. Whether you’re looking for products to sell in an online store, or a service to offer, here are some ideas you could check out:

9 Ecommerce Niche Ideas for 2018

1) Drones – Drones having been reaching new heights throughout 2017 in various industries and is expected to become a $17 billion industry in the coming years. Aside from military use, drones are making a big splash on journalism/film (aerial photography), logistics (express delivery), disaster management (sending supplies, gathering information or conducting rescue operations), agriculture (precision crop monitoring), law enforcement, and more. Of course, drones will continue to its increase its popularity in the travel/photography industries for personal use.

2) Organic Beauty Products – Consumers are becoming more aware of the health and environmental effects of beauty products. Sales of organic or natural beauty products have been dramatically increasing up to 20% per year since 2015. Check out food-, oil- and vegetable-based hair and skin products with a focus on key ingredients like essential oils, vitamin C & E, seaweed, oatmeal, honey, coconut and other fruits.

3) Product Customization – For anyone who wishes to expand an ecommerce store, there’s a huge opportunity for product customization in 2018. This will work depending on the industry, such as clothing, shoes, cosmetics, furniture, or gifts, among others. And since technology has advanced to the point where customization is simpler at less the cost, business owners can add another income stream without having to develop new products.

4) Urban Farming – People are realizing the convenience, environmental importance, and health effects of farming in urban settings. Vertical farming, in particular, is a growing sub-niche that has been embraced all over the world through 2017. Even the government is on board with this upward trend with laws being amended in various states to accommodate urban vertical farming.

5) Subscription-based products and services – The success of subscription-based steaming Netflix isn’t done yet even if its streaming service has exploded in the last several years. Aside from a projection that this industry will reach over $200 billion by 2019, Netflix has inspired many companies that now provide a subscription option with its products or services. A great example of this is Dollar Shave Club, which earned over $615 million within 5 years; by shipping its members shave kits on a monthly basis.

6) Essential Oils – The natural health and wellness industry is all about essential oils in 2017 and it will continue to be a big deal in the years to come. What’s interesting about the popularity of essential oils is that consumers are welcoming them with open arms as they become more aware of natural health, even if the FDA continuously published reports against it.

7) Apps – App development has been a booming industry for a few years now, but there’s more to be invented or copied. Yes, even copycat apps can become successful in the app world. Just look at Uber clone Gofer or Tinder clone Igniter. The best thing about creating apps is that anyone with the right idea can jump into this world (for example: Yahoo!’s $30 million acquisition of Summy from a 17-year-old). With the right app idea that aims to solve a particular problem, an app can sell for millions of dollars.

8) Wedding – This multibillion dollar industry may feel saturated with tons of businesses already in operation for decades, but note that as the trends change year by year, more business opportunities open up for startups. Photobooths, mobile bars, venue decorators, and other sub-wedding niches weren’t always a part of the wedding industry, but brides and grooms ate them up when these businesses were introduced.

9) Custom Fitness Products – The fitness industry is a massive industry that has always had an impressive outlook, but customization of fitness products seems to be an exploding trend in the late 2017. If you have an ecommerce business in this field, try adding a customization option to accommodate the growing needs of consumers to “own” the products they buy.

Turn Your Idea into a Business

Coming up with an idea is half the battle. Turning your idea into a revenue generating business is another feat entirely.

One of the best ecommerce training platforms I’ve come across is Proven Amazon Course. The platform and online community comes highly recommended. Jim Cockrum teaches his students how to leverage the power of Amazon to build successful six-figure ecommerce businesses. Head there now and get moving today.

The Bottom Line

The cool thing about these business ideas is that it can apply to any kind of capital you may have. If you wish to have a product-based business but don’t have enough capital, dropshipping (where your partner with wholesalers who handle everything from stocking to shipping) can help you solve your financial dilemma. Service-based businesses also require a smaller investment that the product development route.

If you do try any of these ecommerce business ideas, remember that mobile usage will contribute the biggest chunk of ecommerce sales in 2018, so make your websites mobile-friendly or develop an app to support your business. Other technology trends you can incorporate into your ecommerce business include the use of virtual reality or 3D shopping, artificial intelligence, customer-centric automation, personalized shopping, one-click payment, and the merging of online and offline shopping.

How to Sell Lesson Plans Online: Earn Cash While Teaching

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Teaching is a noble, fulfilling profession.

It requires a combination of passion, vision, and purpose to mold a nation’s future generation.

Everyone knows a teacher’s importance in a student’s life, but the reality remains that it’s not the best-paying job in the world.

If you’re one of many teachers who love teaching but feel anxious about the lack of financial stability, here’s your chance to learn about making some side cash from selling your lesson plans and other educational materials to other teachers and educators.

Just to be clear, this isn’t like term paper industries where students hire ghostwriters for them to write term papers and other homework for them and basically cheat their way to graduation.

Instead, teachers can sell their lesson plans to fellow teachers and educators.

But why would other teachers buy lesson plans?

Teachers regularly spend hours preparing their lesson plans in advance, as well as updating their established lesson plans for them to be relevant with changes in the times, new students, and as required by the school curriculum.

Lesson plans that have been tweaked, updated, and tested on students are coveted by teachers who want to skip the trial-and-error phase and make a good impression on students immediately.

The teachers who buy get effective lesson plans with minimal time and effort, and the teachers who sell earn money for their excellent work. Everybody wins!

Today, learn all about how to sell lesson plans online.

Can You Sell Your Lesson Plans Online?

The very first question you need to answer is whether you’re allowed to sell lesson plans that you’ve made.

If you’re a teacher currently employed by a school and are planning to sell lesson plans that you’re using in your own classes, you’ll need to check if you own the copyright to those lesson plans and other materials you’re using in your class.

The National Education Association states: “If your employment contract assigns copyright ownership of materials produced for the classroom to the teacher, then you probably have a green light. Absent any written agreement, however, the Copyright Act of 1976 stipulates that materials created by teachers in the scope of their employment are deemed “works for hire” and, therefore, the school owns them.”

So even before you plan to sell your lesson plans, it’s important to resolve this first.

Where to Sell Lesson Plans Online

The good news is that you have plenty of flexibility when it comes to offering your educational materials for sale.

Below are some of your best options.

Teacher Marketplaces

Online teacher communities and marketplaces are membership sites that are targeted to teachers and educators.

Selling your lesson plans here ensures that your lesson plans are seen by your target audience, which is other teachers and lecturers.

Here are the most recommended teacher marketplaces you can join.

1. Teachers Pay Teachers

TeachersPayTeachers is one of the first and one of the biggest teacher marketplaces around, with over 7 million teachers and over 5 million free and paid content. TeachersPayTeachers is also home to many teachers who are enjoying six-figure incomes from selling on their site.

TpT was founded by former NYC public school teacher Paul Edelman in April 2006, sold it to Scholastic Inc. in December 2006, and then bought it back as a private business in March 2009.

TeachersPayTeachers has two kinds of teacher-author or seller accounts – basic (free) and premium (with a $59.95/year membership fee).

Teachers with a basic seller account have a 200MB file size limit, paid only 55% of every sale, and must pay the site 30 cents per resource. Meanwhile, those with premium seller accounts have a much bigger 1GB file size limit, receive 80% of every sale, and pay the site only 15 cents per resource sold (and only for orders totaling less than $3). Payments are made monthly via Hyperwallet.

2. Tes

Tes started out in print over a hundred years ago as the Times Educational Supplement. Today, they are a global digital community including teachers, educators, and schools working together to enable great teaching worldwide.

Becoming a Tes author allows you to share your educational materials to members of the Tes community, either as free downloads or paid-for resources.

The royalties you get for your paid-for resources are dependent on the value of your sales over a 12-month rolling period. For instance, to qualify for the highest tier (Gold), you’ll need to have more than £6,000 in sales over a 12-month rolling total sales value.

What makes Tes stand out as well is their comprehensive author academy, which helps beginners and expert-level teacherpreneurs with strategies to creating their lesson plans and educational materials, as well as how to make sure that authors are following copyright laws.

Plus, it’s a chance to gain a wider audience, as Tes is currently reaching 192 countries and 13 million registered users.

3. TeacherSherpa

TeacherSherpa is an online resource for teacher-created resources.

Free members can only download two resources every 30 days. Paid members can download unlimited resources for $9 monthly or $49 yearly.

You can sign up to be a Content Contributor to earn monthly royalties: $0.25 per download on the first 1,500 downloads, $0.50 per download from 1,501 to 3,000 downloads, and $1 per download on any download above 3,000 downloads.

While you won’t earn much on royalties, TeacherSherpa offers you a chance to promote your materials and your social media and shops on other websites.

Digital Marketplaces

There are also online marketplaces specializing in selling digital goods, and they can be solid platforms for you to sell your lesson plans.

By selling to the general public, you open the door for a whole new audience to see and purchase your lesson plans. Parents who homeschool and part-time tutors browse these sites for teaching materials, too.

Here are some of the best digital marketplaces to sell your lesson plans.

1. Amazon Ignite

Tech giant Amazon created the Amazon Ignite service to help teachers and educators who are selling their lesson plans online.

It’s an invite-only service; that is, you’ll need to apply to be able to sell on their service. To start the process, click “Request Invitation” and answer all the questions about what materials you’re planning to sell, your website address if you have one, and anything else you’d like them to know about your digital educational resources.

If you do get accepted, you earn 70% on all sales. For products under $2.99, they deduct a $0.30 transaction fee. They pay via direct deposit once a month.

It looks like they vet their sellers carefully and are likely to accept those teachers who are already selling their lesson plans.

2. Etsy

Etsy isn’t just for handmade products and crafts. It’s also a popular marketplace for downloadables and printables.

Their most popular digital products would probably be journal- or planner-related, but shoppers also search for lesson plans and educational resources here.

3. Sellfy

Another popular platform for selling digital products is Sellfy, where you can sell just about every digital file imaginable.

Sellfy supports large files (up to 10GB), and unlimited products and bandwidth (for paid members). They also have cutting-edge security features to fight piracy and protect your customers’ information.

They also have built-in marketing tools to help you increase your sales, such as email marketing, upselling features, and discounts and coupon codes.

You can start selling digital products for as low as $19 per month.

Sell Your Lesson Plans Online on Your Own Website

When you’ve dipped your toes in selling your lesson plans on online marketplaces, you can “graduate” to building your own website and selling your materials there.

This will take up more of your time in terms of maintaining your website, promoting your resources, and engaging with your audience.

However, running your own website purely with content that you’ve created means that you control every aspect: from your price point to sales to your branding.

Best of all, having established your presence and resources in other sites can help you direct traffic back to your site if you indicate your website on your materials. If buyers like your lesson plans, they may be curious enough to check out your site and see what else you have to offer.

Plus, having your own website means you can branch out into new things more easily, such as offering physical books and modules, video courses for teachers, or consultancy services for schools.

For inspiration, check out the site Two Little Birds Teaching by Jen Regan. Aside from selling digital resources on her site, she also has a TeachersPayTeachers store.

How to Create Lesson Plans and Resources That Sell

selling lesson plans online

You already know your target audience, and you’ve battle-tested your educational resources. Here are some more tips and strategies to increase your sales and profits.

What Other Resources Can You Sell?

You don’t have to limit yourself to selling lesson plans.

Aside from lesson plans, you can also create the following materials:

  • Lesson plans
  • Worksheets
  • Syllabi
  • Study guides
  • Lecture presentations
  • Exams, quizzes, tests
  • Flash cards
  • Outlines
  • Infographics
  • Games
  • Posters and bulletin board ideas

Selling Strategies

Here are some of the selling strategies you can use when offering your lesson plans online.

Create something worth selling.

As you’ve probably seen when you browsed the different marketplaces, there are plenty of teachers selling educational resources, so the content you create and sell should stand out among all others.

One strategy is to package your lesson plan with worksheets, activities, quizzes, and other relevant materials so that it’s an all-in-one deal.

You can also offer different supplementary materials for the same lesson by learner aptitude (e.g., beginner, intermediate, and advanced) so that teachers can provide materials that are appropriate for learners.

Learn how to price your lesson plans.

Most teachers set their prices based on how much time it took to create the resource, the prices of similar products, and their target profit margins per resource.

They also factor in possible discounts and sale prices.

Give out free samples.

Just like free samples in physical stores, free samples of your work help potential buyers get a feel for the quality of your work.

If they like the results, then they’ll buy the other materials you’re offering.

And teachers won’t keep it to themselves; they tend to tell other teachers about your materials, widening your potential buyers.

Plus, when your free samples are effective, those who get it can review your work, give you feedback, and help you improve your materials.

Try to target niche learners

Lesson plans for preschool, elementary, and high school learners are everywhere, and there’s plenty of competition, as you will learn when you start selling your own materials.

But if you can try to target more specialized learners, you might be able to command higher prices for your lesson plans.

For instance, you can try selling lesson plans for adult literacy, special education (SPED) students, or English as a Second Language (ESL) students.

Pros and Cons of Selling Lesson Plans Online

Before you make a final decision on whether to sell your lesson plans, consider these pros and cons.

Pros

1. You’ll earn money for your efforts.

As I’ve mentioned above, selling your educational materials lets everyone win; buyers get a proven lesson plan, while sellers earn money for their hard work.

2. Making lesson plans for sale makes you become a better teacher.

How’s that?

Constantly thinking about your buyers (other teachers) and their students makes you motivated to improve your lesson plans to be more relevant and engaging.

Not only will you improve your product but you’ll also improve your lesson plans and your teaching techniques.

Cons

The major drawback is being prone to intellectual property theft.

The concept of teachers buying from teachers isn’t bad at all.

What ruins the entire concept of helping each other is that some teachers selling lesson plans online are passing off someone else’s work as their own.

Creating lesson plans take a lot of knowledge and a lot of hard work (which is why teachers buy them in the first place).

But there are some teachers who, instead of selling lesson plans they’ve actually created, buy existing lesson plans, do very minor tweaks (e.g., changing a clipart, changing the font, etc.), and then turn around and sell them in their stores, claiming them as their own.

In a perfect world, teacher marketplaces would have strict controls in place so that this doesn’t happen, but these incidents fall through the cracks.

If you’re still dead set on selling your lesson plans online, this is something you’d have to bear in mind and check with the teacher marketplaces where you plan to sell whether they have policies and safeguards in place to prevent this type of intellectual property crime.

Final Thoughts

Selling lesson plans and other educational materials online is a great idea for teachers since they’ve been creating these resources for years on the job.

Building an online store provides a potential passive income for teacher sellers, while helping fellow teachers prep for school with less time and effort.

However, if you’re interested in other ways to make side cash, check out our list of online jobs for teachers.

Are you planning to sell your lesson plans? Or have you already tried to sell them? Share your experiences and concerns with us in the comments!

Get Paid to Perform Easy Tasks at Clickworker.com

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Clickworker.com is a Germany-based microjob website similar to Amazon’s mTurk. It was founded in 2005 as a company specializing in internet data services, but was turned into the microjob platform it is today since 2011 with a user base of 150,000. By 2014, Clickworker has expanded its workers to over 700,000 people.

Clickworker.com follows the concept of crowdsourcing, wherein businesses post or advertise a detailed task and workers have to complete them quickly. Available microjobs include data entry, writing, translating, web research, surveys, and more. These tasks take a only few minutes to complete, which is why Clickworker is advertising a $10/hour rate offered to workers.

How to Join Clickworker.com

Anyone can join the clickworker network by simply filling out your user profile and completing two assessment tests. Any Native English speaker can easily pass these tests, but those with higher scores are prioritized with more jobs. Check out the available tasks, complete them by following all the instructions and get paid on a weekly or monthly basis.

Clickworker.com works with UHRS (Universal Human Relevant System) for workers living outside the United States. Tasks available for non-US citizens are scarce on clickworker, which is why you’ll need to go the UHRS site (using Internet Explorer) to check out the list of microjobs and complete tasks from there. UHRS becomes accessible and inaccessible to users, depending on the volume of work available for a particular country. In some countries, UHRS never becomes available, so make sure to check if your location would be a problem.

How Much Can You Earn with Clickworker?

Like other microjob sites, clickworker.com won’t make you rich. Depending on how quick you can finish tasks, you can earn anywhere from $5 to $12 per hour. Some pioneers of clickworker.com have been earning $20/hour for tasks they’ve mastered for months. Simply put, the best way you could earn more than $12/hour is to find a task that you can do super-quickly.

Note that the tasks may require a learning curve, so you’d have to practice for a few weeks before arriving at an acceptable hourly rate. Most users work extra-hard for a month to earn the first EUR 5 payout threshold.

Payments are sent out via PayPal or a bank account in a SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) country. The Clickworker website states that payments are processed either weekly once your balance reaches $10 via PayPal, or monthly via bank deposits.

Clickworker Issues

The main problem of Clickworker.com is that the users waiting for microjobs are much larger in number than the available tasks at any time. This means you’ll have a ton of competition for cents or a few dollars for every task. Depending on your current employment situation, clickworker may not be worth the time you spend on hunting for tasks. But for students or those with some free time, completing clickworker tasks occasionally and saving up your earnings for an entire month can give you a way to spend for an extra expense you wouldn’t earn anywhere else.

As a full-time job, clickworker wouldn’t be ideal. There’s no guarantee of continuous work, which means your income potential would go up or down depending on task availability.

Many users report technical issues on tasks, which can be frustrating if you’re in the middle of completing the task. In addition, completed tasks aren’t technically “complete” until they have been reviewed, and it seems that reviews aren’t instant. As a result, your account balance wouldn’t be updated instantly as well. The upside to these two issues though is that clickworker.com’s e-mail support replies quickly and efficiently. You can also get 24/7 support from the Clickworker community.

The Bottom Line

Clickworker.com is a legit website that pays its clickworkers properly. If you are given access to UHRS on top of clickworker, you’d have more options for gigs to choose from, and your earning potential could double.

There are some benefits of clickworker and UHRS, such as being able to work from home or outdoors and be in total control of your work hours. You also won’t have to worry about customer acquisition, since these two platforms take care of task distribution.

However, like most microjob sites, you’ll need to complete a ton of tasks before you can earn a decent amount. If you found a continuous gig that you find enjoyable to complete, then you’re lucky and could probably finish the tasks more easily than others.

SEO Audit Checklist: 20 Website Elements You Should Fix for Better On-site SEO

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If you’ve been focusing all your SEO efforts on social media engagement, forum posting, guest blogging, and other off-site SEO tasks that aim to get a link back to your website and in turn, increase visitors and conversions, it’s all good. But if you’re doing all these and your organic searches are still getting dismal numbers, it’s a huge sign that you’ll need to double-check your website and fix on-site SEO issues.

On-site or On-page SEO involves dozens of small tasks that help turn an ordinary website into a search engine-friendly website, but here are the 20 most commonly forgotten website elements that you should check out:

1) Proper use of No-Index Tag – When the “noindex” tag is applied to any post or page, search engines will not index those pages. If that is your intention, then so be it. But if you’re not aware of such a tag exists, make sure to remove the no-index tag now.

2) Attention-grabbing titles – Titles should stir the curiosity of visitors and make them click the post. Of course, the title should be relevant to the entire content. If possible, include the keywords on the title tag, but ensure that it would make sense and not added just for the sake of keyword placement.

3) Meta description – Meta descriptions provide search engines and potential visitors with additional information about a post. It is the first 140 characters posted on search engine results, so make sure they count by including important keywords and giving an interesting summary of your post.

4) HTTPS – In 2014, Google announced that they are weighing secured sites more when it comes to ranking. Since then, studies from Moz and other SEO industry sites have shown that over 75% of websites on first pages use HTTPs.

5) Header tags – Header tags are used for sub-headings throughout a page. They are named from H1 to H6, but search engines read H1 the most. As such, it’s important that words, phrases or sentences with the H1 tag convey additional information related to the overall content of your page.

6) LSI – SearchEngineJournal defines LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing as a “mathematical method used to determine the relationship between terms and concepts in content.” In short, LSI refers to synonyms of keywords. Since search engines can now understand the concept of synonyms, using LSI for content can improve SEO rankings without using keywords with the old-and-tired robot speak style.

7) Multimedia content – Search engines can only read text, so all pictures, videos, and audio content that you upload won’t have any bearing when it comes to ranking. However, if you follow proper formatting for these types of content, it could benefit your SEO efforts significantly.

8) URL – By default, all posts published via WordPress and other CMS (content management systems) are given a specific URL or permalink structure with a random number like domain.com/p=1234. Simply changing the end of your URL with a more specific word or phrase like domain.com/Onpage-SEO-guide can make a huge difference.

9) Underused or overused anchor texts – Anchor texts are the clickable texts in a hyperlink. When linking to another page within the site, or a third-party site, it’s important to use keywords relevant to the page. Not on does this technique reduce bounce rates, it also helps search engine bots “understand” what your content is about and index your page properly.

10) Keywords – If you’re still stuffing keywords all over your posts, you should trackback and edit them out or change them into LSI instead. It’s no longer acceptable to trick search engines into checking out your pages with keywords splashed all over a page. Search engines can see through this, so make sure to write with your readers in mind.

11) Encourage engagement – To reduce bounce rate (the amount of time visitors spend on your site’s page), encourage your visitors to check out more content from your site by installing “similar posts” plugins, adding social-sharing buttons, encouraging them to comment, posting more multimedia content and more.

12) Sitemap – Does your website have an XML sitemap to help search engines crawl through your site? If you answered yes, double-check if it’s still functional. Add sitemaps for photos and videos as well to bring more SEO juice via your multimedia content.

13) Canonical URLs – In cases where pages are doubled with the same content, adding the HTML link tag rel=canonical into the page you deem more important. Once you’ve done this, it merges the two (or more) similar pages into one without having to delete any of the pages and being tagged with duplicate content.

14) Responsiveness and Site speed – Slow-loading websites may be due to unnecessary plugins, web hosting, and other causes, but this is often easily fixed. Make sure page loads is under two seconds and pass mobile-friendly tests.

15) Fix broken links – SEO is all about user experience and making it easier for search engines to find your site. But when your site has 404s, non-indexed pages, and other errors, not only do these errors lead to demotion from search engines, they also cause bad user experience.

16) Incorporate semantic search concept – Google’s Hummingbird update updated how search engines understand keywords. The literal keyword/phrase used for SEO in the past (example: New York personal injury attorney) can now be forgotten completely since Google takes a cue of the searcher’s location and intent of the search. Adapting to these changes can improve rankings and boost site visitors.

17) Robots.txt – One of the most basic, yet overlooked site element is the robots.txt. This allows or disallows web-crawlers to crawl a part of your website or not. It is the first thing search engines look for when examining a website, so make sure yours was done right with proper instructions.

18) Ads – Wrong placement of ads can turn any webpage unreadable. Make sure to study the size of ads, try out ad placements, and examine ad loading times whenever you decide to monetize your website with ads.

19) Navigation – Your site menu should be organized properly so that the most popular pages are featured where visitors could easily view them. Take advantage of the internal linking opportunity from every navigation space available, either at the main one on top, side or bottom.

20) Mobile-friendly – Mobile search is the future – the number of people using their mobile devices for searching the web has overtaken desktop users. Updating with the times avoid turning off your visitors with an outdated site.

On-page SEO is just as important as link building or Off-page SEO. Use the checklist above and give your site a free website audit to determine if your website is doing alright, SEO-wise or if it needs to undergo some changes. You’d be amazed that even the slightest changes could improve your site’s traffic and conversions significantly.

Join Crowdsourced Contests for a Chance to Win Cash

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Crowdsourcing contests are ideal for people who are in-between jobs and those who are not yet ready to commit to a full-time career.  Since there is no guarantee that you’ll win each contest you participate in, crowdsourced contests are not recommended as a source of income. Instead,  these contests could be an exciting way to master your skills when you’re practicing to become a graphics designer, copywriter, video producer and more.

For those who have free time and would find it fun to get a chance to win cash prizes or gift cards for a few minutes of work, here are some of the websites to check out:

Idea generation

This category of contests involve sharing your name ideas, may it be for a company name, tagline, or even domain names. I talked about the three major crowdsourced contests of this kind – Naming Force, Squadhelp and CrowdSpring – in this guide.

Picky Domains caters specifically to domain-naming contests, so if you’re a regular visitor of GoDaddy and love finding out memorable domain names, don’t miss out on the fun.

Tongal lets participants pitch ideas for music videos, commercials, and other creative media. Prizes for these contests range from $1,000 to a whopping $10,000. In addition, winners also get to receive residual payments – often around 5% to 10% of the amount prize.

Logo and other graphics

This type of contest requires a bit more skill and effort than naming contests. For a pro graphic design artist, creating a logo could take just 5 minutes of his/her time, but can take an entire day for someone without experience in Photoshop and other graphic design tools.

Logo Force – Unlike other crowdsourced contest sites on this list, Logo Force lets clients invite participants to join their contests. Not everyone will be invited, so there’s less competition. Once chosen, not only will the participant receive a cash prize, he/she also receives contact info of the client, which means the business relationship has a chance to grow beyond the contest.

Logo My Way, Logo Contest, Logo Arena and LogoTournament also host logo-designing contests.  Some sites like 99 Designs, DesignHill and Design On Click  have web design, newsletter graphics, Facebook cover other design-related contests beyond logos and often have higher amounts of prizes. Create My Tattoo, as its name suggests, host tattoo-design contests.

Threadless is a popular t-shirt design platform that sells and prints designs of its creative members for a fee. The site also holds t-shirt design contests with cash prizes regularly. Submitted designs are voted by the crowd, and the winner receives $1,000.

Writing

If you have a knack for crafting beautifully-written ad copy, slogans and other texts, this type of contest is for you. One great example of this is BoostCTR (now Boost Media), which gets the help of copywriters around the world to write 30 to 40-word copy that will be used by clients for online ads. BoostCTR isn’t open for new writers anymore, but you could check out Copy Shoppy for similar copywriting contests.

Some contests are aimed at collecting feedback or reviews from people. For example, StartUpLift pays $5 to a user that can provide the best review for a particular website (or $10 for a certain app). BountyIT used to be an option similar to this, but it seems contests aren’t updated anymore.

Other Crowdsourced Contests

Zooppa caters to big brands that are looking for video content and graphic design. The cool thing about Zooppa contests is that the prizes are huge and sometimes include high-value products like newly-launched cameras.

Kaggle is a platform of crowdsourced contests involving data science. It’s highly competitive with experts ranging in the field of mathematics, statistics and real-world machine learning that team up to make educated predictions. Prizes start at $5,000 and can go as high as $1,500,000.

How Much Can You Earn?

Idea generation contests have an average prize amount of $10. Note that Tongal’s $1,000 contest prizes are a rare exception. Logo design contests usually range between $100 and $300, but higher prizes may be offered for other graphic design (such as website header or Facebook cover) contests.

Contests that require more amount of work but higher prize amounts, such as video production and data science analysis, can be a worthwhile hobby for professionals. Imagine earning thousands of dollars for a video you made during your day off from work.

The Bottom Line

The best thing about crowdsourced contest sites is that every posted contest includes a description of the project and amount of prize to be won. Based on this client-provided information, participants can determine if the contest is worthy of their time…or not.

If you’re passionate about a sub-niche, such as t-shirt or tattoo design, the fun in joining these contests will serve as a driving factor for you to join. But without a guarantee of payment, it would be frustrating for some people.

I recommend joining crowdsourced contests only if your skill set or line of work is somewhat related to the contest. If not, it would be better to skip these contests completely.

Work-from-Home as a PPC Consultant

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PPC (pay-per-click) consultants are experts working in the shadows to manage the online advertising campaigns of a company. Their job involves a lot of internet marketing tasks like keyword research and mastery of ad programs from Google AdWords, Bing, Yahoo, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other platforms. Because pay-per-click advertising is an effective, yet costly endeavor, companies hire PPC consultants to ensure the job is done right the first time.

If you’re confident of your Internet Marketing skills and looking for a challenging career that you can perform at the comfort of your own home, then check out PPC consulting as a home-based job.

PPC Consultant Qualifications

The best thing about this job is that you don’t need any diploma or formal education to become successful. However, you do need an in-depth portfolio that would prove you can reduce advertising cost, while improving ad performance and click-through rates. This includes:

  • Certification – This isn’t a requirement to all PPC consultants, but it helps in proving that you know what you’re talking about. Google’s AdWords certification, for example, involves two exams about online advertising in general and AdWords fundamentals. Google AdWords is the world’s largest pay-per-click advertising service and the search engine giant makes the annual certification exams harder each year, so becoming a Google AdWords Certified Partner would pave the way for better opportunities.
  • Google Analytics report samples – You can have one of the most in-depth resumes in the planet, but if you can’t show a report that your clients could check to see your deliverables, how can you prove that you’ve managed a successful ad campaign in the past? Having report samples readily available (even with sensitive company information of former clients blocked out) can give new clients a sense of how you manage accounts, track conversions, measure success, and organize information in general.
  • Ability to use Important PPC tools – PPC involves a lot of research and data, but tools make it easier to handle these tasks. Unfortunately, many of them have a learning curve that only extended use could solve. As a PPC consultant, you should be well-acquainted with tools like SpyFu (for competition research), Ahrefs (SEO tool with PPC functions), SEMRush (PPC ad monitor and competition analysis), Google Trends and Google Keywords Planner (keyword research), Microsoft Excel (exporting large amount of PPC data), and PPC Protect (PPC budget management), among others.

5 Things That Make You Better than the Next PPC Expert

What separate you from the next pay-per-click expert online are these 5 important things:

  1. Excellent communication skills – After selling your skills to a potential client, communication continues to be an important aspect since you’ll need to explain everything about the job from your ad campaign plan to actual results, fees, methods used and recommendations to help website traffic improve, among other important issues.
  2. Proof of ad campaigns with significant spend – It’s common for a pay-per-click expert to claim success over a personal blog’s ad campaign. However, if you can show past work with a campaign involving a significant amount allocated to PPC ($10,000/month or more) and supporting reports to show how you managed this amount, you’ll be in another level in the PPC world.
  3. Free assessment – Real PPC experts are willing to study your case, provide recommendations and an estimate of costs. This gives potential clients a chance to see your strengths and determine if you’re the best person for the job. An assessment includes information about the client’s competition, business goals, budget allocation, and detailed action plans.
  4. Transparency – Ad campaigns require a unique account for every platform, such as Google AdWords, Facebook, etc. A good PPC expert must ensure all accounts created are owned by the client and provide a comprehensive report detailing where every cent went. PPC consultants who have been in this ever-changing field know too well that they cannot make guarantees. You’ll need to be transparent from start to finish, especially if the campaign isn’t getting desirable results.
  5. Research and analytical skills – Experienced PPC consultants continuously research and analyze data even in the middle of a campaign. They examine the performance of keywords, specific ads on every platform used, and adjust as necessary with the go-signal of the client.

How Much Do PPC Consultants Make?

Freelance PPC consultants charge two kinds of fees – one for set-up (wherein the client takes over once you’ve began the ad campaign) and the other is for management fee (charged monthly because PPC consultants manage everything).

Set-up fees range from $1,000 to $5,000, depending on how big an ad campaign your client wants. Monthly management fees can go as low as $300/month or 10% to 15% of your client’s monthly spend (the monthly budget they have for the PPC campaign).

The income you earn as a PPC consultant depends on the services you’d be providing. Tasks like copywriting, ad design or restricting existing ads may require extra payment on top of the monthly fee.

The Bottom Line

PPC consulting is a continuously growing field – AdWords (Google’s own PPC platform and the biggest of all pay-per-click programs in the world) accounts to  95% of the search engine giant’s annual revenue.

PPC done right leads to businesses making an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on AdWords, which is why pay-per-click managers, consultants or experts have been in-demand in recent years. However, PPC consulting is one of those jobs that experience is a must. You simply cannot “just wing it,” especially since you’ll be handling your clients’ advertising fund for them.

If you do land a career in the PPC field, the income potential is substantial and job outlook is promising. Plus, you can completely perform every aspect of your job at home.