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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

3 Sites that Pay You to Recommend Company or Product Names

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Crowdsourcing (outsourcing tasks to a crowd) is a powerful concept that can be adapted to a wide range of industries, such as entertainment, finance, IT, and more. It has branched out into sub-niches like crowdsolving (solving a problem as a group of people), crowdsearching (modern-day search party), crowdfunding (funding a product or cause as a group), crowdvoting (gathering reactions or ideas of a group of people), and more.

Today, there are even inducement prize contests that are based on crowdsourcing, but with a cash prize element in exchange for idea generation. Earlier versions of this include IBM’s 2006 “Innovation Jam,” which yielded 46,000 ideas from over 140k participants around the world, and Netflix’s 2009 “Netflix Prize” recommendation-algorithm $1m contest that increased the platform’s prediction algorithm to over 10% thanks to the idea from the winning team BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos.

Eventually, crowdsourced contest sites that cater to businesses popped up everywhere. They provide a platform for businesses in need of help with naming new products, services or startups and hundreds of participants from all walks of life giving out their ideas in hopes of winning cash prizes.

How Do Crowdsourced Contest Sites Work?

Every participant must join the crowdsourced contest site, check out available contests, and enter their name recommendations for a chance to win a prize. Most contests only give prize ranging from $10 to $500 to the participant with the best answer, but some contests also include smaller-amount prizes to second and third placers.

Businesses rarely disclose their names, but they include as much information needed for participants to be able to churn out recommendations properly. For example, an IT startup providing internet marketing and website creation is looking for a “quirky and memorable” company name that shows the professionalism and fun side of the company. Prize amount is displayed, so participants can decide whether to join the contest or not.

In most crowdsourced contest sites, participants can recommend as many names as they want, and join as many contests they like. There’s no technical skill or educational requirements required from participants, so all you need to do is your creativity and ability to follow instructions.

Getting Started with Crowdsourced Contest Sites

If you have some free time and want to join brand-naming crowdsourced contests, you can start with these 3 sites:

1) Naming Force – With Naming Force, a client creates a contest and allows members to recommend names within 7 to 10 days. Once the submission period ends, Naming Force members have up to 3 days to vote for their favorite entries. The client reviews leading suggestions within 7 days and picks the winner. If the client fails to choose a name, the name with the most votes automatically gets picked and the one who recommended it gets the prize.

  • Participants earn higher ranking every time they submit more names per contest.
  • Participants with high rankings increase the number of submissions per contest. This is because some clients can set the number of times a participant can submit a name.
  • Average prize amount is $100, but it may also range from $50 to $500.
  • Prizes are set by the clients.
  • Prizes are sent via PayPal
  • Naming Force is only open to U.S. citizens.

2) Squad Help – Founded by Chicago-based entrepreneur Darpan Munjal in 2011, Squad Help doesn’t just help with naming brands or companies. They also help clients find logo design, taglines or slogans through the work of contest participants. Out of all crowdsourced contest sites, Squad Help has the largest online presence (from Facebook to Twitter). Participants can jump right in a day after registration. New members can join select contests and can enter up to five entries per contest.

  • Your entries are instantly checked for Trademark issues and domain (URL) availability. If the system accepts your entry, you’ll see a green flag pop up. If not, a red flag will notify you and you can try again.
  • Some contests are invite-only and past winners (Tier A Category) are the only ones eligible to join
  • Some clients require participants to sign a Non-disclosure Agreement before being allowed to join the contest
  • Prizes range from $50 to $300 with an average of $100.

3) CrowdSpring –This platform was founded by Ross Kimbarovsky in 2008. Like Squad Help, Crowd Spring also offers various crowdsourced services, including email templates, design, and more. This is a favorite among creatives since they are allowed to communicate with clients and receive feedback from their submissions. Crowd Spring is also known to police projects properly, which reduces the chance of creatives to get scammed.

  • Creatives can register without a fee.
  • Enter as many contests as you wish.
  • There’s no limit as to how many entries you can submit per contest.
  • As prize, winners are given 60% of the package fee a client chooses.

Are these Sites Worth Your Time?

There are downsides to joining crowdsourced contest sites. First, there’s tough competition. Second, there’s no guaranteed income from participating in these sites. And lastly, your creative name suggestions will be out in the world without much copyright protection and you can’t do anything about it when they get stolen.

On the other side of the coin, naming products or businesses doesn’t require tons of skills or an impressive resume. Just put on your thinking cap, get creative and hope that you win. I don’t recommend using these sites as your main source of income, but if you have spare time, you can always check out what’s available and join in on the fun.

How White Labeling Can Save Your Clothing Ecommerce Store a Ton of Cash

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Anyone who has built a clothing business, whether big or small, will have to decide which path to take: whether to create products from scratch or buy white label products instead. It’s one of the many decisions fashion brands and clothing stores should consider early in the business planning. And rightly so, because this decision would greatly affect the company’s budget, marketing, and other future endeavors.

The term “white label” originated from the music industry. In the past, when DJs and radio stations receive demos from artists, they place white labs on the discs or tapes to keep competition from seeing the details of the new music they just played. The term has since reached other industries and is used to describe business deals wherein manufacturers produce a particular product and distributes this to multiple resellers. The resellers simply receive the products with their own customized, branded labels.

White-labeling has been used in ecommerce more than any other industry. In retail and fashion, the white-label term refers to the white label where the company’s logo and marketing is placed.

It’s the Secret of Huge Retailers

Big retail stores are able to sell various items with their branding, even without finding suppliers and going through the entire production and quality testing processes. Because the third-party manufacturers will be the one sewing labels into the product, retail stores are able to sell the clothing straight from delivery.

The main advantage of white-labeling is the low cost involved in stocking items to sell. This is particularly useful if you’re starting out your online clothing store without funds to pay for equipment, labor, and technology.

However, companies have two options when it comes to white-labeling. They could either:

  • buy white label (what huge retailers do)
  • sell white label (what smaller companies do)

Buying White Label Clothing

As a newbie in the fashion industry, going with a white label route reduces the chance of issues from sourcing to production. Other benefits and disadvantages of buying white-label clothing include:

PROS

  • No huge investment required for equipment, labor and technology
  • No need to conduct trial-and-error
  • Focus on other important stuff, such as marketing products
  • Save money by buying in bulk

CONS

The downside to buying white label clothing is that there is no customization involved in the process. This means you can’t dictate a manufacturer about things like fabric material, design, fit changes and so on. You’re only given a catalog of stock clothing to choose from.

This route is ideal for companies that prefer to begin the business with a bang. Because their initial investment can all be used straight to buying white-label clothing, the chances are high that the first round of products are professionally made as if the company has been doing this for years. Even reputable companies can suddenly switch to buying white-label clothing during busy seasons or whenever supplier issues occur.

Selling White Label Clothing

Smaller companies that want to expand their market, but don’t have much marketing experience can sell white label clothing to increase sales. However, this isn’t a perfect business model either.

PROS

  • No marketing involved – once the items are delivered to the purchasing company, they’re already sold
  • Only sell products you know how to produce
  • Increase sales with every third-party company that buys your clothes
  • Focus your energy with what you love, whether it’s hand-sewing wedding dresses, or producing clothes in bulk manually
  • Save advertising/marketing money

CONS

If you’re only starting out and have no experience with clothing production, it may cost your company a lot money when you’re still looking for vendors, equipment, or people. In addition, if your company has little manpower, they may not be able to handle higher volumes of clothing production. In most cases, the purchasing company dictates the project deadline.

If your clothing business already has a following, don’t expect to get credited for your work because as soon as you decided on selling white-label clothes, you can’t tell anyone if a huge retailer is selling these clothes with their own label.

This route is ideal for small companies who wish to expand their market quickly, but don’t have enough funds to accommodate an expansion. By selling white-label clothing, companies will be able to increase their demand, meet more third-party companies willing to stamp their labels on white-label clothing, and sell more items at a faster turnaround rate than going the retail route.

The Bottom Line

Whether you’re buying or selling white-label clothing, the bad news is you’ll lose some control over the project either at the production level or marketing level. But if losing this control means your company will be able to benefit from the potential for partnerships and business growth white-labeling could offer your clothing line, then maybe you should look into this business model.

Everything You Need to Know about Working as a Home-Based Travel Agent

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Imagine earning $10,000 to $100,000 a year planning vacations, booking airline tickets, creating travel packages, offering the best cruises, and reserving hotel rooms other similar offers to people looking to travel soon. Now imagine you can perform your job as a travel agent in the comforts of your own home, even in your pajamas.

If it sounds like something you’re looking for, there are a few things you should know in this line of work, such as:

  • There are two ways to begin working as a travel agent – start your own travel agency, or work for an accredited host travel agency.
  • Whichever path you take, the starting investment cost is low. You’ll only need a computer (or laptop), printer, stable internet connection, phone, and your own website.
  • Many host travel agencies require agents to have some experience in the sales, customer service, or travel industry. If you’re switching from another career, there are training programs you can complete online.
  • There are general travel agency packages, such as airline, hotels, and cruises, but sub-niches that cater to a very specific kind of travel deal also sell like hotcakes. Take Kari Bonnes’ own home-based originated Marvelous Mouse Travels, which she built alone and is now home to over 100 part-time agents.

How Much Can You Earn as a Travel Agent?

As travel agents, you obtain access to travel-related deals and you earn a commission every time someone books a deal from you. If you’re planning to work with a travel agency host full-time, you can make an average of $30,000 a year. Of course, this depends on your sales skills, target market reach, hours worked, percentage given by your host agency and other factors. Travel agents who have cornered a specific niche, such as destination wedding, often earn a lot more. Special rates are also given to bilingual travel agents.

If you’re a wanderluster and love traveling yourself, you’ll love the perks this job offers. For one, some big corporations provide familiarization trips to its best travel agents, allowing them to “test out” the product themselves, visit these locations being offered and sell travel deals more effectively. There’s also the massive discounts agents can use when booking airline tickets, hotel rooms, and other travel deals.  Some companies even provide a home office (laptop, mobile phone, etc.) for its travel agents.

How to Get Started with Your Travel Agent Career

Jobs for online travel agents come in various terms, from “reservation agents,” to “destination planners,” “travel consultants” to “reservationists,” but all of them are under the travel agent umbrella. Here are some companies and travel agency hosts that offer part-time and full-time opportunities:

  1. Airlines – You can work as an airline booking specialist with companies such as American Airlines, JetBlue, Delta and more. There are part-time and full-time work available, but once these companies open slots for home-based work, they fill up pretty quick so make sure you get notifications from Indeed.com.
  2. Hotels, Resorts and other kinds of accommodations – Hilton Worldwide, Best Western, Hyatt, Marriott, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Omni Hotels’ Flex@Home Program are some hotel chains that hire home-based booking agents. Other companies like Hotel Tonight offer similar opportunities, but instead of just one hotel, they handle bookings for multiple hotels.
  3. Car rentals – Car rental companies like Enterprise, U-Haul and Hertz hire people to work from home and pay an average of $11 per hour.
  4. Cruises – Cruise.com is one of the most popular cruise booking agencies of its kind, but other companies like Carnival Cruise Lines, Princess Cruises, Holland America Line and Norwegian Cruise Lines also offer home-based jobs to travel agents.
  5. Event destinations – Some companies provide solutions for hosting events in another destination. Take Active Network as an example. This company offers sports companies a wide range of services that cater to sporting events.
  6. Travel planning – When customers require customized travel plans, companies like Cruise Planners and Disney Vacation Planner are there to make it as hassle-free and money-saving as possible. It involves everything from booking flights and accommodations, buying tickets, reserving seats on restaurants, events, and more.
  7. Credit cards – Even credit card companies have entered the tourism industry. American Express offers its card holders many domestic and international travel perks year-round. The company hires travel counselors to serve as customer support and sales reps for this product offering.
  8. Business travel – Anything goes with companies offering business travel solutions. From car rentals, hotel bookings, to restaurant reservations at another state or country, your job is to tackle all the needs of business travelers. Great examples of this are FROSCH, BCD Travel and Red Butler.
  9. Sub-niches – Super-specific travel deals are offered everywhere. Some examples include:

The Bottom Line

Note that many of these jobs require some experience or training. If you’re serious about a career change, check out Travel Leaders Group travel agent programs, where you can join a virtual class or learn independently. There’s a fee involved in both programs, but you can land a position with Travel Leaders Group or one of its partner companies after successfully completing the program.

If you don’t have money to spare for a legit travel agent program, you can also learn a lot from National Association of Career Travel Agents or Home-Based Travel Agent Resource Center.

The work-at-home job opportunities in the travel and hospitality industry are plenty. Check out the links above if you’re interested in a career in this field with the chance of a real income while working in the comforts of your home.

Checking Out 7 Figure Profit Code

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Today I’d like to tell you about a system I recently came across called 7 Figure Profit Code.

Hopefully you’re here learning about this system because you have doubts, but even if you’re excited about it I’m glad you’re doing your due diligence.

Bad news however: 7 Figure Profit Code is not to be trusted!

This system is also being pushed as the 7 Figure Cash Code and while they are slightly different, I’m convinced they are effectively the same product.

Let’s see what else isn’t ringing true.

What is 7 Figure Profit Code by Michael Grayson?

Honestly, I’m not sure. Like all the best scams out there, the sales pitch for this system tells you a lot about dreams and potential profits but fails to provide any details on what the actual system is about.

This is really very worrying as you will be basically buying into it based on nothing but the words of a salesman.

Would you buy a car without checking the specs and seeing that it runs? Even a toaster you’d at least see how it works in theory, even if you can’t toast some bread.

7 Figure Profit Code gives you no indication of what it is about and that is a huge red flag.

Seven Figure Profit Code are you feeling lucky

Or not…

Testimonials

Megan earned $1,117.79 and says she’s nervous as never recorded herself on video before. Obviously that’s not true as here Fiverr.com gig page advises she’s a professionally trained actor and an award winning public speaker. It would be hard to have those accolades and have never recorded a video before.

Seven Figure Profit Code testimonial megan

The other testimonials are also just by paid actors.

Scarcity

Apparently Seven Figure Profit Code is reserved for only a handful of people and the video will be taken down at midnight.

Seven Figure Profit Code scarcity

This is clearly not true! I can guarantee you the video will still be there tomorrow, the day after and really for as long as the people behind it can leave it up for.

This sort of scarcity trick is purely designed to make you rush your decision believing you only have a short period of time to take action when in reality you have all the time in the world to assess the merits of the system.

There are other mentions of scarcity throughout the video such as the video being taken down mid-stream, but these should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Michael Grayson, Pseudonym

Seven Figure Profit Code michael grayson

Trust is very important in business, and knowing who you are dealing with is pivotal to knowing if you can trust them.

With big businesses it relies on brand awareness, but when a business puts forward a spokesperson you expect them to be real.

That’s why it’s important to do your research because the person supposedly behind 7 Figure Profit Code, Michael Grayson, is a fake.

The image shown is a standard stock photo image and I doubt the person narrating is anything more than a paid voice over either.

Add that the following:

  • there is no information about the company whatsoever
  • the only contact details is an email
  • they have hidden their details on their domain

This means they are not being open about who they are, where a legitimate business would have no issues telling you about them.

Fat Bank Balances

The narrator, Michael Grayson, shows you several different bank accounts suggesting that this system has made him a multi-millionaire.

It looks impressive, but what does it really show? How do you know that that money was made with this system? After all you only have the word of someone hiding his real self to go by.

Seven Figure Profit Code balances

As well as that, how do you know the figures haven’t been manipulated? It’s really very easy for someone with basic web skills to make a web page display different text, including bank balances. Just because it shows it in a screen shot does not make it real!

The Terms Say It All

A businesses terms & conditions can be an eye opener if you take the time to review them.

First off, whatever promises 7 Figure Cash Code suggests about earnings they state this in their disclaimer:

Whatsoever CLAIMS MADE OF genuine profits OR cases OF real outcomes ARE NOT representative or typical. YOUR degree OF SUCCESS IN accomplishing THE RESULTS laid claim IN OUR MATERIALS depends upon THE TIME YOU dedicate TO THE curriculum, IDEAS AND methods referred, YOUR funds, cognition AND assorted SKILLS. Because THESE components DIFFER ACCORDING TO persons, WE can’t warrant or guarantee YOUR SUCCESS OR revenue LEVEL. NOR ARE WE accountable FOR ANY OF YOUR activities.

This hard to read text basically says that they guarantee nothing and are held liable for nothing.

Then there is the fact that your personal details will be shared:

We share your information with third parties who deliver the products and services you have requested. These third parties may not use your information for any purpose other than assisting us in providing those products and services.

We may also use your information to contact you about other products or services available from third parties. We may also share your information with third parties who may contact you about their products or services.

The bottom line here is that this means your details will be sold to other marketers (and it’s usually only the bad ones that buy these things) meaning you’re open to be being emailed, written to and called to be sold things, and probably quite often.

No Money Required

According to the video Michael is not going to ask a single penny from you today, not one cent!

Sadly, that’s not true. By the end of the second video you’ll be asked for $67 in order to purchase the system.

Seven Figure Profit Code not one penny

Not just one penny, but 6700 of them!

The idea behind this statement on not one penny is just to help convince you to move forward in the sales funnel and hand over your email address.

No Experience Needed

Another red flag here is that you can get started with this system and potentially start earning hundreds, if not thousands of dollars within a week or so with zero experience.

There is no job or system or anything that makes that possible.

All the successful business people and marketers you see out here have put years of effort, learning, mistakes, sweat and tears into their businesses before becoming successful.

If you think that you can make all that money within 7 to 14 days by working just 15-20 minutes a day then you’re deluding yourself.

The Bottom Line

I can’t say 7 Figure Profit Code is an out and out scam because I didn’t waste my money buying it.

I’ve seen this sort of scam sales page time and time again and the while formula of big promises, extravagant earnings claims and nothing in the way of real evidence points to one thing and one thing only: it being a scam!

They sell you on the idea of being rich. That’s it. There is no substance here. They want you to get your credit card out so they can label you a buyer. You are literally paying for the privilege of being upsold more bullshit later on.

I would strongly recommend that you avoid 7 Figure Profit Code.

Take Photos with Your Phone and Sell them at Foap for $5 a Pop

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If you have an eye for photography and can quickly identify an interesting subject, scenario, or event, then you better make use of your phone to snap pictures and earn cash on the side. Foap is an Android and iOs app that lets anyone register, upload photos, and sell them for real cash. It was founded in 2012 with its corporate locations found in New York, Sweden and Poland.

Foap serves as a platform for casual photographers to sell their work to companies and brands. Calling itself as “the next wave of stock photography,” Foap also distributes photos through partners, such as Getty Images.

How Does Foap Work?

To get started with Foap, download the free app from either iTunes or Google Play. You’ll also need to create an account using either your e-mail address or Facebook account. You can’t start uploading photos yet though. You need to check out other photos first and rate at least five images with 1 to 5 stars. Once done, upload any photo you think people would find interesting, write photo description, license information, and relevant tags.

For your uploaded photos to be included in the Foap Marketplace, other users must rate your photo until it reaches 2.5-star rating or higher. The website has a rating system in place, wherein higher-rated images are seen more frequently.

The idea seems pretty easy, right? Well, Foap has two customers – the casual photographers who are uploading content into the app, and the companies or other people who need to purchase images. The demand is there. In fact, Foap claims to be partners with brands like Bank of America, Air Asia, Nivea, Absolut Vodka, Pepsi, Volvo Group, HoneyMaid, Heineken, Sony, Mango, Garnier, and more. But do these partnerships translate into earnings?

How Much Can You Earn?

Photos in the marketplace are sold at $10 each, but the money is split 50/50 – $5 goes to Foap and owners of the photos get to keep $5. The only good thing about this is, you can sell the same photo over and over as long as it’s hosted on Foap.

If you join Foap Missions – the company’s version of photo contests – you’ll get a chance to sell your photos to brands that started the mission. Companies often use the photos chosen for marketing campaigns. In return for being chosen, users may receive cash (somewhere from $50 to $500) or rewards, depending on the Mission description.

In order to get paid, you’ll need to cash out earnings before the 15th of the month. You then have to wait until month’s end to receive it via PayPal (No other payout options are available).

Things to Like about Foap

Foap isn’t the most novel idea, but there are several things to like about the app. For example, users do not need to complete a ton of requirements – all you need is a smartphone and photos that follow basic guidelines, and you can upload as much photos as you’d like.

Other notable things to like about Foap include:

  • Mobile in nature – Snap photos and upload, even while on the go
  • Huge community – Because the app is free to use, you can expect thousands of Foap users. This is a particularly great feature, especially for budding photographers who want free exposure of their work. Fans won’t translate to earnings, but it sure can help to get their names out there.
  • Photo contest Missions – The money isn’t all that great (common prize amount is $100), but it’s one way to gain exposure if a popular brand uses your photos for marketing.
  • Learning platform – Foap can be used for market research – what kinds of photos are people interested in? What kinds sell the most? The Foap rating system gives you immediate feedback of your work.

Things NOT to Like about Foap

Foap has a lot of potential, if the company changes these three things:

  1. Rating system – The rating system has received a lot of complaints from users, since it’s basically free-for-all. Your photo may look award-winning and all, but as long as users rate it low, it won’t have a chance to be seen by a wider audience. There has been complaints that users can be competitive and down-rate others with obvious photography skill.
  2. Require plenty of effort – If you’re a phone cam addict who takes over 20 snaps throughout the day, Foap can be a cool platform to showcase your work. It may not be worth the extra effort for people who aren’t fans of using their smartphones for picture-taking.
  3. Price and Prizes – If Foap changes the rating system and more “worthy” users are featured, the company should also change pricing and amount of prizes to attract more brands and budding photographers to the community.

The Bottom Line: Should You Join Foap?

No one can earn enough money and turn Foap earnings into a full-time income. The Foap app is worth checking out if:

1. You’re only after passive income
2. You’re a professional photographer
3. You are willing to spend time and effort uploading photos (one at a time)
4. You excel in a competitive environment

Personally, I think there are better ways to spend your time in order to make money. Click here to see what I recommend most.