Money | The Reader Appreciation Project

Avoid Avoiding Affiliate Marketing

05. Aug, 2010 2 Comments

Should you jump into affiliate marketing?

John, one of RA Project readers and commentors, suggested that RA Project also cover affiliate marketing. Starting today affiliate marketing and its relationship to appreciation will become part of the RA Project scope. Everything a blog and a business does online or offline is part of your life and also part of RA Project. If you are online to make money in any manner, you have to figure out whether or not you want to be part of the biggest money making system on the planet: affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is basically the act of sending a customer to any business and earning a commission, or a referral fee, if that customer buys something. This simple, yet powerful, trend has both been improved and abused by different people in order to make money in the long and the short term. People doing affiliate marketing honestly try to do it for the longer term, while those who want to lie and make money by sending people to wrong or useless products try to do it in quick bursts for the short term. You can decide which term works for you and how you can do it honestly and effectively, regardless of it being the long or the short term. But before you do that, you have to commit to yourself that you want to actually be an affiliate marketer.

In order to realize whether or not affiliate marketing can work, you have to figure out the reasons why avoiding affiliate marketing can be a deadly mistake.

5 Reasons Not To Avoid Affiliate Marketing

Misconceptions, Tips

affiliate, business, featured, marketing, mistakes, money, Tips, trends

How Fast Do You Process Refunds?

28. Jul, 2010 2 Comments

Are you giving refunds enough attention?

In addition to satisfied customers and new customers, you also have to deal with existing customers who decide that your product or service is not for them. Your product may be great, though the customer may have needs that do not get resolved by your product. Regardless of the reason, anytime a customer asks you for a refund, the only usual way of making that customer happy is to give them back their money.

In such cases, while you may be losing money, you try to focus and make sure the customer in question leaves you or your product at least a bit satisfied. In addition to making sure you get new customers, you have to make sure that one of the most popular trends among customers, the trend of getting a refund, gets sorted out and planned well by you. Without working out a plan or focusing on how you can make your business or blog offer refunds faster or easier, you may never be able to get people to try out your products or services on an effective scale.

How are customers viewing your refund policy? What kind of refund policies do you offer?

How Easy is Your Refund Process?

Questions

business, Customers, featured, money, refunds

Offer Discounts to Increase Appreciation and Sales

12. Jul, 2010 2 Comments

Are you offering discounts to everyone?

One of the two probably biggest reasons people do not buy anything from you is because they do not feel interested in your products. The other reason is that many people do not see a good value in what you are offering. You can try to convert this second category of potential customers by offering discounts. Discounts are basically a way to offer your same product at a lower price while still making a good profit. It is a win-win situation for both you and the customer.

There are many different ways to offer discounts, though companies like AT&T usually focus on offering discounts and rebates to new clients only. One of the biggest reasons people leave any company is because they find a better value elsewhere. You have to offer discounts and incentives to allow both existing and new clients to benefit from any price reductions.

Here are the 5 general concepts of offering discounts that you can apply to your blog and business practically and immediately.

5 Ways to Offer Discounts

Tips

appreciation, featured, incentives, list, money, sales, Tips

Successful People Avoid Getting Upset

07. Jul, 2010 1 Comment

Do you usually get upset?

Wanting to be more successful is the plain and simple fact for many people online, probably including you too. Whether it is to get more readers, clients or sales, you work regularly to try and be more successful. In addition to working on different new things to try and test what works, you also usually work on changing your own self in order to be better. One of the things inside of you that may be a obstacle to your success is the concept of getting angry. You getting upset regularly may be the biggest obstacle to your success.

Spending any time on things that get you upset or getting engulfed in unnecessary emotional drama will only result in you spending time on being angry. It is a commonly observable fact that many things in life can upset a lot of people. What you may not realize is that there is a difference between getting upset regularly and getting upset rarely. What many people not realize also is that many times it can be possible to simply feel uncomfortable or disappointed about something instead of feeling upset. Such a change in attitude, of avoiding getting upset, can do wonders. One of the wonders that can come from such a change is the creation of more and more successful trends and results in your life.

In order to be successful online through blogging or any other medium, you have to focus on good things and yourself. You have to avoid getting upset if you want to be successful.

5 Random Things Online to Avoid Getting Upset Over

Tips

anger, business, Customers, featured, list, money, obstacles, people, successful, Tips, traits, trends, work

Do You Try to Make Money Through Blogging?

04. Jul, 2010 Comment now

Are you trying to make money through blogging?

Many people are doing it. Many people want to do it. And many others out there are thinking about it. The idea of making money through blogging has been around for many years. And in the world of online social networking where the actual lives of people are revolving around the online world more than ever before, the concept of making money blogging has never before gotten so much attention as it does today.

While majority of the blogs end up making absolutely no significant amount of money, the trend of hearing about famous blogs making a lot of money prompts many people to start blogging. Your entire blogging plan can change or may need changing if you introduce a plan to earn money through blogging. And in order to successfully make money through blogging, you need to figure out whether or not you wish to make money through blogging.

Today RA Project asks you to answer a question that can define the future of your blog and blogging: Do you try to make money through blogging?

5 Ways to Make Money Through Blogging

Surveys

advertising, blog, blogger, Blogging, business, featured, money, personal, plans, poll, survey, vote

5 Ways To Make Your Business Blog More Personal

02. Jul, 2010 1 Comment

Do you follow these steps to make your business blog more personal?

Creating a blog in this day and age is very easy. Creating a successful blog can be very hard, however. Working on a blog can take as much time, and sometimes even more, than the amount of time it takes to actually create or promote a product. Even if your exact product is your blog, you have to actually immerse yourself into the concept of blogging in order to attract blog readers. And one of the only ways to actually be success through loyal blog readers and customers is to make your business blog more personal.

Do people always run away from business blogs? Not at all! In fact, blogs tend to be more successful when they are run like a business in at least some specific manner. That specific manner or method depends on you and your business preferences. What you can do, regardless of your business or blog niche, is to try to bring your blog one level closer to the actual blog readers who are your existing and potential customers.

RA Project in this article shares with you 5 ways you can make your business blog more personal.

5 Ways To Make Your Business Blog More Personal

Blogging, Tips

advertise, Blogging, business, communicate, disclosure, featured, list, money, personal, Tips

Tell Blog Readers How You Make Money Through Them

21. Jun, 2010 4 Comments

Blog Money - Do your readers know how you monetize them?

One of the best ways to appreciate your clients and blog readers is to tell them how you make money from their activities on your site. Many blogs and businesses focus on making money through website readers without actually letting those readers know about that practice. If you are making money from your site, it can be a very good idea to let users know about it. A blogger can specify somewhere on a blog how money is made through user interaction with the blog content. Having such a disclosure can make sure you appear as an honest entity to your readers. In addition to that, it also increase the level of confidence and trust your readers have in you and your site.

I see bloggers and websites debate a lot these days whether or not such disclosures are necessary, and whether or not avoiding such disclosures is unethical. Disclosures about how you make money through your readers is ethical only if you believe it is ethical; ethics can be proven to be relative. You should not focus on whether or not a thing is ethical. You should focus on whether or not your reader will be happier and you yourself will benefit if a certain thing is said or done. Telling readers how you make money is better as it shows your readers that you are transparent, and it also shows your readers that you trust them enough to tell them how you make money through your site.

If you want to be transparent with your clients and blog readers, you can start with the most powerful method of letting others know how their behavior around your site makes you money.

Example of how not disclosing can ruin relationships

Articles, Tips

blog, Blogging, business, clients, commentors, disclosure, ethical, featured, list, money, readers, Tips, transparent

Do You Make Money Online?

19. May, 2008 27 Comments

The “making money online” topic is something I have personally shied away from here simply because this isn’t the type of blog that talks about making money.

However, I know some of you out there who do make money online, whether it’s from blogging or some other online venture.

A question I’ve been pondering, but am unable to answer, is how does one make money online and keep the readers in mind?

The linked article does an excellent job of detailing how not to alienate readers, but I’d like to hear it from you if you have a moment.

By the way, the new (and about to be released) Ajax Edit Comments is live here, so feel free to comment and test it out. Please note that any test comments will be later removed.

Questions

ads, advertisements, make money online, making money, money, readers

Is Money A Motivator? Just Tell Me How Much

27. Nov, 2007 3 Comments

Sand Mandala It has been noticed that when it comes to employees, salary is not a motivator. No matter how big it is, it’s a matter of months until the employee gets used to it, and treats it like a given, regardless the passion and commitment for the job. This is why employers who want to keep their team’s moral up, have to offer other kind of incentives, such as performance-related bonuses, trainings, or bonus trips.

What about blogging? I suppose most of you will tell me that readers are a motivator. That the comments you receive, the social bookmarks and votes, and all that stuff is keeping you on the track, is unleashing your best ideas, is giving you the strength to keep on blogging, in this ever busier age, when time seems like shrinking day after day.

What if there were no readers at all? What if I (or somebody else) would pay you to write posts after posts, the only condition to get paid being that nobody ever would read your articles. For how much would you do this?

Would $1000/month be enough to keep you motivated in the long run? I very much doubt.

What about $10,000 a month? If all you had to do for this kind of money would be to write great content which nobody else will ever read?

It is not about money? Then what other motivator would drive you to blog every day and hit delete before any foreign eyes would read your wisdom words?

If you will tell me that there’s nothing is this world to motivate you in this apparently non-sense enterprise, think twice: did you know that in the Tibetan Buddhist religion, when somebody dies, monks gather together and during several weeks, they make a sand mandala, so beautiful and so perfect that you cannot imagine? During all this time, they pray for the dead person, they quote from the Book Of Death, so the soul gets guidance in the beyond worlds. Then guess what? After they finish, they break the mandala, without any shroud of regret, without having the feeling they’ve worked in vain for such a long time. They don’t get any material reward for ther work.
Would you call this madness, or superiority?

Back to blogging: what would motivate you to destroy your blog before getting read by somebody else?

Questions

Blogging, mandalas, money, motivation

Criticizing or supporting trends without revealing monetary interests

04. Nov, 2007 7 Comments

Not telling about monetary interests Every single day someone out there is supporting or criticizing with an idea or with someone simply because they have a financial interest in some idea. Such trends are concepts of manipulation. Agreeing or disagreeing with someone or an idea simply because you have some monetary interest in the issue, and you do not reveal the existence of that monetary interest, means that you are manipulating everyone else involved in the issue.

Imagine if today I criticized your blog publicly and said that your blog was a waste of time and energy in this universe. Now imagine that tomorrow you find out that I have opened a competing blog to yours, and the only reason I criticized your blog today was to ruin its reputation or to destroy it and to enable my own blog to survive and make money. How much respect would you have for me then? Take that exact concept and apply it to many situations in the online world.

Following are 2 examples of this manipulation tactic: one is clear, while the other is shady and debatable because not all of such behavior means something or someone is being manipulated on purpose from all sides.