One of the time honoured ways of making money is to open a franchise that has all the support, branding and framework for you already set out.  Its a great way to start your first business and many franchisers offer some great incentives and training to get you up to speed.

Now the only problem with this model is the huge range of choice available.  You’d be amazed at just how many of today’s high street brands and loca services are actually franchises.  Everything from McDonald’s to Avon.  Woolworth’s to letting agencies.

That’s where Franchise Gator comes in as they offer a fantastic franchise directory for you to find, filter and sort the huge range of franchise opportunities available in the UK.

Not only that but it has a range of useful advice and articles on how to manage your franchise opportunity, how to choose the right one to suit you, and how to make a success of it once you’ve got it.  All well worth a read!

So if you’re looking for precisely the right franchise to go for but haven’t a clue where to start then you’d be mad not to give Franchise Gator a visit.

UK Franchise Gator.

I’ve personally been branching out from my usual green stock trading to find other means and methods to make money through investments. It’s ever since reading the Rich Dad, Poor Dad book I bought over six months ago that I realized you ned to get into the business and investment quadrants to really get the money rolling in.

So I go forth on my usual online travels looking for information and I have to say when it comes to stocks and shares there’s a lot of mis-information out there and sorting the wheat from the chaff isn’t easy.

So here’s a tip from me after my many travels: One site I’ve come across that really stands out for the information it provides is OEXTrading.

My online stock trading has taken a turn for the better since reading that blog and now I’m dealing in stocks and options like a pro - the options advice is clear, impartial and straight to the point.

So now I can add options trading to my repertoire of investment skills and its all thanks to the OEXTrading blog.  So here’s to making money online through the business and investment quadrant!

If you’re interested in the Rich Dad, Poor Dad book then you can grab it at Amazon. It’s by the well respected author Robert Kiyosaki.

Here’s the latest roundup of affiliate networks worth joining:

Affiliate Window - Still by far the best service out there and the biggest by a long way.  Its not got the most user friendly of affiliate control panels but it gets the job done.

TradeDoubler - Was talk of it being taken over and again suffers from a dodgy interface but it has a great range of services on offer.  Not as much as AWIN but still good.

Buy.at - Recently taken over this affiliate network offers a huge range of credit card products - not much else in the finance sector though I’m afraid.

Paid On Results - A relative newcomer to the affiliate networking space but already looking to smash the others for sheer technical features and wizardry.  Including their WYSIWYG ad editor.

Silvertap - Famous for being the engine behind Tescocompare.

Commission Junction - A huge international network with many of the advertisers being US-based but still a good range of UK merchants if you’re looking.

Profitistic - Still requiring manual sign up of merchants and not the most slick of operations but its new on the scene so there’s still hope for it.

I just wanted to point out a hugely successful gent by the name of Zyra.  The site’s design is ‘unique’ and it has no great technical wizardry and yet he rakes in money to the point he doesn’t require a job.

What can be learnt form this?

1. Stop trying to build a great idea - Concentrate on getting a site up and providing it with fresh and interesting content.
2. People have short memories - Just because they’ve already seen some similar content, idea, list, review, etc doesn’t mean they’ll remember it.  So re-publish it and paraphraseanything you want.  If it’s received links before it will again.
3. Affiliate Links Everywhere - Sign up to every programme under the sun.  Every network and service.  Then fill your site with links and keep them fresh.

I’ve just received my first and very nice Linkworth cheque in the post. I hadn’t realised I’d selected cheque as the method of payment but they also allow for wire transfer and Paypal too.

Its a hugely impressive service at Linkworth and its testiment to its effectiveness that I’d completely forgotten about it until I received a nice fat cheque on my doorstep this morning.

They have a huge range of products and features for webmasters to make money form their site. Including paid links, banners, content, etc. All very nicely wrapped up in a slick and informative interface. Since the payment I’ve decided to add a few more of my sites onto the account to increase revenues a bit.

I shall keep you all posted on the money situation.

Diversity, consistent branding and creativity across many web sites will be key factors in starting and maintaining your laptop business empire. No money? No worries. This article will get you started for little or no start up capital depending on the path you follow.

If you’re a person who creates art, can write articles, blogs or make short films (or can do all of these) then this article is for you. Many web sites are paying for content from their users. This is a golden opportunity for you to start your laptop empire. The best part is that most of these web sites are free to join and are a lot of fun to create content for.

Getting Paid…

Before you start you’ll need a paypal account (www.paypal.com - check to see if there is a local paypal site for your country too). Paypal allows you to be paid no matter where you are in the world. Most web sites prefer to pay you either by cheque or by direct transfer to a paypal account.

Step 1: Find a customer

Step 2: Keep the customer

Wow? Who would have thought of that? People who come to my mind are the likes of Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell, Ola Ahlvarsson, and Reed Hastings to name a few, but back to the topic at hand, building a lucrative business, better still, an ethical and sustainable lucrative business on the web.

The first step is finding a customer, which means we need to create a product or service that other people will need or want. At last count, there are approximately 1.2 Billion potential customers available on the World Wide Web and while this number is growing in leaps and bounds it is still less than 20% of its potential. All of these potential customers want or need something that you could provide. Herein lies the opportunity, and the only limitations are your efforts and your imagination.

Effort and imagination challenged? Then let me give you a small hint here of how that might work.

• There are 9 Million home aquarium owners in the US
•  Small polished pebbles, preferably natural, are a common fixture and sell for about £25.00 per bag, retail.
• On average aquarium owners buy 2-3 bags/year on cleaning.
• The annual “replacement” market for aquarium rocks is roughly £5,000,000.00
• Capturing .5% (yes, one/half of one percent) of that market by ecommerce could yield an annual profit of $100,000.00, and if your rocks are good enough, you can expect that to grow annually at around 6%.

There are 3 great books that anyone serious about building a lucrative e-commerce business should read:

• “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson,
• “The New Big is Small” by Seth Godin and
• “The Maui CEO” by John Tennant.

Using your own unique ideas to create and keep a customer, Google to advertise, your own web site or Ebay to sell, your supplier to warehouse, FedEx or UPS to deliver, EPay or PayPal to collect your revenue, Salesforce.com to keep track of your customers and what they liked and did not like, and Quicken to keep the books, you are up and running and on your way to financial and personal freedom.

Sure, there are enough “get rich quick” methods, pyramid marketing schemes and letters from Nigeria to keep that puzzling population who want something for nothing busy, but the real power and opportunity of the Internet and Web is the ability to tap some niche of a huge market better and more effectively than anyone else. It comes with some effort and it might take a year or so before you can make that down payment on the summer home in Cape Cod, but it works and, most importantly, it is sustainable, particularly if you provide a product and a service that keeps customers coming back.

Another thing worth a mention is the site are offering a free credit report – simply go to the site and look down the left navigation to find a link to a free complementary credit report by one of their partners.  So if you’re unsure what card you need to look for that can certainly help.

With the constantly changing nature of the credit cards market its great to see sites like this keeping an up-to-date listing of all the offers out there.  It helps finding the best for the consumer and ultimately makes everyone money – from consumer to the companies themselves.

So if you’re looking for best offers of credit cards don’t hesitate to check out this site.

With the increasing prevalence of financial comparison sites is difficult sifting through them all to find the diamonds.  Well here’s one I found earlier this week: Credit Card Analyser.  Its a major US financial portal giving links, comparisons, reviews and news on a huge range of credit card information.  Everything from Amex to Visa, Master Cards and Delta, 0% APR, cash-back and air miles. They review them all and give you the full breakdown of the benefits.

One thing I really like about this site is its categorisation of customers.  It won’t just tell you what “The Best” card is but it’ll tell you the best card for students, for families, for singles, etc.  One thing that annoys me with so many sites is how they try to pidgeon hole people and end up not really serving anyone. Not so with Credit Card Analyser.

Another great feature is its navigation.  The left hand navigation bar gives you quick links to the most common choices: Choose by Reward, Choose by Credit History, etc. Helping you to find what your looking for is a definite bonus in a site of this size.

The people here have really done their homework and they’ve produced one hell of a site from it. Here’s hoping others can follow-suite and learn something from them.

I’ve created a new article with a list of ideas and sites for making money from the net.

Making Money on the Net

As always if you have any comments or suggestions for the listing let me know.

This great Adsense blog has some good pointers for getting people to visit your site: Adsense Websites

Tags: adsense, websites