Consulting is a profession that a lot of bloggers do as a side job. I do it a little bit more than on the side because I have a number of clients that I am working with and ensuring that they rank well in search engines, giving them advices and suggestions as their business grow. If you consider yourself an expert in the industry or have a lot of experience in a specific industry then you should consider consulting.

Consulting is just a few extra bucks, but you have to prove yourself to the client. I mean all you have to do is talk. You need to know how to present yourself to the client or a board of directors. Some people might think it is hard, but really it is not. I go by the following quote:

“Just Stay one step ahead of your client.”

You do that and you will be considered an expert. Companies hire me to present their idea to a group of investors or a board of investors because a lot of companies have a hard time convincing the investors to invest. I know the secrets of that, or so called secrets of that. So here are my tricks!

Make a Bold Statement

At the start of each presentation, you need to make a bold statement. A strong Pitch that will get the investors interested. Those who can’t do that learn how to highlight the important part of the campaign. Think to yourself if you can define the whole campaign in one or two sentences. If you can’t then this campaign is not going to work.

Explain their Benefits

You need to tell them what they get out of this deal. People really don’t care what is your benefit. Everyone wants to know what they are getting out of the deal. So you need to explain the profits, and stick with the profits. Once you explain them the benefits, they would be eager to know how this will work.

A Very Brief Explaination

You need to give a very short description of how it is going to work. Why? Because you want them to be interested. You make it long, it will be boring. But when you make it short, they will ask questions. If one ask questions, the others will get more interested. That is a psychological fact.

Conclusion with a BOLD Statement

End it with a strong pitch. You want to make sure that these investors give your client the money. Because your client will be paying you. Not only will that make you look good, but you will succeed.

Each time you make a good impression you will get more referrals.

Now one of the main quality as a consultant you need to have is calm and patient. Because you will have to explain the same thing over and over. You need to know your topic inside out, and have different ways of explaining it because not every human mind works the same way.

Well Why Am I telling you this? Well this will make you an extra 60,000 a year. Or at least that is what this is doing for me. You get paid to talk on hourly rates. Not a bad thing for a talkative person like me.

Yesterday, I received a card in my mail. It was from my recent client that Uzzz Productions just finished working with. The card was just wishing us Happy Holidays. First of all Thank you Stephanie and Peter from New Heights Coaching.

Now I thought of it and this was a really smart technique. I know personally handing out gift cards via mail can be a bit expensive for smaller companies, but I think the mailing list is not too hard. I haven’t incorporated a news letter yet in Balkhis, but I will make sure that I make a Happy Holiday post soon for you guys.

So getting back to the point how you can market yourself or your new products during holiday season. First thing first, if you have a great product that you are selling. Put some Holiday Discount for your users. Now I know one of my good friend Jeff Behrendt from Aviva Directory sent out an email to Aviva Directory users. With a 20% off coupon. I think that is a really smart decision.

This way you are getting your product sold for a little less, but at the end of a day you have a loyal user, the one who will come back.

Another thing I notice that could be done with this christmas letters is branding your new products. Lets say you developed a tool. That you want to launch. What would be a better time to launch then right now? I mean you can send out a news letter to your readers, and let them know about this new product a long with holiday greetings. Perhaps if it is a premium tool, might let them have first month free. I think holiday seasons are unbeatable.

A major thing that you should never forget is Affiliate Marketing. Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Years coming soon people buy tons of gifts. Now wouldn’t you be very nice if you suggest some nice gifts to your readers. It should start with a greeting and wishing them happy holidays then you can suggest some gifts that they can give to their family and friends. That is when affiliate marketing comes in. If that product have affiliate option available, then why not embed your link. You might be making some good cash by being nice. Good Cash, Loyal Readers… What else can you possibly want.

A lot of things are not available via normal affiliate programs, so I suggest you guys use Amazon Affiliates to take the most advantage.

Above are a few ways that you can market yourself and your products during holiday season. So are you smart enough to do it? If you have any other suggestions feel free to put them down here. If I like them I will include it in the post.

Internet is a place where you can make money in so many ways by just sitting at home. There are a lot of jobs online that pays you well if you have talent. Most people think they don’t have the talent, so I have compiled a long list of things you can do to make money online. So just look. There are some ways you can make money online by spending a fraction of your time. I am not saying you will make millions. But you will make some extra money on the side. Below are 113 ideas / ways you can make money online.

Note: I am giving ideas in this post. You would have to do a little research on your own as well to make these ideas work. You will not do it successfully unless you do a short amount of research on these topics.

Love Books?

1. Write eBooks and Sell them.
2. Write Books and sell hard copy through a publisher.
3. Buy Books from Good Will and Sell them on Amazon / Ebay.
4. Buy Books from Garage Sales and Sell them on Amazon / Ebay.
5. Review Books and Get Paid.
6. Sell other people’s book and get referral fee.
7. Sell your own used books on Ebay / Amazon.
8. Sell other people’s old book on Ebay / Amazon.

Good at Writing?

1. Write quality articles and charge per 100 words.
2. Write essays for people.
3. Create a blog and Write about something you like and sell ads on it.
4. Proof Read for students. Review grammatical errors etc.
5. Start your own content creating service.
6. Write email templates for small start-up companies.
7. Be a Paid Guest Author.
8. Get Paid to Post on empty Forums.
9. Get Paid to post on forums you regularly visit. There are some that offers cash.
10. Get Paid to write comments on Blog.
11. Enter Writing Contests.

Know HTML?

1. Code templates for others as a free lancer.
2. Make Custom Blog / Forum Templates.
3. Make Blog / Forum Templates and release them for free with sponsor links.
4. Create Myspace Layouts.
5. Code templates for different scripts.
6. Become an administrator of a site that requires few updates a week.
7. Fix small errors on websites.
8. Make Websites W3 valid.

Can you program?

1. Develop a script and resell it.
2. Develop a paid plugin for another script or platform.
3. Develop facebook applications for other companies.
4. Develop websites for others.
5. Make Canned Websites – Develop a website in a specific niche and sell multiple copies of it.
6. Edit scripts and customize it for people.

Web Industry?

1. Buy and Sell Domains for profit.
2. Buy and Sell websites for profit.
3. Flip Websites.
4. Start your own website / product.
5. Invest in beginning online business.
6. Start your own website and sell ads.
7. Start an Online Store that sells products from Ebay and others.

I know you wish to see more, so just read on the full post.

So I increased a little bit more activity on digitalpoint to do an experiment. But while I am visiting it more often stupid threads with titles, make big money blogging. Where the guy ask a question how do you make big money blogging. Or someone saying start blogging if you want to make big money blogging. First I will say big is a very subjective word. Second I will show you how I make money blogging.

How Much Money do I make?

I will say it like this I don’t make any where close to how big blogger make from their blog. But I am averaging around 2300 – 2400 USD a month from Balkhis. Now you are wondering how do I make that money from Balkhis. More yet, thinking how do I survive from just that little income. Because that is only 28000 yearly. But you have to understand a good portion or a major portion of my income comes from my web design company, Uzzz Productions which puts me close to six figure marks gross. Now lets get into how do I make money blogging.

Google Adsense

Adsense is something that I don’t incorporate in all of my posts, but I put it in the posts that are popular. Or the ones that are likely to get tons of traffic mostly tutorials. Aside from that, I have adsense in the header banner that makes me a decent amount of money, but it is not the majority. I mostly use the size 336 x 280 and 468 x 60. So use those because they work the best.

Private Ad Sales

Private Ad sales are a good one. I have header banner for sale as well as sidebar buttons. Also paid reviews. Those account for some of my income, but this one is still not the majority. Mostly direct ad sales are a pain to manage, but I use OIO Publisher to do it myself. I don’t believe in giving my money to any of the companies like Text Link Ads or Review me because they take up so much of the commission, you won’t get the money that you deserve. So do it directly with OIO Publisher.

Affiliate Marketing

The biggest Chunk of Balkhis Income comes from Affiliate marketing. How do I do it? Well I use Commission Junction for the most part, and Market Leverage as a secondary earner. Commission Junction have the most offer then you can imagine. So if you use them you are most likely to find offers that you want. I usually use hosting and other different sorts. If I am writing a post, and I think that I can find something that would be a good product. I head over to Commission Junction and run a search. And sometimes I write posts entirely based on the products, and it works very well also. So now if I just embed the CJ link it doesn’t do it. So I use WP-Affiliate Plugin that lets me make urls like balkhis.com/refer/xxxx so that helps me track the urls and see how it works. Now some people say Balkhis why people buy the products from your site and not from mine when I place the affiliate codes. And I will say, I really don’t know. I will probably say read the post How to make sales from your blog and earn profit. That have a little bit of answer. But that should cover that.

My costs of running / Advertisement

How much does it cost me to run Balkhis. Time and hosting fee. I switched to host gator reseller which cost me $25 monthly, and that is about it. I buy ads on a few sites thats it which is not very expensive. Rest is just social media. I am not one of those people who spend a lot of money.

I don’t think I will write this sort of post again unless I add new ways of making money. But if you are interested then head over to my make money online page.

I got this odd question from a person in Gainesville who apparently have some blog. He was like how do you make sales from your blog and earn profit? I am sure when you enter the blogging industry, you have the same questions. Heck I had the same question. And I learned the answer by observing other top bloggers. There were few things that I found that were noticeable.

Consistency

All the top bloggers are consistent. If they are writing one post a day, then they will have one post every day. They just don’t decide not to post on weekends because not enough users reply. I was at Izeafest 08, and John Chow made a very good point. That he has been writing 2.8 posts a day from the start. Meaning one day he would make 2, or someday he would write 3. Basically the idea was that he would have a new post every day. And if he have more then he would post more. But you got to be consistent. Some people have issues such as well I was on a trip. Which is understandable, but for the most part you can avoid it. I mean I took a 3 day trip. I made sure for the two days I had the post, and one day I slacked. But the other two days I had the post for which is better than 0. All you have to do is schedule posts. But the key is you have to be consistent to show the readers that you actually care about them.

Personality and Voice

I don’t know if you really notice, but a lot of top bloggers, I will say almost all speak in first person. The reason for that is no body want to sit on their ass and watch some snob tell them what to do. I mean seriously while psychology shows that people who are smarter are usually liked more, but people who pretend to be Mr. Know It All are not very well liked. So you have to have your own personality in the blog. People like people who they can relate to. Show them that you are not one of those scammers when you are selling a product.

Honest Feedback

There are some blogs that just talk about positive while others that are very honest. I mean I have reviewed sites where I have highlighted bad parts of the site, and I have reviewed sites like Store Stacker which I found very good, so I didn’t write anything bad. But the idea is not good and bad. But the idea is being honest in your review. So always be honest. Don’t try to be a suck up. As one of the better speakers that I have listened to said: “Only suck ups like suck ups, and I am sure you are not one of them” – Merlin Mann

Add Value

There are bunch of blogs that are there just for the heck of it. People just like to blabber, but you want to stand out. So add some value. Share some knowledge, tutorials, tips that you have learned over your experience. That is the only way people would give you authority, and think of you as a credible person.

Credibility and Authority is one of the main things that I noticed you need. And you can obtain that by doing the things that I mentioned above. Then simply embed links in your post. So if you recommend one hosting service, then keep recommending that one and be consistent. Unless something bad happens with that company. Because that way you make more sales. I know my main source of income is CJ and a lot of those are hosting sales. Just embed the links in related content on your posts.