Nate Whitehill dot ComStrategic Business Blogging & Internet Marketing

There seems to be an unlimited number of ways to make money online these days. With so many different products and services to be affiliated with, how do we find a product/service that will convert well and be profitable?

One of the easiest ways to make money online is by promoting free products, such as magazine subscriptions or software trials. Just because a product is free does not mean there is no money to be made! Free products might also include things such as white papers, magazine subscriptions, or software. Depending on the product, a free product may convert better than a paid product.

Meet RevResponse

RevResponse is a new company that allows bloggers and affiliate marketers to provide their readers and audience with informative niche-specific resources.

The best part is that you can earn up to $20 for each payout. RevResponse allows publishers from all over the world to promote free product and earn money - you are not required to be a U.S. citizen. RevResponse pays its publishers via PayPal, but only 45 days after the end of the month in which the revenue was made. It would be nice if they paid out sooner than that.

A Wide Variety of Promotion Tools

Unlike Adsense and many other affiliate products, RevResponse offers many different ways to promote your offers including direct linking, flash or javascript widgets, email promotions and even through your RSS feed. You can see an example widget to your right.

Traditionally, the problem with monetizing widgets has been that even though they can be useful to readers, they do not produce any ROI. RevResponse aims to solve the problem with widget monetization by giving allowing publishers to provide informative materials while earning money.

RevResponse also allows you to display offers on a page which matches the brand and colors of your blog. You can see an example of my customized RevResponse page here.

Customize Your Promotions With Ease

Once you have been accepted into the RevResponse program, you can create interactive widgets for your blog in a few clicks. RevResponse offers a dynamic setup wizard which allows you to customize the promotional materials for your needs. You can then copy and paste the advertising code onto your site.

Earn More By Leveraging the Community

RevResponse strongly believes in doing whatever it takes to further open up the lines of communication between publishers, advertisers, and Account Managers. The RevResponse forum allows you to network with other publishers and learn what has and hasn’t worked for them. If you have a question or want to make a suggestion, you can post it in the forum. One thing I have been particularly impressed with about RevResponse is their professionalism and how quick they are to respond to my emails.

RevResponse believes in taking the good with the bad in effort to continually improve their program. In addition, if you wish for a more one-on-one experience, each RevResponse publisher is assigned an Account Manager.

Conclusion

Although RevResponse is new on the scene, it looks like they already established a dedicated community of bloggers and affiliate marketers. With an interactive widget creation tool, a wide variety of promotional methods, and a knowledgeable community, RevResponse appears to be a viable option for those interested in making money online.

I am going to experiment with a few RevResponse offers on my blog and I will let you know how responsive the revenues are, if you get what I’m saying.

Sign Up For RevResponse Today

Over the past few months, I have fallen head first into the ocean of social networking services. To most people, web 2.0 is synonymous with social networking, meaning sharing photos, blog posts, articles, and even friends with each other. As much as web 2.0 tries to simplify our lives, it can seem impossible to maintain all of these networks and use them to our professional advantage.

For me, even before I started blogging, I was a Digg user. Several months after that, I joined Facebook, then Pownce got dropped in, Flickr popped up after Blog World, most recently, Twitter, and now I am using Utterz and TwitPic for mobile photo sharing through Twitter.

Social Networking = Personal Brand Building

Everyone who chooses to be a part of a social network is making the decision to create a “personal brand” for themselves.

By “brand,” I mean the persona one chooses to represent him/herself online or on any given network. These are the things that people remember when they think of you, and could be things such as your interests, who you are associated with, the topics you blog about, and your professional connections. These are all things we can easily define and input into these social networks.

The days of anonymous marketing and communication are dead. These days, everyone wants to know the people behind the companies they work with. The more that one participates in social networking, the more opportunities there are to start conversations which may have a professional impact on our lives. Not to mention, if someone does business online, a solid reputation is a necessity. Luckily, reputation building can now be done entirely online, giving more people than ever the opportunity to start and run a web-based business.

What is the benefit of social networking?

There are so many social networking sharing services these days that it leaves most people wondering what the point to them all is, and how these services can have any real benefit to our lives. Is it just a constant stream of useless data or are there worthy uses for social networking? When VC’s give millions of dollars to social networks for pets, some screws have to be loose, right?

Of course, it’s not about the dogs and it’s not about having the most friends - it’s about building relationships and becoming more well known within a niche. The purpose of social networking is to start and participate in online conversations, thus building personal brand and online reputation.

Conclusion

Going to the gym and doing a few reps will not make you a body builder. The same is true for online networking - by adding a few friends and occasionally tweeting (or is it twittering) that is not going to build a reputation. However, the more that someone participates in online networking and brand building via social networking, the more professional opportunities that arise from being more well-known. I can say that from personal experience. Of course, this is especially true for people that do business online.

How has social networking helped your personal brand or business online?

Let me get straight to the facts:

• I started my blog in January of 2007 (almost 1.5 years ago).
• I started a blog design company in August of 2007 (almost 9 months ago).
• Since then, I have been using a free, but highly customized theme by Ed Merritt called Ocean Mist…until now.

Welcome to Nate Whitehill dot Com 2.0.

Now, you may ask yourself, “why did the guy who started Unique Blog Designs wait so long to design a unique theme for himself?”

Good question. Read More »

Some of you may have remember that when I first started my blog back in January of 2007, I was awarded with a PR5 during my first PR update. Unfortunately, when the Google PageRank slap hit everyone six months ago, I was bumped back down to a PR4.

Today on I read on Courtney Tuttle’s blog (nice blog, Courtney that Google is undergoing its quarterly PageRank update. I decided to verify this for myself by checking a few blogs in my Google toolbar. I am happy to report that my blog jumped back up to a PR5. This is a another nice surprise from Google because less than two months ago, I was awarded with a Google authority listing for my name.

Every blogger can do things to increase the chances of them receiving a higher PageRank update. Almost a year ago, I wrote on article on how to prepare for a PageRank update.

How about you guys? Have you noticed a change in your PageRank? Usually, the update takes a few days to be accurate across all Google data centers.

For more information on this mysterious force of Google, check out this Wikipedia article on PageRank, which interestingly, outranks Google’s page about PageRank.

Guest post by Mr. Achievement - Stanley F. Bronstein

The Journey Of A Thousand Miles Begins With A Single Step
- (Lao Tzu)

I recently saw an excellent movie called Rabbit-Proof Fence. The movie is based upon the true story of 3 young Australian aborigine girls who were removed from their families because they were of mixed heritage (their father’s were white and their mothers were aborigines). These girls were taken over a thousand miles from their home to the other side of Australia. They were to live in a camp where they would be trained, based upon the goals of a government bureaucrat who thought he knew what was best for them. Read More »

It seems like everyone these days is now Twittering - the micro blogging platform in which people “follow” each others’ updates via a live, instant message-like chat stream. You will see my recent Twitter updates on the top of the sidebar on the right-hand side of my blog.

I first started Twittering in November of 2007 when UBD attended the Blog World Expo. I used Twitter to keep my readers up to date of what I was doing while we were in Vegas at the expo.

At that time, not many other people were using Twitter and I had less than 10 followers. Now, in the past week, the number of people following me on Twitter has more than tripled!

What accounts for such a rapid increase in the number of Twitter users and followers?

I have no idea! Twitter is simply becoming more viral by the day. Way too many of my homeboys and homegirls are now using Twitter.

About a week ago I told John Chow to get on Twitter, and within a few minutes he was signed up and following me. In the past week, John now has almost 500 people following him on Twitter.

Many people seem to think Twitter is just useless bantering, but I have started to see its benefits. For example, Twitters allows you to:

• Keep up to date with what your friends and colleague are doing
• Be on the cutting edge of breaking news - for example, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington posts tidbits of upcoming news which have not yet appeared on his site
• Keep you readers updated of your new blog posts using the Twitter Updater Wordpress plugin
• Share interesting stories or websites you have found with your followers
• Start conversations with people whom otherwise you may never talk to
• Network and become more well-known within online communities
• Ask questions and receive answers from the people who follow you

I asked John, “Is Twitter just useless chat or do you think it allows you to better keep in touch with your readers?” This was his response:

Twitter is like having one big mega chat room. It can be a huge time waster or a good marketing channel depending on how you go about it. I got on Twitter as a marketing move and I’m trying very to keep it from being a time waster. It’s VERY HARD!

I have noticed that as more of the people I know have started twittering, I have become more a more active Twitterer myself. In the past week, for example, I have updated Twitter (a.k.a “Tweeted”) over 70x… Compare that to less than 10x in the previous 5 months.

Writing a quality blog post takes significant time and effort, but with Twitter, you only have 140 characters to post, so no one is expecting a novel. A good “Tweet,” as they are called, may simply be a link to a cool blog post, or a question/answer to a problem a fellow Twitterer is having.

I highly recommend Twitter to anyone who is looking to network within a community and potentially increase new readers for their websites or blogs. I know that I will be using Twitter more over the next few months to stay in contact with my readers and also to network with people. I have even started to receive quite a few “follow” requests from many people local to me in Scottsdale, Arizona.

So, what are you waiting for? Follow me on Twitter!

BIC Promo Pens is a company that specializes in creating promotional pens for corporate events and other functions. BIC Promo Pens was kind enough to send me this awesome golf shirt and a few of their latest and greatest pens.

Notice the carbon-fiber weave on the silver pen - now, that is what I am talking about!

If you are looking for BIC pens for your next corporate function, I highly recommend BICPromoPens.com