The folks at Wealthy Affiliate University have come out with an excellent and FREE – Internet Wealth Guide.   This is a really great little book.  Yes they want to sell you something –but the book is not a sales piece. Rather its a way to introduce you to the training and their product.

Click here to get your free Internet Wealth Guide

Here is a little from the introduction to give you a feel for whats in there:

Today I am going to be completely, 100% honest with you. This whole online business thing can be difficult to understand and very frustrating and there have been some crazy changes that have taken place over the last year.
First FTC changed the affiliate laws in the US. Then Google hammered over 1 Million Adwords accounts with a suspension. Then Google updated their search algorithm with their latest “Panda” update and has been updating their search rankings every 4-7 weeks since.

Then we have apps, mobile, smartphones, iPads…

So I can understand the confusion and frustration. Carson and I are here to give you some clarity in the whole situation and give you a “path” in which you can follow to attain traffic and earn money in today’s Internet environment, along with tomorrows!
Cool?

I recently sat down with Carson for an entire day. We typically meet once per week to talk about business, but this day was a little different.

We spent it talking about where we think the Internet is headed. We have 1,000’s of people within Wealthy Affiliate that are our personal responsibility to inform and educate on the latest marketing techniques and strategies that work today.
This discussion got a little off topic. We ended up spending the whole day outlining a plan that would help people who aren’t even members of ours get traffic, SEO pages into Google, back- linking strategies, learn the latest techniques, and ultimately earn money.

They publish this book every year or so. This is the brand new 2011/2012 edition just released this week.

Click here to get your free Internet Wealth Guide

This economy has been tough on everyone –with seniors on fixed incomes especially hard hit. I spent a few hours doing research for an article today and thought I would share some of what I found with my readers.

So here are some of the best sites I found with tips to budget, save money, reduce expensesmake extra money or  raise some fast cash.

Budgeting

Personal Budgeting is a great site that walks you through the right way to set up a budget. Another great site is Always Frugal. It has tips on on frugal living, suggestions on how to save money on groceries, a budget worksheet and more. Ten tips for staying on a budget from How Stuff Works is also very helpful.

Dave Ramsey has a very different view of budgeting that you may want to look at.

Saving Money  & reducing expenses

The Simple Dollar is a great site with 101 money-saving tips.

DoughRoller has 75 Painless ways to save money

ZenHabits offers up 106 Money-Saving Tips for a Frugal Lifestyle

Frugal Dad gives you over 100 money-saving, expense reducing tips from his readers.

Making Extra Money

The MSN Money Blog offers up 52 ways to make extra cash quickly.

Us News Personal  Finance Blog offers 7 ideas to make extra money in your spare time.

The Wisdom Journal covers 26 ways to make extra money while keeping your job.

I often get email from readers wondering if it is still possible to start an internet business from home. People worry that the opportunities have all been taken or that the economy is too tough to start an internet business now.  Nothing could be further from the truth. As fast as the internet is growing –and it still is, the internet today accounts for less than 17% of all retail goods and products sold. New internet businesses are starting every day –and many of them are being started by seniors looking to make extra money to supplement their retirement.

Internet Business Resources

Here are some resources to get you started:

• My book, The Official Geezer Guide to Making Money With an Online Business is a great resource. I review 6 different internet business models and show how you can get started and how you make money doing it.
• My latest book at SkipMcGrath.com is How to Make Money Blogging From Home has been a hot seller and is getting great reviews.
• Chris Malta, founder of World Wide Brands has just released a package of three FREE eBooks about starting an online business and about eBay product sourcing and dropshipping. Click here to download your free eBooks – no email or other information required.

These are all great resources and can help you get started. There is no time like the present.

I have often felt that selling used books on eBay, Amazon and the Internet was one of the best home business opportunity for seniors or really anyone who wants to make money online without a lot of risk and upfront cost.

In my first book in the Official Geezer Guide series on starting an online business, I wrote about the used book business extensively. Because unlike the current generation, we seniors grew up reading and loving books and we seniors are now the fastest growing online market for all goods and services –but books in particular.

The used book business is a $6 Billion a year business and the online portion of that is now at almost 50% and growing every month.  Used books also do well when the economy is challenged as it is today because people still want to read, but they have to save money when they do it.

Last year I wrote a book on my main website, How To Make Money Selling Used Books on eBay, Amazon and The Internet.  I recently updated the book and added new bonus materials. How To Make Money Selling Used Books….is still one of the best-selling eBooks on the web and may soon surpass the Complete eBay Marketing System as my personal best-selling book of all time. The reason is simple:  It works!  I get tons of email from readers telling me about their successes.  In most cases the email are from people who are using online used book sales to generate extra money –but I also get email from folks who are making substantial amounts of money each month.

One of the markets I covered in How To Make Money Selling Used Books…was eBay’s Half.com, which is a fixed price site where you can sell books, movies and music.  Last week I discovered a great new selling tool called ScanLister.  There are three parts to ScanLister:

1. A small Scanning device that plugs into the USB port on your computer.
2. Scanning software that reads the scanned info and instantly creates a listing (with photo) that you upload to Half.com with the click of a mouse
3. An excellent training manual by a woman that consistently earns over $4000 a month on Half.com. Not all books and products sell well on Half.com, but she knows the ones that do and tells you where and how to find them.

I recommended ScanLister in my monthly newsletter at www.SkipMcGrath.com. Within a few days I Started getting email from my readers thanking me for the recommendation. One, who is a fairly experienced book seller said she was thrilled and thinks that ScanLister will save her hours a day and allow her to make money from a lot of otherwise slow-moving books and tons of DVDs she has sitting around the house.  Another person wrote that ScanLister paid for itself within 5 days.

So if you know nothing about books and would like to learn about this great low-cost, low-risk business, check out my training manual, How To Make Money Selling Used Books Online and once you are set up and running, check out ScanLister.

In a few days I will be releasing my latest book, How To Make Money Blogging From Home.  The first version will be released on my home website www.skipmcgrath.com. It will be released as an eBook, but if you want a printed version, we will be releasing the Official Geezer Guide version in a few weeks on this site, where you can order a printed version.

I am often asked the question from the title; “Can I really make money with a blog?” The answer is yes, if you follow some simple rules.  Since the book will show you how to create and launch a blog and how to make money from it, let me point out here the top 5 reasons that bloggers fail:

1. Choosing a Bad Niche  — This is probably the biggest reason new bloggers fail. They pick a topic that is too narrow and there are not enough interested followers to sustain a blog. Or they pick to big a topic –one where there is just too much competition from other bloggers. So spend some time researching your niche or main topic.

2. Going for The Gold – There is nothing wrong with starting a blog to make money, but that has to be a secondary consideration if you want to be successful. If your blog is just one big advertisement or plastered with advertising, they readers will abandon you and other bloggers won’t link to you. Keep your advertising and affiliate programs discreet and don’t overdo them.

3. Content is King – I know you have heard this hundreds of times, but this is one truism that is really-really true. You don’t have to be a great writer to blog successfully, but you do have to have good ideas, good content and you have to help people solve some type of problem or you have to entertain them. If you can help and entertain, your blog will rocket to the top.

4. Lack of Focus – We are all guilty of this from time to time. Its easy to lose focus and broaden your topics. If your blog is about digital photography tips, your readers don’t really care what you think about fluoride in drinking water –positive or negative. Staying on topic is critical to a successful blog.

5. Becoming Lazy or Giving Up Too Soon – Let’s face it, blogs are work. If you want to make money blogging, you have to do the work. Set a schedule and a goal. When you are starting out you should do post every day for at least the first three to four weeks. After that you can back off to 5X per week but I would never go below 4 times per week if you want your blog to consistently make money. And most importantly, if you are not growing your readers and starting to make money –don’t stop. Some blogs have overnight success and others take weeks or months to get traction. But once you get traction, you will see your readers grow and your income will climb steadily month by month.

If you don’t want to wait for my book, and would like to get started now, one of my blogging mentors is Yaro Starak. He has just published a free eBook called Blueprint to Blogging. You are still going to want my book, but Yaro’s stuff is a good way to get started –and its free.  Click here to get the Blogging Blueprint.

I am pretty new to Twitter. I have known about it for a while but didn’t really understand how it could help me. In just a few short weeks though I have built my Twitter list on my main eBay site at www.skipmcgrath.com to over 1400. And I just started a Twitter link for the Official Geezer Guide yesterday. I already have over 150 followers in just one day. (Here is the link to follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/HeadGeezer)

Twitter is a great social networking took, but you can also use it to make money. You can tweet links to your eBay and Craigslist listings, you can tweet affiliate links, you can use it to build traffic to your blog or your website where you sell products, information or have Google Ads and affiliate banners.  The possibilities are really endless.

There are a lot of schemes and tools people are selling that will help you build a Twitter list quickly –but most of them are pure junk.  The key to building a Twitter list that can make money is to have it focused on a topic, or a product or a niche of some kind. For example, if you sell diet or weight loss supplements, then you don’t want a list with lots of young kids on it, or a list of video gamers –you want middle aged to older people who are health conscious.  If you have a website that sells quilting supplies, then you want to build a list of hundreds or thousands of quilters –you don’t want real estate investors and Puff Daddy fans.

Last week I found the perfect tool. It’s called The Twitter Traffic Machine.  This is a series of 6 short videos that walks you through an automated system to build your list of hundreds of  HIGHLY TARGETED followers a day with just a few minutes of work.  The program only costs $27 and comes with a money-back guarantee.  I have only been using it for a few days and it works great.  I did one post right after setting it up, and that post made $56 on an affiliate link within about 30 minutes. I checked again today and it made another $11 –all from that one post.

I also started using Twitter to drive traffic to my eBay listings.  The two listings I featured in a Twitter post got double the amount of hits they normally did each day and resulted in one Buy-it-now sale for $229. so my $27 investment paid off pretty quickly.

Earlier this week I also told you about a new selling tool called netSpray.  The neat thing is that you can set up a netSpray account and use Twitter to drive traffic to your netSpray listings.  When you look at netSpray, you will get a free 27 page eBook I wrote for the netSpray folks as part of their launch promotion.  And if you sign up for netSpray for one month, you will get another book I wrote that shows you how to use Twitter to generate profits from eBay and netSpray.

If you take the time to learn the ropes, affiliate marketing is a great way to make extra money –or even some serious money.

Affiliate marketing is now used by some of the largest companies in America including eBay, Amazon, Wal-Mart and many others. If you don’t know what it is or how it works, check out our book, The Official Geezer Guide to Starting an Online Business. Basically it is nothing more than setting up a website or a blog and then placing links to your affiliate advertisers where people can see them and click on them. When someone clicks on an ad and buys something, the advertiser pays you a commission.

The neat thing about affiliate marketing is that you can do it as little or as much as you want. If you are happy earning a few hundred dollars a month you can do that with a few hours a week. If you want to make more –just put in a little more time. Granted, I am very experienced, but I also had to start from scratch.  After my first few months doing affiliate marketing as a sidebar to my regular business I was pretty consistently making around $1000 a month.  After a few years that has gone up and in my best month ever I made over $15,000 –and it is still a part time thing for me.  Lest you think you have to be some sort of web expert or genius, that is not the case. I am actually a very low-tech person with only basic web skill.

Top 5 Tips for Making Money with Affiliate Marketing

1. Buy  your own domain name and hosting.  Free blogs and free websites give you less control, poor search results and lack credibility.
2. Learn everything you can about the product or service you are promoting. Again you want credibility. If you are knowledgeable about what you are promoting then people will believe you.
3. Only recommend products and services related to the content of your website or blog. If you blog about barbecue recipes and have links to credit card offers and travel then your readers will not take you seriously. But if you have links to purchase BBQ grills, smokers and gourmet steaks then they will listen to your recommendations.
4. Learn everything you can. I really like the programs at Affiliate Classroom.  They offer excellent low-cost training and you can try them out for just One Dollar.
5. Track your activity.  Too many people just grab a banner or affiliate link, put it up and forget it.  All affiliate programs offer tracking and statistics.  Check your stats often and replace banners, links and advertisers that are not converting.

Everyone needs a little extra money these days, so why not give affiliate marketing a shot. This is a very low-cost, low-risk online business that anyone with even basic computer and internet skills can do.