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Everyone loves free stuff. At SitePoint we publish around 10 books in a year (yep, of the dead-tree variety). We decided to make one of our best-selling titles available as a free PDF to anyone who followed us on Twitter within a 14-day period.

It was a somewhat risky proposition for us—it’s both expensive and time-consuming to produce a high-quality book. We were therefore faced with the very real possibility that we might be giving away something of considerable value to thousands of people, only to have them un-follow us immediately afterwards (luckily, this hasn’t happened!).

However, the fact that we offered a free book is only one reason our campaign has succeeded. If you’re thinking of running a similar promotion, here are six tips, based on our own experience.

Give It A Name.

Any successful marketing campaign needs to have a catchy name. Before this venture, our marketing manager had jokingly used the phrase “Twitaway” a couple of times around the office, to mean a “Twitter giveaway”. We realized that this was in fact quite a catchy compound, and decided to run with it. We quickly registered the twitaway.com domain, and referred to the Twitaway promotion in all marketing material that went out.

Do Your Homework.

We hit a couple of hurdles on the first day we set our campaign live—primarily due to the fact that we weren’t aware of Twitter’s throttling of the number of Direct Messages you can send in a day (as you can guess, we hit our limit pretty quickly).

It is possible to get around this limitation (it requires that you submit a request to Twitter for your account to be whitelisted). If we had done our homework better, we’d have realized this before embarking on such a project. Perhaps you’ll learn from our lesson, so you’re not scrambling desperately to get hold of Twitter support at odd hours, requesting that your request be accelerated in the queue. Not that we would ever dream of doing such a thing…

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Here’s another way to profit from information products without having to deal with the product creation yourself.

Namely, by buying, tweaking and then reselling products that come with product label rights (PLR).

PLR products are those products where you purchase the right to modify the product and, generally, do with it as you please (as long as you follow the terms of your PLR license). That means you usually can modify the product, break it up, add it to another PLR product, change the format (e.g., create an audio product or a physical product), sell it, give it away, etc.

Now here’s why this can be so extraordinarily profitable…

Even though 20, 200 or even 500 people might have the rights to this same product, very few of them will actually take any action. Of those that take action, most will simply use the PLR product as-is, without any modifications whatsoever.

However, all you have to do is invest an hour or so of your time to modify the product, thereby creating a new, unique product. Then you can change the title, create new ecover graphics and tweak the sales letter.

The best part? That one hour you invested eliminated all your direct competition, because you’re selling a unique product!

Quick Tip: You don’t even have to rework the product yourself. Visit elance.com or similar to find a competent freelancer willing to rewrite and tweak PLR content. Some will do it for just a few pennies per word.

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No matter what your area of expertise, it's important to believe in yourself. At one time or another, every writer needs to polish and improve his or her skills, which is to be expected. However, it's critical that you know in your heart you can write.

There are times when I get frustrated with writing and I think "I'm getting nowhere". What do I do? I remind myself that I am a BEST-SELLING AUTHOR and adored by MANY READERS WORLDWIDE. I don't say it to brag, I say it to remind myself that I am a professional, and I know what I am doing. And it helps to bring my confidence back.

Maybe you have never written a best-selling book or eBook. Maybe you don't have a worldwide audience. Do you think I always had that? Heck no! When I wrote my first eBook, no one had any clue who I was.

But, that didn't stop me. Why not? Because I BELIEVED IN MYSELF AND MY ABILITIES. Writing is mental in many ways, including CONFIDENCE. You gotta believe that you have something worthwhile to share and that you have the skills to share it.

There will be times during your writing career when your plate is full and sometimes overflowing. You will find yourself feeling completely stressed and second guessing your abilities. When this happens, and it will, take a deep breath and remind yourself that you are a good writer, skilled and capable.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed is always a part of any artist's mind. Providing your readers with quality work is in the forefront of the mind, as it should be. Remember that you can always go back and clean up your materials once you get a draft completed.

In the end, it will all come together beautifully. Give yourself a pat on the back occasionally. There's nothing wrong with reading your work and thinking "Darn, that's good stuff!"

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The key to the Social Networking applications is interaction between the users. You can encourage this in a couple of ways depending on your interest in the subject.

If you are genuinely interested in the subject and you’re prepared to interact with other people on the subject, you can simply go looking for other Lenses on your subject, post some comments on their articles/lenses, and when you’ve shown you’re ‘genuine’, you can ask for their feedback on your pages.

That will work well for a lot of people but if you don’t really want to initiate this sort of contact (or spend that much time on it), there’s an easier way that takes a lot less of your time.

You still go looking for related lenses, but instead of commenting on their page, you simply add a link to their page from yours. Most ‘Lensmasters’ will soon notice that you’ve linked to their page, and they’ll pay you a visit.

If they like the content they’ll generally add a link back to your page. And the more people do this for you, the higher your page ranks, and the more visits it will get.

This approach works well on Twitter as well ... search for people with related interests and sign on to 'Follow' them. They'll get a notification that you are following, and the majority will check out your page to see who you are and why you're interested in them. If you're page is of interest to them, they are quite likely to follow you as well.

The other thing you might want to do for your Squidoo visitors is asks specific questions. I’ve noticed that the lenses that ask for the general ‘feedback’ or ‘comments’ rarely get a post, (mine included) but those that ask as specific question of the visitor can get dozens of answers.

And of course the more people interact with any of your pages, the more likely they are to bookmark them and come back regularly!

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So by now you should have your blog setup on Wordpress.com and have a post or 2 on there.

You should also hopefully have got yourself a domain name, either your name or a name suitable to the niche of your blog.

So what’s next?

Well now you want to grab the bull by the horns and take control of your own business.

Time to get some web hosting and start hosting your own blog.

Of course please don’t think you have to do this, you could remain with a free wordpress.com blog but you should be aware of something.

Something VERY... VERY important…..

As your blog is on their hosting they own the blog not you.

You therefore have no ownership of that blog, this also means they could remove your blog at anytime and you would lose all the work you have done to it.

Now this can be for many reasons but it could be down to any spam complaints they may receive about you and your blog. A jealous competitor could easy get your blog closed simply by putting in a complaint about you!

Sad but true so just be aware of that.

So what do you need in a web hosting provider?

If you choose the right host this process is far simpler than I ever thought it would be.

What you basically need is hosting that comes with Cpanel and you also need it to have software called Fantastico.

Fantastico is a piece of software that has Wordpress built into it so once you go to your Cpanel all you do is click into Fantastico and click to install Wordpress.

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If you can help it, don’t limit your income sources to the internet. Even though there are millions of blogs online there are still millions of people who do not have blogs, or any type of internet presence. Many of these people would appreciate and benefit from sponsoring your site. Quite a few local companies would be willing to pay a tidy sum to have their business mentioned, or featured, on a page within your blog.

I run a small blog devoted to tattoos and body arts. Many small tattoo shops and artists who can not afford, or don’t want to manage, their own web presence have paid to have their companies advertised on my tattoo blog. These advertisements are usually in the form of a page within my blog that describes the company in detail and includes contact information (address, phone number, ect.).

A friend of mine who’s all into wines and grapes and all that stuff runs a blog dedicated to wine making and hosting wine parties and he has been able to get several individuals who also host, and throw, wine tasting parties to advertise on his blog. These people are not interested in maintaining a permanent web presence and are content to piggy back on his blog. Each time they host an event they contact him and ask hime to blog about the event and they also have an entire page on his site dedicated to providing the contact information for those that are selling wine making books or materials and who host parties. He get paid every time he writes about an event or wine tasting course… It takes him, let’s say, maybe 15 minutes to pull together a 500 word post or so with a few nice pictures and they often pay him several hundred Euros for one article…

Opportunities like this are usually available in your area, it is just a matter of looking for, and making, the right connections. Things are easier if you have a niche site and steady traffic that can benefit a business owner. These sponsors can often be found by word of mouth or through placing ads in your local newspaper. Some of my best sponsors have been found through ads in the newspaper and even through direct advertising campaigns.

My campaigns are pretty small and are focused on those businesses I know do not have a web site and who would benefit from my traffic. Sending out a simple flyer with information about my site, traffic stats, prices, and how they would benefit by advertising online often has good results. Not only was I able to earn income from companies willing to advertise, or at least exchange links, with me but every now and then I was able to generate a local media buzz for my blog.

Being able to show other advertisers that your blog has attracted local press and interest can increase your ways to earn revenue. If you are having advertisers pay you directly to advertise on your blog site showing a review will help to justify your fees. It will also help prove your credibility to clients if you are selling a product or service of any kind.

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Alex’s secret to his success is planning. In order to succeed you need to see the whole picture first. After all, if you don’t know where you are going, how do you know how to get there?

Get these plans down on paper. Planning is one of the strategies that people fail to do. Yet when you write something down you are committing to paper what you plan to do and you can get it out of your head. Some of the most successful people write their plans down with pen and paper first.

Planning helps you learn quicker, as you can see what you need to overcome, or the tasks that you need to do to get to the next stage.

Alex plans out 90 days in advance, but to start to get into the practice of this, you can start with a month or week. Let’s say a week to start off with. For the next seven days, plan the tasks that you are going to complete on a daily basis.

Put them in a step by step plan, so you can tick each of these tasks off as you complete them.

Don’t open your email account, your favorite forum, or general internet surfing until you have completed your tasks, all they are, are distractions. Although if you know what your own personal distractions are, then that’s good as you can overcome them.

Later in this report, you will see a step by step plan on how to build your list, use this as your basis for the next week and you will feel a real sense of accomplishment as you tick off each task and get closer day by day to building that responsive mailing list.

Plan tomorrow today. If you have a plan you can stick to it. It maybe that something took longer than you thought, then plan to finish it the following day. If you stick with the plan, you will make money!

The real secret here is to always have the next 5 tasks planned, as this makes you ultra productive, so always have the next 5 to 10 tasks planned at all times.

Remember, it doesn’t have to be perfect, just get going. You are going to hit hurdles and glitches, but just keep going and you will get there.

For added motivation, dangle carrots in front of yourself to push forward – reward yourself when you meet targets. When you start out this might be a night out on the town or a shopping trip and as you make more money this will become luxury vacations. Always dangle carrots, and don’t whip or punish yourself as you will lose motivation.

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There are coaches for gobs of different areas online these days. There are life coaches, business coaches, organization coaches and marketing coaches…you name it there is probably someone out there who can coach you on it.

PLR is perfect for those with a coaching business online. Remember earlier when I told you that content is what helps to build a relationship with readers? Well who more than someone who is going to work one-on-one with do you need to have trust in?

Coaches also have to show their experience and knowledge just as much, probably more actually, than other business owners. So, how can they do this without spending all their time writing instead of coaching?

You guessed it…with PLR content of course.

A coach’s website has to convey A LOT to potential clients. The more articles and information they have on the topics they coach the easier it will be for people to believe they are qualified to help.

If you’re a coach, why not put some PLR articles about your area of expertise on your website to give visitors proof that you are capable of assisting them in the areas they struggle in? Just don’t forget to put your own thoughts in by rewriting the articles first!

There are a ton of ways you can use PLR articles to help promote your products and services via an affiliate program. The key to getting the most from your affiliates is to offer them as many tools and resources as possible to make their promotions easy. The easier you make it the more they will promote you; it’s as simple as that.

Here are a few ways you can use private label rights articles in your affiliate program. Give them lots of articles to promote your product or service. Take some PLR articles and put them in your affiliate toolbox for your affiliates to add their link to and post on their own site, blog, or in their newsletter.

They can also add the articles to their own eCourse or autoresponders. Better yet, use the PLR articles to create an eCourse for your affiliates. Give them a place to add their affiliate link in each message, tell them to load the course into their autoresponder program and you’re now being promoted in their lists too!