Start Your Own Cafe Press Shop...

If you've been thinking about selling merchandise like t-shirts, mugs, mousepads, and the like but you're daunted with the thought of shelling out a huge capital - there's no need to fret anymore. If you sign up with CafePress.com and set up your own online store, you can start selling products in no time.

The basic idea of Cafe Press is that they have a base price for each product. When you sell a product, you can set your own markup price to get a profit.

This online money making idea is perfect for those who love designing/creating artwork. Cafe Press also has a DIY publishing section for audio and print books.

Pros:

It's free to set up! You can also have up to five free basic stores. It's easy to get started. You can buy your own products at base price and sell them offline (or use them for give-aways/promos). They have a good reputation.

Cons:

Basic stores have limited flexibility. You can only sell one design per product. If you wish to have more advanced functions and more flexibility, you pay for a premium shop (starts at US$4.99/month). There's a bit of competition for generic products. It's best to have specialised designs that will have mass appeal. If you're not used to formatting digital images, there might be a bit of a learning curve there, as images need to be created at a reasonably high quality in order to work well.

Income Streams for Bloggers

Here's the deal , if you wanna make money with your blog you have to learn how to target the income streams. Let's go over some income streams that will hopefully expand your mind and give you some ideas.

Advertising Programs

Advertising programs is one of the most popular and obvious. Such as Google Adsense or one of the more recent programs Chitika's eMiniMalls In order to make advertising programs profitable , you need traffic and good content to display your website. Usually these programs will pay you to run ads on your blog!

Sponsorship

In addition to the advertising programs that are available to join there is a growing awareness in the business of the value and opportunity that exists for them to advertise directly on blogs. When your website grows more independant so to speak and more developed , don't be afraid to email companies. Set up partnerships and become sponsored , this can become very rewarding for the blog writers.

Affiliate Programs

Theres a variety of affiliate programs all over the net including Amazon.com , ect.
These type of programs should appeal to you if own a blog reviewing merchandise.. for example you if you review or write about cameras and photography , you could then affiliate Amazon.com to display new camera's onto your site.

Selling Digital Products

Theres an increasing trend of bloggers have been developing other digital assets to support and add revenue streams to their blogs. For example you see bloggers selling their Ebooks.

Blog Network Opportunities

With the rise in popularity of Blog Networks - bloggers are also being presented with more places to earn an income from their blogging - by writing for and with others. While it might be difficult to get a writing gig with one of the bigger networks - there are plenty who are always asking for new bloggers to join and who are willing to pay bloggers using a variety of payment models. While there are distinct advantages of blogging for yourself - blogging for an established network who will handle a lot of the set up/promotion/admin/SEO etc has it’s advantages also. More and more bloggers are combining writing for themselves on their own blogs with taking on blog network blogs as additional income streams.

So ya wanna make some Big Bucks from blogging?

If you answered Yes , then you'll need to generate traffic... which means you'll need to know some tips.

Now here's 5 tips for successful blogging :

1: Content Quality over quantity
It doesn't matter if you write 100 or 200 articles every day , it's the quality of the articles that will deem it attractive.

2: Effective Management
Manage your blog or blogs , schedule your tasks when you decide to write content. If you want to take blogging seriously , treat your blogging as if it was your job.

3: Use The Resources
If you do a search online there's tons and tons of free resources that you can use , whether it's to generate traffic or to give you ideas. Look online and use your resources!

4: Creativity Counts
Be creative , most of the time we don't like seeing the same movie over and over. In the same aspect we enjoy reading blogs with more creativity to it , look at it like art.

5: Promote Yourself
Tell people about your blog , Read other people's blogs and sign their guestbooks , Email , Stand outside with a sign if you want. Don't always rely on services to promote your blogs!