Grow Your Creativity into a Laptop Empire

Diversity, consistent branding and creativity across many web sites are key factors in starting and maintaining your laptop business empire. No money? No worries. This article will get you started for little or no start up capital depending on the path you follow.

If you're a person who creates art, can write articles, blogs or make short films (or can do all of these) then this article is for you. Many web sites are paying for content from their users. This is a golden opportunity for you to start your laptop empire. The best part is that most of these web sites are free to join and are a lot of fun to create content for.

Getting Paid

Before you start you'll need a PayPal account (check to see if there is a local paypal site for your country too). Paypal allows you to be paid no matter where you are in the world. Most web sites prefer to pay you either by cheque or by direct transfer to a PayPal account.

Next, you may wish to consider signing up for Google Adsense. Adsense is a program where you can earn money through relevant advertising placed along side the content you create. For example if you've written an article about cats, Google Adsense will show advertising, relevant to cat owners, such as 'cat breeders associations', 'cat posters' etc. You earn money from people clicking on the ads.

Google Adsense is useful because many sites will allow you to earn a percentage of the money from Google Ads placed on their pages if you provide your Adsense for Content code. If you start your own web site you can place your Google Ads there and earn 100% of the revenue.

Both Paypal and Google Adsense can be linked to a bank account so you can access payments you receive.

Diversity

Earning money online is a slow process that requires a lot of work. Although there are some web sites that, theoretically, you could earn all your income from it is better not to keep all your eggs in the one basket (or in this case web site).

Spreading yourself across a number of sites will give you access to many different markets of people and provide many opportunities for cross promotion. Be careful not to spam web sites as this will hurt your earning potential. Tell people about your various web site interests as they get to know you.

Deciding which sites to focus on is the fun part. Whilst you do want to be diverse, you can't be everywhere. Pick a range of sites that focus on different aspects of your creativity. This way you won't simply be repeating the same information on each site and you'll be constantly challenging yourself for new ideas.

Consistent Branding

Branding is how people get to know who you are and what you do. On the internet branding is most commonly the nicknames you use as a login name and/or your web site address (URL). For example, my own branding is The Extraordinary Tourist which I often truncate to etourist (as a login name) and TET being my nickname. My web site is www.extraordinarytourist.com

You can extend branding to include a logo (you may want to trademark this) or even a photo of yourself (use the same photo each time) however, the main point is that you, as much as possible, use the same nicknames/user name/login name across all the sites you earn income from. This way people looking for you on a web site (or in a search engine) will know exactly how to find you.

Creativity

If writing is your thing then a good starting point is Helium. Helium pays a percentage of Ad Revenue based on article views and also has a Marketplace where publishers will pay a set amount for the best articles on their subject.

There are other sites where you can publish your own writing and earn ad revenue including the Triond Network. Triond will let you publish any kind of content including photos and video too but generally articles seem to attract the most traffic.

The benefit of writing for someone elses site is that you don't have to work as hard when it comes to marketing. Most of these sites come with a built in community that will read your work. Though it never hurts to do a bit of self promotion too.

If you're really good at self promotion then starting your own blog could be for you. Blogger is the easiest way to go as Blogger is owned by Google. This makes adding Google Adsense to your pages a breeze as it's included as part of your customizable template plug-ins.

The benefit of starting your own blog is that it is the easiest way to set up your own web site and gives you one central place to promote all your income earning activities from. For example you could post a 'teaser' entry for any new articles you've written on Helium then provide links to the full article.

The other good thing about a blog is search engines love them. I get so many visitors to my web site by people who had one of my blog posts come up on a search engines results page.

A final word on writing. Once you have a prolific collection of work online you could collect the best of it together and self publish your own book through POD book publisher LuLu.

If writing isn't quite your thing then what about selling original art and/or prints of your art? I sell much of my original art on Ebay and sell prints of my art through print on demand (POD) sites Cafepress and Redbubble. Other POD sites you might like to consider are Imagekind and Zazzle. There are many more.

Selling original art on ebay takes time to build a following of collectors but is a good way to make some money. I've written an article, Selling Art on Ebay: 15 Tips for Self Represented Artists, that will help you plan your auction listings.

Cafepress will allow you to set up a shop for free (that you could link to your blog or include the URL of in your email signature etc.). You can upload images of your art and place them on products however you don't need to be a great artist. Some of the best selling products on Cafepress are slogan designs, that is, designs that are words only - usually humorous.

There is some skepticism from users of Cafepress that free shops aren't successful and that a premium (or paid) shop is the way to go. Whilst I do run a premium Cafepress shop I paid for it, initially, with the earnings I made from a series of free shops. Hence you can make money from a free Cafepress shop.

A great way to market POD products is to talk about them in your blog. Which is not to say you should write buy my stuff posts but rather talk about the designs and how they came into being - write a brief story around each product.

If you're an amateur film maker then your time has come. There are quite a number of web sites that will pay for short format videos (videos under ten minutes long with a file size of less than 100MB).

Currently Revver and Metacafe are two of the most popular sites that will pay for content.

YouTube does have a Paid Partner Program which requires a certain level of success before being eligible. Given that YouTube is the third largest site on the Internet it's well worth uploading your videos to and trying to make it into their Partner Program.

Revver pays through people clicking on ads placed in your video. MetaCafe has a producer rewards program that begins to pay once your video reaches 20,000 views and has a rating of 3 or more. Revver is easier but slower (income-wise) whilst MetaCafe pays better but only if your video has wide appeal.

Both sites allow you to embed your videos into your own web site, blog or wherever you choose. Again you could post your videos to your own blog and add detailed descriptions for the benefit of search engines.

Revver has the added benefit of creating collections of other people's videos (or even your own) which can be embedded into a web site. This will allow you to earn money from other peoples videos as well. You could create a collection featuring Revver's most popular videos right on your own web site.

When making your videos be sure to include the URL to your web site (if you have one) right in the video as an end credit. Videos have a tendency to be posted all over the place by people whom you've never met. You want to make sure viewers know where your video came from (so they can view your other videos).

Marketing

Whilst all of the sites mentioned above attract people that will view your content, you can boost your earnings through your own marketing.

To do this you'll need to participate in online forums and communities. Look for communities that are interested in the type of creativity you specialize in. If you paint pictures of dogs then participate in an online forum for dog owners (chances are you already do).

However do not spam these communities. Check their rules about advertising first. Many forums will allow a link to your web site in a signature or may allow you to advertise for a small fee. If a discussion comes up about selling on Cafepress (for example) that is a good opportunity to share your experience and direct people to your shop without actually promoting directly.

Don't forget about promoting your sites/work in your email signature (again don't send spam emails).

You could start an email newsletter promoting what you do that people could subscribe to. You'll need a web site for your subscription form. One company that will manage up to 1000 subscribers and give you the tools to make a newsletter free is Your Mailing List Provider. The free version has some restrictions but is a great place to start.

Don't discount advertising in your real world local area. Business cards, fliers, posters newspaper ads and articles can all help your efforts depending on the kind of opportunities you've taken up to earn money. (Joining a local writers group for example).

To conclude

The list of web sites contained in this article is not exhaustive. You'll find many more sites that pay for content or allow you to set up all kinds of online shops (there's even one I know of that will let you set up your own online dating web site: www.free-banners.com). This article has mainly focused on earning money from your own creativity.

Most sites only pay small amounts in the vicinity of a few cents here and there however, if you work at it, providing more and more content, the more you are likely to earn in less time. Plus you're work keeps on earning for as long as it is online.

If you focus your efforts on two or three sites you'll be well on your way to starting your own laptop empire.

As a final footnote. I practice most of the suggestions above. Be sure to visit my web site to see my advice in action!

Note: This article was first published by me on Helium and appears under the title, How to start a financial empire from your laptop. It has been revised and updated by me for this blog.