6

What is SEO and Why Do I Need It?

You may wonder what is this strange term that people use on the Internet, SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

SEO is the process of readying a website to be listed well in search engines (according to Wapedia). Let’s put it in a more simple form.

You set up your website to get ranked in search engines. This is SEO, in a nutshell.

In order to get ranked in search, you need to do certain things. Provide valuable content, engage with people, use keywords, social media presence and so on.

Why is SEO Important?

You want to be ranked in Google, Yahoo and other search engines to get traffic.

Think about the benefits when you get ranked in search engines. Let me give you 4 reasons.

1.It’s free marketing (You don’t need to pay for SEO)
2.Your visitors are targeted (People search for something specific and end up to your website.)
3.Your brand/company’s value rises
4.People find you easily

There are of course more reasons but these four are quite crucial.

Think about expensive marketing campaigns. You pay for Facebook or make Pay Per Click campaigns to get your ads somewhere. They may cost a lot. But SEO doesn’t cost money. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be using paid marketing methods but don’t solely lean on paid methods.

If you want to get fit, you may search “How to get fit” from Google. Then you head to the fitness site which sells ideas and products how you can get fit. You are already interested in the website’s theme because you searched it from Google.

In other words, using SEO effectively gives the website targeted visitors who are already interested in the subject.

 

Your Competitors Are Using SEO

Let’s think about an example. Company A and company B are working in the same industry. They both want to get more customers online. Company A uses SEO but company B doesn’t.

Company A gets ranked in search engines and a lot of people come to his website. Then they end up buying his products and the company success. Company B thinks, “We don’t want to think about SEO. We concentrate on the other things.” They don’t get ranked in Google and only very few people come to their website. Not many products are sold.

Even though the example is very simplified you get the glimpse how important SEO can be. The successful companies online are using SEO.

Keywords Are Important. But Don’t Overuse Them.

In SEO, keywords are one critical key to success. You may want to get to know the free keyword tool, Jaaxy.

Jaaxy helps you to research great keywords for your website to get ranked better.

Still, I just want to mention that keywords are only a little part of SEO. Sometimes people seem to overemphasize keywords. The most important thing to provide valuable content that people are interested in.

This article was a little introduction to SEO. You can learn more about SEO from my SEO tips in Pinterest or by reading Search Engine Optimization – Getting Started Guide by a successful internet entrepreneur.

Have studied SEO? Why it’s important in your opinion? 

9

Ultimate Opportunities! Did you know this?

It’s curious that some people see opportunities everywhere while other people seem to be blind for them.

Imagine two people walking around and thinking about their lives. The other one (Let’s call him Jamie) is complaining about his job, relationships and health. The other one (Bob) offers him help. He sees opportunities.

Bob is an entrepreneur and offers Jamie an interesting job. But Jamie refuses and says, “I can’t take that job, I’m incompetent.”

Then they talk about relationships. Bob gives advice what has helped him in relationships. Bob tells that before his relationships weren’t so good but he saw the great opportunities to make them better. Now he offers his help to Jamie. But Jamie refuses.

Jamie is overweight. He needs to lose about 20 kilos to have “normal weight” again. Before, Bob was also overweight but then lost 30 kilos in one year. He knows how to do it. He knows how to change eating and exercising habits. But Jamie refuses to listen.

Are You Bob or Jamie?

You are maybe thinking, “Why you are telling me this story about two weird guys Bob and Jamie?” Let me explain.

When you see people around you, some of them are like Bob. They see new opportunities everywhere. They love to explore new things. And they succeed.

Spending time with people like Bob is usually quite inspiring.

Then you know the people who always tend to fail. At least, in their own words. They don’t see many opportunities. Actually, they tell you things like, “I’m not talented or I’m slow to learn.”

They have hope. But they have closed their eyes.

The crucial question is, Are you like Bob or Jamie?

What Bob and Jamie Have to Do With Online Businesses?

You may be wondering what this story has to do with my website’s theme, “Learn to Earn Online”.

Some people close their eyes from opportunities on the Internet. Nowadays, it’s certainly possible to work full-time with an online business.

If we go back two years in time I didn’t know that earning money online could be possible. I didn’t see the opportunities. I had a lot of prejudices about earning money online.

I thought that in future I would like to have my own website but I didn’t know that it’s also possible to earn money from websites. I had thought, “Maybe some gurus earn something with ads.” Thanks God, I see more opportunities today.

The Internet serves also for million other things. You can affect millions of people on the Internet. If you want to make the world better, the Internet is one great place to start. You can also learn from the best teachers in the world.

I could be talking hours and hours of the opportunities of the Internet but you probably know them quite well (at least if you are Bob) ;).

My Eye Opener – Wealthy Affiliate

Wealthy Affiliate has opened my eyes a lot to see more opportunities. I know that making money online is possible. I have learned how to get more traffic, how to build websites and a lot more things.

I need to say that I didn’t have any background for these things before Wealthy Affiliate. It teaches everything step-by-step.

OPEN YOUR EYES FOR A NEW OPPORTUNITY. LEARN ABOUT WEALTHY AFFILIATE HERE.

I hope you found this text inspiring and helpful. What are the great opportunities that you found during last years/months/days? Leave a comment.

2

Help Is Nearer Than You May Believe – Be Conscious About It

Before, I didn’t even know that it would be possible to earn money online. The possibility was out there but I wasn’t conscious about it. Another thing that I didn’t know how easily I could find help if I want to earn money online.

Everything changed one day when I was searching from Google “how to make money online” and other search terms.

I went to the page which told me “Earn Money by Selling Products in Amazon.” The author of the website was probably about 25-30 year-old. He had started making a lot of money online and now he taught other people about the same subject.

I went to Wealthy Affiliate from his link and new opportunities opened to me. A lot of helpful people who already had succeeded online wanted to help in my journey.

Let’s Be Conscious

Probably you have wondered that you would like to earn money online. Or maybe you haven’t been conscious about the possibility like I wasn’t. I can tell you today, It is possible to make money online! And many people are doing it.

First I thought that making money online must be probably something related to cheating other people. How wrong I was!!! Nowadays I know that most of the people earn online 100% legally by providing important value for other people. (Yes there are many scams online and I want to warn you about those. I write reviews of them to my site to “the Bad” -section.)

Actually those provide the best value for people, usually also success best.

A Lot of Helpful People Out There!

If you don’t know personally yet anyone who earns online I can tell that in Wealthy Affiliate you can get to know many of those.

People in Wealthy Affiliate aren’t greedy or overlook but totally contrary. They are positive, encouraging, motivating and helpful. I am very positive person (Check my other blog YourPositivePower) but I was actually surprised how helpful people are in WA.

First I thought that it’s only hype of the founder and salesmen but it was true. People are friendly and they really want to help you!

Members in Wealthy Affiliate are from all around the world. I’m from Finland and I’ve met people from Asia, Africa, America, Europe and so on.

You can ask anything that comes to your mind and you will always get an answer. I have always got an answer to my questions (see the image).

Learn From Those Who Did It Already

I believe that many times the best way to learn is to listen to those people who have already walked the path that you are about to take (Read the text from my other blog). Now when they have experience, they know what are the typical mistakes and how to avoid them.

They know what they would have done differently if they could start again from the start.

Everyone has once started. No one was an expert in the beginning.

Many times in my life I have thought, “Oh, if I would have known this before I would have done differently. But hey! Now I can share my knowledge with others and probably they can benefit! from it”

That’s one important reason why I’m writing this blog. I want to help people to know the things that they probably don’t know yet. I didn’t know them before but after studying and working I’ve found out.

Your Friends and Family Can Probably Help

When you are running an online business, did you know that your friends can be some kind of experts also even though they wouldn’t have own experience about business?

Your friends can watch your business with the customers’s eyes. Would they buy from you if they wouldn’t know you but would be interested in the subject? They can give important insights what kind of thing they point out in your website and how they feel about spending time there.

Summary

Many times we are not conscious about the possibilities around us. I didn’t know how easy is to get help for making money online in Wealthy Affiliate.

That’s why it’s good that we spend time with different people, search from the internet and keep our minds open.

 

If you want personal help to earn money online I can fully recommend to start from Wealthy Affiliate.

Thank you for reading, I hope you caught a glimpse how easy is to get help to your online business nowadays!

If you have any comments or questions, feel free to share!

8

Persistence Is the Key to Success

Over and over again I keep on reading the success stories from people about their online businesses. See for example “$0 to $10k In 3 Years” by a guy who started earning 5-figure passive income from internet after working three years for his online business. Or see this “My First $10,000 Month!” by 20 years old guy who started also earning 5-figure passive income from internet.

There are numerous stories like this but there is one common thing in those stories.

Even though they had challenges, they didn’t quit.

Two Groups – One Big and One Small

If we compare the amount of those who start an online business to those who start making 5-figure passive income there is a big difference. Only a little fraction of the starters will reach the point that they can say “Woohoo! I’m making $10,000/Month.”

Why is it so?

Let’s compare those two groups a bit.

What is the most significant difference between Those who reach 5-figure passive income vs. Those who don’t make it?

The Most Significant Difference

When I have read numerous texts from the successful online business people they have always one common advice.

DON’T QUIT! If you want to fail quitting is the fastest way to do it.

Those who have succeeded have been there usually for years. They have seen tens, hundreds and probably thousands of people quitting while they have still continued. They have heard many people saying, “This won’t pay off. I quit.” Probably the quitters have listened too much other other ones who have failed before them.

Successful people have the one thing in common. They haven’t quit. They have had the same struggles as everyone else. They keep on telling about their struggles but now they see their struggles in the new perspective because they have reached the goal.

But most of the starters didn’t have enough patience to wait for the results.

Delayed Gratification

You are probably familiar with the term delayed gratification. According to Wikipedia it “is the ability to resist the temptation for an immediate reward and wait for a later reward. Generally, delayed gratification is associated with resisting a smaller but more immediate reward in order to receive a larger or more enduring reward later.”

Usually doing online business requires delayed gratification.

If you go to work for a normal job you will probably earn $100-$300 for the first day. In online business you may have to work three months or more to get the first revenue. (Some people get their first revenue in their first week but that’s now very usual.)

But the reward after a lot of work would be that you will get bigger reward than in the “normal work”. Compare which one would be better:

After three years of online business you start earning $10,000/month passive income vs. after three years of “normal work” you will earn $4,000/month if you work for 40 hours/week.

Here a successful guy in online business asks a question, What if I said that you had to work 12 hour days for 3 years, but then after that you would own a six-figure business and could set your own hours. Would you do it then? That’s a crucial question.

Summary

If you won’t to success in online business don’t quit until you make it. Shia Labeouf says in his famous motivational video “If you are tired of starting over, STOP GIVING UP.”

That is the key to success. Don’t give up. Persistently keep on doing the right things until you can reap the harvest.

Think how the things will be after three if you quit now? How the things will be if you don’t quit?

Think about the times when you have succeeded well in your life. What were keys to success? Share with us!

6

Get More Results with Less Time – The 80/20 Principle

Have you read the book “The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less” by Richard Koch? In the book Koch explains the 80/20 (Pareto) principle which means that 20% of our time accounts for 80% of the work we accomplish. In other words 20% of our work provide more results than the rest 80%.

The principles applies to other things also. Did you know, for example, that 20% of customers account for 80% of revenues?

Understanding this principle can powerfully benefit your online business.

What is Your 20% That Determines 80% of the Results?

If you want to make money online (and at the same time provide important value for other people) there are certain steps you need to take.

Some of the important steps are:

• Build a Website
• Get Enough Education/Knowledge
• Write Content and Add Images
• Network in Social Media
• Do Social Media, Email and Other Marketing
• Get Feedback and Develop Your Websites
• Sell Products or Services (your own or other people’s products)
• Keep Your Clients Satisfied

Probably there are also other things to do but these are usually very important, especially selling. If you want to earn money, you need to sell something. Someone has to be interested in your product or services.

But sometimes you may find yourself doing useless things related to your business. Online business is always a process, it’s not an event. You do certain things until you succeed. But you need to concentrate on the things that are the most important at your phase of the process.

Different Phases – Which is Your Phase?

If you don’t have your own websites your most important task should be to build one. When your websites are brand new you should concentrate on writing content and providing important value for the readers. At this point it would be totally useless to spend hours and hours analyzing your visitors from Google Analytics if you don’t have enough visitors or any content on your website.

At this point your 20% (the most important task) would be developing your websites.

But let’s assume that your website is appealing. You have good theme, good images, good email list, good content and products to sell. Then it would be highly important to get more visitors to your websites. You can make for example social media campaigns. That may be the most important (20%) task at this point of the online business process. (But remember that scrolling Facebook’s or Twitter’s news feed is not social media marketing. It’s only a waste of time!) 😉

Concentrate on 20% = Get the Results Faster!

Many people are asking, “How much it takes to make some money or a full-time income online?” It depends on two things.

1. How much do you invest time to your online business?
2. How much time do you invest doing the most important (20%) things related to your online business?

You may invest 100 hours and get the same results when someone has used 200 hours. Be sure that you are the one who is not wasting time on the useless things.

Nothing really happens until you take action. Today I want to challenge you: 

1.Take a sheet of paper and a pencil
2.Write down the most important thing in your online business right now
3.Start working until the task is done
4.Repeat

Writing down helps. The thing you have written will sink into your subconscious mind and it will start searching the ways how you can accomplish the task. It also helps you as a reminder if you find yourself scrolling that Facebook news feed or reading useless blog again.

Summary

20% of our time accounts for 80% of the work we accomplish.

Concentrate on the most important tasks and you will achieve more results with less time.

What are your most important tasks right now in your online business? Leave a comment below.

4

How to Make Your Content User-Friendly? 6 Tips for Readable Text

The #1 purpose of the good website is to provide value for the readers. But how to get readers? With valuable and well-written content. No one will get value from the site if no one reads it.

To get the visitors read your content, you need to make the content appealing. One important thing is to add relevant images. But today we concentrate how to make your text look good.

6 Tips for Readable Text (confirmed by an Online Millionaire)

(1) Use Small Paragraphs
(2) Separate Your Ideas With Headings
(3) Use Black Text (or Dark Grey) on White Background
(4) Use Conversational Speak
(5) Choose a Relevant and Captivating Headline
(6) Use Relevant Images

(1) Use Small Paragraphs. People in internet don’t want to read long paragraphs. People are used to read small snippets like maximum 140 characters in Twitter.

Sometimes people just skim through texts and blogs without reading them carefully. If your paragraphs are short, they are easier to skim through.

One sentence paragraphs are totally okay.

Got it? 😉

(2) Separate Your Ideas With Headings. As you can see in this text for example I have separated different ideas with subheadings. It’s easy to see when the new idea starts and when the other ends.

Separating your ideas with headings helps navigating. Another benefit is that good sub-headings can captivate the reader for the longer time in your website. Good headings leave the reader curious.

(3) Use Black Text (or Dark Grey) on White Background. You don’t want that your website looks like a circus show.

What do think about this? Do different colors give me authority? No.

Black text on white background is easy-to-read and it looks more professional than many different colors.

You can exceptionally use a bit of some colors like I have done in the end of my reviews. But only exceptionally. Don’t overuse colors. Black text on white background is cool and effective.

(4) Use Conversational Speak. Lay back. It’s just you and me.

Don’t use too formal text. People want that the text is easy to read and understand. Usually the best teachings are so easy that even a child can understand the message.

Usually You-form is the most effective because then the reader has the feeling that you are talking right to him/her.

(5) Choose a Relevant and Captivating Headline. You want people to read your text. You need to captivate their attention with the relevant headline.

Don’t tell everything in the headline. Leave people a bit curious. But say something that they are would like to hear. If your website’s theme is fitness and healthy lifestyle, great headline could be for example “How to get fit in two months?” People want to get fit fast and they want to know how to do it.

(6) Use Relevant Images. People are visual by nature. We get used to images already in the childhood when our parents read us children’s books.

Great images make our content more lively, it helps to remember the text better and it makes the whole website more appealing. (How to find free images.)

Summary

These six principles are great guidelines for you when you are writing texts. Remember, there can sometimes be exceptions but by using these principles your text will be very user-friendly. Your visitors will spend more time on your website and you will get your message through.

(1) Use Small Paragraphs
(2) Separate Your Ideas With Headings
(3) Use Black Text (or Dark Grey) on White Background
(4) Use Conversational Speak
(5) Choose a Relevant and Captivating Headline
(6) Use Relevant Images

I hope you found these tips helpful! If you have any comments or questions, please don’t hesitate to leave them below.

10

How to Find Free Images? – Millions of Images Available for You!

As you may know most of the images in internet are copyrighted. In the same way texts are usually copyrighted as well. Still there are millions of images which are totally free to use and you can find them in seconds.

Adding relevant images to your website is highly important. People are visual by nature. We grow up by reading books with a lot of images and a visual characteristic never leaves us.

With good and relevant images you make your content more readable and attract more visitors. Relevant images make the text also easier to understand and to remember what you are saying. But where to find free images?

Free Image Sources

• Your own personal camera
• Screenshots that you take
• Wikimedia.org
• Sxc.hu
• Stokpic.com
• Freeimages.com
• Pixabay.com

These are good examples of the ways you can find free high-quality images. There are other websites also but with in these websites you already have millions of images.

Many of the free images are very high-quality and taken by professionals so you don’t have to worry will you find good images. You will!

If you take own photos there is of course your personal touch and it can be fun. The drawback is that sometimes it may take more time and always the reward for the used time is not worth it. It depends what you are looking for but of course I encourage you to use the good quality images to make your website more appeal.

My Favorite Way to Find Great Images

Did you know that you can also find free images from Google? I will give you step-by-step instructions.

1.Go to Google Images and click settings and Advanced Search

2.Type in the “all these words” box what do you want to search.

3.Scroll down and in the last “Usage rights” sections, use the drop-down to choose what kind of license you want to have for the images.

4.Click advanced search and you can see all the photos that are free to use. Here are three free examples that I found from Google with the search “Images”. What do you think about the quality? I think it’s good enough :).

I use Google search many times because it gathers photos from many different websites so I can spare my time when I don’t have to search photos from many sites. Still I sometimes use other sites mentioned above to find more exact, relevant or higher quality photos.

Read the Rules

I just want to mention that there are different rules in different sites so you may want to read the rules before using the images from the new site.

Sometimes happens that someone adds images to a “royalty free” sites even though he/she doesn’t have copyright for the photo. It’s hard to know when this has happened but just be careful when you are using free photos.

There are also a lot of paid photos in internet but in my opinion there are enough free photos to use. But ifyou need really world-class quality photos for something particular it’s also possible to buy them from internet. If you are interested in photographing you can also start your own business by selling photos in internet but there’s a lot of competition.

I hope you found this article helpful! If you have any questions or comments, leave them below!

Where do you get the photos for your website?

4

How to Make Money Selling Other People’s Products?

You want to make money online? Yes.

You don’t have own products? No.

Is it possible to make income without own products? Certainly Yes!

Four Simple Steps

1.Choose Your Interest. First step is to decide what you are interested in. Do you like sports, arts, music, programming or dogs. I mean your interest can be literally anything. You don’t need to be an expert. But you certainly need to be interested in that theme. 

Okay, let’s say that you are interested in music, more specifically playing guitar. Once you have chosen your interest we can move to step two which is

2.Build a Website. Building a website is actually very easy and SIMPLE. The process will take probably 30 seconds. You will have a good-looking website which is the foundation of your online business.

You don’t have to know anything about programming or stuff related.

 

If your interest is playing guitar, your website will be related to that theme. You will be adding information, reviews and other things to your website. I still want to point out that you don’t need to be an expert but interested in that theme. If you are expert guitar player, that’s wonderful but not necessary in online business.

3.Attract Visitors. Once you have your very own website the next step is to attract visitors to your website. You attract visitors by providing value about your theme.

MORE PEOPLE MEANS MORE OPPORTUNITIES!

If your website is about playing guitar you can for example give tips how to practice. You can write reviews of your favorite guitars or link great guitar tutorials from Youtube.

4.Earn Revenue. Once you have your website and some visitors you can start earning revenue. Most easily this works by promoting other people’s products. You “affiliate” products that are related to your website’s theme.

In internet there are millions of different products that you can affiliate.

In your guitar playing site you can affiliate different guitars, guitar equipment, guitar training courses and others. For example in Amazon you can find 1,233,667 results for “guitar”. You can literally run a guitar business by selling Amazon products only. Once someone buys a product from Amazon, you get a commission. Simple?

Commissions Vary But even 80% is Possible From Some Online Products!

In our example your interest was guitar playing. But your interest can be anything in the world. I can assure you that there are affiliate programs for any theme in internet.

Internet is full of opportunities to earn money selling other people’s products. There are thousands and thousands of programs. Some of them provide you little 5% commission but some programs can provide you even 80% commission.

Let’s say for example that you promote a guitar which costs 500$ and you get 10% commission. That makes 50$ into your pocket. But if the guitar is 5 000$ with 15% commission it means 750$ into your pocket. And these numbers are totally realistic.

Just Remember those Four Simple Steps:

1.Choose Your Interest
2.Build a Website
3.Attract Visitors
4.Earn Revenue

Start Today

You can start the process today. I started my journey in Wealthy Affiliate and I can say from experience that it’s the great place to start making online revenue. In Wealthy Affilliate you will learn all the things and details you need to run a successful online business.

In this article I explained you the four steps, four principles of making money online but if you really want to make online revenue you need to go more into detail.

I just want to underline that all you need is the will to start learning.

Start Making Money Selling Other People’s Products Today

5

Perfection – Not Required in the Online Business

Hi there!

This blog post can work for you and me as a reminder what is really important in running a website, writing a blog and actually in life in general.

Many times in life fear of not being perfect can hold us back. To be honest I believe that perfectionism can be harmful for our progress in online business and life.

1-0 The Only Thing That Counts

Have you watched the football match where the other team dominated the action in the field during the whole game. But then the underdog scores in the last minute and wins 1-0.

Ball possession doesn’t make the winner, great shoots don’t make the winner or great individual performances don’t make the winner.

The only thing that counts is the number of goals you make

Of course ball possession can help you in making goals but it just doesn’t make you a winner. And same applies to life.

Great plans or dream don’t make you a winner. The only thing that makes you a winner is the action you take!

I believe that it’s important to dream big but after you have dreamed big and made plans how to achieve those dreams, the only thing that counts is that do you stick with those dreams and plans.

The Right Direction Is the Most Important, Not the Speed

If you start your very first website today, the website is not probably perfect. Let’s be honest with that. But as you start the website today and run it for three months I’m quite sure that it’s already way better after three months. The website has developed a lot and you had learned from the mistakes. (If you are interested in building a website, check out my easy instructions)

What would be the progress after six months, one year or five years!? If you start today, and stick with your dreams, nothing is impossible.

The most important thing is to start.
The second thing is not to give up.

If you remember those two things you can achieve literally anything in online business. Some people don’t even start and the majority gives up without trying enough. That’s the only reason they fail in online business.

Perfection Isn’t Necessary at all

You really don’t need to be perfect when you start. But atually you don’t need to be perfect afterwards. When you run a website, people are not looking something that is perfect. Does Craigslist or Reddit look like perfect? No, but still they are highly popular websites.

If you make mistakes with your website and its content you can always correct it afterwards if you want. It’s better to have 10 texts published than 1000 drafts waiting for a perfect day. Because “the magical perfect day” never comes.

Just make some progress today because Little progress every day counts up big results.

Do people want to act with someone who is totally perfect, without any mistakes, almost a robot? I guess that people would prefer someone who is a normal human being with two legs and hands. Just being yourself is enough.

If you are interested you can Start online business today.

I hope this text can motivate you to keep on going without the fear of not being perfect.

What do you think about the subject? Please leave a comment!