Sam Cherry

With unemployment going up, more and more people are looking for alternative ways to make money. One way is to make money online. It is so easy to start a blog about something you enjoy, and with a lot of hard work, start making some real money. I’ve often said that making money on the internet is simple, but not easy. It really does take a lot of work, but it’s not rocket science. Today, I want to share a free resource that can help you make some money blogging, whether you are just starting out or have been blogging for some time. The resource is called Flex Offers, which is currently offering a $200 sign-up bonus (more about the bonus in a minute).

How Affiliate Marketing Works

Flex Offers is an affiliate marketing program. Here’s how it works. Many companies want to advertise their products or services on blogs and websites (referred to in the business as publishers). Rather than developing the systems in-house to do this and reaching out to publishers one at a time, they use the services of an affiliate marketer like Flex Offers. Flex Offers does two things for these companies. First, it develops the relationships with publishers. Publishers sign up with the affiliate program, thereby gaining access to market the products and services of all the companies that have contracted with the affiliate. Second, call recorder lite takes care of all the accounting systems to make sure that publishers get credit for the sales they generate.

And that brings us to how publishers make money. When you sign up for Flex Offers, you get access to text links and banners for a variety of products and services that you can place on your website or blog. Here at The Dough Roller, I obviously focus on financial products, but Flex Offers has a wide variety of products and services to choose from. When a visitor clicks on a link or banner and buys the product or service, the publisher gets a small commission. The amount of the commission varies depending on the product or service and the volume that each publisher generates.

How to sign up and use Flex Offers

Joining Flex Offers is both free and easy. The first step is to sign up for Flex Offers, which you can do by clicking here (but make sure you read about the bonus below first). The sign up process takes just a few minutes. Remember, they will ask you for your social security number and eventually you’ll need to complete a W-9 (gotta love the IRS). Once you are approved, you can then apply to promote any of the products or services offered by Flex Offers. Applying to promote a given product or service is literally as easy as checking a box and hitting the apply button.

Since joining Flex Offers is free, you’d think there would be no reason to offer a bonus. But for a limited time, Flex Offers will pay out a $200 bonus once you earn your first $1,000 in commissions. Now I won’t kid you, earning $1,000 in commissions takes a lot of effort. If you added up all the income I earned blogging when I first started, it took me about eight months to make my first $1,000. But it’s a lot like investing. As you grow your business, the money compounds. Now I have single days where I make more than $1,000 (no, not just from this site, and no, not every day). The point is that money can be made if you put the effort into learning the business, and Flex Offers can help you get there.

P.S. If you are just starting out, be sure to check out a series that Patrick at Cash Money Life has just started–How to Start a Blog for Fun or Profit.

Just like their search engine Google has a scoring system for ranking Android Apps in the Android Market. Google does not completely reveal their scoring system for their search engine and the Android Market is no different. So what metrics should Android App developers pay attention to and what tactics should they use to gain more visibility in the Android Market?

Ranking an app in the Android Market is very similar to ranking a website on Google. A lot of basic Search Engine Optimization tactics can be applied to the Android Market. Here are some metrics to pay attention to and how to go about optimizing your app to gain more visibility in the Android Market.

• App Name and Description: You want to make sure that your app name and description best reflects what your app does. This will not only make it easier for potential app buyers to find your app but it will reduce the number of refunds as well. Make sure that you use keywords in the app name and description that will help potential app buyers find your app. Your app will be ranked on how relevant it is when potential app buyers do a search in the Android Market.

• Number of Downloads: The number of downloads will effect your app’s ranking and visibility. When you first release your app you can help get your app downloaded by contacting app review websites and submitting review requests. If you have a budget you can also consider purchasing ad space on these websites. For more detailed information on this read the  Free and Paid Mobile Marketing Campaign post. This can help you out a lot and make your app popular among users which can get your app some more visibility in the Android Market.

• User Ratings: If your app gets bad user ratings this will be bad for visibility. To get good user ratings for your app pay attention to the ratings and make improvements based on the user feedback. Good user ratings will help get your app more visibility in the Android Market.

• Installation Time: The shorter the installation time the better. There is not really much else to this metric.

Just like with a website you can figure out the other metrics to use to have your app gain more visibility by conducting weekly carefully controlled experiments. This can help you figure these other metrics out and see what works best for each of your apps.