music_mom30 - Online Stay at Home Jobs

February 9, 2014July 14, 2014

Wealthy Affiliate Review – My Personal Experience

Wealthy Affiliate Review

Name: Wealthy Affiliate
Website: www.WealthyAffiliate.com
Price: $0 Starter Membership (get free account)
Owners: Kyle & Carson
Overall Rank:

Welcome to Wealthy Affiliate!

I’m already welcoming you because if you’re reading my Wealthy Affiliate review you are only one step away from joining the WA family, one of the best online communities I’ve ever been a part of. I personally have been a member for 5 years and think that it’s one of the best stay at home jobs.

So what makes Wealthy Affiliate different? And why should you consider joining?

That’s simple. It is one of the most innovative and interactive Internet Business schools/communities online.

If you have been struggling to find work, online or offline and you are ready to stop looking and start working, then Wealthy Affiliate is the best place for you to begin.

I won’t sugar coat it for you though, I won’t say it is an absolutely perfect place, it has a few issues, but EVERY online community does – technology isn’t always perfect and something that is right for one person isn’t necessarily going to be right for everyone. Take Facebook and Twitter as an example. I personally prefer one over the other (no I won’t tell you which) and I know lots of people that feel the same way. That being said, one thing I love about WA are the owners and the fact that they never quit. They are constantly on the sidelines helping the people within the community and doing everything they can to make it the best place possible.

Let’s get to the Pros and Cons of Wealthy Affiliate so you can decide for yourself.

Pros vs. Cons

Pros:
– Complete training (for all levels)
– video, tutorials and courses
– Thousands of community members
– Over 13 complete and interactive classrooms
– Live help
– 2 Free Websites
– Free state of the art Web Hosting
– Access to the owners (Kyle and Carson) – Industry Experts
– Spam free environment
– $0 Membership. (Yup! It’s Completely Free!)

Cons:
– Too Much Information (the site can sometimes be overwhelming – but no worries, I’m there to help!)
– Sometimes the tools glitch, but that’s just technology for you! It’s never a long-term problem.

Wealthy Affiliate Product Overview

Wealthy Affiliate isn’t exactly a product. Anymore than a University would be. It’s a community and a place to get an online education. It offers tools and services and support that are unlike anything else out there. Be warned that it is a spam free place, so if your goal is to only infiltrate the community with something you’re selling, you’ll find the doors close for you. That’s one of the best things about Wealthy Affiliate. So many other communities have been taken over by spammers, but not WA. If you truly want to learn how to make money online, this online campus of fellow entrepreneurs is a great place to be. For networking, helping and getting help from others and using the state of the art tools offered there you can’t a better place to begin your own online business.

Unlike some other “products” out there, Wealthy Affiliate has something quite different; Active Owners. Kyle and Carson started it, continue to work on it and are there supporting the community on a daily basis.

Who Should Join Wealthy Affiliate?

Anyone interested in learning how to build their own online business and finally find success on the internet. Beginners who have no experience to those of you who have tried and failed – you can still succeed if given the right instruction and direction. And that is what Wealthy Affiliate provides. The Bootcamp is easy to follow and keeps you on track and helps you continually take action towards your goals. Although mentioned above that it can overwhelm some who join, the changes I’ve seen at WA over the years have really helped decrease those issues. It is extremely well laid out and easy to navigate.

So who is WA for? Everyone. If your interested in learning about creating an online business, anyone from any age in any country and any level of experience will benefit from WA.

Wealthy Affiliate Training and Tools

The training within WA is well organized, up to date and easy to follow. It includes training for all levels, from beginners to even the most experienced – the internet is always changing, there is always something new to learn.

The Wealthy Affiliate Classrooms include live weekly training classes, Q & A answer periods, are organized by topics, offer interactive discussions and are formatted for everyone and include both video training and tutorial training.

This is part of the reason it can seem overwhelming, because there is so much information at your fingertips. There are over 1,000 training modules within WA. But the way it is structured, it is easy to find what you need.

All of these tools are available to you. From a free website builder, free web hosting and a free keyword tool, you don’t need anything else in order to start succeeding online.

True, there are other places online that offer free websites. But none compare to Wealthy Affiliate’s, and with the free web hosting it’s a one stop shop…except it’s free.

As a member you have access to:

– Keyword & Competition Research Tool
– WordPress Express (a 3 click website builder)
– Low Competition, Cherry Picked Keyword Lists
– State of the Art Hosting
– 1,400 website templates/themes
– Rapid Writer

If you’ve been around the block already you know that there are thousands of “programs” and “products” out there that sell these things individually, usually for a pretty penny. But you get them all at Wealthy Affiliate, there is no need to look anywhere else. You are able to focus and begin working on your business the day you join and after that the sky’s the limit.

Never Underestimate The Power of a Community!!

You’ve heard the saying “it takes a village to raise a child”, well you can think of your online business as a child for now and the community within WA is there to help you turn it into something profitable, for you.

Inside WA you have a live, 24/7 community of support, including help from the owners as well as myself 🙂 I’m always happy to help you with any questions that you may have on your journey.

The fact that Kyle and Carson already have succeeded and probably have enough money to retire a thousand times over, they are still there, helping everyone. It’s quite remarkable and something very different than you’ll find anywhere else.

What Will You Be Doing After You Join Wealthy Affiliate?

Since there are so many ways to make money online, this is a very understandable question that I get often. Within Wealthy Affiliate you will have the choice.

You can either choose to build your business on a niche you are passionate about (it can be anything at all) and start the initial training course that will walk you through the steps or if you aren’t sure what you would choose, you can follow the Affiliate Bootcamp which will help you start building an online business that day on a topic that WA will choose for you.

It all begins with a niche website that will ultimately turn into an authority website that you have built from the ground up and something that can make you passive income in a variety of ways for years to come. You can make revenue through affiliate programs, ads, your own products and more. If you want a more in depth explanation go to my “make money from home online” post.

How Much Does Wealthy Affiliate Cost?

Wealthy Affiliate has two membership levels:

Starter Membership, $0 (Join Here)
Premium Membership, $47 per month / $359 per year (Join Here) – the first month is only $19!

Although FREE may seem to good to be true, I think you’ll find in this case that it isn’t. As a Starter Member you’ll be given instant access to the entire Wealthy Affiliate community. You’ll be able to access Live Chat, over 500 of the training modules, 3 classrooms, you’ll be able to network and comment, get 2 free websites and have complete access to the keyword tool. And that’s just mentioning a few of the perks.

The only thing out there better than the free membership offered at Wealthy Affiliate is the Premium membership at WA.

As a premium member you no longer need to worry about hosting fees, keyword tool fees, website builder fees, paying for help or searching the internet for help in your endeavor. As a premium member you’ll solely be able to focus on your goal and have everything you need all within the community at Wealthy Affiliate.

Once you become a premium member you’ll never have to worry about buying another e-book or scam product that claims to have all of the answers. You’ll already have everything you need.

My Final Say + Special BONUS!

I highly recommend joining the starter, it’s free after all. If you really don’t like Wealthy Affiliate once you get inside, please come tell me – I wanna know!

Once you’ve joined I will be contacting you personally within the first hour. I have only one request if you do join, set-up your account! It doesn’t take long and it will get you one step further in your goals.

Join Wealthy Affiliate, $0 Starter Membership Here!

How to Claim Your Bonus…

Once you’ve accessed your FREE Starter Account, I’ll be offering you a bonus (hey…no eye rolling…it’s not THAT kind of bonus – there are no upsells here, so no worries).

If you decide to become a PREMIUM member in the first 7 days at WA I will be offering you a bonus of a 59% discount. I will contact you personally on your profile and help you in any way you need to get help or claim your bonus. In addition to the discount you’ll also be getting personal help from me 🙂 you will also have access to the owners Kyle and Carson for any help you might need.

Wealthy Affiliate is unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, trust me. It’s worth the peek.

Summarized Overview

Name: Wealthy Affiliate
Sales Page URL: http://www.wealthyaffiliate.com
Owners: Kyle & Carson
My Overall Ranking:

My Wealthy Affiliate Review

VERDICT:

If you have any questions or would like to leave your own review/experience of Wealthy Affiliate, please leave them below.

Thanks!

Kat
Owner – OnlineStayatHomeJobs.com

February 27, 2014March 21, 2014

Sell Your Novels Online – How to Self Publish Your Book

Introduction: How to Sell Your Novels Online

If you want to sell your novels online but have no idea how to self publish your book so that it is the finished the product that you’ve always dreamed it would be, I will outline some tricks of the trade and resources for you in this article.

I have personally self-published 2 of my own books (currently working on a third) and have helped others to as well. Although my own novel writing and publishing journey only began a year ago I discovered the most inexpensive, easiest and effective way to get an extremely well-made copy of my work into my hands.

For some, it’s about the money. Many authors have gone the route of e-books as they are the cheapest and easiest way to get your novel into people’s hands. And that’s great. I made those too.

Want to know what I discovered? People actually prefer the physical copy of my book! I was astounded that I sold more copies of my book in physical print than I have in e-book.

I get it personally, I prefer real books too. Although I won’t discount the ease of having something delivered directly to my Kindle, so I go both ways.

Regardless of which direction you’d like to go, these are the resources you can use to sell your novels online.

How to Self Publish Your Book

First: Be Sure It Is Ready To Publish!

I can’t emphasize this enough. If you are going to self publish your book, make sure it has been edited, proofread and formatted before you even think about handing it out for public consumption. I personally freelance in this area, so if you need help at a modest price please contact me, I’d be happy to help you get your book ready for printing.

Second: Cover Art

The words are one thing. But a cover, and particularly a very well-crafted cover is essential. This is the image people see first, make sure it is eye-catching. It has been proven that a good book cover will outsell the competition in its sleep, regardless of the quality of the book itself! *cough* I also do cover art…just sayin’. If you need help there, here is a sample of my work.

Third: Formatting

For formatting you’ll need to figure out which devices you are wanting to submit to, they are all different. If you were like me, well I wanted my book everywhere, so I formatted it for everything. Including for PRINT, using CreateSpace. I made it simple by using the following places to distribute my book.

– CreateSpace
– Kindle Direct Publishing
– Smashwords

Smashwords was great because you can submit one “clean” word document of your novel and they will “prepare” it for all devices – including the Nook. But if you don’t want to use Smashwords for whatever reason, the same program that prepares it for Kindle can prepare it for the other devices too. And you guessed it…I can help with that too, if ya like.

I learned how to do all of these things so that I could save money. By doing it all yourself the act of self publishing your book will cost you… $0. Except for the small shipping cost to get a proof of your book from Amazon before you make it “live”. And I tell you, what a feeling that is after all of the hard work you’ve put into it!

What To Do After You’ve Published:

Once you’ve published your book it is now for sale in the marketplace. You’ll need to market your own material if you actually want it to do something. Otherwise, chances are it’ll just get lost out there, sad but true. If you’d like to learn some very effective ways of marketing so that your book has a chance to really be seen, read my review of the best and FREE place to learn online marketing.

There are a few other places you can use to have your book printed, I’ve personally used Lulu as well for a few other projects, but I really preferred the ease of CreateSpace and KDP as they are already attached to the #1 place to sell your novels online: Amazon.

If you have any questions at all about the process of self publishing your novel, please do not hesitate to leave me a comment below or contact me HERE.

Here are some links to a couple of projects I have worked on:

The Light of the Blue Pearl

Hank Butterfield

Wishing you all the best!

Kat
Owner – OnlineStayatHomeJobs.com

February 23, 2014April 27, 2014

Sell Music Online – Learn How to Make Money Selling Music Online

Learn How to Make Money Selling Music Online – Like the Pros!

My Introduction to Selling Music Online

As a previous starving artist I have definitely been in your shoes. So that I could afford to buy new shoes I started to sell music online: My music. I didn’t do it just because I have terrible stage fright and was trying to avoid the crowds while still doing what I love to do. (Okay, maybe that was part of the reason.) I did it by accident actually.

Let me explain.

I’ve been around for a while…no I’m NOT old. I just happened to be around in that perfect moment, that transition between when music was sold one way, until the internet took over and now it is sold an entirely different way.

Can I see a show of hands out there of how many of you used tapes? And I don’t mean the sticky kind. How about when you started to see the music stores start to shut down and you began to panic? Not just because you are a musician, but because you frackin like music!

Well. You can stop panicking. Yes, things have changed. But guess what? They have changed for the better and in our, “the musician’s”, favor. So if you want to learn how to make money selling music online, I am here to help you out and show you many ways that you can do that and perhaps STOP being a “starving artist”, unless of course you like being nostalgic and ya just can’t part with the term. It is catchy.

So, How Did I Discover How to Sell Music Online by Accident?

I actually just wanted to create a CD for myself. I had composed 12 songs and thought it would be cool if I had a CD. So…back in the day when I had a little extra “play money” (you know, before the economy…nose-dived) I printed 500 CD’s. I think it cost me $1000. Yeah, that was probably a bit excessive when I just wanted 1, but back then you had to buy them in bulk. I still have some lying around, but I have given away and sold most of them.

At some point I stumbled across CDBaby and joined hearing that they could get you on iTunes, and I remember thinking how cool that would be. That was back in 2002! I’m not even going to do the math, but you can see that things have changed a lot since then. It was only just beginning.

Then YouTube took over, I decided to make some videos. Guess what? In addition to some iTunes sales, I was now getting a ton of free traffic to my website and gaining fans…without really even trying (or leaving my house.)

I actually want to leave my house now, the stage fright has dissipated some…some, mind you. One of these days I likely will, but it won’t be because I HAVE to in order to make money selling music, it’ll be because I want to which is why I started writing music in the first place.

And as a free spirit, an artist, I can’t tell you how awesome that is. Or maybe, since you are one too, I don’t have to. You already know.

So now that you know a teeny tiny bit about moi, let’s get to it.

So How Do You Make Money Selling Music Online?

First: Create the music (I’m going to assume you already have.)

Second: Join a program that can help you distribute your creations. I joined CDBaby, they aren’t necessarily the cheapest, but I love them and would highly recommend them. The other places I would recommend are TuneCore and SongCast. If you want to see a comparison of the three companies check out this article (will open a new window).

Third: Start Promoting!

Don’t be intimidated by the word promoting. You can think of it as marketing, “work” if you like, or you can simply think of it as networking and gaining and fans and followers based on your own efforts, be them small or large.

With the many avenues at your fingertips the ability to reach as many people as possible with the internet means, more fans, more sales and more time to do what you love…make music!

Sure, you can still go the route of trying to get a record deal. But that doesn’t always make sense anymore – it depends on who you are and what you want.

Social networking offers so many outlets at an artist’s disposal. You can get creative in the ways you choose to promote your music. For instance, some artists include offering their music for free with a purchase of a t-shirt. The more fans you gain the more money you can make from selling merchandise like cell phone wallpaper, getting endorsement deals or even appearing on TV and getting advertising offers.

And creative bands continue to change the paradigm. At Hot Topic stores artists include their music for free with purchase of a t-shirt. Other bands sell hundreds of thousand of copies of their music as game files to download and play on Rock Band. Fame from social networking outlets allow some artists to sell large amounts of cell phone wallpaper, get endorsement deals, appear on TV and garner advertising offers and licensing opportunities. Still others are “breaking” in other parts of the world and get flown in, all expenses paid, to play festivals to tens of thousands of people.

Here Are a Few Places to Start:

– build a free website (this place offers free websites and can teach you even more ways to sell your music online)
– join Myspace, Reverbnation and Soundcloud
– create a facebook page
– open an Amazon store and sell your stuff!
– get on Twitter, Google+ and even Pinterest
– create videos – Upload to YouTube and Vimeo
– enter free competitions* (I’ll explain that one below)

*Free competitions. Okay, from personal experience these drive me crazy! Maybe because I just don’t have the patience or time to “Vote” all of the time – or my fans don’t either. But that being said, I have gotten more exposure because of them and a few even pay you and I’ve also made some really great musician friends from around the globe. Here are a few I like: ArtistSignal, Beat100, Citizen.tv, ShootShareWin.

A Few More Tips:

Use Amazon and iTunes to gain fans and earn more revenue. When you sell your music on Amazon and iTunes you have the opportunity to “rate” and “review”. And with iTunes you can create an iMix, an iMix is a playlist that you publish and make available to others in the iTunes Music Store. Creating one or more playlist like this which includes a few of your songs as well as other music (9 or so other songs by other artists is recommended) will help your music to surface on the other artist’s album iTunes pages (and your own). Give your playlist a cool name like, “Perfect Breakup Music”, or “Music for the Ultimate Workout”. Catchy titles will capture peoples’ attention. The more iMixes you seed into the iTunes store, the higher the probability that you will be found. And don’t forget to rate and review your iMix and have friends, family and fans do so for you as well.

Find MP3 blogs and contact the owner, this can be a great way to find new fans that will embrace your music and promote you. For a list of music blogs, click here.

All right, I don’t want to overwhelm you. I know how easy it is to do, with so many options, so many social networking sites, just…it’s a lot. I get that. As with any business, focus is going to be the key to your success. If you want to sell music online, and you’d like to be truly profitable, there is a lot more you should learn that I cannot possibly cover in this short post. To learn how to make money selling music online and utilize the techniques I mentioned above, check out the place I learned with this link – it’s free!

I am also always happy to answer any questions you might have. So please feel free to leave a comment below 🙂

Thanks!!

Kat
OnlineStayatHomeJobs.com