Great ‘Bit On The Side’ Hunt

WSO

competitionscafe wrote:

edit - just to add, amazon web services (mentioned by websiteowner) is more technical but you can just use their standard associate program links (as above) to start with and then consider more complex stuff later - to use their standard associate program links you just need to be able to cut and paste (like adsense).

Sorry, perhaps I should have made it clear that the basic "cut and paste links and banners" are available with Amazon - but when I started (1999) the choice was very limited so I made heavy use of AWS from the early days and haven't really looked at the cut and paste solutions since.

I recall they mentioned a feature where you can use a keyword instead of a particular book when designing a banner/ad unit and it will provide links to the most relavant items and is updated as new ones become available - but while they are much better than they used to be I really like being in full control with AWS.

If you don't mind working with the designs that are available then you can get started with Amazon very quickly and easily as competitionscafe said... but if like me you like full control then AWS is the way to go and does have quite a learning curve if you want to do it yourself and are not technically minded.

sprinkle_2

Thanks for the information on the surveys and mystery shopping. Have registered with a couple of sites but I am worried about how much information they have taken and whether they are actually looking for researchers not just lots of information from gullible people like me.

Has anyone else fallen foul and ended up with a lot of adverts being thrown at them?

I do love all the ideas everyone is coming up with, just hoping I can find one that will suit me.

Thanks

Janet

BungleGirl

I love the idea of eBooks but how do you create an eBook? I know that you can download a free eBook reader but do you have to buy eBook publishing software or something? How do you stop someone copying and pasting what you have written and selling it themsleves? Oh, and how long are these eBooks - I don't know how much to write before I can sell one.

Thanks to anyone who can shed some light on this!

And one more question - are eBooks allowed on eBay? I had a look at the 'is my item allowed' bit, and it looked as though you are not supposed to sell them but there are thousands on eBay!

competitionscafe

You would write them in Word and then convert the word file to a .pdf with software. There is some free software which does this for you I think.
See this article: 4 Big Reasons Your E-Books Should be PDFs
http://www.juicedconsulting.com/art_jt_pdfebooks.php

You can sell e-books on ebay if you have resell rights or are the author. (although ebay may not be very strict at enforcing these rules, hence the high numbers of e-books on there, many of which are probably of low quality). If you are the author, then there are also other places you can sell your ebook, eg: eBookAd - http://www.ebookad.com/publish.php3

To prevent copying and theft you would need to have a website with a password protected section or only send the ebooks to confirmed buyers as an attachment. If it's your own work you will own the copyright, but should also make this clear in the ebook.
This site is selling an ebook about writing ebooks but there are some short extracts from some of the chapters which you can read for free:
http://www.ebookfarming.com/

There is also some good advice on coming up with a topic for your e-book in these posts:
http://www.selfstartersweeklytips.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6193
http://www.selfstartersweeklytips.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6150&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

You may also find this free e-zine newsletter helpful?
http://www.juicedconsulting.com/iparchive.php

BungleGirl

Thanks competitionscafe it all makes much more sense now! I understand much better now - I didn't realise that an ebook was a pdf - that simplifies things in my mind now.

I will have a good look at all of the links that you have kindly provided now! I think I can write off this weekend to research - such a shame that I probably won't have time to do the ironing!

Thanks to everyone who has posted on this thread, the information on websites and affiliate schemes has been especially usefull.

I shall have to head over to ebay now and buy at least one ebook if only to see how many 'pages' these things have in them for the money they charge.

competitionscafe

No problem - I also managed to find the link to free software to convert word documents into .pdf files/pages to create an e-book. The easiest one to use is:

http://convert.neevia.com

Which converts, for example, your Word doc into a .pdf with working
hyperlinks. The only catch to that online converter, though, is the file size
musn't exceed 1MB.

For bigger files try: http://www.pdf995.com/

Another alternative is to download and use Open Office - which is free - this is basically open source (free) word processing software (similar to Word) which has a feature in it to convert your document into .pdf

Or just do a search on google for free word to pdf convertor and see what you can find...

Also, there is a forum here for just for ebooks, to discuss "Writing Ebooks, Formatting Ebooks, Selling Ebooks, Giving Ebooks Away, Rebrandible Ebooks... discuss anything ebook-related!"
http://www.selfstartersweeklytips.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=45

aliwatts

competitionscafe wrote:

Hi Ali, yes you will need some kind of hosting for your web address (domain name) - as suggested earlier you could buy a .com domain at https://www.doteasy.com for $25 which is about £14 (for 1 year) and this includes web hosting for a whole year. They may not be the best host in the world but they are fairly reliable and for just over £2 a month for your domain name and hosting this is about as cheap as it gets. With a decent website which has good quality content, adsense ads and maybe a few relevant affiliate program links (amazon, etc) you should easily make more than the £2 a month needed to cover your costs and give you some extra cash.



Hi, thanks very much for this advice, its really useful, I will give it a go. Keep up the good work, its really helpful for lots of people.

Ali

love2save

My hubbie and I used to do research trials for a place in Surrey and made good money. If you have free time and fit the category it is definately worth it. My hayfever now stops me and hubbie can't get time off work anymore which is a great shame. http://www.hpru.com/

competitionscafe

Found a good very basic guide to making a web page for those who have never made one before, at:
http://webdesign.about.com/cs/beginninghtml/a/aa033103a_p.htm

Basically just copy and paste this into Notepad:

<html>
<head>
<title>My First Web Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello World!</h1>
<p>This is my first Web page.</p>
</body>
</html>

Then save the file as a .html file and open your saved file. Easy!

Then you can add more text in the bit between <p> and </p> and play around by adding some of the tags at http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_primary.asp to see what happens!

chris1sc

Wow, Thanks competitionscafe.
Great tip