These communities could include places like online forums, blogging environments,, social media sites and so on.  What follows are some guidelines that will help you promote your product or service responsibly online, thereby giving you a better chance of making money from home.

Give back to the community: If you are in an online community such as a forum where you will be interacting with others, it may be fine to promote your business, but you should also contribute something to the group.  Rather than simply dropping in on a discussion and heading straight to your sales pitch, actually try to join in the conversations that are going on.  Share your knowledge and opinions, and be considerate of others.  If you do this, people will be more responsive to your sales efforts down the line.  You will be seen as a credible member of the community, and not just a spammer.

Observe the rules: This is of the utmost importance within online communities.  You should always read the terms of service for any site where you plan to promote your business.  Some sites simply don’t allow for any kind of promotion that results in commercial gain.  If you encounter one of these sites do not try to break the rules.  If you do, you will quickly get yourself banned from the community.  If you are selling another company’s product, you may even get into trouble with them if you are reported for spamming.  Even if a community does allow for some advertising, only share sales information, links and the like in areas of the  community where they are welcome.

Don’t advertise in unrelated communities: If you are selling sports equipment, only try to promote your items on sites that talk about sports.  Joining unrelated communities with the sole purpose of making sales will get you labeled as a spammer.  Also, trying to sell in such places won’t make you much money, as community members are far less likely to purchase what you are offering.  It is also bad practice to misuse the social media sites.  Don’t try to get thousands of Twitter followers just to give them your sales pitch.  This is not the proper way to use such sites, and once again, it won’t make you much money.

I hope these tips are helpful to you whether you choose to join affiliate based work from home companies, or sell your own products online.  Please share this post with others if it has been helpful to you, and please come back again soon.

I wanted to write a brief introductory post today about another way to make money with video.  I want to tell you how you can make money by selling a video product.  What exactly is a video product?  Well, it is a collection of videos that is of commercial interest to others because it teaches them how to create or use something.

Maybe you are passionate about photography.  You could do a set of videos that shows someone how to choose the right camera for their needs, how to take the best action shots, or how to do some editing with the latest photography software.  Maybe you are a web designer who would be interested in creating a video product that shows people how to build their own site.  Anything is possible.

Once you have created your video product, you could sell it on a website that you create, or even burn the videos to a DVD and distribute it to your customers through the mail.  You could potentially earn a lot of money because you will be able to keep all the profits you make from this kind of venture.  The product will belong to you, and you will be selling it on your own for the price you think it is worth.

To get you started I have a few basic tips for now.  First, you need to keep quality in mind.  Make sure that you have a good webcam or digital video camera to do your work with.  Also make sure that you have the proper microphone as there is nothing worse than a video with poor sound quality.  Please also be sure that your video series follows a logical order and that each video is easily digestible.  You want to break the videos up into chunks that each cover a specific facet of the subject you are trying to teach.

I hope this post will help you to get started making some money with video.  In the future, I will offer more posts on working with video, and on how you can use it to make money from home.  I hope you have enjoyed this quick introduction to video products.  Please join me back here again soon, or subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed to learn more about work at home opportunities on the internet.

I want to tell you about a website that will offer you money for allowing people to download the photos you take, and use them for commercial purposes.  The site is called Big Stock Photo, and I think it offers a good opportunity for passionate photographers looking to make extra money online.

How much can you make with this service?  According to the terms, they will generally pay you between $0.50 and $3.00 every time someone downloads one of your pictures.  They do offer a program that will pay you considerably more if you are willing to allow their clients to purchase your images for reprint on mugs, tee-shirts and the like.  When customers buy your work for these kinds of purposes, you can potentially make as much as $60 for each download.

Make sure you have a look at the site to see exactly what your rights are before sending in any of your work.  Keep in mind that they expect images to be sent to them in digital format (a number of popular file types are supported).  They also have some recommendations as to the kinds of images that tend to sell well on their site.  The service even offers a page listing photographs that they are in need of, and they show you some examples of what they consider to be high quality images.  Checking out all of this information should help you maximize your chances of earning money with the service.

With regard to payment, be advised that there are minimum account balances that must be reached before you can receive your money.  You can request payment through PayPal once you have earned at least $30.  If you prefer, they are also willing to pay by check if you have earned a minimum of $50.

If you’re already a photography enthusiast, Big Stock Photo could be a great way for you to work from home doing what you enjoy.  Please feel free to comment here about your experiences with the service, and please join me back here next time for another money making idea.

The trouble is that many people just do not believe that these websites will actually deliver the free products they promise, and decide that it is not worth it to try them out. The easiest way to get referrals in this case is to use a service like Refstop.  Refstop is a referral trading service that will, for a small fee (of $6), allow you to trade referrals with other members.  It works like this:   Member A is looking for referrals to get a free mp3 player.  He goes to member B who is working on getting a free Iphone.  Since member B has not yet signed up for the mp3 player site, he agrees to be a referral for member A if A will in turn sign up under him at the Iphone site.

Refstop has plenty of members at many different free product sites.  It is very well organized, and trades generally run smoothly.  There is even an option to offer a small cash payment for referrals if you don’t want to bother with trades.  If you should have any problems with the service they have written up a guide for using the site, and also maintain an active forum where you can communicate with both Refstop administrators and other members.  To top it off, there is a free trial that allows you to see how the whole system works before you pay the membership fee.  In my opinion, Refstop is well worth its nominal $6 fee.  It is by far the best option you have if you encounter problems getting the referrals you need in order to receive free products.

If you want to work at home by learning how to sell products online, Refstop is a great tool to help you get some merchandise so that you can start earning.  I hope you have enjoyed this post, and I look forward to welcoming you back to the blog again soon.

You probably already have some ideas about this.  Maybe you have an offline business, and are familiar with the best selling products in your niche.  Maybe you have simply been following news or television ads about the latest hot product.  In either case, once you have a product in mind that you think you could profit from, you will undoubtedly begin to look at ways of getting a few test products at a low cost to see how well the item actually sells.  The aim of this post is to show you a creative way of getting very low cost or even free sample products that you may not have thought of before.

Before going into exactly how to do this, I have a brief back story that describes how I discovered this method.  A few years ago, I wanted to purchase an Ipod as a gift, but at the time the $300-$400 price was a bit over my budget.  I looked all over the internet, but I simply couldn’t find a great deal for the product.  Eventually, my search led me to a site that promised a free IPod.  Naturally, I was skeptical of the offer, so I checked around to see what others said about the site.  To my surprise, the reviews were good, and since the site was free to join anyway, I signed up.

After reading the site’s terms carefully, I found that in order to get my free product, I would need to complete a sponsored offer, and get a few friends to do the same.  The offer I selected was a trial of the Blockbuster Online service.  The trial was free, and I was credited for the offer quickly.  I then got a few friends to do similar offers, and before long I had earned the free Ipod.  The company who awarded it to me even covered my shipping charges.  If you follow this approach, you may incur a small shipping fee of perhaps $5-$10 for your free trial item, but that is it!  In the end, you will have earned a big ticket item that you can sell on eBay or any other site.

If your test product sells well, you can look into partnering with a wholesaler to buy a larger quantity of merchandise.  You can get many kinds of high value items that are hot in stores right now using this method.  For a small sample of the items available check out the Freepay Network.  In my next post, I will show you how you can get free products, even if you can’t find friends to sign up as referrals.  I hope you come back soon for more information about how to sell products online as a means of earning a work from home income.