One sure-fire way to easily earn a passive income in 2013 超越!

Foremost on many of our minds is how to earn that extra dollar. It can be a daunting and challenging exercise to find that one thing that can possibly or most likely bring in some extra money to do the things we need to do daily, plan for in the future or just to save for a rainy day.

I have come up with one sure-fire way to help you along the way. Some of you may wonder what this has to do with publishing, since this is a publishing column, but what I am about to share with you is part of publishing as well as marketing, for one cannot occur without the other. It may even entice some of you to go out and be innovative and earn more when you see how easy it is.

Let’s start off by clearly understanding what a passive income is. Without getting all technical about it, I like to think of it as income earned with very little to no investment, effort and maintenance. In a nutshell, I consider it making money while you sleep. Isn’t that a dream?

A realistic dream too. Now don’t take this lightly. As with any strategy to make money, you just can’t set it up and leave it to work on its own. While this strategy takes minimal effort and investment, it does require some amount of work on your part to reap the dividends, but you can also get help by leveraging the efforts of others. We should all aspire to what John D. Rockefeller said: “I would rather earn one per cent off a 100 people’s efforts than 100 per cent of my own efforts”.

The sure-fire way I am speaking about is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing surrounds the promotion and sales of mainly tangible products such as books, digital products and even courses. This model revolves around three groups of people – the seller, the affiliate (you in this case) and the customer.

In terms of set up, all you need is a website or a blog which I am sure most of you already have, but if you don’t, you can easily set up a WordPress blog for free by going to HTTP://wordpress.com/

On your website or blog, you promote other seller’s products by using text or image links that will be attached to your affiliate ID. There is a tracking system that works behind the scenes so that anyone who clicks on your text or image link will be tracked so when they make the final purchase, you will be credited with a percentage of the price of that particular product. The price and percentage is set by the seller. Some sellers even allow for you to make money by the number of clicks you get on your link which adds to the pot.

There are many places you can go to search out affiliate opportunities, but I would suggest starting with something that is in your area that you like, so, 例如, if you like computers, or let’s say books, then you search out places that offer an affiliate programme and sign up to be able to promote their products to make some money. One place you can go is HTTP://www.clickbank.com. They already have a wide variety of categories and you can pick, choose and refuse what products you are interested in promoting on your blog or website. Remember, the purpose of your blog is simply leading your visitors to a buying decision by telling them about products that will help them reach their goals and fix their problems. It’s really as simple as that.

THE EXPERT ROUTE

Another great way is if you are an expert on a topic, let’s say computing, you can set up your own blog as a review site for computers. People are always using reviews to make a decision whether for travel, accommodation, places to go, or books to read and buy. Whatever the case may be, position yourself as an expert and start a review site where you can offer reviews on various products using your affiliate links in your content so when purchasers decide on going with what you recommend, you are rewarded! 简单, 右?!

To those authors who already have tangible products, set up your own affiliate system on your website or blog using a wordpress plugin which you can access here: bit.ly/UqvlsF

Set up is easy and it does everything for you after that. It’s your business on auto pilot. Why would you need to set up your own? Remember what Rockefeller said? I am sure by now most, if not all, of you have realised that you can’t promote and sell your books or products all by yourself, all the time. So why not have others help you? That is leverage off others, in order to get your books and products sold and your affiliates will also gain as well. It’s like having your own sales force at work for you. It is a win-win situation for all involved.

I can tell you it works, for I use it and my affiliates who truly promote do get paid using my system, but you need to have products. So here comes the part about being innovative that I mentioned earlier. Now that you realise that you need to have something tangible to sell online, it only means that you need to look within yourself to determine what you can create in a short space of time that offers quality and value.

在 2012, I wrote an article on ’5 ways to create your own e-book’, look back at it to get some suggestions and get started. Now it may not be an e-book for some of you, but this is a simple and quick way to get started.

This passive-income model is the one main way to earn that money while you sleep – guaranteed. Some sellers even offer up to 25 per cent commission on the selling price. There are people who earn US$100-200/day and I recently heard of someone in my network who made US$4,000 in four minutes just promoting the seller’s products. I was utterly shocked that it brought me back to my senses to get back on the train of affiliate marketing.

So stop whining and saying “nutten nah gwaan fi mi”. Many opportunities are out there for the taking. You need only to open your mind and pockets to the potential of affiliate marketing for 2013 超越.

In my next article, I will introduce you to an approach that is revolutionising the marketing industry as well as a tool you can use to your advantage that can explode your sales and business. Follow my Facebook page and website blog to get some hints.

Corine La Font is an author, certified author assistant and online book marketing specialist. Get a copy of her book at http://amzn.to/TFHQka. Tune in to her radio programme at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/helpdeskja. She can be reached at corine@helpdeskja.com or visit her website at www.helpdeskja.com.

该 “Meth Monsignor” busted for selling drugs after his kinky behavior got him suspended by superiors told his Connecticut flock he was leaving “to make more money,” a parishioner told the Daily News Saturday.

Pastor Kevin Wallin, 61, who could face life in prison for his alleged role in a cross-country methamphetamine ring, resigned from St. Augustine’s Parish in Bridgeport in June 2011, citing health and personal issues, church officials said this week.

But Wallin, who worked as a personal secretary to Edward Cardinal Egan for years when Egan was Bishop of Bridgeport, told parishioners a different story, one said.

“He said he was moving, being transferred,” recalled parishioner Bernedine Jordan, 52, a substance abuse counselor.

“He said he really liked it here but he was going to somewhere where he could make more money.”

Wallin’s money-making plan, according to federal prosecutors, was a drug operation that stretched from Connecticut to California.

And sources told the Connecticut Post Wallin may have laundered drug money through an adult video store he owned.

Church officials called Wallin “compassionate” and “gifted” after his indictment Tuesday. But the pastor — who dressed in women’s clothes and had sex in the rectory, according to Connecticut Post sources — was just the opposite, Jordan said.

“He was not a humble person,“她说. “He had a personality problem. He was very overly aggressive and he had anger. When I heard about the drugs, I was not too surprised. 我想, no wonder he was always angry.”

Open source technology is everywhere. It’s in your phone, your laptop, and it may run even the website where you’re reading this article. Thousands of companies have placed open source software at the center of their business. But how do they make money from something being given away for free?

Red Hat is the global leader in open source software solutions — and has a clear strategy in how to generate revenue. They package the popular open source operating system Linux as Red Hat Enterprise Linux and deliver it to enterprises with a promise of 10 years of support. Open source projects like Linux can literally change every day, so that’s a tall order.

“The functionality is a very small part of what companies are buying when they buy software,” says Red Hat CEO and president Jim Whitehurst in a phone interview. “We make the power of the open source development model consumable for the enterprise in the way they’re used to consuming software. We have engineering teams that track every single change — a bug fix, security enhancement, or whatever — made to Linux, and ensure our customers’ mission-critical systems remain up-to-date and stable.”

Paid support is one of the most common sources of revenue. This usually takes the form of an annual service contract but can also be available á la carte. Providers typically offer a tiered model, based on the number and urgency of requests. At the top end, a company may put dedicated, full-time staff on-site in their customer’s office.

Companies also package more substantial (and expensive) professional services with open source software. Often a customer needs help implementing the open source tech or may need help customizing it for their particular needs. They’ll pay to ensure it’s expertly installed and maintained. Other professional services may include quality assurance and training.

Why do companies pay for open source software support? Executives often feel more comfortable when they’re paying for something instead of getting it for free. They’re not buying the code base, but they are buying speedy responses to support queries, adherence to industry and regulatory standards, and so forth. 总之, they’re buying assurance that someone will be accountable for their technical problems when they arise.

But there are other successful strategies. ActiveState licenses their software by selling their language distributions, commercial versions of popular open source programming languages like Perl, Python, 和 Tcl. Perl and Python are especially attractive because they’re highly regarded and ubiquitous — many developers know how to work with them and like using them. ActiveState takes garden-variety Perl, Python, and Tcl and supercharges them. They guarantee quality-tested versions of the code; they manage complex licensing issues that come into play when you include open source software in other products; they maintain the code for you (记得, open source changes over time); and they provide on-demand technical support. These advanced versions of open source come at a price.

And just because they’ve released a version of their software under an open source license doesn’t mean that they can’t augment it, make significant improvements, and then sell it under a more restricted license. 例如, WordPress Enterprise is a souped-up version of the popular garden-variety content management platform. Enterprise customers not only pay for reliable hosting and support, but also for customization features unavailable in the basic product.

Using these companies and strategies as a guide, you can determine if your business will be able to make money with open source. Consider these points:

• If customers already pay for your expertise, then augmenting your offering with open source can work. 例如, when businesses choose Drupal as their web solution, they get the popular publishing platform for free. But they’ll pay good money for a developer like Acquia to build a custom Drupal theme, implement better security, and upgrade the open source platform as newer versions become available.
• For many businesses, the decision to go open source is a way to remove all barriers to adoption. If your business needs mass adoption to succeed, then open source can be an effective way to get your product into more peoples’ hands. Just be sure you’ve got corresponding, valuable services or complementary products at the ready to monetize.
• Often companies will pair open source technologies with paid solutions. In Mobify’s case, we give away the tools and materials so users can build their own mobile websites, and we make money when they launch those websites on our platform.

Whether they know it or not, businesses and consumers use open source software every day. While the premise of giving away your product may seem counterintuitive, there’s abundant proof that it can be a solid strategy for business success.

在 2012, Indian markets outperformed their global peers to deliver 26 per cent returns, quite unexpected at the beginning of the year. This is despite the virtual collapse of the manufacturing sector, reflected in the Index of Industrial Production growth of 1.1 per cent thus far in FY 2013, which has been the key factor behind India’s economic slowdown. 然而, the past few months have raised some hopes of a likely recovery in FY 2014. While the base itself will be favourable for growth, few other catalysts are emerging: monetary easing will lower cost of funds; renewed policy action will help kick-start several stalled projects and revive confidence for starting new projects; and a favourable currency will drive manufacturing exports.

After the strong rally in 2012, stock market valuations are back at long-term averages. Mean reversion, where things eventually move towards the mean or average, is our core theme for the next two years – FY 2014 and FY 2015. We see mean reversion across the board – government policy, macro economy, corporate earnings and stock markets. Let me elucidate.

Government policy: Consider the following – foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail permitted, banking amendments cleared, direct cash transfer initiated, fiscal deficit coming under control and monetary policy poised to support growth. 最后, it is business as usual once again on the policy front.

INVESTMENT TIP: How to build and protect wealth in 2013
Macro economy: Domestic variables should revert towards the mean. 例如, GDP to recover from decadal low of 5.2 per cent in FY 13 至 6.5 per cent and fiscal deficit back to mean of 4.9 per cent in FY 14 从 5.9 per cent per cent in FY 12. External sector variables, 然而, may settle at a new normal – current account deficit at 3-3.5 per cent and dollar at Rs 53 to Rs 55.

Corporate earnings: Expect FY 13-15 earnings growth to revert to the mean of 15 百分之 (compared with eight per cent during FY 08-13), and select sectors and stocks should also recover from their worst. Stock markets: Expect domestic institutional flows into equities to bounce back. If the market earnings was to grow at its long term average, expect the Sensex at a new high of 23,000 within the next 12 个月. Let me give you five key themes for 2013.

PSUs: Over the past 10 岁, 2002-12, PSU stocks performed well in the initial period. 然而, they underperformed the benchmark in the second half, more so in the past three years. Our estimates suggest that over FY 13-15, there is likely to be some mean reversion. PSU valuation de-rating seems overdone. With earnings getting back on track, there are multiple re-rating triggers as well: government policy engine back on track, pressure on PSUs to increase dividend payouts, higher FII participation and disinvestment.

Public sector banks: Over the past two years, public sector banks have underperformed significantly, led by sharp increase in slippages/restructured assets and deterioration in operating performance. With the impending economic recovery and monetary easing in FY 14, we expect balance sheet stress to peak out in the first half of this year. Banks’ Statutory Liquidity Ratio portfolio is at a multi-year high, which is beneficial in a falling interest rate regime. Valuations have seen some recovery and public sector banks now trade near their long-period averages. Improvement in asset quality trend would be a key catalyst.

Automobiles: Macro headwinds, which impacted the performance of automobile companies over the past 12 至 18 个月, are turning favourable, with initial signs of an economic recovery, likely monetary easing and increased policy actions by the government. Expected softening of commodity prices and favourable exchange rates would boost profitability. The improving macro scenario is coupled with company-specific triggers: depreciating Japanese yen should significantly improve Maruti’s profits, Mahindra Mahindra could witness significant upgrades on turnaround of loss-making subsidiaries, and Hero MotoCorp stands to benefit from expiry of royalty payments post June 2015.a

Metals: Despite a 30 to 40 per cent earnings growth, the market capitalisation of metal companies has fallen by 30 to 35 per cent over the last two to three years. Markets have de-rated metal stocks due to exponential growth in their capital work in progress and resultant increase in debt. As various projects start generating cash flows and capex intensity peaks over the next two years, net debt should start coming off.

Midcaps: 以上 2008-12, the BSE Midcap Index has underperformed the BSE Sensex by 17 百分之. Empirical evidence suggests that divergence between the two indices increases during a downtrend and narrows during an upturn. The one-year forward P/E( price-to-earnings) ratio of the BSE Midcap Index is at a 20 per cent discount to the Sensex and 18 per cent below its historical average since FY 04. Earnings growth estimate for the BSE Midcap Index for FY 13/FY 14 at about 25 per cent is significantly higher than that for the BSE Sensex, a positive for midcap stocks.

The author is Chairman and Managing Director, Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd

Facebook announced Graph Search, but monetization schemes haven’t been discussed. Here’s how we think Facebook will make money from its search engine.

Facebook has finally made the jump into search, and while monetization isn’t being discussed as much as the existence of Graph Search 本身, it’s only a matter of time before Facebook opens the floodgates currently holding advertisers back.

Analysts are buzzing about Graph Search’s monetization possibilities, with one analyst saying that one paid click per Facebook user could generate $500 million in additional revenue.

Currently Facebook has said that its hands are tied with smoothing out the kinks and solving the issue of scaling the platform up to handle the billion or so search queries that it already deals with. Zuckerberg responded to Graph Search’s monetization outlook by saying, “This could potentially be a business over time.” But we wouldn’t put it past the social network if in the next few months the first advertising unit or module on Graph Search is debuted.

So what will its ad products look like? We’ve got a few ideas on possible monetization schemes.

“Extend this Search”

If you look at the screen shots or the promo video of Graph Search in action, you may have caught a glimpse of the section titled “Extend this Search.” From the looks of it, Graph Search recommends additional results based on your friend’s interests. The module itself reminds us of Twitter’s “Who to follow” box, which promotes relevant accounts to the top of that module. In similar fashion, if you’re looking for a music venue nearby that your friends have visited already (whether they’ve liked the venue’s Facebook page or checked in) there may be multiple results. Chances are that many venues won’t surface on that module. So how can Facebook give businesses an edge over competitors? By offering them the option to slip it a little money for some of that sweet, sweet real estate.

Related Searches

Below the fold of “End of Results” there’s an additional field that says “Still looking? Try these related searches.” Here additional search terms are recommended to the users. While this may be a stretch, one way Facebook can monetize this section is by enabling advertisers to bid on certain keywords. Say you’re looking for “Photos from 2010” and Facebook recommends 2009 as an additional search query, advertisers could bid on the term “2009” and when clicked on and then have a photo from their Facebook page for example appear as the first photo in the results. But should Facebook attempt an ad strategy like this, it would have to be wary that search experience isn’t corrupted by brands.

Paid Results

In a similar manner to the related searches strategy that I mentioned above, paid opportunities for brands to interject their own content that shoot their content to the top of Graph results is a more realistic route. A strategy like this would provide an entirely native advertising experience. Take a look at Twitter’s Sponsored tweets and Tumblr’s Radar advertising program:  These ad programs fit seamlessly with the product and aren’t disruptive to the user experience. For instance if you’re searching for photos of friends from a recent skiing trip, you probably wouldn’t mind a photos of skiers and snowboarders from Red Bull’s or GoPro’s Facebook Page showing up.

Sponsored real-time search results

Google introduced the autocomplete real-time search feature, which it coined “Google Instant,” a few years ago and since then social networks Twitter and Facebook (and many other platforms with search) have followed suit. Facebook took their real-time search capabilities a step further with the integration of sponsored search results inside of the search box. To recap, Facebook app developers bid on specific search terms and when users type that query the developer’s app is recommended alongside the search results all inside of the search box. Say you’re typing “bars my friends like in New York City” into Facebook Graph, other bars could pay for a sponsored slot in the search results. Seeing as how Facebook Graph Search comes baked in with an autocomplete feature, we can’t see why Facebook wouldn’t offer recommendations to relevant advertiser’s pages when a similar feature is being promoted already. 

Restaurant listings

Foursquare and Yelp should be very, very worried. One of the highlights of Facebook’s demo on Tuesday was the ability to discover venues and restaurants, and this offers a cornucopia of monetization strategies – most of which can be taken straight from Foursquare’s book. In fact analysts have downgraded Yelp’s financial outlook for this year in the wake of Facebook’s Graph Search announcement.

Restaurants can pay to have their establishment listing show up at the top of the results. This would be in the vein of Foursquare’s promoted updates ad program. Facebook is already talking about how businesses can use Graph Search to their benefit. 

It’s about the money

Graph Search might be a new concept, but it’s still search — and that means there’s money to be made. Analysts are upgrading Facebook to $37, meaning that if you believe them now is a good time to buy Facebook stock. The monetization schemes we discussed above are entirely native-based ad products. Keep in mind that the social network has partnered with Bing to support Facebook searches for everything that Graph Search isn’t equipped to handle. We’re sure that Facebook is benefiting from the traffic it directs to Bing, but we just don’t know how much; Facebook’s not spilling the details on that partnership.

Graph Search is a powerful new feature, and one we’ll benefit from. 当然, that means so will advertisers. 

GE posted better-than-expected fourth quarter results today, with net profits of $4.01 billion, 上 13% from the fourth qua十亿 2011. Revenue for the quarter was $39.3 billion, up 4%, bringing the 2012 total to $147 billion.

Though the industrial giant has been expanding sales of oil and gas production equipment in emerging markets, and CEO Jeff Immelt has planned $1 billion in cost cuts, one secret behind GE’s unexpectedly upbeat earnings is the company’s continued reliance on its financing business for profits.

GE still produces more plane engines and medical-imaging equipment than any other company in the world, and the corporation’s reputation is firmly staked on the turbines, locomotives and oil pumps it has been manufacturing for nearly a century and a half. But GE Capital, which represented 55% of GE’s earnings in 2007, 和 45% last quarter (PDF), continues to account for an outsized, if slowly diminishing, portion of the company’s profits.

CEO Jeffrey Immelt said he wants to reduce GE Capital’s contribution to his company’s earnings to 35% 由 2015, and he initiated the process by shedding GE’s bank stakes in Asia and selling off its commercial property holdings in America. GE Capital’s core business, now that it is slowly getting out of real estate, is corporate loans, consumer financing, and private-label credit cards. GE Capital’s revenue dropped 6% 去年, to $46 billion, while revenue from GE’s industrial businesses rose 4%, to $111 billion.

The seeds for GE’s continued reliance on finance were planted many decades ago, when GE first ventured into lending (a business that quickly turned profitable, given the corporation’s access to cheap credit thanks to its AAA credit rating), and the phenomenon is telling of a broader economic shift over the last few decades, which has seen the growing financialization of the American economy.

GE Capital employs 50,000 employees today, and would be the fifth-largest commercial bank in America, ranked by assets, if considered as such.  Yet since GE remains first and foremost an industrial company, its reliance on its financing business presents complications.  As the WSJ points out,

The heavy reliance on GE’s lending business for profits highlights a conundrum faced by Chief Executive Jeff Immelt. His company is good at banking, but investors don’t value that business as highly as they do GE’s industrial units, which are struggling to post strong revenue growth.