Essex Fashion Awards
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Make Money Online (Beginners)
Making Money Online
Making money easy by surfing the Internet is something that is always a big question on peoples minds, we hear on a daily basis about people making 5 or 6 figure sums working online and I would like to share a few thoughts and ideas with you.
Platform
Having a platform to work from is always a great idea (although not 100% necessary), your platform could be a website, blog or even a group or page on a social networking website, there are many ways to create a “home” for your cause or product you are trying to promote.
If you are just starting out then no doubt you have come across pay per survey or quiz website’s and you may already have an account and tried, my guess is that you either got bored or found that you did not make enough money to make it worth your while, for this reason I am not going to endorse or link to any pay per survey websites!
To begin with there is some things that you need to know:
- If it seems to good to be true then you should research more because it probably is to good to be true, many people loose money by paying up front, never pay money up front… ever!
- If you need money NOW then online marketing is not for you, online marketing is something that does not happen over night but WILL give you a steady revenue stream if it is done right.
- Use your common sense, this is the most important thing you need to be doing at all times when working or looking for wok online.
- Get rich quick schemes only benefit the person who comes up with the idea, we have all seen it; the guy who has the nice car, nice house and holiday home, a nice banner on the website with floating money… and they are giving it away for next to no money???? – No money up front right?
To earn money online you still need to “work”, now this does not have to be 9-5 but the more you put in, the more you get back.
You will need a niche or topic, this will need to be something that you love and have a passion for, you will get bored otherwise.
When picking a niche you should think outside the box, people search the Internet for literally everything today right down to the smallest things around your home, you need to find a gap in the market, I bet you have in the past said something like: “why is there no ??? online” or “I can never seem to find a decent ???”., why not create it?
Some of the most profitable website’s online are blogs, you can get a free blog at blogger.com or Wordpress.com or you can invest in some affordable hosting and get yourself a domain name, most hosting companies have website builders where you can easily create a website.
Once you have your “platform” you will need a way to bring traffic or visitors to your platform, the only true way to do this is to create good quality information (content), so say you have picked your niche / topic and it is laver lamps, you could write about how they work, safety, tips, make your own (if such a thing exsists), where to buy them from ect, this is probably a small topic but then I bet there is a large market for them!
So you have now written about your niche and need to open the revenue streams, you will need an affiliate program, there are many places to sign up (free):
- Bitvertiser, with bidvertiser you can Promote your Website with BidVertiser. Get $20 in FREE clicks.
- Commission Junction, with CJ.com you can advertise banners, text links and promote individual products.
- Google Adsense, with Google Adsense you apply code to your platform and then relevant adverts will be displayed, this is pay per click so you get paid every time someone clicks
Other than that you can look for relevant website’s to your platform and see if there is an affiliate link, sign up and promote just like this weight loss website where you could earn up to 30% of each sale (about $15 per sale!).
After you have your platform, your links added and your content then its just about plugging your website and getting visitors to do the buying J
Take a look at our SEO category for promotional tips!
Good Luck
Website & Blog Promotion
Something that is always… always asked is “how do I promote my blog / website” and the simple answer is: Time and patience, Rome was not built in a day and indeed a lot of the big website’s / bloggers have been around for years only to reap their rewards later on.
The bad news is there is no secrets, there is no secret website were you can submit to thousands and your done and there is no use in using “black hat” SEO services, I am not saying that all SEO services do not work but there are many people out there who have lost a lot of money getting “guaranteed positions” for keywords that have no competition or little interest.
You have probably been surfing the internet looking for the secret recipe for promoting your blog and seen forums that have this question asked every day and most of the time you will get back the same old answer… “content is king”.
The good news is that content is king (in my eyes) just as much as quality content is queen and the princes are your inbound links, there is no quick fix just promises of good position but that does not help you create a great blog.
To make a blog worth something there needs to be something of value within your blog, something that is not on any other blogs, an edge, something that will make your visitors hit the share button, something that will make you visitors subscribe because there is a good reason and benefit from doing so.
Creating a blog, adding a couple of keyword rich articles, Adding meta tags, buying back links will not do this for you, good old fashioned hard work and patience is, it really is post by post, this is what blogging is about right?
Before you start on your domination or the blogging world you really do need to think about the niche you have chosen, are you still going to be interested in this niche in a years time?
It is a good idea to blog about your hobby or passion this way you will never get bored of it, treat blogging as a part of your hobby to begin with because you stand a good chance of not getting any great traffic or revenue for a year plus.
Time + Unique “quality” content + patience = Success!
Please remember to subscribe as I am going to be posting many many more hints and tips to do with website promotion in the near future 
How to make Facebook Application
This is probably the most basic app you will ever make, this is a good place to start if you are new to making apps.
You will need to download the PHP client libraries from Facebook, this should consist of:
/facebook.php
/facebook_desktop.php
/facebookapi_php5_restlib.php
/jsonwrapper/jsonwrapper.php
/jsonwrapper/jsonwrapper_inner.php
/jsonwrapper/JSON/JSON.php
/jsonwrapper/JSON/LICENSE
In this example I have placed these is a folder called "client" this will keep everything tidy and seperate from the files in the root.
Next thing you need to do is:
- Visit the Facebook developers page
- You will see a button on the top right hand side saying "Set Up New Application" Click this button.
- Enter your desired name for the application and accept the terms and conditions.
- Application Name
- Application ID
- API Key
- Secret
Now for the script, this is pretty self explanatory, all you need to do is use the essential information (API key and secret) to fill in the variables on this script then upload it to your server where the application will be hosted.
<?php //add your api key here $api_key = ''; //add your secret here $secret = ''; //include facebook.php from the PHP client libraries folder include_once 'client/facebook.php'; //initiate the class $facebook = new Facebook($api_key, $secret); //require the user to login $user = $facebook->require_login(); /*----- All of the above is required-----*/ //welcome message echo "Hi "; ?> <fb:name firstnameonly="true" uid="loggedinuser" useyou="false"></fb:name> <?php echo " your basic app is working!"; ?>
Now this is completed and uploaded you need to go back to Facebook and click on the "canvas" tab on the right, you will now see a section that says "required URLs". You now need to choose a Facebook url.
Then you need to enter the url to the page above that you have uploaded to your server.
You can now test your first Facebook application!
PHP Conditional Statements [if() switch()]
One thing you can do with PHP is add decision making capabilities to your scripts
The most common conditional statement is the if() statement, here is how it is used:
<?php
$number = 10;
if ($number == 10)
{
echo 'The number is ten!';
}
else
{
echo 'The number is not ten!';
}
?>
The result would be: The number is ten.
During this conditional statement we have come across another operator, the two equals signs and all these mean is explicitly equal to.
Here is a list of operators that you may need when using conditional statements:
== //equal to === //equal to and of the same type !== //not equal to and not of the same type <> //not equal to (same as !=) < //less than <= //less than or equal to > //greater than >= //greater than or equal to
So using our new found operators we can now create another conditional statement:
<?php
$number = 10;
if ($number >= 11)
{
$result = 'The number is more than eleven or equal to eleven';
}
else
{
$result = 'The number is less than eleven';
}
?>
Now we can have instead of just two possibilities, we can add more using elseif():
<?php
$fruit = 'apple';
if ($fruit == 'apple')
{
$color = 'Red';
}
elseif ($fruit == 'Bannana')
{
$color = 'Yellow';
}
elseif ($fruit == 'Pear')
{
$color = 'Green';
}
else
{
$color = 'Unknown';
}
// Now display the data
echo "<p>The $fruit is $color</p>";
// In this example because the fruit was apple the color will output red so the string will read:
// The apple is red
// If you was to change the fruit to mango the the color would be unknown as there is no color set for mango:
// The mango is Unknown
?>
Switch statement coming very soon!
Nesting conditional statements
It is possible to nest conditional statements in order to handle multiple conditions and this is done so like this:
<?php
if ($shape == 'Square')
{
if ($color == 'Red')
{
if ($size == 'Large')
{
$item = 'The item is a large red square';
}
}
}
?>
You can use logical operators instead of nesting statements and this is done like this:
<?php
if ($shape == 'Square' && $color == 'Red' && $size == 'Large')
{
$item = 'The item is a large red square';
}
?>
Using logical operators is probably the better way to do things!
PHP Operators (Basic PHP Operators)
Now that we have the variables lets do some maths using operators, operators are the symbols that connect all the variables together.
Simple maths with PHP:
<?php // Define variables $number1 = 123; $number2 = 2; // Add $total1 = $number1 + $number2; // Subtract $total2 = $number1 - $number2; // Multiply $total3 = $number1 * $number2; // Divide $total4 = $number1 / $number2; // Modulus $total5 = $number1 % $number2; ?>
Now lets use auto-increment and auto-decrement operators
Auto-increment
<?php // Define variable $total = 123; // increment it $total++; // $total is now 124 // This is the same as $total = $total + 1; ?>
Auto-decrement
<?php // Define variable $total = 123; // decrement it $total--; // $total is now 122 // This is the same as $total = $total - 1; ?>
PHP Commenting your code
You may have noticed that I have commented the code and if you have tested any of the scripts so far you will have noticed that these do not effect the script itself, these are great for developers to take note of lines of code, greater understanding by other developers as to why you have done certain things and a lot of developers use the multiple line comment to display licensing information, here are the different types of comment you can use:
<?php // This is a single line comment # This is also a single line comment /* This is a multiple line comment */ ?> If you wish to comment in HTML then use the following: <html> <title></title> <body> <!-- Your comment here --> <?php // Code here! ?> </body> </html>
PHP Variables (PHP Basics)
Now you have the basic layout down to an art, it is time to make our basic script more dynamic and we will be firstly doing this using variables, variables are strings that change
In the following example we will be assigning variables and using them within the exciting script
<html> <head>PHP Test Page</head> <body> <p>Jack is wearing green trousers</p> <?php // Define your variable $name = 'Jill'; // Now display the variable we have set echo "<p>$name is wearing a blue skirt</p>"; ?> </body> </html>
This may sound very simple and pointless at the moment but the further you get into PHP, the more you will realize just how much you use variables ... Please note that when you echo a variable you must enclose it within double quotes, single quotes will not work, you can echo variables on their own in the following way:
<?php // Define your variable $color = 'red'; // Display variable echo $color; ?> //You can also display a variable like this: <?php // Define your variable $color = 'red'; echo '<p>My favorite color is '; echo $color; echo ' what is yours?</p>'; //This will display: My favorite color is red what is yours? ?>
Now we know how to display single variables we can move onto displaying multiple variables.
<?php // Define variables $name = 'Jill'; $age = '23'; $email= 'jill@example.com'; // Build a sentence with all the variables echo "$name is currently $age years old, you can contact her on $email"; ?>
The sentence above is all well and good but it is a little bland, now lets make it a little dynamic
<?php // Define variables $name = 'Jill'; $age = '23'; $email= 'jill@example.com'; // Build a sentence with all the variables echo "$name is currently $age years old, you can contact her <a href=\"mailto:$email\">here</a>"; ?>
You will notice the slashes added to the left of the double quotes, these are important to keep the string from generating errors.
Introduction to PHP (beginners)
The main aim of this blog category is to teach you the basics of PHP, by the time I have finished my posts you will be able to use your new found knowledge and build yourself your first basic content management system and to give you an insigt into building applications with PHP, the further we progress, the more complex things will get so if you are a PHP beginner then it might be a good thing to start atthe beginning.
Basic Page Layout
PHP allows you to embed commands into HTML pages and wrapped around these commands must always be special start and end tags:
<?php // Some PHP code here ?>
Now we know how to embed PHP into a HTML page, lets se a sample of this in action:
<html> <head>PHP Test Page</head> <body> <p>Jack is wearing green trousers</p> <?php echo '<p>Jill is wearing a blue skirt</p>'; ?> </body> </html>
Feel free to save this script to your server and test it out.
You will see by the diagram that we have just created our first PHP script!
