What is ArtFire.com?

ArtFire is a website that provides you an online studio to buy and sell handmade items, similar to the well-known Etsy.com.

Joining is FREE and Selling is FREE too! There are some limitations with a free membership, such as a limit of 10 items in your store at a time and a limited number of pictures for each item. However, for a free deal, that is not bad at all! There are no commission fees and no listing fees for each sale either!

If you want to display an unlimited number of items in your online store, you may opt to choose a membership of $20/month. This is not bad at all considering there are no additional fees.

Even better... Right now they are offering $7/month for 5,000 lucky members! This special rate is good for the life, as you don't cancel. If you are interested, you better act fast! There are only 1,975 accounts left (at the time I posted this article). $7/month with absolutely no commission fee and no listing fee is hard to beat!

Invite your friends to join ArtFire.com and your membership could be free. When 10 people sign up at the (and reference your username) ArtFire will convert your membership to FREE for LIFE!!!

To take advantage of the limited $7/ month studio, simply Register on ArtFire.com now.

Visit AcornAccessories's ArtFire Shop

Make Money Writing Online

Do you enjoy writing? Are you good at it? Have you ever considered making money as a freelance writer?

There are many great reasons to get involved with freelance writing:

1. When you work as a freelance writer you can accept the jobs that you want to work. You decide what to do, as well as when to do it.

2. As a freelance writer you will have the ability to choose your own hours. If you prefer to work at night, so be it. If the day shift is easiest for you, that is fine too. I t does not matter when you want to work; as long as you get your work done.

3. Freelance writers can earn a lot of money. In fact, there are many who take home in excess of $100k per year. If that sounds like an income level that you would like to join, look into starting a freelance writing career.

There are dozens of websites offering opportunities to get started with freelance writing. There are also many freelance writing books and blogs to available to help familiarize you with the process. The more you read about freelance writing the better chance you will have in succeeding.

For some helpful information about how to get started visit:

How to Make Money Freelance Writing

How To Land A Writing Job

How to Make Money Writing Online Articles

Selling Handmade Items Online

Of course, just about everyone has heard of eBay - the world's largest online marketplace for buyers and sellers to come together and trade almost anything!

But, if you are selling quality handmade items, you might want to look into a site called Etsy, "The place to buy and sell all things handmade." Etsy is similar to eBay, however, the rules are slightly different. The platform at Etsy is fixed price items, no auctions, and each seller gets their own shop that can be uniquely customized (with a banner, an avatar, a shop announcement and a link to your store).

Etsy charges 20 cents to list an item for 4 months. Once an item sells, the seller is charged 3.5% of the sales price. Sellers are permitted to sell anything handmade such as jewelry, clothing, handbags, baby items, accessories, and household items. The site is exclusively for crafters and artisans.

Granted, there is no argument Ebay's traffic far exceeds that of the much smaller Etsy. But, Etsy provides forums in which to promote your store, your items or just to pick up ideas from a very friendly and helpful group of members. The chat forums on Etsy are a great!

Ebay is the place to sell items that you are selling at bargain prices. But, for quality handmade creations, Etsy is by far the better place to be.

If you're a crafter, Etsy is where you need to be. And if you like to buy handmade, rather than mass-produced, you will love ETSY.com!

I just opened my Etsy store in November 2008. I have had 16 sales so far. Check it out...

If You Blog, Consider Adsense

One of the most popular ways to make money on your blog is to utilize Google’s AdSense. It is a quick and easy way for bloggers to display ads that are relevant to their content.

AdSense is an ad serving program run by Google. It is "pay per click" "contextual" advertising, which basically means it is advertising that is in context with its environment (your blog).

Basically, you simply add a piece of code to your blog that helps Google analyze what your page is about so they can serve ads on that topic. This increases the chances of your readers clicking the ad which increases the chances that you’ll earn something from them.

AdSense also provide a variety of other income streams to bloggers including a site search tool (you make money by people searching your site) and referral tools (where you can make money by recommending Google products).

Some sites do very well with Adsense and end up making a lot of money. And yet, many sites do very poorly with the program. The biggest mistake people make with Adsense is they simply slap it in their websites and hope that it will automatically earn them big money. It isn’t necessarily that easy.

Your income will depend on a number of factors:

• the topic of your site (if you have high paying keywords you stand to earn more)


• responsiveness of users to ad (are visitors coming to your site with blinders in their eye or do they look at the ads as additional complementary resource)
  
• traffic (you earn more with more traffic, even if you have low paying keywords or other metrics)


• how you implement the ads on your site (some positions and colors work better than others)

I suggest you join the program and see how your site does with it. You have absolutely nothing to lose since it is FREE!

Let the fun begin!

So, where do we start?

There are so many ways to make money online. So, we are going to start at the beginning and explore the many, many options available to us. What works; what does not. What is waste of time and what you should try next.

I will share my successes and not-so much successes. I will share the results of my research and exploration as I try new and different ideas. And hopefully there will be some fellow "followers" that will choose to add their "two cents" along the way.

So, let the fun begin!