Set up Your Own Zlio Shop for FREE!!

I came across another way to make money on the Internet last week which involves setting your own online shop. You can do this for FREE via Zlio. With these shops, however, you don't need to actually handle the goods themselves or the payments. Effectively what you are doing is advertising the goods on your store, then people are re-directed to the merchant who actually sells the product and you take a commission! Setting up the shop is the easy part. You can choose from a range of templates, or create your own. You then add products that fit your shop - apparently there are 3 million to choose from! You can also add Google Adsense if you want to increase your income further. It takes literally minutes to get your shop up and running.

The tricky bits are first of all deciding on a niche and a name for your shop. Once your shop is ready your next challenge is trying to get customers to your shop, which is much like promoting any other website - except that some options (such as reciprocal links) are not an option. However, there are other tools available such as link exchanges with other shops and a widget that you can post in your blog (you can see mine in the sidebar) or website.

With your FREE registration with Zlio you have the opportunity to open up to 50 (yes, that's right 50!) shops. If you have 50 ideas for shops that is. I've just created one so far - another 49 to go! I have decided that it probably best to concentrate on a specific niche, so my first shop is focussed on all things organic, recycled and fairtrade. I have called it The Earth Store. So why not try it yourself. It's easy!

By the way did I mention it's FREE!

CLICK HERE TO CREATE YOUR OWN ZLIO SHOP

Never Enough Time

Before I discovered that there was money to be made on the internet I must have had lots of time on my hands. I began my foray into making money with paid surveys, clicking on freebies on cashback shopping sites and on paid to click ads. I got into a routine and gradually started building up some extra money. Then I hit upon the idea of putting together a website and blog, and launching into the world of affiliate marketing.

Now I find myself torn between adding more content to my website, looking for the best affiliates and adding posts to this blog. Then of course there are all the tasks you need to do increase traffic, such as web/blog directories, RSS feeds, articles, forums, entrecard, link referral, etc, etc......... In the meantime I continue to complete surveys, click on freebies and paid to click sites.

And then I keep coming across more and more ideas for making money on the internet which I want to try out. Not to mention the fact that I keep getting ideas for more websites and blogs....... Of course on top this, I have a wife and two children to spend time with, oh and a full-time job by the way. We have a house that needs some redecorating throughout following some work that we had done, and a large garden that needs a complete makeover as it currently covered in nettles and other such weeds (I think there is an idea for a blog in there somewhere.....). It currently resembles more of nature reserve than a garden.

There are just not enough hours in the day to do everything that I want/need to do. The only solution is to give up sleeping! Or perhaps to start a movement for an eight day week - i.e. you work 5 days and have three days off! We (i.e. the global community) would have to collectively think up (and agree on) a name for the eighth day. Or perhaps we should just call it "Day 8" so as not to offend anybody?! Except of course it would upset the Creationists who insist that the world was created in 7 days. Damn!!!

Paid to Review - Ciao and Dooyoo

I am intending to add a new section to Extra Cash Review covering paid to review sites, i.e. sites where you can write a review of a product and can be paid to for doing so. Generally you are paid according to how other people rate your review. This isn't something that I have done before myself, so I feel the need to try this out before I start adding them to the website. The main websites seem to be Ciao and Dooyoo.

I have been a member of Ciao for a while as they also do surveys. The company has now split in half so that there are separate websites for surveys and reviews. So far though I have only done the surveys. However, these have proved increasingly frustrating as I seem to be screened out of nearly all the better paid surveys. The only ones I am not are ones for which you are paid 10p for a 30 minute (or more!) survey. I have decided to opt out of these. So this is another motivation for trying the reviews, to see if I am any more successful in boosting my balance this way instead.

There is also Dooyoo which I joined a couple of months ago with the good intentions of writing some reviews, but I never got around to it. Dooyoo seem on first glance to operate on a similar basis to Ciao in terms of reviews, in that the money you receive depends on how helpful other people consider your reviews to be. Dooyoo don't offer surveys though.

Once I have had a go at these then I will be better equipped to add these to Extra Cash Review. The only problem I forsee is that in order to write product reviews I would have thought you would need to buy the things you are reviewing. Currently I am trying to avoid spending money on new things, so I may be limited. I have not searched the sites properly yet so I guess I will soon find out!

Totals for June

I thought it was about time to have a bit of a recap on what extra money we have managed to bring in over June. I have only counted what has actually hit our bank account or Paypal account, or in the case of shopping vouchers, actually arrived through my letterbox. So here goes:

Surveys: £31 (£14 cash and £17 shopping vouchers)
Writers Share: £1
Cashback Shopping: £10 (shopping voucher)
Eggs: £32
Mystery Shopping: £35
Ebay: £21.19
Squidoo/HubPages: £0
Affiliate programmes: £0
Ad Sense: £0

Total: £120.19

No too bad I guess, but somewhat short of my target of £300! I have been spending quite a lot of time on expanding the website so I haven't devoted as much time as I usually do to Ebay. I have some surveys that are due to pay out shortly so that should boost the July total.

I haven't really had much time to devote to Squidoo and HubPages and you do really need to put the time and effort in to get any sort of traffic to your lenses/hubs and to have any prospect of making some money from them.

I haven't had the affiliate programmes running long enough to make money from them yet. My Ad Sense total remains stubbornly at zero which is very frustrating!! I think I need to look again at the placement of ads on Extra Cash Review as they are a bit random at the moment.