Make Money Online|How To Make Money

Many people are asking how to make money in the end, what is the best way to make money? I feel the best way to make money is this: The best way to make money is to study hard and work hard. Here we introduce five kinds of free Wangzhuan way, if you can truly master one, and to firmly resolve to do so, I think you have high income!

1, the best way to make money is to open a Free Online Shop Online

Now the Internet has entered every household, the network also gave rise to great convenience. Before we buy something, RUN mall, run to store and later became popular TV shopping, and now the network services to millions of people start online shopping, online shopping has brought a lot to the people’s convenience, at home, the little lightly mouse, to buy things to make money, so more and more people are shopping online, this also opens up the market for people, so more people have the opportunity to make money, so that hidden in a huge online shop potential! now able to offer free online shop there are many, for example: eaby, Amazon, Taobao, eBay, paipai, AOL and so on. They provide a platform for people shopping in the network, and the platform is free of charge. Then you go to these sites to show your product, you will be able to successfully open. This is your first step to making money online. Way to make money online there are several requirements for free. You must be able to provide product. Products including electronics, network services, physical products. This is a free part-time ingenious way to make money.

Second, building personal websites to make money

5 kinds of ways to make money, this is the technology we need to have some. We heard, felt like a very deep, in fact, quite simple, we are not professional built them, as long as one can be built can be used, we will not build their own open-source program can find online. For example, cms, blog sites and other systems. Then the site built, how do we make money? General practice is placed on advertising to earn advertising. Of course, your website must have traffic flow size determines how much you earn advertising fees, so build the station first thing to do is to promote web site, other sites have a certain flow can make money! That way to make money , early may be suffering, but once developed, they can not do waiting for money what are called after a first bitter sweet, we can consider this way to make money!

Third, write a blog to make money

Write something to make money is not nothing new, we usually look at those networks novels, they are not real writers write what are some of the network was handwritten, because they can make money writing this! On the network, some people Some things, some products, it is necessary to promote the article, and there is a demand market niche. You can build a blog and start writing, although many people will think you are in casual and writing, but some people will pay you to write articles about them. Write a blog, you can put ads advertising alliance. When your blog is popular when you can rely on these ads have high income!

4, joint marketing, also known as affiliate program

Affiliate marketing is now the network’s most profitable business. So what is the Union preparations? Give a simple example:

A network is a company needs to open up the market, but they do not know how.

B is known as the network’s advertising agency. They offer an affiliate program, also known as advertising medium

C is the networking products salesman. That is us!

The company now does not require direct contact with the C, B with A company’s direct marketing agency network, c not, however, C have a website, he went to B for A place on your site ads, to promote Internet sales. Throughout the process, B is C and A of the bridge. C is the affiliate. C using their own methods to sell products, you can get a percentage of the commission. Therefore, whatever country, as long as you know the language of this country, you can become the country’s affiliate. Well-known affiliate marketing provider cj.com, clickbank.com, and so on. These companies are the U.S., but around the world, allow people to register. Make money that way does not need technology, knowledge and skills required. Patients with serious efforts will be successful.

5, earn money doing online survey

In the network there are many online survey, then what is the network polls? Online survey that you accept other people’s market research, others have because you time and effort and give you your reward.

These are Wangzhuan of 5 ways to make money, as long as we can master a serious, then the money is actually so simple, do not believe you try? But want to know: is good, to see who used who, as long as you can stick with it, I would like to make money is very easy!

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“How to make money with AdSense” is one of the most popular topics in Internet marketing forums and the subject of many books and special reports.

Its popularity isn’t surprising given the extensive coverage of AdSense in mainstream newspapers and magazines as well as the program’s importance in driving Google’s every-growing advertising revenues. Website and blog owners can’t help but perceive Google AdSense to be an easy way to make money online.

While it’s true that adding AdSense a web page is trivial — all you do is paste some JavaScript code that Google generates for you — learning how to make money with AdSense — especially how to really make money — is decidedly non-trivial. Like anything, it takes time and effort. There are no overnight successes with AdSense.

The key is to know what to work on. Four factors come into play:

1. Traffic. By far the most important factor is how much traffic you can drive to your pages. After all, you only make money when visitors click (or in some cases view) the ads shown on your pages. If no one’s visiting your site, you won’t make any money. If you want to make more money with AdSense, you need more traffic. (That traffic should be targeted, too, otherwise smart pricing will kick in and reduce your earnings.)

2. Niche. The niche you’re targeting also has a huge effect on your AdSense earnings. You need to target niches where advertisers are actively seeking customers: if there are no advertisers, you won’t make any money. The simplest test you can do is to search Google for related keywords and see how many ads appear in the “Sponsored Links” section on the right-hand side of the results page. If there are few or no ads, that’s a sign that the market’s not a big one and probably isn’t a great choice for monetization via AdSense. (But you may be able to monetize it in other ways.)

3. Content. AdSense is all about content. It’s not about search results. It’s not about random collections of scraped data. There’s a reason why AdSense users are called publishers: it’s because they publish content. You need great content on your pages, written for humans and not search engines. Content is what’s going to keep visitors on your site, looking for the information they need. The longer they stay, the more chance they’ll click an ad.

4. Optimization. Many AdSense publishers spend too much time trying to optimize their pages when they should be spending their time on getting more traffic and writing more content. Luckily, many AdSense optimization techniques do double duty as search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Concentrate on the basics, like: * Blending ads by removing borders and matching colors. * Positioning the ads in the “hot spots” of a page. * Choosing the right ad formats. * Tracking performance with channels.

These and a few other techniques can make a dramatic difference in your earnings — but only if you have enough traffic.

Note that even a poorly-optimized AdSense site can make its publisher a lot of money if draws a lot of traffic with quality content in a competitive niche. Don’t place too much emphasis on AdSense optimization.

This tutorial will show Webmasters and software developers how to make money with partner programs. After years of trying to make money on the Internet I finally discovered what works. I currently receive residual income with minimal effort. This tutorial explains in plain English how you can make your Web sites and software more popular and how to generate income from their popularity.

This tutorial does not promote spyware and only recommends adware that is not intrusive to the user. Adware shows ads and promotes different Web sites whereas spyware tracks Internet usage and uses that information to market to the user.

The Forex software industry has literally exploded in the last few months and there are a lot of junk being thrown out at consumers to see who falls for it. Therefore, the task of assessing which Forex software works best can be a daunting one.

The problem with most Forex software, particularly those within the “expert adviser” category, is that they simply do not adapt to market conditions well enough to handle sudden and unpredictable movements caused by external factors.

It is a fact that the markets, whether stock or Forex, behave according to certain patterns that tend to repeat themselves over time thus making it possible to somewhat predict what is going to happen next, being this the science -if you will- behind the numerous Forex software available.

However, these patterns are not constant, they evolve, and this demands that traders do the same or at least use a strategy suitable for any market condition. Most Forex software do not have the ability to evolve, nor they have a trading strategy capable of facing an ever changing market.

This is why you often see great results in back tests, but when you go ahead and download and use many Forex software -each one claiming to be the best- you find yourself wiping out your equity in a matter of days, because the fact of the matter is that what worked in the past will not necessarily work today or tomorrow.

Therefore, in order to make sure you are getting the best Forex software based on performance, you must look for alternatives that have been proven to work not only in the past, but in the present time. This will tell you that they are adaptable enough to make them profitable today and tomorrow.

Very few Forex software and services have dared to take the step of showing how they work in live trading accounts that show the performance of the software on a daily basis, because doing this obviously poses a great risk for the developers, who would have the inadequacy of their product openly exposed in case that the results are not what people expect.

Therefore, the best Forex software definitely have to be the ones capable of showing real live results and not only back tests, because the quality of these products can only be measured by their performance.

There are things that you must know when learning how to make money, especially online. Once you know them, then the world is your oyster.
 
When you stop to consider all of the ways that people choose to use in learning how to make money, sometimes they are dead on, other times they miss the mark entirely. Some are self taught and others are mentored. No matter who you are, there are five tips on how to create a cash flow on the internet. These five tips include self evaluation, product evaluation, setting up a site, marketing and updating.

Self Evaluation

This sometimes is an often overlooked step in the how to make money profile. Self evaluation is an excellent tool in order to truly evaluate if you are really ready for this type of business. Successful money makers do this all the time to constantly gauge their suitability and the suitability of the products or services that they are selling. The trick is to be completely honest with yourself when doing the self evaluation process.

Product Evaluation

This might not be a top ten to remember but it is one of our top five ways of how to make money. Finding the right product to sell and promote can be a pain if you don’t know what you are doing. While many different products are lucrative, you must be comfortable in selling and promoting the product in question. Do you use the product or service? Do you know all the ins and outs? Those questions need to be answered in choosing a product or service to make money with.

Setting up a Site

This is a requirement to have, especially when trying to learn how to make money. There are not many products or services that can be sold by just newsletters alone. You need to have an active site set up in order to be able to conduct business on the internet. Even when using affiliate marketing, you still have to have a site to promote and sell the product. Your site is your “store” so you have an active place online to sell and promote your products or services to the general public.    

Marketing

This is the kicker! Nothing is more annoying than to have a site and product, but no way to market them. Marketing and promotions are concerned with selling your product and using those promotions in learning the ways of how to make money. The promotion of your product and service is vital to the success of any venture on the internet. If you do not understand this and know how to use it, then you will not be successful and you will not make money.

Updating

You must also concern yourself with keeping everything up to date. This is vital also to your success in a money making venture. By constantly updating your product and site, you keep things fresh and more people will come to you with money to buy. But they will not buy if the site is “dead” or hasn’t been updated in a while. People want sites that are updated with the latest information.

With the presence of blogging in the internet, it has fast becoming a great tool where one can make use of to make money online. With a little creativity and applying some tricks and techniques, you can now start to make your blog an interesting one and attracting loads of visitors. Once you have these loads of traffic to your blog, you can then start to make money. So what is a good blog and how can you make your blog interesting enough to make people want to revisit your blog all over again? Read on to learn more.

How To Attract More Visitors To Your Blog

Attracting more people to visit your blog is pretty much like marketing in itself. First of all, you need to know what your readers will want to read and know about. With this in mind, you then have to respond to their needs to give them a reason to visit your blog for the first time. Even after managing to get them to visit your blog, it does not necessarily mean they’ll stay with you. Imagine with the tons of blogs out there in the internet, your visitors can easily just go on to the next one and totally forget about yours. This is the time where creativity comes into play in order to keep them coming back. It is only when you have built a loyal base of readers to your blog, then only you will truly be successful and can make money off it. 

Knowing The Needs Of Your Readers

 Before you can start making any money from your websites, you need to have lots of people to visit your site. This also hold true for blogs created. On the other hand, you have to ensure that the contents in your blogs are interesting in order to keep your visitors coming back. So, with this in mind, you have to know that creating a successful blog is like creating an answer to a need, and of course, you need to know what those needs are first.
 
Naturally, you can ask them through a survey you created. Try to keep it short and brief and only stick to questions that are relevant but fairly easy to answer. If the survey takes too much time to answer, people might not want to answer. Basically, the trick here is to phrase your questions carefully such that you are able to get real and useful information out of them. Once you have managed to get what your readers want, you can then select which one you can use as the main topic for your blog. Probably it is a good idea that you should choose to write something you’re pretty knowledgeable about, or else you won’t have much to share that would be of interest to others. Also, try to ensure that your blog has one main topic around which your posts will revolve, in order to help you build a community of readers.

Update Your Blog and Have Fresh Contents Regularly

After having decided on a topic of your expertise for your blog, you can then start to write your posts. Whenever you have some spare time and have a topic in mind, do not hesitate to write down spare posts so that you can easily update your blog at a later time when you are not busy with any of your daily activities. If your blog does not have much updates, readers may notice it and might stop visiting your site again. They will probably think that they have nothing new to read anyway.
 
So, the key to a successful blog to hold your visitors basically lies in the content of your blog. As time passes, if your blogs is not updated regularly, visitors’ interest may fade, especially if they don’t learn or see anything new and entertaining on your blog.

What Should You Do To Hold Your Readers

Do not worry even when you have reached this point. Give yourself a chance to make something big out of your blog. Not to mention, making money out of it. Keep in mind that all it takes is a bit of ingenuity to make them come back for more. Try to be more innovative. Come up with new and exciting treats for your readers like posting pictures and launching online games. Instead of being a passive reader, you can also ask your readers to be part of your blog by participating in it. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Try out different things which you think you will be able to build a community of readers that can be additionally attracting for new visitors and for old readers as well.

Advertising Your Blogs

Do not underestimate the power of online communities and social networks if you want to make money out of your blog, As in the actual world we live in, word of mouth also plays an important role online. Yes, advertising online is something which you cannot give it a miss if you want to make money online and be successful. But at the end of the day, the key to success as a blogger lies in your readers. They are the one who can spread the word and give good reviews about your blog. If your blog is really good and interesting, they are also the one who can ask others to check out your site. So, the more people you get talking about your blog, the more chances you have to make money out of it.

Want To Make Money Online? Start Blogging

Thinking of setting up your own blog? Do not hesitate and go ahead. It definitely pays to blog. If you want to be successful in blogging, take note of all the things mentioned above because they will surely be helpful to you as a blogger and to make money out of blogging. To learn more on how to make money with your blog, click on this link How To Make Money Easily With Your Blogs now. Good luck and be successful in blogging.

Blogging has been the big thing in the internet after emails. But the big question of how to make money with your blogs is also the answer that most bloggers have been searching for. Is that possible? Well of course it is possible and you can actually make big money online if you know how!!! If you want to learn more, continue reading to find out.
 
The concept of making money online through blogging has actually taken the internet world by storm. If you have not started one, then you have actually missed the boat on one of the most profitable way to earn extra cash online. So, to answer the question of how to make money with your blogs, you first have to know what are some of the easiest ways to do it. If you are one of the bloggers looking for an answer, then you have come to the right place.

Ways To Make Money

With so many options available on the internet, it has never been so easy to earn extra cash through your blogs. You will be surprised that big name like Google can actually be your partner in venture to make money with your blogs. So, how can such multi billion company help you to make money online through your blogs and why would they want to co operate with small timers like us?

Placing Advertisements In Your Blogs

Company like Google actually have advertising programs in which advertisers paid them to advertise their services or products or anything through them on the internet. So what do the advertisers have to do with publishers like us who only have websites or blogs? Well, with the advertising programs, they also have corresponding program in which websites or blogs can publish these advertisements.
 
In Google, they have what we call Adsense. When you signed up with any one of their programs and place a code in your websites or blogs, you will start displaying their advertisements.

How To Make Money With These Advertisements

Remember that advertisers pay Google to display their ads in publishers’ websites and blogs. People like us who have websites and blogs are also known as publishers. So the way it works is that whenever a visitor to your websites or Blogs clicks on an advertisement, you will be paid on a certain percentage of what the advertiser paid to Google. In this way, the more visitors you have and the more advertisements they click on in your blogs or websites, the more you will earn.
 
This is not money making scam as all the advertisements shown will be relevant to the content of your blogs and websites and thus giving more options and information for users to find what they are searching for online. This is a perfect program as it gives all parties a good experience. As a publisher and the company (like Google) which offer the program itself, both of you get to earn part of the advertising cost when someone click on the advertisement. On the other hand, the advertisers get to advertise their products and services and might make some money out of it.  And also not forgetting users of the internet, they get extra relevant information of what they are looking for online. So, isn’t this great for everyone?

Do Not Try To Cheat

However, please do not ever think of cheating this system of making money just by starting to click on your own advertisements, hoping that you can make lots of money out of these clicks. If you do that, you are doomed. Google have ways to detect fraudulent clicks and once detected, your account will be banned and you can forget about getting into their programs again. Appealing to them normally has slim chances of reinstating your account. This is because such fraudulent activities cannot be tolerated at all. The whole idea here with their program is to provide everyone with a good experience and not to rip off advertisers with their money in advertising. Just imagine, if you are one of the advertisers, do you want such fraudulent activities to happen to you? Of course not!!!
 
In addition, also try not to ask others to click on your advertisements as Google also have a way to detect it too. If you think that you are smarter than Google and try to cheat, you will definitely regret. So, take my advice and do it the right way and start making money with your blogs!!! Also before posting the codes in your websites or blogs, read the TOS (Term Of Service) posted by these big companies in order to prevent any unnecessary ban from them by unintentionally doing what are against their TOS.

Other Way to Make Money With Your Blogs : Affiliate Program

Does this answer your question of how to make money with your blogs? In fact, this is not all the answer. Another way to make money online through blogs is to display affiliate links. So, how does affiliate program work?
 
With affiliate program, you are actually acting as the middleman between a company who are trying to sell their product or services, and the buyer of such products or services. What you do is to put an affiliate link in your website or blogs and whenever a visitor clicks on this link, they are directed to the products or services which the affiliate company is trying to sell. If the visitor bought something through your affiliate link, you get to earn a commission which sometime can turn out to be quite attractive and substantial. As a result, you get to make money online through affiliate marketing.  There are 2 such companies with such affiliate programs. You can check out Clickbank and ComissionJunction and sign up with them if you intend to make affiliate marketing as one of the strategy to make money with your blogs.
 
Hope that the above information has answered the question of how to make money through blogging.  Isn’t it easy to make money this way? If you have not started blogging, start one today!!! Click on HOSTGATOR to sign up with one of the best Web Hosting Company with excellent customer service, lowest price and guarantee 99.9% uptime to start hosting your first blog site today!!! HOSTGATOR also ensure the top service by giving a 45 Days Money Back Guarantee.

Photographers Needed Worldwide!

“Genuine home-based photography system lets you earn up to $250 a day and also gives you the opportunity to earn monthly residual income off every photo that you submit online!”

Discover How to Make Money – Lots & Lots of Money – With Your Digital Camera!

All You Need is a Digital Camera & Internet Access to Get Started … Even If You Are a Rank Amateur With No Previous Professional Photography Experience at All!

Listen up,

If you have a digital camera (or you are thinking about getting one) and you have ever wished that you had more money coming in to pay off debts, buy those little extras you’ve always wanted, or just to save for a rainy day … then this is definitely the most important letter you’ll read today!

Here’s why:

I’m about to reveal how you can make up to hundreds or even thousands of extra dollars a week taking pictures and submitting them onto the internet in your spare time! You can make money even if you have absolutely no photography training to speak of because my proven and tested system introduces you to several photography opportunities that are so easy – even “newbies” can make money with them. These powerful, genuine, and legit photography opportunities require no need for expensive photography printers or machinery!

It’s true.

You don’t need any special printers or expensive photography equipment because all of the pictures you take will be uploaded directly to the internet! You don’t need to know anything about digital cameras or photography to make money with this system, as I am prepared to teach you exactly what you need to do in order to get started right away.

• I am going to hold your hand and spoon-feed you the information step-by-step.
• I will explain what I do and show you exactly what you must also do to discover how to make more money than you probably ever dreamed possible using a digital camera!

Hello, my name is Brian Moore and I’ve been making money online using the power of my digital camera for over two years now and I’m here today to tell you that to start earning money with your digital camera you don’t need any special training, diplomas or aptitude.

All you do need is a digital camera and access to the Internet.

That’s it!

If you have those two things, you can begin to make REAL money online today!

In all honesty, it’s the best way of making money online that I’ve ever come across.

It’s a career that allows me:

• To take vacations to wherever I want, whenever I want, for as long as I want!
• To have total job security!
• To decide what my work hours are. If I want to stop working early one day, it’s my decision!
• To finally escape the competitiveness, the backstabbing, and the long hours of the rat race!
• To spend much more time with my family!

It really is great! I wouldn’t even call what I do a business. Digital photography is actually fun to do and even more fun for me when I see all of the extra money being deposited in my bank account month after month!

This Can Be Your Chance to Set Your Own
Schedule & Work Whenever You Want to
- You Can Work as Much as You Want or
as Little As You Need!

Introducing the “Camera Dollars System eBook” …

The “Camera Dollars System eBook” contains everything you need to know in order to start making tons of money with your digital camera.

You’ll learn:

• How to earn ongoing residual revenue by submitting photos to newly discovered in demand photo sites – follow these tips to earn profits from your digital photographs around the clock, 24/7 – Make money even while you are sleeping!
• How to ensure you are getting the best fee possible for each photo you upload online – don’t get taken advantage of … find out here how to ensure you are paid what your photos are really worth!
• A little-known photography market that is exploding thanks to the internet – act now to get in on the ground floor of this exciting opportunity that could very easily allow you to earn a full or part-time income!
• How to get very-very large commissions by taking pictures of vehicles for sale in your local area and uploading them onto eBay motors. I’ll show you how I regularly get commissions of $500 – $2000 for just a few hours worth of work!
• How to put yourself in a buyer’s shoes and always shoot to sell – find out what buyers are looking for and the easiest ways for you to deliver exactly what they need!
• Who pays the highest rates – and how to get them to not just accept your work but beg for it! 
• How to turn your photos into screen savers and other money-making products – follow these tips to create multiple revenue streams that will send profits flooding your way!
• How to easily find websites that will practically beg you for your photos – and who’ll be willing to pay a premium for each photo you submit to them!
• How to select the right keywords to use with your photos when you upload them online – use the wrong keywords and your sales may slowly suffer, use the right keywords and sales will soar rapidly … find out everything you need to know to ensure the latter here!
• What a “field rep” is and how you can start providing this in-demand service immediately – this could be the money-producing opportunity that you have been dreaming about!
• How to sell your images on your own website and keep all the profits for yourself – includes expert advice on how to post your photos on a web page, how to flood your site with traffic and how to write copy that is sure to sell your photos like crazy!
• How to sell your images offline – discover everything you need to know to open your own profitable brick and mortar photography store!
• How to make money in the competitive world of celebrity gossip sites – these tips will give you the advantage you need to begin dominating the competition!
• How to take pictures of sporting events and sell them online – it’s not as difficult as you might think … in fact, follow these tips and it will be downright easy to earn extra money this way!
• How to dramatically improve your chances of getting each one of your photos accepted by all of the photo sites.
• How to make your images look professional for extra cash even if you are an amateur just starting out – find out how to get the perfect shot every time!
• What to take pictures of – find out what types of images are in the most demand here!
• How to sell your photos like hotcakes on eBay – you’ll be amazed at how easy this is to do when you follow these simple tips!
• And much, much more!

This System Does Not…

IT DOES NOT require you to create any websites.
IT DOES NOT require you to ship anything.
IT DOES NOT have anything to do with adult or pornographic content.
IT DOES NOT require you to have some “high-tech” digital camera because you are going to learn several ways to make money with just a regular digital camera!

The Honest Truth is:

There’s Never Been a Better Time to Become a Freelance Digital Photographer!

Photographers are needed worldwide – and thanks to the power of the Internet you can fulfill this need no matter where you are located!

All you have to do to start earning your fair share of the exploding market is:

• Read my “Camera Dollars System eBook Course” – This detailed guide will teach you everything you need to know in order to get started.
• Pick up your digital camera … and aim and shoot!

In my comprehensive program, I really do tell you everything you need to know to make money with your digital camera … from what types of images are in demand to where and how to upload your photos for residual monthly income!

I will show you how you can upload an unlimited amount of photos to in-demand photo sites and then get paid each and every time someone downloads one of your photos! You can even make money from the same photo over and over again and you don’t even need a website! I’ll show you how you can get paid up to $50.00 per photo download and also exactly how to get your photos the maximum exposure so they get downloaded like crazy! Just imagine the income potential!

Learn more now.

In this easy-to-follow guide, we’re going to examine the commercial opportunities for open source software. We’ll investigate the different ways of generating revenue from open source software and how to reduce development costs by using open source software in your development life cycle and how to select open source software technologies for building that next knockout product. On top of this we will also investigate how to gain access to national and international markets through using the open source marketing methodology.

Before we get started the first question you are probably asking is; why bother? According to Accenture Australia, using open source software as the basis of your development can cut your development time and budget by 50 percent. The open source testing and debugging methodologies have been shown to greatly reduce product development costs, and using open source software marketing and distribution channels can greatly increase the likelihood that your product reaches the broadest market possible, and levels the playing field with your larger, better- heeled competitors.

The next question many would be asking is; sure, but can you make profit from open source software? Let’s get this straight from the start. Open source is commercial software. At no stage do open source licences preclude the commercial exploitation of the software. Open source licences are not anti-commercial, they are anti lock-in. This is good for users and can be used by you for marketing purposes. There have been free and open source vendors selling solutions in this space for over 15 years. Open source is not suddenly going ‘commercial’; it always has been.

Services not licences
The open source revenue model is one based on a service revenue stream rather than a licence revenue stream. This fosters competition amongst vendors for any class of software. Most open source software is copyright, but released under licences which allow free re-distribution. It is this attribute which allows for the distinctive economic benefits that open source accrues. And it is this in turn which attracts a number of potential customers to consider using software which is sourced from smaller development houses. Customers who would have otherwise never considered your software.

Let’s also take a whirlwind look at the industry side of the open source world. We know there are around two hundred Linux (and BSD etc.) open source platform vendors globally. These are firms which pool together hundreds of applications, placed on top of an open source operating system, marketed through a number of channels and via a number of different business and non-business models. Strong competition is evident in this space.

There are also several thousand open source products, solutions and service vendors, including perhaps 300 in Australia. If you’d like more information, visit OSIA.

Additionally, almost all major traditional ICT industry vendors now support open source software too. These range from tier- one hardware vendors through to numerous enterprise level ISVs. Many vendors of open source solutions also supply proprietary software. Open source software can be bundled with proprietary software, with no problems. Proprietary software can also be built with open source tools, be linked to many open source libraries and run on open source software.

Open source development and distribution models can increase the visibility of local software development as well as of individual programmers. Australia’s market size has often meant that we do not have the potential to acquire sales and revenue momentum from the local market. We are thus at a disadvantage in comparison to US-based suppliers, who hit Australia’s shores well-stocked with funding, flushed with success and momentum from their home market. Australians are great at tech smarts, but lousy at marketing. We often don’t have the financial and managerial wherewithal to take software technology to the global market. If we can’t, then why not let the open source distribution method do it for us?

Indeed, why not use open source to form the basis of our product in the first place, reducing our own efforts? To get the ball rolling, recall the Programmer’s Maxim: good coders code, great coders reuse.

Before you write a single line of code, let’s see how the open source world can help us by saving time and money. The reuse model is merely an extension to the well-accepted idea that developers will have put together a pretty decent toolbox of code chunks, application frameworks and possibly partially complete application husks. When you’re planning a new application, it merely takes rummaging around in this toolbox and pulling out the components which more closely match your requirements.

Open source takes this to the logical conclusion, making the toolboxes of 500,000 other developers available to you.

Getting started
Visit the well-known open source code repositories such Freshmeat.net or SourceForge.net. Search to find projects which are thematically related to the kind of product you want to build. Next, start drilling down into the contestants. There may be only a handful or there may be dozens. Use your heuristic filtering sunglasses to help you whittle these down to two or three selections: Do they do the core of what you want? Are they written in programming languages you know? Are the projects active? Are they available under a licence which is commensurate with what you are trying to achieve?

Next, download the project which appears to have the most overlap with your intended product. Scope the code, audit it for quality, comments, structure and evenness. If it passes muster, you read through the documentation to determine if there’s a section to jumpstart new developers into the complexities of the code base. Most of the good open source software projects have this, which is what enables them to become good open source projects.

Now, start making some mods, for example stylesheet changes, logo changes, form changes etc. You want to get a feel for how much time and effort would be involved to get up to speed with this code, and how much effort would be involved in adding any missing functionality your putative product may need, which this open source project lacks.

It’s now up to you to determine if indeed utilising this codebase will get you to your intended destination faster than if you started from scratch. Bear in mind a few things however; many widely-used open source projects have seen successive iterations of quality and security feedback, loopsÃ,­Code being fixed and enhanced and security exploits being patched. If you start your project from scratch, it may be years before you reach a similar maturity level. Factor this cost in to your decision process too.

Do the right thing by the existing project community; make contact, alerting them to the fact that you intend to build a commercial application upon their codebase, but that you will comply with the licence they have stipulated for the project. Contact with the open source developer community isn’t mandatory, just common courtesy.

Package it
Packaging your solution in a form downloadable via the Internet for no cost provides a friction-free manner for distributing your application, allowing you to establish your product’s credentials and market presence. You can also provide a packaged version which includes printed manuals and CDs. This is for all those sites that do not like to use freely downloaded software off the Internet, but prefer a real, physical product. Price varies, as it’s essentially a service charge. Say $100 to $500. You could also consider building an appliance solution, constituted of preinstalled operating system, database, application server and your application on top. Price: $2k to $10k depending on the level of bundled support. With all your product options, price them in the market sweet spot, to maximise attention and gain as many quick sales as you can.

Marketing your offering
What does it take for your product to get noticed? Obviously, by using open source attributes when marketing your product: Market the fact that you give your customers the complete source code to the system; market the fact that the code does not have a use-by date or sunset clause. If you and your business collectively fall under a bus, your customers can continue to use and have third parties provide ongoing support. Leverage the fact that local business and government consumers are risk averse, and that you, unlike a group of coders in Iceland or Brazil who produced the original codebase, can indemnify your customers using your professional and product liability insurance; market the fact that you are local or regional and can provide same time zone business support.

By commercial support, I mean commercial support. Charge the customers $200 per hour for it, but make sure you deliver the goods. You should also play the perpetual code escrow card. Many potential customers of vertical business applications need to be guaranteed that they will not be left stranded when deploying a new line of business system.

This is one of the main reasons encountered when Australian firms have trouble competing against larger international players. The argument goes that buyers are unsure of smaller Australian firms’ business longevity and worry about code escrow. Ensuring that potential customers have full access to the source code is a great way of nullifying this competitive disadvantage.

In short, open sourcing saves you many of the marketing and sales costs necessary in taking your application globally. If your product is good, and there is a global market for it, you have a far greater chance of reaching that market through open sourcing.

Achieving the same marketing reach using traditional means, would cost millionsââ,¬”money that few Australian developers have. News of good quality open source projects travels fast.

Paying the bills
But how do you make money? First up, support revenue. As soon as you can, establish mailing lists and discussion forums so that users of your software can help other users. This takes the load off your team. You will need to kickstart this community by providing technical support freely at first. Once momentum has been reached, provide no more free support. Instead, offer various paid support options, with credit card payments: per incident, quarterly and yearly. For business-grade vertical applications, this could be hundreds of dollars per incident or thousands of dollars per quarter.

Next up, provide installation, customisation and enhancement services. This is where the real money is. Show the market you are a serious commercial open source player. Whilst your code is indeed open source, and your users could extend it themselves, most businesses do not have the time nor the inclination to undertake this kind of activity; it’s not their core business. Firms will instead turn to you.

Additionally, no one should know the code as well as you, and your time to build for extensions and any integration work will far exceed others’ value delivery. All you need to do is capture just a small percentage of all those users who pulled down a free download and you can generate some real revenue with customisation work. And because any such resultant work can be open source too, you can slowly build upon the functionality of your product, thus attracting more users.

Finally, you can make money by re-licencing. Just because you licence your software under an open source licence, doesn’t mean you can’t also licence it under non-open source terms as well. For various tactical reasons, the best open source licence to use for this purpose is the General Public Licence (GPL). This approach works especially well for libraries and for products which you could classify as ‘engines’, such as computing engines (scientific and engineering), database or transactional engines. By using the GPL, anyone who links to your engine or library and plans to redistribute that combination as a total product must also licence their own IP under the GPL.

Many potential customers would prefer not to do this, which gives you the opportunity to sell them a version of your product which is not based on an open source licence. Are there issues with open source licences when reusing the code of others? Specifically, aren’t we in trouble if we reuse open source code in our own projects? In most circumstances, no. Most developers in Australia are building bespoke software, which is not for redistribution beyond the client purchasing the service.

This model is compatible with all open source licences. If you or your client wants to redistribute modified binaries of GPL licenced products, you must also supply the source code to your modifications under the GPL.

If you use any of the BSD-like licences (Apache, MIT etc.) only attribution is needed within your derived modified binaries. You do not need to make available the source code to your modifications.

The proof
How do we know that it is possible for firm to develop a commercially viable support, training and custom extension business model based on open source? We have case studies.

Just consider the following success exemplars: JBoss, MySQL, eZ Publish, ZOPE and Trolltech. Let’s drill down a little. MySQL AB in Sweden went from nothing to become a name brand in database technology in the space of seven years: over 4 million deployment sites worldwide, earning US$10 million in annual sales and growing. Similarly adept Australian software technology firms can do the same.

Open sourcing your code is not a panacea, nor is it guaranteed to work in every case, but then again, building and trying to sell closed-source apps carries no guarantee of success either, and the financial investment stakes therein are much, much higher.