The University of Texas and Dell are looking for college students worldwide with ingenious ideas to tackle pressing social issues for the chance to win $50,000 in seed funding. Students from any 4-year university are invited to create change at home, or anywhere in the world, with an idea that brings new resources in the form or technology, knowledge, people or action to an old problem for amazing results.

The goal of this competition is to engage the most number of students to start using the skills they are learning in college to find solutions to world problems. They put no limits on the imagination of contestants and they hope to give students a pathway to make their dreams of a better world a reality.

How to Enter

The deadline to enter is fast approaching on March 2. The entry form is a quick overview of your idea and takes about 30 minutes to complete. There is still plenty of time to enter. If you are in college or know someone in college – encourage them to enter!

If not, you can show your support by voting and commenting on the ideas at each round of competition!

There are 3 rounds of competition. A group of 100 students will be selected as semifinalists from the initial entry form and asked to write a venture plan detailing their idea. From the venture plan entries, judges and the public select the top three teams and they come to Austin, TX to compete live. One winner walks away with $50,000 to start their venture.

My Idea

Administralo.com – A Social Development Platform by means of Financial Improvement for Low Income Consumers in Developing Countries

Administralo.com is a social development platform for low income individuals and families in developing countries located in South America. The platform performs as an educational tool to improve people’s lives by means of helping users to have a better financial awareness and practice through their daily life.

Personal Finance is confusing and very hard to learn, there’s no easy-to-understand information available in spanish and everyone needs it, specially low income individuals from developing countries which always turns out to be broken. Here comes Administralo.com as a portal for online Money Management, Financial Education and Life Improvement. The platform consists of an automated system that will guide users through a highly developed user-friendly experience to achieve their financial goals and life improvement stages step by step. The user interface is made in accordance with recently web 2.0 applications and resources, as well as content and graphics to make the user experience as rewarding as possible.

The system will allow users to experience the benefits of a well managed Personal Finance. The learning process includes lots of information, the use of several tools for money and time management, online forums, blogs and coaching, among other benefits. The service will be completely free and users won’t have to reveal their banking accounts or their identity, they will be only requested to have an username and submit a valid email address.

Research made on the subject reveals a strong willing from people to improve their personal finance, and a big social improvement can be achieved.

So I invite you to take part of this venture by voting for my idea and leaving a comment if you want it. All the best for those who are participating and thanks for supporting me!

PS: You need to register to be able to vote or comment, which will take you about 20 seconds

There are many business strategies you can use to promote your affiliate products, and a very interesting way to do it is with Article Marketing.

Article Marketing is nothing more than a type of advertising in which businesses write short articles related to their respective industry. These articles are made available for distribution and publication in the marketplace. Each article contains a bio box and byline that include references and contact information for the author’s business. Well-written content articles released for free distribution have the potential of increasing the authoring business’ credibility within its market as well as attracting new clients.

Source: Wikipedia

So what’s the strategy? How can I boost my sales by writing articles?

The strategy is not so hard to do, but actually it is if you have difficulties to be consistent, but we are going to see how to deal with that.

What do you do when you want to buy something? I bet you search on google everything you can: videos, reviews, scam alerts, comparison articles etc etc. That’s why you need to write articles of the products you sale!

People used to investigate before taking actions and you need to take advantage of this situation by promoting your marketing products with articles. Articles of every type, but specially you need to write articles that review the product, articles that talk about the pro/cons of the product and things like that.

By writing many articles and using the proper keywords you could rank high in most search engines, or at least Google. Is not so hard, you just need to find keywords that sell.

The basic strategy is to redirect the people who read your articles to your landing page or another website where they can buy the product. This way you will get a commission per sale.

NOTE: You cannot use hyperlinks in affiliate marketing, so how do you redirect them? Using the little bio box at the end of the article, where you can place hyperlinks.

How to write articles that sell

Write from experience: When you write from experience your articles will be much convincing, and that’s what you want. This relates the thing I was talking the other day about choosing products that you are interested in. If you are not interested in a product how could you write “from experience”? It’s kinda impossible… Also, many times you won’t need to pay just for getting the product and then write a review about it. In most cases you can contact the advertiser and explain it the situation, asking for a free copy of the product in order to test it and promote it.

It’s kinda usual to get free copies of what you want to promote.

Be precise: Don’t write things neither too long or too short, just be precise. Hit the nail and that’s it, don’t waste lines talking and talking about nothing. Give the information you want to bring to your potential customers and that’s it!

Write what they want to read: This may sound unfair or non-ethic but this is how marketing works. Study the people you are targeting, their likes, their ages etc etc… So then, when you really know the people you will target, write the articles based on that statistics and give them what they expect to read when they search for a product on Google. Of course you will need to write several articles in order to cover a wider espectrum of possibilities. FYI, you can try QuanCast to know demographic stats of people specificing a page.

Use outside sources to validate your article: This is a fact, people like to read “as seen on CNN” and things like that. When possible, use outside sources that help you to validate the things you are talking about in the article. Try to find a special article from a magazine, news channel or something where users can read and makes them believe in you.

Hopefully if you follow these guidelines, you will boost your sales promotions in a targeted market.

Where to write these Articles?

Great question, I was talking about article marketing and I didn’t tell you where you can publish them. The following is a list of websites where you can do it, most of them could be well known by you:

• EzineArticles
• BestEzines
• AssociatedContent
• WebSource
• Freesticky
• Amazines
• IdeaMarketers

Those are the main websites, but you can find more by looking into the tag called Articles of my Delicious account.

Your Ideas About Article Marketing

Well in other posts I will talk more about other promotional marketing methods beside this one. For now I’m done, but I would love to read your thoughts or experiences in this matter in order to learn more from you, I don’t know everything!

Hi guys,

This link love post will be brief due to I just focused in making money articles. Therefore, I collected the following 3 links for you, which contain great resources that will give you more ideas to make money with.

• How Do You Maintain Multiple and Profitable Niche Blogs by Garry Conn at GarryConn’s Blog.
• Six ways to experiment with AdSense and grow your earnings by Darren Rowse at Google Adsense Blog.
• Blog SEO Tips: Top SEO Mistakes to Avoid by Alex Cristache at Blogsessive.

These were what I could find in my feed reader, but if I missed something great related with making money and you want to share it with me and my readers, drop the link in a comment!

Hello friends, it’s me Tamal to serve you again on MrJavo.com. On this post, I’d like to go on a deeper topic in blogging. Can you become an outstanding blogger? There are thousands of blogs online and everyday lots of new people starts to blog. No one can say that I’m an outstanding blogger, the audience has to make the choice.

The key things that we chase forever in blogging are money, traffic, fame and popularity. But why you’re missing the core element? Outstanding bloggers with a unique point of view produces different articles. Everyone loves to read from them and advertisers want to put their ads on their site. At the same way, you’ll see the same old blog posts in every blogs, but there are only few blogs that you love to go back again and again because they have something different.

So how do I know if my blog is outstanding?

The answer will come if you look at your blog from a reader’s point of view. For few minutes, forget that this is your blog and try to solve these questions,

1. Do you think this post will help you?

Read your latest post and try to think how this post can help you. Is this post includes real informations or some guesses? Is this a basic concept what everyone knows or something that is well researched? Tutorial type posts and those post which have practical experiences, goes well. Most of the bloggers write for their own benefit, because they want to keep the blog updated and to increase the post count. If you write an article that really values your reader, then it’ll help you too!

2. Do you think it’s a well researched post?

Your readers are not fools. They are bloggers or active blog readers. They can say how much time and effort you’ve spent while writing this post. They can tell it with the writing structure, is this blogger a professional or a newbie? Spelling and grammar errors can tell your readers that all you wanted to do is to update your blog, not wanted to add a value. Well researched posts don’t go well and only few people promote it with social media.

3. Do you think this is worth leaving a comment?

There are some strategies to engage your readers. Adding some questions on the end of your post makes them comment. A blog is a two way communication tool. When you’ll post, others can post comments on it. Most people write articles, as they are writing for the newspaper or for a book. Try to leave some personal message asking to post suggestions or more related informations on this topic. This will help you to attract more comments on your blog.

4. Do you think this post deserves to be in your bookmarks?

More people bookmarking your site mean more success for your blog. If you add valued content and a personal touch on your posts, they will love to add it on their bookmarks. Now I use StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious and Twitter, but it doesn’t means my readers have to use them too. By asking them with a message, “Please do bookmark this post with your favorite site” will inspire them to bookmark it with the site of their choice.

5. Do you want to come back again on this blog?

This is the last point you should figure out as a reader. Is this site a niche site? Did I found what I was looking for? Is the author response to their readers? Do the updates are regular with useful informations? Should I subscribe to this blog? etc. This will determine if your new reader will convert into your subscriber, supporter and come back again or not? This is the final question which will make you feel if you’re blogging in the right way or wrong?

You are the judge of your blog

Blogging is independent and you will judge yourself and your blog. Don’t listen to anybody, just listen to your self and you know better what will make you an outstanding blogger.

Have your say

• Do you think solving these questions will improve your blogging?
• Do you want to be an outstanding blogger?
• What more could be added on this post?

Please leave a reply; I’m ready to join the discussion!

Hi guys,

It’s fridaaaay! So as I won’t blog this weekend (theorically, I have scheduled posts ) and as I won’t give you all my affiliate marketing information at once, I’m going to take a breath today respecting AM and I’m going to share with you my incomes report of the first month of 2009:

• Private Sales: $129.5
• TLA: $21.16
• Affiliate Commissions: $215.5

Total: $366.16

The other months I was earning about $400, so you could appreciate a little drop during the last month but algo note I didn’t make any Web Design jobs, which ussually gives me at least $100.

So what do you think about them? With all this posts about affiliate marketing I’m very inspired and working in a couple of affiliate campaigns which will increase my earnings by hundred dollars – or at least I hope so.

Many Internet Marketing gurus say it’s easy to succeed at this business, or at least they make us think it. I think everything is easy when you already learned how to do it, for example to walk. We learned to walk when we were childs, but for a just born baby it could be an impossible thing aka nightmare.

The other day I talk about The Secrets Behing Finding Niche Markets where I gave you details about finding niche markets. Today I’m going to give you some tips to help to take part in this business. Many people when join to affiliate networks think they could start promoting the first thing they see, or may be the hottest thing. Well, that’s not so easy because if it were, everybody should be sucessful and rich.

Recommendations for Choosing an Affiliate Product

Be familiar with the product: The reason why I’m giving you this advice at first instance is because this is the key to suceed. You should look for a product you are familiar with, a product which you know and will enjoy promoting it. This way, you won’t need to research before promoting it because you have the knowledge to talk about it.

Also, it’s not good to promote something you don’t believe in. This is like blogging, if you blog just because of the money you can earn, you will end failing. So to resume this first advice, pick a product you know and you think it worth.

Be interested in the product: You can be familiar with the product because everyday you hear about it, but if you are not interested in it you will lose your time. At the beginning you can do it fine, but then when you need to work hardly writing many articles about the product and submit it in article directories, it will be a pain in the ass!.

Almost every week I see people promoting Herbalife products in my community, but for any reason I would promote them.

Check its landing page: When you think you got a good product, check its landing page, email creative or whatever is supposed to convince people for buying the product. The landing page needs to be easy to navigate, and it should call to action.

When you see the html email or visit the landing page, think as you were a costumer near from buying the product. If YOU are persuaded, it means your costumers will too. In the other hand, if you don’t feel motivated or persuaded, probably you should look for another product with a better catching interface.

Check if it converts: Talk with your affiliate manager and ask him about the conversion rates of the product you want. In other words, the conversion rate tell you if the product makes sells or not, 3 or more sales per day is ok. Conversion rate is the ratio of visitors who convert casual content views or website visits into desired actions based on subtle or direct requests from marketers, advertisers, and content creators.

I talked with my manager of NeverblueAds and he told me some good conversion rates related with different offers:

• Email submit = about 25 – 35%
• Free trial offer = about 2% – 3%
• Dating offer (short for submit) = about 10%
• True sale offer = about 2 – 5%

Those numbers are relative, so talk with your manager to assure.

Stay with the winners: What I want to mean with this, is to promote those things that are working. Promote popular/hot products, promote that things you know other people are making money with. Why, won’t be harder because of the competition? If you try to promote those products that are not converting well, you will lose money and time promoting it.

What you need to do is to effort promoting it, that’s it. I will talk more about promoting your affiliate products in other article, as well as how to find keywords and how to find these products that are making the people richer, using Affiliate Espionage.

Money back guarantee: This is not always available but if so, it would be better for you. Money back guarantee programs inspire peace and trust, your consumers will feel safe of blackhat tricks or scammy programs.

As I said, this is a plus. The good thing is most of the U.S. and Canadian offers have this policy, but if you find a great product without it don’t worry!.

Which are your tactics?

The other day I read something that recommends the opposite of me about the popular products. I read it is better to get an unsaturated market, this way you could sell “better” than if you take a saturated one, such as making money online for example…

What do you think about it? What about the wasted money until you discover the trick of the product?

If you are promoting a product I would love to know how did you choose it, teach me!