If you fancy the idea of making money from creating your own books, then Blurb might be of interest to you. It follows a DIY model of publishing books (similar to self-publishing). But, without all the hassle of coming up with a huge capital and plenty of unsold books in your garage.

In a nutshell, this is how Blurb works: You write your book. You take care of the typesetting and layout. You make sure the whole document is publication-ready. Then, upload your book on to the system. Once it’s ready to be published, you set a price if you wish to sell your book.

Then, you can order a book (or more) from your account, paying the base price. You can just mark-up the price if you wish to sell your book in person.

Or, if you don’t want the hassle of ordering too many books and selling them yourself, you just get people to buy your book directly from Blurb. Then, you get whatever profit/mark-up that you provide when you set your price. You keep the profit.

Some of the things that I like about Blurb:

• Clean interface; really pleasant site to look at;
• You can have your own little Blurb shop, if you wish. You can then share that link to people so that they can buy your books there;
• They have a free software application (called Blurb Booksmart, available both for Windows and Mac) that you can use to create your book – really handy if you want to make sure that your book is formatted for publication. It even has a built-in function that gives you warning signs if your image is not going to be publishable, etc.
• If you prefer to format your own book, that’s okay too;
• Basic books starting price is reasonable (approx. $5 for a 20-page Black and White Text book with coloured soft cover), prices go up from there, depending on the number of pages, etc;
• There are a number of options and pricing available – soft cover / hardcover, 4-colour/BW, etc.;
• Bulk discounts are available (if you buy 10 or more, you can buy your book at a lower price; the more books you buy, the higher your discount); and
• They seem to cater for a number of countries.

In any case, yes, it works pretty much like Lulu.com.

Since I haven’t tried using Blurb yet, I’m not sure about the printing quality of the books. I hope to be able to try it out one of these days and report my findings back here at some stage.

If you have given Blurb a try, do let us know what you think of it. Do you like it? What’s the quality of the printed books like? What about the service?

Right now, they’re currently running the 2009 Best Blurb Photo Books Contest. The grand prize winner gets to win $3,000. The runner-up wins $1,000. Then, there will be honourable mentions, who will then win $50 gift cards from Blurb.

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Blurb: Make and Sell Your Books

If you’re not running Chitika | Premium Ads yet, now might be a good time to try. Especially if you can come up with interesting ways to display your ads.

You see, they are giving away a total of $200 for “the most interesting/cool/unique placements of Chitika | Premium ads”.

What does it mean to have a cool/interesting/unique ad placement? Well, according to Chitika, “a good way to place these ads is by placing the ads inside the content (right after the first paragraph) – which will generally earn a very high CTR/eCPM. But since it will only display to search engine traffic, it will not display to your regular readers (they won’t be annoyed by ads in the middle of their content!).”

The one who can come up with the best placement will receive $100, and 2 runners-up will receive $50 each. To enter, email specialprojects@chitika.com with a link to your interesting Premium ad implementation. Chitika asks entries to include a sentence or 2 about the ad setup. Deadline for this is on 12:00pm US EDT on Monday, November 10.

Good luck with it!

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Chitika’s $200 Giveaway

The b5media Sports Channel is holding a contest over at Thoroughbred Fever, in celebration of the Breeder’s Cup. Just leave 5 comments in any of the blogs from the Sports Channel and you’ll get the chance to win $200 spending money on Amazon. Good luck with it!

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Win a $200 Amazon Gift Certificate

Just thought I’d give you all a heads-up on a couple of contests that the wonderful Kristen King (Biz Chicks Rule) and Char Polanosky (Essential Keystrokes) are currently running for online business folks.

Biz Chicks Rule is giving away an iPod Shuffle. The deadline is on July 13 and the winner will be announced on July 15.

Essential Keystrokes is celebrating 2 years of blogging and Char is holding a giveaway. Prizes include: subscriptions to her favourite (and essential) online tools such as pMetrics, Freshbooks, and Highrise. 5 copies of Darren’s Problogger book and a blog critique from Chris Garrett are also on offer. Deadline is also the 13th of July.

Head on over and try your luck in winning something.

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Contests, Contests

If you own a WordPress blog and you want a more professional-looking theme, then you might want to check PremiumThemes*. They have over 25 themes available – a handful are for free, while others are for sale (licensing fees for personal or developer use).

I haven’t bought a theme from them yet, but I’m seriously eyeing a couple that I’m considering for my personal blog. And, right now, the owner of PremiumThemes is currently running a contest, where one lucky winner can get a free copy of any premium theme. The contest runs until 30th of June.

Also, if you’re keen to sell some of these WordPress themes on your blog or site, you might also consider signing up with their affiliate programme. The owner is offering 20% commission per sale. Payout is once a month, with minimum of 2 sales.

See more, if you’re interested.*

Note: Affiliate links included

Image source: PremiumThemes.net

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PremiumThemes: WordPress Themes

Can you create 10 lenses in 10 days on Squidoo about everything surrounding eBay and the stuff you sell? If you’re up for the challenge, then you might want to join the Squidoo-Ebay Challenge.

What if you don’t have a Squidoo account yet? Then I encourage you to sign up now.

What if you don’t sell on eBay? Well, I’m sure you can still join. Just create lenses about the stuff you like to buy on eBay.

So, other than the possibility of making money with your lenses and affiliate links within your lenses, you can also get the chance to win the following prizes from the challenge:

- A free ipod
- The lucky winner also gets one of their eBay lenses showcased as the Squidoo Lens of the Day on June 19 (The first day of eBay live)
- And gets featured as a case study in Seth Godin’s talk at eBay Live!

The challenge runs from 4th June to 17th June 2008.

When you’re done, email all 10 URLs to ebayaward@squidoo.com.

Some helpful articles that you might want to read:

• eBay Selling 101
• Tips on eBay Selling
• A Guide on How to Make Money with Squidoo
• How to Make Money Online with Squidoo

This post is originally from Just Make Money Online. Please respect copyright.

The Squidoo-Ebay 10 Lenses Challenge

Another day, another social networking site. But this time, with a twist.

If you join iYomu (tagged as ‘A Social Networking for Grownups’ – er, as opposed to…?), you get the chance to join the One Million Dollar Challenge. Basically, when you sign up, you become eligible to join the challenge (yes, it’s free to join). Then, you start collecting points when you complete a profile, take part in puzzles, refer a friend… By the end of 2007, the Top 10 members with the most points will be eligible to be chosen for the Grand Finals round. The ultimate million dollar winner will be chosen from one of the 3 Grand finalists.

Oh, and yeah, the winner will not get the $1M prize in one go. It will be paid over a period of 12 months. Not a bad thing, really, as it can avoid overspending in one full swing.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see if iYomu is going to make it in the fierce battle of the online social networking space. What with MySpace, Orkut, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Multiply, among many others, it IS going to be tough to break in. But, I guess, giving away one million dollars can definitely help attract some members.

To learn more about iYomu’s $1M Challenge, read the Challenge Rules.

Tip from Dipping Into the Blogpond.

Technorati Tags: contests, iyomu, $1M challenge

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Win $1 Million Dollars with iYomu

I just found this site called The Contest Center. It claims that people can win cash by participating in their contests, puzzles and games. I tried to look for more information, but I couldn’t find any details (how to win cash prizes, how to get paid, etc). So, I’m not quite sure if this site is legit or not. What do you think?

This made me think, though, if there is a way to make some good money simply by joining contests online. After all, I have heard of some people who actually try to earn a living somehow just by joining game shows and such. I’m not particularly watching out for these opportunities, so I’m not sure if it’s viable.

What do you think? Have you tried joining contests online and made money? Share your story here!

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Make Money with Contests Online?