Just a few hours ago, one of my clients introduced me to the use of Google Apps. I’ve been using gazillions of Google products but most of those I use are free.

Google Apps comes with a hefty price tag ($50/year) so although I was so excited to use it, I kept my calm and gingerly checked out the product. What I’ve started toying with is its Start Page since that’s what my client asked me to set up first.

The personalized start page is a syndicated version of iGoogle, allowing you to set up dynamic homepages for your users that bring together your content, Google services, and the best of the web.

I have an iGoogle page but I don’t really use it so I don’t know the difference between the Start Page and iGoogle. But I definitely enjoy adding all the Google gadgets that are designed to make life more enjoyable for online workers like me.

My only problem right now is I don’t know how to import my BlogLines feeds. Anyone who can help me with this?

Also, I’m looking for a similar online collaboration software program that comes for free. If you are using anything similar, I’d appreciate it a lot if you can tell me something about it.

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

Google Apps for Online Collaboration

It’s a no-brainer that if one plays his social networking cards right, it can have a huge effect on the bottom line. This is because social networks are made to help people widen their social circles for many reasons and one of the most popular is – to bring in more clients or referrals, to achieve career development goals through finding mentors, new employers, or to find highly qualified employees, contract workers and partners.

However, earning money from clients you gain is not the only way to make money from these social networks.

Check out the other methods people use to make money online using social networks:

Revenue Sharing and Referral Programs

If you are a social network butterfly who can create an account on any social network and you won’t bat an eye if your batallion of friends will follow you wherever you can be found online, you might want to make some moolah from the eyeballs your page gets. Dada.net, *ApSense, Yuwie are some of these social networks offering referral programs and/or revenue sharing.

Leverage the Traffic

Targeted traffic equals more chances of conversion. And, social networks are popular vehicles to get more targeted traffic to a blog or website. If you have lots of social network contacts or friends, it won’t hurt to use features like Friendster’s ShoutOuts or Facebook Wall to inform your network about a blog post you wish to get Dugg or Stumbled. The list of social networks that are well-known to help people drive traffic to their sites are MyBlogLog, Digg, StumbleUpon, BlogCatalog, and BlogRush.

Land a Job as a Web Community Manager

If you enjoy maintaining your LinkedIn or your MyBlogLog community and you receive lots of emails and comments from your gazillions of contacts, friends, community members or whatever a social network labels your followers commending you for your work or simply loving the interaction, do include it on your resume.

An ideal web community manager should have Web 2.0 – Knowledge, experience, and an active user of a social networking site.

However, this would usually work for those who would like to pursue an online marketing career.

If you’re serious about the “online community manager” jobhunt, you can start preparing by seeing if you can come up with decent answers to these questions. Here’s a job board focused on community-related jobs.

If you find “web community manager” too big a job title, you may want to consider a forum moderator or an online relations stint.

Create Social Network Accounts for Busy Entrepreneurs

Although not yet as popular, you can actually earn from creating accounts for other people. The popularity of social networks as marketing media is what gave rise to this type of job. There are lots of online marketplaces where you’ll find service buyers posting this service. But I’ve become more aware of its growing popularity when about half of my virtual assistance clients ask me to do it. What fun!

Got other ways to make money online from these lovely social networks?

image source

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

How to Make Money Online with Social Networks

It’s just been months since being a virtual assistant took most of my time. Within this short span of time I became acquainted with so many software programs that I’ve never used for my web content writing projects.

Here are three of those virtual assistant’s tools that I now can’t live without:

TimeStamp – a time tracking freeware from Syntap

Zoho Wiki -  aside from being a great spot for your online to-do lists, you can make use of it as a word processor

BlogDesk – desktop publishing software which facilitates things for me blogging for a number of blogs

I know that more experienced virtual assistants out there have a wider variety of more advance online tools that make their online career a lot fun.

It’d be really helpful if you can share about those online apps and downloadables that help you make money online.

image from logodesignweb.com

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

Virtual Office Freeware