The most obvious way to make money online is through writing, i.e., becoming a “content provider”.

You might, for instance, sell your work directly to one of the many blog networks now out there. Or you might become a problogger, like Darren Rowse, which means tailoring your writing to specific niches so that well-heeled search traffic will find you and click on your contextual advertising, like Google’s Adsense. By adding to your “page views”, they will also make it easier to sell paid advertising off the site.

We’ll be looking at problogging later in this series. For now, I want to concentrate on direct publishing, selling your words themselves in a print format. Here’s an example that popped into my inbox this very morning:

Marti Lawrence runs a blog called Enter The Laughter, which rather speaks for itself. However, to monetize it further she has decided to put her blog posts into book form using one of the “free” publication tools now available on the internet.

Using Lulu.com Marti has stitched her posts together as: Queen Klutz – The Misadventures of a Very Clumsy Woman:

It takes a bit of work to do this, and it’s not as free as you’d think — an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) costs $99, for example. But Marti has done it, cheerfully confessing her lack of technical know-how in this field.

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Dave Sifry, head honcho at Technorati, the blog search engine, has given us another State of the Blogosphere assessment. Essentially he says:

* The blogosphere is now 100 times larger than it was 3 years ago.

* The blogosphere is doubling in size every 200 days.

* 175,000 blogs are created each day — two every second.

* 70 pc of pings that Technorati gets are from spam blogs.

* Daily posting levels are at about 1.6 million posts per day (18.6 per second).

* English has retaken the lead as the most spoken language in the blogosphere (Japanese is only 1 pc behind).

All this shows what a great market the Web is for commerce of all sorts. Take the business behind this Website, Syntagma Media. Over on Syntagma, there’s an assessment of its growth in July:

In the month of July Syntagma Media’s basket of key indicators showed an increase of 20.8 pc. Annualized that represent a 250 pc growth rate.

July, of course, is traditionally a slow month for commerce, the exceptions being anything related to travel, tourism and vacations in general. So our true growth is probably somewhere between 300 and 400 pc — a rate that outperforms even Hong Kong in its heyday.

As we often say, blog networks — whether interpreted as geeky outlets for techy types, or online, distributed magazines, like Syntagma — are a good business to be in.

To press this message home, we’re going to be running a new series titled, Making Money Online.

Stay tuned for that one.

One of the simplest ways of starting a business is to buy a franchise. These are usually sold by suppliers of well-known products or services in order to expand their user base without investing in more staff, bricks and mortar etc. It’s also a good way of increasing cash flow.

Franchises can represent a good deal for a startup business. Typically, the franchising business will provide product, literature, national advertising, links to potential customers, and much else. All for a price, of course.

What to look out for when buying a franchise

1. Make sure you have a solid business plan in which you have budgeted for your living expenses and management fees.

2. You may have to borrow from a bank, but expect to commit about one-third of the total cost yourself.

3. The franchisor should know the business and its prospects better than you, so take their projections seriously.

4. See if you are eligible to secure any loan through the UK Government’s Small Firms Loan Guarantee Scheme, if you are in the UK. Other countries may have similar schemes.

5. If you are not satisfied with the information you are given by the seller, walk on by.

Tomorrow we’ll look at what you need to do before you sign on the dotted line.

The problem with sending email newsletters to your customers has always been that different states have different requirements.

In the US, Federal laws defining allowed practices for email marketers, which includes email newsletters, are detailed and precise. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulates what is know as the CAN-SPAM law. At present though, state laws are causing more concern, particularly in Michigan and Utah. I’ll begin with these :

New laws in Michigan and Utah for child protection carry custodial sentences for even inadvertent non-compliance.

In essence, the problem is : The states of Michigan and Utah have passed child protection laws with “Do Not Email” registries for individuals to enter minors’ email addresses. Marketers potentially face stiff fines as well as time in prison if they send email to a registered minor’s address and the email contains material, or links to material, which children may not legally see or respond to. If you send commercial email, of any type, and you don’t check the address against the registry before you send it you are potentially liable.

The laws are not clear on what products or services a minor is prohibited from purchasing, viewing, possessing, participating in, or otherwise receiving. However, the State of Utah’s Department of Commerce is attempting to add further definition to what types of advertisements are covered. There’s a pdf here.

The only way to avoid liability is to check every address in your email list against the Michigan and Utah registries before you send them an email.

The fees to start are expected to be 0.007 cents for Michigan and 0.005 cents for Utah per address on your list. The costs for a 100,000 name list will be $1200 per pass. So you’ll need to check each new subscriber as they come, plus the whole list every 30 days. For a 10,000 list which acquires say 100 new subscribers a month. The cost will be $121.20 monthly. A 50,000 list with 500 new subscribers would be $606 monthly. Not cheap.

Any business anywhere in the world with a presence in the US needs to follow these laws. This law does not just apply to businesses in Michigan and Utah, it effects all businesses with a presence in any of the 50 US states.

These are the main provisions of the Federal law :

It bans false or misleading header information. Your email’s “From,” “To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person who initiated the email.

It prohibits deceptive subject lines. The subject line cannot mislead the recipient about the contents or subject matter of the message.

It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method. You must provide a return email address or another Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages to that email address, and you must honor the requests. You may create a “menu” of choices to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to end any commercial messages from the sender.

Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your commercial email. When you receive an opt-out request, the law gives you 10 business days to stop sending email to the requestor’s email address. You cannot help another entity send email to that address, or have another entity send email on your behalf to that address. Finally, it’s illegal for you to sell or transfer the email addresses of people who choose not to receive your email, even in the form of a mailing list, unless you transfer the addresses so another entity can comply with the law.

It requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender’s valid physical postal address. Your message must contain clear and conspicuous notice that the message is an advertisement or solicitation and that the recipient can opt out of receiving more commercial email from you. It also must include your valid physical postal address.

Fines can be up to $11,000 for each violation, but may also impact other laws, so can be progressively higher, or even custodial.