Making money on the internet!

My two ways of making money on the internet:

1) Cafepress:

Basic vs Premium:

First things first. I had a basic shop and it sucked, all the basic shops look the same so it didn't stand out, I couldn't add more than one of each item and it didn't have all the functions of a premium shop. I also checked out forums and websites and found that premium shops sell a lot more than basic ones.
So I just upgrade my shop? Not that easy! A premium shop costs money, $6.95 is not a lot but still more than I have!
Thank goodness for trails! Cafepress offers a 15 day trail period where you can make money to fund your premium shop. The only downside is that if your shop doesn't generate cash in those 15 days your shop gets deleted!!

Designs

Ok, so now I have my premium shop and I have added images, tags, descriptions etc. What now? How do I know if people are going to like my designs or my products? Well having as many products as you can have makes it easier for people to choose something they are interested in buying and if the designs are good quality, funny, pretty, cute or quirky there is someone out there that will want to buy them!
My shops name is I candy design and to stick with my I candy concept I made my designs pretty, cute and girly.
Be careful when opening a shop and simply uploading loads of designs without reading all the image requirements, I made that mistake and had to re upload all my designs because I didn't load them in .png format...
Big mistake that cost me a lot of time, effort and frustration! The images should also be quite big, 300dpi should be sufficient!

Promotion

So this is where I am stuck at the moment. How do I promote my shop for my specific market? Well at the moment I am still struggling. Viral marketing is apparently the way to go but I can't seem to think of really good ideas of how to implement it.
I have opened a myspace page but I don't want to randomly add people because I am not a spammer...
In the next couple of days before my trail finishes I will try and make at least enough money to stay open for another month!

Linking:

I have received more than 50% of my traffic by linking to other sites and I still think its one of the most effective ways to get people that are interested in your topic to read your site.

There are a few things however you should always keep in mind when linking

1) Link to sites that are the same or similar to your (example - I have a gossip blog so I link to gossip, fashion, celebrity sites)
2) Do you have less than 20 posts? Then don't request link exchanges people will say no.
3) In your email requesting link exchange say something nice about the person's blog to show your interest. It makes it feel like they are not just getting another bulk mail.
4) Join www.technorati.com and check who links to your page and maybe link back to them in the future if you are interested in their content. It creates more awareness to your site.

Content:

Content is difficult especially if you want to get your blog up and running asap. Take time with your content until you know what your reader likes and prefers. Try a few different ways of writing your posts as well. You will then see what gets the best feedback.

Don't have too many adverts on your blog (between every post, on both sides of the page etc)

Make the content as interesting as possible and put your own opinion in as well.

Increase traffic:

1) Add your blog to search engines (I get loads of traffic from Google)
2) If you upload pictures onto your blog name them (picture of Britney Spears, name it Britney Spears and not pic12 or something like that) Google images will pick up on the name.
3) Add your opinion or advise to relevant forums ad put your link in your signature
4) Open different networking accounts and display your links (myspace, facebook, friendster)