Make Money Online
If you are out searching in Google for the best ways to make money online you are going to come across all kinds of affiliate programs promising to show you how you can earn a $1,000s a day from one simple plan. That is not how it works. The truth is that it takes a lot of hard work and determination to make money online. If you are willing to work hard though it can pay off big. I’ve found that some of my most profitable ideas have come from a lot of work at first and then just a little work to keep things going.
The two ways that people are making money online today is by blogging and by promoting products for other people. Promoting a companies products is called affiliate marketing and it can be very profitable. You make money when you refer a customer to a website where they purchase a product. You will be surprised how many companies have affiliate programs.
Blogging to make money
Every expert that has ever talked about how to make money off your blog has always started with this one simple statement: If you are blogging only to make money and not because you are interested in what you are blogging about – you will fail.
So where do you start? Start with what you are interested in. Find a topic or a hobby that you think you would be able to blog about 3-5 times a week. You have to start with an idea.
Once you have that settled you have two options. You can go with a free blog site like wordpress.com or blogger.com where you get a free website and blog. Everything is automated for you its easy to get started immediately. The problem with this is that you get what you pay for. You are limited to the designs they provide, your domain name will be xxx.blogger.com or whatever you choose if it’s even available. Having a restricted design template means that later on when your blog becomes famous you are limited by the free features. You may have a harder time selling ads on your blog or making it look at do the things you want.
The second option is not free and requires more work to get started. You have to do a little more work with this option but if you are in this for the long term it’s a must. First you have to buy a domain name. I use godaddy.com. Once you buy a domain name you will need to buy a hosting account so that you can host your domain on a web server. That’s all that you have to pay for. $10 for the domain name and $5 for the hosting account… not too bad. You can download the free version of wordpress and install it for free from wordpress.org. (not the same as wordpress.com) Their installation steps are clear and easy. Once you have your blog setup you just start blogging!
Now once you have your blog setup how do you make money from it? Here are a few ways that I have used to make money from blogging:
1. Adsense – Google’s adsense program is free an easy to setup. You get paid each time someone clicks on a ad.
2. – Text Link Ads sells other people links on your website and you get paid each month to let someone have a link on your website
3. Sell ad space – You can charge people to let them post an ad on your website. This can be competely automated if you use the OIO plugin.
4. Promote other people’s products: Companies like Amazon and Ebay will pay you when you refer a sale to them
5. Charge a membership: If you content is good enough, or if you can provide a service you can charge a membership fee for people to be members of your blog
There is a great website that will teach you all the ins and outs of making money blogging: Blog Mastermind
Promoting other companies products (Affiliate Marketing)
Affiliate Marketing is huge on the Internet. Everyone is doing it and lot’s of people are making huge money with this business. As I said before there are a ton of companies out there that have affiliate programs and will pay you 5-75% of the sale price for each referral you produce. The rate depends on the product and the company. Opportunity.com is by far the best place to start. You can get access to the largest list of affiliate programs and get step by step instructions on how to promote these products and earn money.
If you already have an idea of a product or type of product you want to promote just go to Google and search for the keyword you are interested in and the word “affiliate.” I bet you will see a bunch of results. All you have to do is apply for their program and once you are accepted they will provide you with your personal affiliate link. Anytime someone clicks on that link they will be tracked as someone you referred and if they buy something you get a percentage of the sale price. It’s sometimes required that you have a website before you can get approved for affiliate programs. Having a blog is a good place to start.
Promoting affiliate products can be done through a bunch of different methods. To get you started here are a few you can use:
1. Your blog: Setup a blog and review products from a specific niche. Or, setup a blog and every once in a while through an affiliate link into your blog posts.
2. Email: If you can build an email list or buy one, you can email your affiliate links to people.
3. Twitter: You can promote affiliate products on Twitter by tweeting about them. It helps if you have a bunch of followers though. Read my post on how to build a successful Twitter account.
4. Affiliate advertising: Many affiliates will provide you with advertising banners you can put up on your site. The banners have your affiliate link in them.
5. Adwords: You can pay to advertise your affiliate links through Adwords.
The best way to learn more about how to make money promoting other people products is to use Opportunity or The Affiliate Code.