I get a ton of emails from people asking me about ways to make money online. That is a very broad question, because there are many answers. Folks just don’t know where to start. Believe me…I know how you feel. Everything seems so overwhelming at first.
When sifting through the maze of “internet marketing” it is difficult to see the entire forest when all you can see is the tree trunks and branches in your field of view. That is why it’s important to take a large step back and get perspective. That way, you can get an “overall picture”, then drill down on any one of the ways to make money online that work for you.
To help you get an “overview” of how to get started, I have outlined five ways to make money online below:
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Outsource Your Services – This is probably the easiest way to start earning an income online, although it has the least potential for generating an income that can be scaled up because your time is limited. If you have a talent that you feel would be useful to others, you can advertise your services online and people can hire you to complete those services. For instance, you might be a good writer, graphics artist, salesperson, programmer or social media enthusiast. Put together a professional portfolio and sales pitch and advertise on ODesk, a marketplace for people to exchange services for money online. The way it works, generally, is that you bid the fee that you are willing to accept for performing a particular task. The person hiring reviews your history, feedback and credentials to determine the best match. It’s important to do good work so that your positive feedback will get you more business. Money is handled by ODesk. You will not be paid until the task are completed properly. You will also need a Paypal account to get started. Other sites that provide similar services are: ELance, Freelancer, Guru, VWorker, and Scriptlance.
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Affiliate Marketing – Ever since the very first e-commerce websites went online, and especially since sites like EBay.com and Amazon.com have gained such a hold of the online retail world, affiliate marketers have been raking in huge incomes by promoting products and services online. Affiliate marketing works this way… 1) a website (“Vendor”) has a product or service to sell, 2) you sign up as an official affiliate (“Affiliate”) for that site, 3) you advertise those products and services online with your affiliate link (a special link that is assigned to you and your affiliate account), 4) if a customer clicks on your affiliate link, they are taken to the Vendor’s website, 5) if the customer decides to buy that product or service, you GET PAID a commission for the sale. It’s that simple in theory, but the trick is knowing how to advertise those products and services and how to get enough visitors to your online advertising to make sales. The methods for doing this include article marketing, video marketing, picture marketing, social media marketing, etc. How to begin with these methods is outside the scope of this post, but you should be able to gain an understanding of each by visiting the Warrior Forum.
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Product Creation – This is truly one of the best ways to make money online, but does require some technical skill to create a website, connect it with a payment processor and integrate your own affiliates. To begin with this method, try to think of a product or service that a group of people could really benefit from. The product itself could be as simple as an ebook or video series where you are providing some instructions on how to perform a task, how to start a business, how to win your ex girlfriend back, etc. The best thing about product creation is that you can leverage an army of your own affiliates who sell your product for you. Online marketplaces like Clickbank are great for this method because they handle the payments, returns and affiliate sales for you. If you don’t have anything but an idea and a little money, considering outsourcing (see #1 above) the product creation, website build-out and integration with Clickbank.
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Offline Marketing – OK…so you think its not really among the “ways to make money online”, but it is since you’re basically helping people offline to create a better online marketing strategy. The hottest trend in this category lately is for people to sell services to offline business so that they can be “online”. These services might include setting up a website for them, setting up a Facebook(TM) fan page, setting up a mobile optimized website. There are a ton of tools out there to help you get these things up and running fast. One popular method is to look for business that do not have an online presence and to contact them with a link showing them what their site might look like. This could be a template site that you can easily customize with their brand. Once the business owner has latched onto the idea of being “online”, or “on Facebook” hit them up for your fee for delivering the service. Do a good job and the business owner might refer you to one of his or her associates for more work.
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Domain & Website Flipping – This is a sub-culture among the ways to make money online. These folks will go out to Godaddy and Sedo to purchase expired and aged domain in an auction format. New domains can also be purchased, but aged and expired domains come with some search engine optimization (“SEO”) benefits built-in. These benefits might be related to superior branding, the number of backlinks and existing traffic a domain might have or the potential to develop a domain into a new brand. The more of these aspects that a domain has, the more valuable it can be. Sites like Flippa are great for selling domains and complete websites. Sometimes, the value for any particular domain can be greatly enhanced if you develop a website on the domain, then sell the domain together with the website. However, be careful when choosing domains and websites that you do not infringe on the trademarked names of other companies or selling website content that has been copy-written by other authors.
Feel free to leave comments. I look forward to hearing from you.
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