How to Really Make Money Online
Today's internet is saturated with gurus, how to guides, and get rich quick schemes. For as many people out there who wish to learn how to make money online, there is someone ready and willing to sell them a method, a business, a membership, or a secret...After reviewing these products for the past five years, I've noticed that too often I've had to say, "Don't buy this product - you can get the information online for free." The problem, however, is that this information is scattered all over the web in bits and pieces.
My hope for this guide is to bring all this information together as a free resource to help you learn how to really make money online. This is not a get rich quick guide, but it is a guide to show you how to make money. You'll need to put in the time and effort to follow it step by step. If you do this, you will achieve success.
What You Need to Know Before You Begin...
The first thing to realize is that in several important ways making money online is very similar to making money offline. It still holds true you that cannot make money without effort, and there are no shortcuts to success. Anyone who tells you differently is trying to sell you something.That being said, there are some distinct advantages that an online business has to an offline business. You have access to a global market, your business is open 24/7, and the startup costs are generally much lower. This makes online business ideal for the average person.
The purpose of this guide is to illustrate how to start your very own profitable online business using internet marketing. There is no hype in this guide, no up-sells, and no false guarantees of easy riches. This is the same information that all those internet marketing gurus attempt to package and repackage and sell to you for a fee.
I am working to expand this guide and make it even more comprehensive. I would love to hear your feedback so please leave your questions & comments about how it can be improved at the bottom of any page. Make sure to bookmark this page and come back often to see the updates!
What is Internet Marketing?
Internet Marketing, in the broad sense, simply means the marketing of products or services over the internet. It can include selling your own products, marketing other companies' products, or providing useful information in exchange for serving relevant advertisements.As you can see from the graphic below, internet marketing can be broken down into four steps. Do not worry if these seem overwhelming right now because every step will be explained in detail as you read on.
Why You Must Have a Website…
The corner stone of internet marketing is your web property; with this you can utilize internet commerce for your benefit. There’s simply no way around this step and if you really want to make money online you must accept that having a website will be part of that. The good news is that these days you don’t have to be an expert programmer to create a website that will make you money.You just have to learn a few basic concepts that will get your site up and running and ready for monetization. In fact, you'll learn that the web design process is the least important step in creating your online business…
Focus on Getting Traffic
The most successful internet marketers make money through their understanding of traffic generation techniques and niche selection abilities, not based on how pretty their sites look. In fact, you can have the ugliest site in the world and still make a ton of money, just because you know how to drive a lot of visitors to it.This is what a lot of beginners fail to understand; they’ll spend months trying to decide which theme to choose for their site before they learn the first thing about making money online. Furthermore, you can make the same mistake by trying to monetize a website before it has the visitors.
Goals
Your primary goal should be to build a website that has informative posts, a unique perspective, and most of all that solves a need that your visitor has. You want someone to recommend your website to a friend or family member based on how useful they’ve found it. This is the real foundation of an online business, not fancy graphics and slick logos.The long term goals that you set for yourself should be:
- Learn to build a basic niche website
- Understand how to get visitors to the site
- Turn a profit from that traffic
- Do it all over again
What is Niche Marketing?
And How to Choose the Right One...
Niche marketing means that you are focusing on becoming an authority in a highly specific market. A niche is a very targeted and focused area within a general market. An example of a general market is "pets," whereas an example of a niche market could be "tropical aquarium fish" or "Black Labrador dogs."
There are many reasons why niche marketing is effective, with one reason being that it's much easier to become an expert in a niche than in a market. The smaller and more focused you can go the better.
Selecting Your Niche
The absolute best piece of advice for selecting a niche is to focus on topics that you’re either interested in or knowledgeable of. Even if you choose a topic that you're very interested in, but not necessarily very knowledgeable of right now, that's fine too because you can learn more about it over time.Focusing on a subject which is of great concern for you personally will not only make running your online business more enjoyable, but it'll greatly improve the quality of your work. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is going for a niche simply because it seems to promise high income, even though you care nothing about the topic personally.
Remember, there is a way to monetize a website on almost any topic, and if you truly have an interest in a certain niche then you'll have the motivation to succeed in that niche. Choosing your specific niche can be a daunting task, simply because there are so many options to chose from. Don't simply sit there and try to find the perfect niche straight out of the blue. The key is doing some research and active brainstorming.
A Tactic I Use...
For example, to help think of ideas for your niche, you can visit a website like www.Dummies.com which has books and articles on many different topics. Let's say that you have an interest in gardening. Click on the gardening section and look further. They have an article titled "Steps for Fool-Proof Repotting" which explains how to repot plants. If you have interest or knowledge in such a topic then this could be an idea for a niche website. You do not want to create a website that simply talks about "repotting plants" because that is still too broad. You may want to create a website that explains how to repot specific plants, and have article such as "How to Replant a Salvia Divinorum Plant."Here are some other good websites to check out which may help you gather ideas:
- Amazon.com
- Magazines.com
- eBay.com
- Q&A sites(i.e. Wikianswers.com
- Website Auction Sites (flippa.com)
I've Found My Niche Interest! Now What...?
Well, now that you have found your niche topic of interest there are two more steps we have to take to make certain that this is actually the right niche to focus on:- We have to make sure that other people have an interest in this topic too. After all, if you are the only one interested in this subject, then who will come to your website?
- Check to see if there are too many other websites focusing on this niche already. No market is fully impenetrable, but some may simply be so saturated that the barrier for entry may be too strong.
Keyword Research: Making Sure Your Niche Exists
Once you have your niche selected, or at least somewhat narrowed down, the next step is to do some keyword research. This simply refers to analyzing the words and phrases that your potential website visitors are typing into search engines to find what they’re looking for. This information is crucial because if you use it to build an ultra targeted website then not only will you be getting the most primed customers, but your site will show up higher in search engine results, getting you more traffic.When you’re looking for keywords around which to focus your site, look for the ones with the highest search traffic and weakest competition, while still being relevant to the niche you have chosen.
There are many tools to help you with this task, some free and some that require you to pay. You can hold off on investing in paid tools until your site is up and running and has generated some income.
The best place to get started is with the free tools is Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool.
It’s a very helpful and easy to use tool; below is a simple example of how you would use it to narrow down keywords for your niche. Technically this tool was created for advertisers who want to run paid ads on Google, however there's a very strong corellation between paid search ads and orgranic search results. In general a keyword with high advertiser demand indicates a highly popular search term and will be difficult to rank for organically.
How to Select Keywords for Your Site:
To stick with the mommy blogger concept, let’s say you wanted to create a site about "diapers." Below you can see what kind of results come up when you use "diapers" as your keyword in Google’s search tool:
For instance, here it shows the term "diapers" getting over a million monthly searches but medium to low advertiser competition. In cases like these it's safe to assume that ranking for a general main stream keyword like this would be very difficult.
This is why you want to dig deeper into the market to find a unique niche. You want to play around with the search terms, trying out things that you as a shopper might be searching for. You can do this by exploring the related keyword ideas that show up in the results.
So let's take Google’s advice and see where "cloth diapers" will lead us.
As you begin to see this market unravel, your head should be spinning with ideas. First of all, there’s a clear separation of target audience between adults and children, which is a very important distinction to make.
Next, there’s the obvious "best" and "top rated" keywords which can apply to virtually any product or service. However, there’s a lot more to think about here, like offshoot potentials of this niche such as cleaning and caring for cloth diapers. The “how to” keyword also presents a lot of potential opportunities and suggests that this target market is in need of education on this topic.
Now, using what we’ve gathered here we can try exploring this niche even deeper using Google's search engine. You can use the search results that appear on Google for a specific keyword to get even more ideas on additional relevant keywords.
At the bottom of the search results, Google automatically shows related searches which you can use for a better understanding of your niche and target market. You want to carefully research the keywords in your niche and take this step very seriously as it's essentially the foundation of your business.
Let’s recap the qualifications of a good Keyword/Niche combination:
- Gets a high amount of monthly searches
- Not too competitive
- As narrowed down as possible
- Fits your personal interests
Sizing Up Your Competition
Once you feel you have narrowed down a good niche the next step is to do some research on the leading websites for the keywords you have chosen. Again there’s a whole suite of tools out there for website analytics and competition research. But first you need to understand what you're looking for. No matter how good you think a niche may be, it could still be out of your grasp. The issue with many make money online courses is that they send their customers into markets they have no business being in.Theoretically, any newcomer can go on to dominate any market but the question is at what cost? As a one person business you simply don’t want to be competing against corporate websites staffed with writers, designers, product developers, and so on. If you have unlimited money to invest then by all means have at it, but for now I’d recommend avoiding those sites.
Understanding Your Competition...
There are two basic metrics that you want to look at when analyzing a potential competitor. The first and most important is the number of links pointing to that site and the second is Google PageRank.In order to gather all this data you should download a plugin or toolbar for your web browser. If you’re using Firefox a good one to get is http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/. It lets you see these two metrics at the click of a button. After you install it the results will look like this in the bottom right of your browser.
- Simply right click on the blue icon
- Mouse over "show backwards links"
- Select page or domain (will show back links either for entire site or a specific page)
- Then choose Google/Yahoo depending on which search engine you're focusing on
The search engines have turned the internet into a kind of popularity contest and each time somebody links to a site it’s as if they’re casting a vote in their favor. Sites with the most relevant and quality links generally tend to rank the highest. We’ll cover this more in depth in the SEO section of the course.
What is Page Rank...?
PageRank is a simple 1-10 rating system that Google includes in its algorithm to determine what sites to rank higher than others. If you read internet marketing forums you’ll find that a lot of people consider this ranking signal to be antiquated and no longer relevant.Technically they’re right but it does help you get a quick perspective on your market without going into serious site analytics. For example, the PageRank of Facebook.com is 10, FoxNews.com is 8, and BestBuy.com is 7.
Again this metric is one of hundreds that Google uses when determining which site to rank, so while it’s not a definitive factor, it is one that can be instantly located and works well when analyzing your competitors. It’s pretty safe to say that if the top 3 search results in your chosen niche are sites with 6+PR it will be a long time before your new site will outrank them.
Your ideal competitor website will have few links and a low PageRank. Again, the more important metric is the number of links, and you don’t have to be too scared of a 3-4 PR if the site doesn’t have a lot of back links. As mentioned before, Google’s keyword tool only gives you approximations of search activity, so once you've decided on your niche you want to be sure that your data is for real. The best way to do this is to use SemRush.com, a search metrics and analytics tool.
If we go back to our diaper example and the keyword of "organic cloth diapers," the first site to pop up is http://www.greenmountaindiapers.com. When you run that site through SemRush you get this result:
The other benefit of this tool is that it also shows you high impact keywords for that website. So if the competition metrics (# of links/PageRank) tell you that this isn't a powerhouse site, you can go after the higher volume keywords in order to get more traffic to your website.
Keep all these lessons in mind as you go on to the conceptualization and site building stage of your internet business.
Intro to Site Building (It's Not as Hard as it Seems)...
With the niche research done, you should start conceptualizing what kind of website you want. There are many different routes you can take but again it is highly recommended that you stick with what you’re most comfortable doing. For instance, if you’re a good writer and can see yourself writing 2-4 posts a week on your topic then you definitely want a blog. On the other hand if you’re more of a technical person and not a storyteller, you can choose to make a product focused site where you only describe features and benefits of leading products in your niche. You can have a hybrid of these two as well; you can choose whatever option works best for you.
Another aspect that you want to focus on is the relationship you want to have with your visitors. Ask yourself will you be trying to sell them something, educate them, or entertain them? Do not feel like the only way to make money from your site is to sell things; remember any site can be monetized as traffic is the main factor when it comes to making money online. In many cases you can drive more traffic with engaging personal content versus boring product specs.
Defining this relationship will also help you choose more appropriate names and keywords for your website. Something like DigitalCameraReviews.com makes sense for a product review site, whereas DebbiesPhotographyAdventures.com makes more sense for a personal blog.
Choosing a Domain Name
A domain name may seem like a minor step in setting up your online business but on the contrary, it has major influence on your business’s credibility, search engine ranking, visitor quality, and return visitor ratio.A domain name is required in order for people to find your website online. Without domain names you'd have to use the specific IP addresses of websites to visit them. Imagine telling your friends to head over to 74.125.224.116 to see the latest viral video. By registering a domain name you'll be giving your website a user friendly name and home that people can easily find. For example, if your domain name is www.NewDaipers.com, one could type into a web browser or search engine and it will lead you to your site.
You should spend a considerable amount of time thinking of your website’s name and how it will reflect on your business. As you’re thinking of a name, ask yourself if it answers these questions…
-What is your website for?
-Who is your website for?
-What specific keywords are you targeting?
Some tips for choosing a name…
- Keep it Short
- Make it Catchy
- Reveal a Value
- Relate to your Niche
- Advertise your Purpose
- Separate yourself from the Field
- Make it Logo & Brand Friendly
- Leave Room for Growth
Do I Need a .Com?
When registering a domain you should always try to register a “.com” domain. If you have your heart completely set on a specific name that is not available, then you can check alternate extensions.Some other extensions include:
- .Net
- .Biz
- .Info
- .Org
- .Ws
- and many more
If you do fall in love with a particular name and it’s not available, you can consider purchasing that domain name from its existing owner. If you have that money to spend, you can use www.sedo.com or www.sitepoint.com to buy existing websites. You should also refer back to the keyword research you’ve done in the previous steps and try to incorporate them into your website name. This will help your search engine rankings and keep you relevant to your niche. Remember not to try and force awkward phrases into site names but definitely aim for having at least one keyword in the domain if you can.
You can use product names, product types, how to do "blank", or opt for a more personal name.
Your end result should be a domain name that can convey to a first time visitor what they can expect to find on your site and bury itself in their mind so that they’ll return.
As mentioned earlier, with many millions of domain names already registered take the time to pick out several leading candidates. This will speed up the registration process as you won't be forced back to square one if a name you like is already taken. Some people find this process intimidating I'll show you how extremely simple it is to register your domain name and get your site online.
Registration & Hosting
There are two main things that you need to do to get your website up and running so that other people can see it.
1. Register your domain name
2. Set up hosting for your website
To make things easier we recommend using the same company we use, HostGator, throughout this whole process simply because they’ll let you register a domain name, get your site hosted, and get your site ready for publishing all under one roof.
Hostwink is another option.
Each of these steps can be done through a variety of companies but again when you have a low priced one-stop-shop it makes the whole process quick and painless.
Setting up hosting for your website simply means that the web pages you want people to see are put on a computer (web server) that is connected to the world wide web.
Here’s what the basic concept looks like:
To help other people find your website more easily you need to register your website name. Basically, registering your domain name ties that name with your website's IP address, so when someone enters your website name in their web browser, they'll be taken to the correct place.
Let’s get started…
1. The first thing you want to do is head over to hostgator.com and click on view hosting plans.
2. The next step is to select your plan, we recommend starting out with the hatchling plan which is the cheapest and most basic option. It will only allow you to host one website, so if you have plans for expanding your business to include multiple sites you might want to go for the Baby or Business Plan.
You can also select for how long you wish to host your site, the longer you choose the better price you will get, many internet marketers also believe that sites hosted on long term plans are treated more favorably by the search engines. I recommend the 2 or 3 year option since you can still cancel at any time.
3. Now you get to choose your domain name, remember what we discussed in the domain selection section. Your first choice might not be available so have 2-3 ready to go. You should also enter "NewMembers" into the coupon code section to get 25% off your order price.
Setting Up Your Website
Now that you have registered your domain name & acquired website hosting, it is time to create your website. There are several directions you can go here such as creating your own website from scratch, use a website template, or use a web content management system such as WordPress. Unless you are an expert web designer I do not recommend attempting to create your own website from scratch. Website templates can be an O.K. solution if you're trying to create a very simple website which you will not often make changes or add content to. You can do a search for something like "free website templates" on google to find out more.The way I recommend (and use myself) is to simply install WordPress because it's free and offers great utility and flexibility for managing your website content. It is the most popular content management system on the internet with everyone from personal bloggers to multi-million dollar companies using this format.
Wordpress can be a bit of a pain to install, but luckily HostGator has the easy 1-click-installation service called Fantastico. Simply login to your website control panel by going to www.yourdomain.com/cpanel and login with your name and password.
The video below explains exactly how to do all the rest.
Using Wordpress
Now that you have Wordpress installed it's time to see what it can do! Login to your wordpress account by going to www.yourwebsite.com/wp-login.php and you should see something similar to the picture below.You will add content to your new website by creating Posts or Pages, and the overall look of your site will be controlled by the Theme you chose. In addition, you will be able to alter the function and features of your blog by installing Plugins. Lets take a look at how to do these things on your new website...
#1 Choosing your website's look.
There are literally thousands of free Wordpress themes to chose from and you can search or browse them by clicking on "Add New Themes" in your admin panel. In fact, there are so many themes that I find the easiest way to chose one is by searching for one using the "filter feature". For example, you can search for themes that are only a specific color or are of specifically a three-column design.It can seem overwhelming to pick out a theme right away that you feel works perfectly for your site, but don't stress about this too much. The great thing about Wordpress is that you can change your website's theme any time you want and all of your content will still be there! In any case, it's hard to predict exactly what your website will develop into down the line and chances are that you will want to change or customize your theme at some point.
#2 Adding Content
The main way to add content to your website is by writing posts, which include a title and the content. You simply click "Add New" under the Posts menu, enter your content, hit "Publish" and you've just added content that's immediately viewable on your website. It's that easy...Post are dynamic in that they will be shown at the top of your website homepage and will be replaced, or pushed further down, when you write a newer post. Of course how all this works depends specifically on the theme you choose.
You can also create "Pages" by going to "Add New" under the "Pages" menu. Pages are more static than posts in that they are not linked to from the homepage and are not replaced when you create a newer page. You can link to your pages from the menus of your blog or from any post that you create. An example of a wordpress page would be an "About Us" page.
#3 Plugins
Plugins are a built in feature in Wordpress and are used to change some aspect of your website or add a new functionality. There are literally thousands of plugins created by people from all over the world, most of which you can install for free with 1 click of a button. For example, there are plugins to add social buttons to your posts (Facebook like and Twitter buttons) or to create a membership portion of your website, or just about anything you can think of.You can install new plugins by clicking "Add New" under the Plugins menu. You can also find useful plugins by doing a google search for something like "best wordpress plugins" or "essentially wordpress plugins" to get an idea of what plugins are capable of. One plugin I suggest you get right away is called "All in One SEO" as this plugin will help you get your website found by search engines like Google. This plugin easily lets you control on-page SEO factors such as meta-title and meta-description and I'll explain why this is important in the next step.
Intro to SEO
Now that you have your site configured and ready to go, you need to populate it with useful content. Depending on what type of site you have chosen to create your content will vary. However you should still use the skills you learned in the keyword research step to write posts that are related to things that people are actually searching for.This should be reflected in the way that you title your posts and the content within them. Not every post has to be keyword driven; it’s fine to have whatever content you wish, but understand that the way you’ll be getting visitors to your site is through the search engines. And the way to show up in the search engines is to write about things that people are searching for.
If you get to the point where your website has a loyal following and people will regularly read your posts then your writing can be much less keyword driven, but until that point you need to do everything you can to get visitors to your site. There’s no such thing as a “build it and they will come” approach; you need to actively go after visitors.
This leads us into something known as SEO or Search Engine Optimization…
SEO
SEO is simply the practice of doing everything possible to help the search engines find and rank your website. There are a lot of experts, software developers, and services in this field and many claim that they have the key to number one rankings. There is definitely a lot of confusion and misinformation out there about SEO which often steers newcomers in the wrong direction.Just remember no one can guarantee you rankings and when you’re first starting out you shouldn’t be considering paying anyone for SEO services. When you learn more about it and start to understand what it takes to rank a website, you’ll see that it’s not that complicated, rather it takes staying organized and working smart. It’s important to understand that you’re not trying to find cheats or exploit the search engines; you simply want to do everything possible on and off your site to make your content more accessible to searchers.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO simply refers to optimizing your website and your posts. This is the easier part of SEO even though many people neglect to do it right. As stated earlier, when you write a post just make sure that you are using relevant keywords in the title and throughout the post.Let’s say you started a Mexican cooking website and you’re ready to share a recipe…
An example of what not to call your post would be something like, “Dinner I Made Last Night.” No one is going to Google and typing that into the search bar, thus no one will ever find or read that post and you’ve essentially wasted your time. This type of title is only appropriate if you already have a loyal following who will read that post because they know you, are familiar with your writing, and care about what you did last night. Again when you’re starting out this will not be the case.
Now what you should do is title your post something along the lines of “Best Pork Taco Recipe.” You’d also want to use that phrase several times throughout your post to let the search engines know that this is what the article is about.
There’s no need to overdo it; keyword stuffing is terrible as ultimately you’re writing for people not for search engines. You just want to make sure you do enough to keep them happy.
You should also remember to accurately fill out the meta tags for your post such as title, description and keywords. These tags let the search engines know what your post is about and also let them know how to display it in the search engine results.
This step can be easily done through the All in one SEO Pack that you should have installed.
For the keywords field use what you've learned in the keyword research section to fill out a number of terms and phrases that people will be using to find your post. You can also add pictures to your post, which you want to label appropriately with your key phrase as it is another signal that the search engines use to understand and display your post for relevant queries.
Another important aspect of onsite SEO is who you link out to. Linking to educational and related content is encouraged and will not harm your site in any way. However, linking to what are known as "bad neighborhoods" will hurt your site. You should refrain from linking to sites about gambling, adult content, or sites that have malware on them.
Off-Site SEO
The definition of off-site SEO is pretty self-explanatory: it simply refers to everything that you do outside of your own site to influence your ranking factors. This can refer to a lot of different factors but in most cases it comes down to link building. We already discussed how Google views the internet as one big popularity contest in which it treats links as votes for websites. However, this is a broad example and there is a lot more to link building that you need to learn about in order to do it right, stay within search engine best practice guidelines, and get the most out of your work.In the following section you will learn what it is exactly that you need to do to get high quality links pointing to your site, but first let’s start with the fundamentals...
Link Building 101
In order to get visitors to your website you will need to rely heavily on generating links. Links will help your website rank well and allow you to get visitors from a variety of sources that already have a steady stream of traffic. To do this you will need to understand the fundamentals of link building and learn some popular strategies for generating links to a new site.The basic structure of a link in its raw form looks like this:
http://legitimatemoneyonlineguide.blogspot.com/2011/11/step-by-step-guide-to-making-money.html which would equate to this How to Make Money Online Legitimately
The green section is the url of the website which the person will be taken to and the orange is called the anchor text. The anchor text not only creates the clickable text but that text lets the search engines know that the website you are about to visit is on the topic of whatever is in the anchor text area.
This is the one area where newcomers often make the most critical mistakes; even if they understand the importance of link building, by not including anchor text in your links you’re missing out on the full SEO benefits.
Going back to our diaper example…
Do not link to your site like this: Visit my awesome diaper site www.bestorgranicclothdiapers.com
Instead do this: For more info on diaper selection please visit my Best Organic Cloth Diapers website.
It is also very important that the page you are linking to is relevant to the anchor text that you choose for it. It is possible to rank unrelated pages for specific keywords but it is a huge time sink with minimal benefits.
So when you do your keyword research make a list of the keywords you want to rank for and have specific pages setup for each keyword. This kind of optimization will greatly help your rankings and drive highly targeted visitors to those pages.
Next we will examine the different sources of where and how you can get links to your site.
Article Marketing
When you’re first starting you will unfortunately be caught in a catch 22 situation – you won’t be able to get natural links to your site (people finding your site and linking to it because they like it) because they won’t be able to find your site. But in order for them to find your site, you need links.This is why you will have to focus on manual link building methods. The best way to start is through article marketing. Article marketing is the practice of submitting articles to large directories in exchange for a link back to your site. You are essentially trading your labor for a link back to your site. It’s a win-win situation for both parties, as the article directory gets free content and you get links and traffic from their site.
The best site to get started with is EzineArticles.com; once you create your free account there you can begin writing articles for them. You will be writing approximately 450 word articles on your chosen topic. Make sure to use the same keywords that you are targeting in your article titles and throughout your content; this will make the link back to your site more relevant.
You are allowed to place two links back to your site in the author resource box. Again, make sure to use anchor text in your links. When you’re done it should look something like this…
There are many additional article sites that you can work with, but for now just start with one and after you start seeing results you can move on to other article directories.
Forum Marketing
Online forums or message boards are great resources that many people use to get information or just to communicate with like minded individuals. There are forums on virtually every topic imaginable, from auto parts to American Idol fan clubs and you can use these sites as great resources to get visitors and links back to your site.When you make an account at a forum, you are allowed to post links in your signature that will show up below any posts that you make.
There are some general guidelines that you should follow for posting in forums. You want to be looked at as a valuable member of the community and not just some link spammer. So when you make posts write helpful and useful comments or ask real questions that you may have.
You should try to post in forums relevant to your topic. For instance, in the example above the user has a link to men’s suites on a web design forum. In general that link is not going to hold a lot of weight but at the same time it doesn’t hurt. Ideally you want to find a forum that is focused on your niche and become an active member there.
You can also play around with your signature. Those who only use it for SEO tend to use simple links, while others who are actually trying to get forum readers to click their links will make enticing offers and use eye-catching links. It’s up to you which route you want to take. In general the more helpful and authoritative your posts are, the more people will follow your links.
Blog Marketing
Blog marketing is another great strategy that can get you links and visitors to your site. Many bloggers allow their readers to leave a link whenever they make a comment on one of their posts.
The output looks like this:
Now there are a couple things that you need to know before implementing this strategy. First of all, your comment approval is completely at the blog owners discretion so it’s important to post well thought out and useful comments. However, before you waste your time writing a great comment check out their commenting guidelines.
Many blogs won’t let you use keywords as your name; you can still get a link but the anchor text will be your name. This is not as good, but still has some value.
The other strategy for getting links from blogs is to write guest posts. Make a list of the top ten bloggers in your niche and contact them for guest blogging opportunities. Just like with article marketing, you will write them an article and in exchange they will allow you to place links in your post.
The downside is that these guest posts have to be more thought out and better quality then what you are submitting to the article directories. The upside is that these links are not only more valuable, but you can also get some nice traffic from the blog’s visitors.
Another great link building strategy with blogs is Guest Posting. You can contact popular blog owners and request to do a guest post for them. In exchange for the free content they will let you post a link back to your site from your author byline. This method is fairly work intensive since the post you write for them has to be top quality, definitely better written than ones you’d submit to an article marketing site.
Video Marketing
These days a lot of people are supplementing their link building strategies with video content. If you have the time and knowledge you can put together some videos related to your product and place them on your website and on video sharing sites. The main one to consider is YouTube. The good thing about videos is that people generally find them helpful and in some instances prefer them. So if you’re looking for ways to diversify and expand your link building efforts, try making some how-to videos for YouTube. Again make sure to use relevant keywords and post a link back to your site.Once you've mastered these techniques and are seeing daily visits to your site it's time to think about monetizing that traffic. You should start by understanding affiliate marketing and how you can use it to earn an income from your website.
Affiliate Marketing
Now that you have your site up and running and it’s beginning to get some traffic, it’s time to think about monetization. As always, this needs to be tactfully done and congruent with the overall theme of your site as well as the position you’re taking in the marketplace.
For example, a personal blogging site that is overly heavy on product promotion will not work as your sales efforts should be personalized and subtle.
The most popular method for making money online is through affiliate marketing. This is an amazing opportunity that allows you to promote other people’s merchandise for a commission. All you have to do is sign up for a merchant’s affiliate program or use a larger affiliate network to get your personalized tracking links.
When you send customers to the merchant’s site using these links, their activity is monitored. If they complete a sale, you earn a commission. Different vendors have different rates, which range anywhere from 10% - 75%. However when you’re looking for products to promote don’t just focus on how much you stand to make, look for quality products that your visitors can actually benefit from. Otherwise refunds will eat away at your profits and your reputation will suffer for promoting low quality items.
Affiliate Networks
Affiliate networks are large sites that bring together merchants and affiliates. They provide useful statistics on how well offers are doing and really streamline the whole process of promoting products online as both affiliates and merchants are vetted. The other benefit to some of the large networks is that they take care of the payment and refund processing so that all in all the process is pretty hands-off.ClickBank.com is usually the first place that most affiliates get their start. It’s easy to use and has a lot of products to choose from. The downside is that they deal mainly in e-books and subscriptions, so if you want to sell physical products you will have to turn elsewhere. In general you should always try out a product before you choose to promote it.
You can do so by purchasing and returning the product or simply contacting the owner and requesting a promotional copy which in most cases they’re more than happy to do.
When you’re searching the ClickBank marketplace for products to promote, you will see a list of statistics below each item.
A quick way to determine if something is worthwhile product is to look at the Gravity. If the product has a high Gravity number it means that a lot of affiliates are promoting that product. The logic is that if this product was no good and wasn’t making any money for all these people, then why would so many of them promote it?
Again, you should still take a look at the product itself before promoting anything.
When you click to promote, you will be prompted to this screen where you have enter your unique account name and optional tracking ID.
Below is a list of additional popular affiliate networks to consider:
- http://www.cj.com/
- http://www.linkshare.com/
- https://www.connectcommerce.com/
- http://www.linkconnector.com/
- http://affiliate.com/
- http://shareasale.com/
Different Types of Offers
When you’re browsing through all these offers you will come across various types of affiliate payouts. The main ones will be CPS and CPA. CPS simply stands for Cost Per Sale which means you only get paid when a customer completes a sale.CPA stands for Cost Per Action which means that you can get paid just for having a customer input some of their data, like an email address or a phone number. The process for setting these up is the same as a standard affiliate offer, the only difference is that your affiliate link will take your visitors to different types of sign up pages. You can play around with these different types of offers to see what works best for your site and your type of traffic.
Again don’t promote anything that you wouldn’t use yourself, as some offers may seem incredibly enticing but will ultimately leave your visitors with a poor shopping experience, and a poor impression of your website. If you feel like affiliate marketing is not for you or does not work well with your site's concept you can still make money from your site. Next, we'll look at the best hands-off way to passively earn from your traffic...
Google Adsense
If you choose not to directly promote any products from your website and instead maintain a strictly information/entertainment website, you can still profit from your efforts. Google’s contextual ad network, AdSense, allows webmasters to profit by placing relevant ads on your site.
All you have to do is add the specific code to your website and Google sponsored ads will appear in designated areas. You may have seen these ad units on some of your favorite websites...
This is an income stream that can be a primary or secondary focus of your website. Whenever a visitor clicks on one of these ads you get paid. The amount you get paid is never fully revealed, but in general it is determined by the popularity of the subject and the amount that advertisers are willing to bid for spots relevant to their keywords. This can range from a few pennies to over $10 per click. The important aspects of this method are website traffic and targeted keywords.
Since the entire basis for the program is site visitors clicking on ads, it’s important not to jump the gun applying for an AdSense account. Before you proceed, make sure your site is getting a steady stream of traffic, has been around for at least a couple couple months, and meets all Google AdSense program policies.
If your site meets the criteria, click here to apply.
Once you're accepted into the program all you have to do is add the adsense code to your website where you want the ads to appear.. You’ll have to play around with sizes and formats to find the best fit for your blog. While there are some ad formats that generally work best, such as the "Large Rectange" and "Wide Scyscraper" formats, you'll have to test, test, & retest to find out which ads and what placement works best for your individual website.
Best Practices for AdSense
If you are just using AdSense as a way to passively pay for the routine costs of running your site, then you don’t have to concern yourself with this section. But if you are looking for AdSense to generate large scale earnings, then you need to approach your site’s content from an advertiser’s point of view.The posts that will have the highest ad click through rates and the highest paying ads are the ones most suited for advertisers. Focus your posts on topics related to product selection or problem solving. Let’s say you have a cooking site and you make a post about the top 5 best sautering pans; once this post gets traffic it will have great AdSense results.
The reasons for that are pretty self-explanatory…
1. It makes sense for Google to place ads on this post since it is dealing with a tangible product
2. If you do a search for this product you’ll see that there are tons of advertisers for it
3. People reading about the product are more likely to click on an ad featuring the very product they’re reading about
4. The more targeted visitors that page is sending to Google Ads, the higher your payout will be
Tips for Getting More Clicks
Check your posts to see what kind of ads are being served. If the results you see don’t match up with your content then it’s time to make some changes.You could have the correct keyword dialed in, but are simply not using it enough for Google to register that that’s what the page is about. Check your keyword density to make sure it’s high enough. If it is, you can try implementing a few techniques to enhance their visibility like highlighting, italicizing, or linking to other relevant pages with your keyword as the anchor text.When Google’s AdSense bot crawls your page, it takes everything into consideration including your blog’s title, your side menus, headers, and footers, so make sure that all those are congruent with your site’s overall theme and chosen keywords to greatly improve ad relevancy.
Another good technique is to really focus your posts on one single topic and keyword. When it comes to having relevant (highest clicked) ads, you want to make sure that Google is not confused about the topic of your content.
You can also manually block out ads that are not relevant to your site. Your AdSense control panel allows you to do this so you can block out irrelevant or otherwise unwanted ads from displaying on your site.
Finally, you can play around with ad size, color, and placement. Here is Google’s recommend AdSense placement for standard blogs:
A Few More Things to Consider
Do not click on your own ads! You might think you’re outsmarting Google, but they will quickly match your AdSense ID with your IP address and ban you from their program. There’s no point risking it just to make a few bucks. Along the same lines don’t outright request that your readers click your AdSense ads; this is another offense that violates their Terms and Conditions.Once you have everything set up, keep an eye on your stats and see which pages are performing well and which aren’t, then do more of what’s working and less of what’s not. If you need help figuring something out, you’re likely to find your answers on Google’s AdSense support page. Remember that as an internet marketer your work never ends, and while it may seem like you can make money in your sleep you always need to be on the lookout for ways to optimize your income streams.
Testing Offers
Once your website is up and running and you have the basic framework of your sales funnel set up, whether it’s AdSense or affiliate marketing, the next step is optimization. If you are treating your website as a real business, then you should always be looking for ways to improve your income.This can be done through a variety of methods which all rely on some form of basic data analysis. Without making things too complicated, you should simply have an understanding of where the majority of your profits are coming from and what you can do to increase them.
In internet marketing you’ll often hear people refer to the 80/20 Rule. This states that 80% of your income will be coming from 20% of your site. The trick is identifying where that 20% lies and how you can improve that area of your site to meet its full potential.
Testing Products
If you are using affiliate marketing then one thing you can do is to test out several products to see which ones convert the best. The metric that you want to use for this is known as EPC or Earning Per Click. This breaks down your earnings so that you know how much you make each time you’re sending someone to the merchant’s website.This is the best metric to look at since it sums up your total earnings. For instance, even though one product may pay $10 or $20 more per sale, it doesn’t mean anything if it has a worse conversion rate then one paying far less. This is why you should look at your EPC over any other data.
All affiliate networks provide you with extensive data on any offer you run with them so checking your EPC is just a matter of logging into your account and seeing the results. Here’s an example:
Just don’t be too hasty with your decisions; make sure you have an ample data set before you take action. You should also be tracking your sales individually, which all affiliate networks allow you to do. When you have selected an offer you want to promote you will be given the option of including a tracking ID. This will not only credit the sale to your account but will let you know that the sale came from specifically that link.
In ClickBank it would look something like this, http://XXXXX.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=Name of Tracking Link
This can be used to compare a variety of pages selling the same product to see which one has the higher EPC. For example you can have a tracking link like article1, homepage, or how to page which would let you know which of those 3 pages earns the most sales. With that info at hand you'd simply make more of the pages that sell the most.
Creating a Bonus
An interesting strategy to play around with is creating a bonus for the product you want to sell. I’d recommend doing this only after you’ve found a really great product that has long term potential. There’s no point wasting your time on a product that’s not going to be around in the future. So after you’ve chosen your main product and have tested it against others, you can consider creating a bonus to increase your sales even more.Bonuses can be anything that you might think your customers will find useful and use in tangent with the product you’re promoting. This can be something like additional how-to information, a series of setup videos, or your own personal assistance.
Once you have created your bonus simply add this info to the pages that are promoting the product. Your bonus could be along the lines of “Buy Product X now and receive my list of additional tips and tricks for no added charge!”
This strategy can work and many marketers don’t promote anything without adding a bonus, however it is a time consuming step that should be saved for the end, once all the other pieces of your business are in place and working well. In addition to these tips there are more exciting strategies that you can use to further grow your business and increase earnings.
Growing Your Business
If you’re interested in creating a long term relationship with your visitors you can choose to build an email list. This requires the use of a 3rd party service that will provide you with easy to use tools for collecting, storing, and communicating with your email list. This strategy has many benefits but also comes with its own set of challenges.
The most important thing here is to determine whether you need an email list or not. Many marketers love the idea of an email list because they think anytime a new product comes out they can simply shoot out an email to their list and make thousands of dollars in one day. In reality an email list needs to be nurtured and cared for, and if you abuse it you’ll lose it very quickly. So don’t start building a list if all you want to do is spam your subscribers with promotional offers. However if you feel that you can provide additional value to your visitors through a series of email communications then you should by all means invest in this service.
If you send your email subscribers useful information and build a trusting relationship with them, then every once in awhile you can send them affiliate links to products or services that you want to promote.
Email marketing does put an extra burden on your business since you have to come up with these informative/entertaining emails and come up with catchy email titles but it can have tremendous results if you do it right. You should also do your research on the different companies offering these services as some are more suited for smaller business and others for full time marketers. AWeber Communications and Constant Contact are probably the most recognized names in this industry, and allow you to choose custom packages based on your business’s needs.
Outsourcing
Finally, the last and often the most overlooked aspect of optimizing your business is time management. As you can see from this guide there are a lot if pieces that comprise a successful business and if you’re doing them all you can quickly overextend yourself. This is why you should consider outsourcing some menial tasks.There are some mixed opinions on when you should start outsourcing. Some marketers will tell you to invest heavily in it right from the start and tell you things like it takes money to make money. They are definitely right to some degree, but I would recommend building your business to the point of at least some profits before you start outsourcing.
The whole point of outsourcing is to speed up the creation of profitable elements of your online business, but if you don’t know what those are yet then how can you hire people to do them for you?
The one area where you can benefit the most from outsourcing will deal with link building, primarily article writing and distributing. Instead of writing all your articles you can outsource this task to the tune of 5-10 dollars per article, depending on quality and length.
Then instead of manually submitting that article to one site you can pay a service to distribute that article to hundreds of sites from the click of a button. These kinds of shortcuts will save you hours of time and greatly increase your link building efforts.
There are many sites that you can use to hire writers and get people to do other tasks:
- Elance.com (also good for finding developers/coders)
- Fiver.com (get people to do virtually anything for 5 bucks)
- Odesk.com (great outsourcing hub)
- DistributeYourArticles.com (mass article distribution service)
Just be aware that as a small business owner you'll be the target of many too good to be true offers and while some may seem completely legit as a new comer to internet marketing it's hard to tell what services you really do or don't need. We'll go over these next.
Things to Keep in Mind and watch out for...
This guide should have given you enough information to start building your online business from websites that you actually enjoy working on. Feel free to refer back here as often as you need to and share and comment on any pages that you found useful. Remember this industry is new and constantly evolving so always keep your eyes open for new ways to improve you websites and online business.Along the way you may come across many services offering you help and ways to improve your income, traffic, and more. Before you go take a look at some common offers that you should avoid.
Paying for Traffic…
This is a complete scam and something you shouldn’t waste your time with. These companies make ridiculous promises like getting fifty thousand people to your website for less than fifty bucks. The majority of the time you get nothing from these companies, on occasion you may see a traffic increase but it’s untargeted and not quality traffic, usually sent there by some other program that promises them money for visiting advertisers’ websites.Coaching and Mentoring…
This is a slippery slope that has the potential to cost you thousands of dollars. There are many gurus who would love to coach you; the problem is that they want to do it for up $30,000. Be wary of coaching that gets offered to you after you have purchased some kind of intro product.If you get a call from some hot shot’s secretary saying that you have been selected to receive coaching from their millionaire boss, it maybe a scam.
There are a few business leaders who have been working in the industry for a long enough time that they have established reputations as experts. This is why you should only approach or consider mentoring for specific business needs and from specific business experts. As with anything make sure to search for online reviews before you sign up with any program. In most cases you should be able to find the info you need for free online or get help from some related forums.
SEO Companies…
These groups of people make you promises of number one search engine rankings for your list of targeted keywords. There’s a difference between books and courses on SEO strategies which are recommended and companies that actually promise results.First off you should learn SEO techniques on your own if you seriously plan to work online. Once you have multiple sites you don’t want to have to pay people to optimize each one every time. Regardless, in most cases these unsolicited offers are from foreign companies who are better at taking your money than delivering results
Link Building Offers…
You should approach any kind of untargeted link exchange program with extreme caution. The search engines, especially Google, have developed very sophisticated methods for detecting unnatural link building patterns. This means if you pay some company for 100 incoming links, warning bells go of as the Google spiders reveal that this exchange is not natural and therefore goes unaccredited and at times punished. You can lose your sites’ entire rankings if Google believes that you are using black hat SEO techniques. At this point it’s just not worth the risk.Final Thoughts…
I hope that this resource has been helpful and informative. Just remember that a real business takes time and effort to develop. This process may seem like an overwhelming task but if you develop a solid plan and work at it every day, slowly but surely your online income will match if not surpass your day job’s.The worst thing that you can do is give up on your dreams of succeeding and working from home full time. There are tons of people already doing this and there’s no reason that you shouldn’t be one of them. Feel free to share this resource with those who need it.
Check out the link below for additional information regarding surveys, writing, and other scams...
Good Luck!
