Making Money Online - Is it Really That Hard?

The topic of how to make money online is a popular one. In fact, a Google search returns nearly two hundred million responses to that query. Obviously, there are many people who are interested in making money online or working from home. Why, then, are so few people able to actually do it?

There are several reasons why making money online is difficult to do.

The Web is competitive; it is difficult to find a niche today that isn't already being exploited by someone else.

Setting up a business on the Internet may require a cash investment that some would-be entrepreneurs simply don't have available to them.

Going into business online may require a skill set, such as writing or programming skills that some people who would like to get involved just don't have.

While these may be obstacles to certain types of moneymaking ventures, it doesn't eliminate all of them. In fact, there are hundreds of ways to make money that don't involve large investments of cash, programming skills, or the ability to push online giants such as Amazon out of the marketplace.

Here are a few examples of ways to make money online:

Create your own online store. You don't need to know how to build a Website; many Web hosts offer complete, "turnkey" shopping cart systems. You just need to fill in the blanks to add merchandise. Some wholesalers will even drop ship merchandise for you, so you don't have to stock or ship the merchandise yourself.

Sell things on eBay. If you aren't the sort of person who likes finding bargains at garage sales, you can even make money promoting eBay. The auction site will pay you a small commission for every new customer you send to them who signs up and bids on something. Some eBay partners earn more than a million dollars per year this way.

Create a blog. If you do have the ability to write a bit, you can create a blog about any subject that happens to fascinate you. Google or any one of a number of other companies can place advertisements on your blog that pay you if anyone clicks on them. Each click won't pay much, but it can add up over time.

Sell products through affiliate marketing. There are no limits to how many different things you can promote online as an affiliate. Amazon has an affiliate program that pays you a commission if you send someone to the site that buys something.

The possibilities for making money online are endless, if you only put your mind to it. If you can't come up with ideas on your own, just do a Web search. After all, there are some two hundred million answers out there.

Where To Source For JV Partners

There are many places to source for joint venture partners:

1. Search Engines

Make searches on Google and other search engines. Use keywords that are related to your products or services.

2. Forums

Visit forums regularly and read the posts. You will see many Internet marketers hang around in these forums. Here are a few that you could check out:

Warrior Forum

How To Corp

Anthony Blake

3. Ezines

Subscribe to Ezines. You will receive plenty of information from publishers. You will also be exposed to other Internet marketers since you'll receive promotions and endorsements from them. You can source for them using the search engines.

4. IMNewsWatch

This site is managed by my good friend and JV partner, Mike Mograbi. Many Internet marketers make regular postings here. You can source for your potential JV partners here.

5. Joint Venture Brokers

There are some Internet marketers who will assist with getting JV Partners to assist with your product launch. There are many mushrooming on the Internet. Just make a search on the search engines to locate them.

6. Attend Seminars and Boot camps

There are many Internet marketing seminars held in the US and other parts of the world. Most of these seminars are organized by Top Internet marketers. Many successful Internet marketers are the speakers for these events and many of the participants are serious Internet marketers. Going to these seminars will allow you to network with these Internet marketers. I am sure you can source of great JV partners in these events.

You can make a search on GOOGLE to locate such seminars. Here are a few:

1. The Big Seminar


2. The Internet Marketing Main Event


3. WIS (World Internet Summit)

7. Referrals

Once you have a few JV partners, you can ask them to refer their contacts to you. Some of them will assist while others may not. As I said, you have nothing to lose!

Typical Mistakes You Should Not Repeat In Affiliate Marketing

Many people think affiliate marketing is an easy thing to do and so they will become rich in a matter of days. But it's more complicated that it might appear at the first moment. The basic reason behind the disappointment in affiliate marketing and failing to earn online is the lack of believing in yourself and hard working. You just can't build your own affiliate marketing based online business without hard working and believing in achieving your goal.

The second basic cause of disappointment in affiliate marketing and online business in general is the lack of promoting skills or simple promoting know-how's. As you might have noticed, the main thing in online business is the Traffic – it literally inhales life in your site/blog. Without the traffic your Web project will be half alive. When your project gets traffic – you get sales for your online business. It's funny how many newbies don't understand it and act very surprised when they don't get any sales. It's they who will post messages like "there's no money online!"

The next fault is trying to build online business without having a website for it. The only way to start promoting your project is to build a site (or better a blog) for your project. It will also help you getting potential and customer's e-mail addresses and building your own online business web.

Many people start acting like crazy when they sign up to their first affiliate program and then start promoting it in wrong places. For example, you would hardly get any sales if you would start posting messages advertising weight loss pills on video games forums or message boards – most probably you would get banned. You should find your targeted online audience which will transform in highly targeted traffic – that traffic will bring you sales. To summarize, the more targeted traffic you will get – the more sales you will earn.

One the most important affiliate marketing principles is in pre selling instead of directing your selling. People are smart and they fill or know when you want to make them something to buy – so you should establish a trustful relations with your site visitors instead of forcing them to buy some product. The success of pre selling is knowing the product of your affiliate program and, the most importantly, knowing your customer. You should discover your way of preparing them to buy, so the customer would understand and truly feel he/she needs that product very much.

And the last tip I will reveal is - offline promoting of your online affiliate marketing based business. Many people focus so much on web based methods that they forget that good old offline promoting methods still work. So when you have a site of your project – go and get some flyers, visit cards and stickers which will help you to spread the word about your online business.

Driving Profitable Traffic To Your Website - How To Get Your Website Ahead Of The Pack

So you have a website for your business or affiliate program or you are in the process of creating one. If you are new to web design you are probably just learning the hard way that you cannot simply submit your website to google and start raking in the web traffic. It can be frustrating for someone just starting out in the affiliate marketing field when they put so much time and effort into a website only to find out they have had one or two visitors in three months and no commission checks. There are many ways to drive profitable traffic to your website. Some of them cost money and some of them don't. The one's that don't typically are the one's that take alot more time and effort. I have broken some of the most common ways to drive traffic to your site down below into 3 categories.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)


The first way to increase your website's traffic is by optimizing it so that your site will rank high on search engines. This process sounds much easier than it really is. Search engines such as google rank their indexed websites by things such as relevance, quality of the content and credibility. If you have a site with false information or not alot of information, chances are you wont be indexed very high if at all. Search engines also look for credibility. They determine this by the quality of pages that link to your website. If you can get a high ranking website such as a government site to link to your website you are going to dramatically improve your search engine ranking. The more high quality pages you can have link to your site the higher you are going to rank. For a complete run down of characteristics that search engines look for please visit my website listed below. Another thing you can do to increase your website's visibility is to submit your information to on-line directories. If you are unable to get any high quality websites to link to you there are alternatives. You can get links to your website without actually contacting any high ranking websites or paying for links. This alternative leads me into my next category.

On-Line Articles (Such As This Site)


This category has dual importance in gaining traffic to your website. First of all, many people search the web for information on a regular basis. This also means that many people read on-line articles. There are literally thousands of websites that will allow you to submit articles to them to be published on their website at no charge. No only is your on-line article that you submitted show up on search engines, but you can put a link to your website within your article. This not only drives traffic to your website but it increases your rank on a search engine because you know have a quality incoming link to your website. If you write a quality on-line article outlining some of the information you have on your website, chances are many will visit your website for more quality information. This is a free yet effective way to drive traffic to your website.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)


One fast and effective way to drive traffic to your website is through pay-per-click advertising. What this means is you sign up for an account with a search engine and set a maximum price you are willing to pay for advertising. The search engine then displays your add on search results and relevant websites and you only pay when someone clicks your add to your website. The cost you pay per click to your website depends on how high the keywords are selling for. A word of caution: This method sounds much easier than it really is. I highly recommend doing alot of research on PPC advertising before committing to it.

There are many other ways to drive traffic to your website that are not covered here. Alot of it comes with research and experience. For more information please visit my website below.

How to Get One Way Links (Directories)

There are so many criteria that search engines follow to determine a site's rank for certain keywords or search phases. One of these includes links to your site.

The page rank of your site is directly related to the number of links it has. The more links you have pointed to your site with some variation of key phrases.The better ranking in the search engines you will receive.

You may not know how to go about getting one way links to your website, but it really is pretty easy. All you need to do is start listing your website in different web directories and before long you will have plenty of links pointing back to your website.

This is really important and something you want to focus on because if you do not have links to your site then getting ranked high in the search engines will be difficult.

If you can get listed in a web directory that provides search-engine-friendly one-way-links (that is, links that connect directly to your URL), you are essentially acquiring a "vote" to your site, and therefore improving your site's authority in the eyes of Google, Yahoo and other major engines.

One way links and search engine rankings have a great cause and effect relationship. Think of it as a business referral system. The business with the more referrals is most popular and hence, search engines rank them higher. The reason behind it, as many put it, is that the more links you have, higher are the chances of a visitor coming to your site through these links!

There are thousands upon thousands of Internet directories where you can list your site. Some will charge for submission, and the price will vary, from as little a few dollars, to as much as hundreds. Some will accept your site right away, and others will need to review it, to ensure the integrity of their database.

Before submitting to any web directory, check to make sure the directory is not banned by Google. Here's a site, where you can type in the URL of the web directory and find out if it's banned right away: http://123promotion.co.uk/tools/googlebanned.phpIf you don't want to spend a lot of time searching for, picking and choosing directories checkout these two pages. http://www.mainsearches.com/Computers_and_Internet/Web_Directories/ and http://www.eliteweb.cc/directory/internet/web_directories.

Using third party services to submit your Site.You can use an inexpensive service like Feed Shot to submit your site to some of the major blog directories. They no longer offer a free service.Or try a hand submission service like http://submit2please.com/. Who will submit your site to 500 directories for $99.95.

Should I Use Article Marketing Techniques Or Do I Bum It?

Article Marketing is a successful way to acquire traffic for your website. It has become more popular recently especially with the coined term "Bum Marketing." There are differences to each technique, but basically they are both Article Marketing Techniques.

Article Marketing is easy to implement and can be very effective for acquiring free search engine traffic. For the record it is considered off page SEO.

Basically, you write a short 300 to 500 word article on a niche market keyword and add a keyword rich link in your bio box to the website you want to promote. You then submit the article to one of the many article directory sites and anywhere from 2 days to two weeks you should be listed in the search engines.

Repeat the above step a few times with different articles in the same niche as your website with another niche keyword linking back to your website and you will be listed very fast in the search engines.

Bum Marketing is a name that was coined in the last year. It is exactly the same as Article Marketing but with a slight twist.

You would write the same short 300 to 500 word article on a niche market keyword. But, this time you want to use what is called a "long tail" keyword.

This keyword is so exact in its phrasing that usually has very small amounts of searches done using it every month. And, the kicker is that it has very little and sometimes no competition for that keyword. This means that there is practically no website competing to use the keyword. If you are really lucky there is also little to no PPC programs using that keyword.

Long tail keywords are popular now because it is felt that anyone that does search for this type of keyword is a "hungry buyer." It is reasoned that a searcher is looking for a precise item for example "charcoal pre-filter for Honeywell Air Cleaner" instead of using the general keyword, "Air Cleaner."
General keywords are considered hard to convert to sales. A searcher of a general keyword is a so called "tire kicker" who is shopping around but has not made up his mind to buy.

Finally, in the author's bio box of a Bum Marketing article you link directly to the affiliate program you want to promote instead of linking to your website. I think it is similar to the Google Cash promotion method used in promoting via Adwords.

In a nutshell these are the differences between Article Marketing and Bum Marketing. Both are very effective at becoming a successful Affiliate Marketer.