How To Make Online Money

As I look back at my journey from Internet Marketing as a hobby to IM as a career, I think fondly of the early days.

In those first days, I would not spend a DIME out of pocket to make money.  Sure, sure, NOW I outsource coding work or SEO work to my Virtual Assistants in various parts of the world.  NOW I buy domain names like they are going out of style.

But when first starting out, I didn’t have the bankroll to invest like that.  And it was frustrating because all of the folks that were “making it” were all spending money.

It’s NOT true that to make money you have to spend money.  It does make it alot easier to make more money faster if you have some to spend…but if you don’t have anything to start with, how do you do it?

Here’s a quick list of ways to make money without buying domain names, or paying web hosting fees:

1. Leverage the free sites like Blogger, Squidoo, WordPress.com and HubPages.  You may be limited to a certain look or functionality, or may be at risk for having your site taken down if it’s too spammy.  But, it’s FREE.  And if you are doing IM correctly, there won’t be a reason for them to take it down.
2. Start with Adsense.  It’s the easiest way to start making money.  Affiliate marketing takes time to figure out.  With Adsense, it’s only a matter of having it on your site and getting traffic.  With Affiliate marketing, you have to do that, AND pick a good-converting product with an affiliate organization that is trustworthy.
3. Create your own content and publish it on Kindle.  Obviously this only works if you can write, but chances are you know SOMETHING that people would be interested in reading about.  Ask yourself, “what would someone be willing to take me out to McDonald’s to learn about?”  Whatever it is that you know in your head that is worth a burger, someone may buy for $7 or so on Kindle.  It adds up.
4. Lurk on the WarriorForums.  The War Room is worth paying for, but since this post is about free stuff, you will learn a TON of stuff from the site.  Even now that I don’t spend as much time there, since I’m actually DOING IM, and not just talking about it, I still go there weekly to be inspired.  Read, read, read.  Don’t pay for the guides…most of the guides are a distillation of what you can learn for free.  (Buying the right ones CAN be helpful because it clarifies and focuses you, but you’re trying to do this with no money, right?)
5. Offer your services for sale.  You can do this on the WarriorForum, or places like ODesk, eLance, getafreelancer.com, etc.  You can learn as you go, and earn as you go.

Remember…treat it like a business.  Put the money that you make away.  Then you can start investing in the easier ways to make money, which will include paying for domain names, hosting, an autoresponder like AWeber, etc.

Well, it’s official! I am no longer a member of the 9-5 club!

For the last 10 years I’ve been a Data Analyst at one of the nation’s largest banks. But I have finally cut back my hours to 20 per week, since my “hobby” of making money online is earning me enough to do so.

It’s not as satisfying as quitting altogether. But, I like what I do at the bank, the pay is good, and the benefits are phenomenal. Ie: I still have my and my family’s health care benefits paid for from the bank…that’s almost worth working 20 hours per week for anyway.

I know I’m one of the “few” lucky ones. My wife does not work. Scratch that…my wife is a stay-at-home mom (so she works ALOT…she just doesn’t get paid for it). My kids have me around a lot now, which is especially good during the summer. There’s nothing like stepping away from the computer for a bit in the afternoon to play with my 8-year-old son!

I love the freedom. And I know many of you who read this blog are looking for the same thing.

So here are my pieces of advice of how to get here:

1. Diversify. The expression “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” is especially true in the world of Internet Marketing. Google changes it’s search algorithms, and it’s Adsense and Adwords policies which might make it harder on IMers. eBay is notorious for making on-the-fly changes to its affiliate program. Other affiliate programs change, products change, niches change. I’d rather have a little income from each of these than all my income from one.

2. Work. If you treat Internet Marketing like a part-time hobby, it will treat you the same. If you treat it like a business, it can be a business for you. People think that IM is EASY (mostly because all of the people trying to sell internet marketing products are trying to convince you this is true). But, the few who actually make enough from it to earn a living will all tell you the same thing: it takes work, like any other job. (Unless they’re trying to sell you something.)

3. Go Offline. Once you get your feet wet and start making some money on the internet for yourself, find a way to help other people in real life do the same. The education you give yourself by building your own websites, doing your own SEO, etc., puts you WAY AHEAD of the average business owner. And those folks are willing to pay you a premium to help them do what you have been doing.

4. Plug the holes. Find the things you are really good at, and things you really aren’t good at. Be honest. Then find a way to plug the holes…to get the things done that you aren’t good at. It might mean being willing to pay someone (outsourcing anyone?), but if a little out of your pocket keeps you productive on the things you are good at, it’s worth it.

5. Test and Measure…EVERYTHING. Test ad copy on your sales page. (Split test with Google Web Optimizer.) Test your Adwords ads. Measure conversion rates. When you pick a product to target, pick several in the same niche and horse-race them. You can get a huge increase by focusing 80% of your effort on the 20% of the products that are the most profitable.

6. Have a Supportive Spouse. Not much more I can say about that!

Well, those are a few pearls of wisdom from someone who has been in the trenches. I hope it helps those of you starting out on this journey.

Recently I’ve been trying out a new strategy for making Adsense revenue.  I learned about it from the Warrior Forums…a guy posted exactly how he was making $300-$400 per DAY in Adsense revenue from small, niched sites.  The thread became a monster…about 33 pages or so long, before it was finally locked.  There were tons of questions and answers throughout.

The guy who explains his process (John, known as XFactor on the forums) was literally begged by people (right in the thread) to condense the material to an ebook.  That way we didn’t have to read through so much junk, and we could have his definitive answers to some of the oft-repeated questions.

He finally created his ebook.  No kidding, it’s one of the best ones I’ve read.  There’s no hidden affiliate links, no fluff.  He just walks through his exact method.  He does not claim to be the end-all be-all answer man…he just reveals what HE does.

I bought his guide and decided to put it to the test.  So many folks on the forums had given positive feedback, with actual results, that I thought I would give it a try.

The great thing about it is that it is very, very practical.  It isn’t just concepts that seemingly could make you money.  I can’t tell you how many guides I’ve read where I’m impressed with the IDEAS.  I know in my head that they could make money…but for one reason or another, they never implement in a way that makes the money that was conceptualized.

With Xfactor’s guide, the idea is to:

• find product-oriented micro niches (like “glass top end tables”),
• ensure that the proper search volume is there to support it, but that the competition on page 1 of Google is easy to beat
• validate that advertisers will indeed pay a decent amount per click,
• setup a small website, HIGHLY optimized for high click-through-rate,
• run an article marketing campaign that will put your site on page one quickly, and keep it there.
• see income of $2-$5 per day per site
• make many of these sites (since they take only about an hour to create)

Like he even says…there’s nothing new under the sun.  This isn’t some earth-shattering new discover, some secret Google hack, or anything black hat.  It just takes the CONCEPTS that we all have learned and gives it an actual step-by-step.

Now…for the RESULTS:

I have been doing this for 3 weeks at the time of this writing.  (Keep in mind I have a full-time job and work at this only in the evenings after the kids are in bed and the wife and I don’t have other plans.)  I have created 4 sites.  2 of them are now on page 1 of Google, and of those two, both are averaging over $2-$3 per day.  The other two are not yet on page 1.  I have not even completed the article marketing campaign that he recommends…not for ANY of the four sites yet.  The general consensus is that it takes about four to six weeks for the sites to ‘mature’.  (Sites bounce around on and off the first page during the early days.)

I’m about to start another site or two this week, so I’ll keep you posted on those results when I start to see them.

Xfactor’s Micro Niche Adsense Course costs $67 when I paid for it.  With these two sites alone, it will pay for itself in about 5 weeks…then every other site I create will be gravy!

By the way – he uses Micro Niche Finder as his tool of choice, and gives very specific results you should look for when choosing a niche keyword phrase.  It’s a phenomenal tool (my favorite keyword tool, even over Keyword Elite), and I already had it, but if you don’t, it’s worth the investment.

UPDATE: Well, I’ve made over $341 since I started. I had a learning curve, and I only spend a little time every week working on it. I only have 13 sites up, but frankly I don’t even count some of the early ones. (I did a bad job at picking the niche and the domain name.) I think the thing that helped me turn the corner was the membership forums he offers. There is a TON of good information about SEO, niche-picking, link-building, etc., that really make it easy. This is definitely a course worth picking up, and if you do, be sure to get involved in the forum.