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.

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.

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.

But it’s a common problem.  You want to make your blog profitable, but you run out of ideas about which you can write.

I have developed a package called Uniquification which solves two problems:

1. getting over writer’s block and finding topics to write about
2. generating unique content quickly and easily

In fact, I’ve created an entire blog over at No Duplicate Content (www.noduplicatecontent.com) to help document strategies to solve those two problems.

If you have trouble coming up with you next post, or if you don’t know what to write, check out the ideas at No Duplicate Content.  The Uniquification report is free!

Here’s a taste:

• special searches you can do for your niche to find hot topics
• one of the biggest sources of content that is NOT indexed by the search engines, but easily lends itself to creating blog content
• how to convert exisiting content on the web into your own, original, unique content for your site

I even have some macros that you can run in your web browser that automate some of the brainstorming and content-gathering.

So check it out, and drop me a line to let me know how you like it!

Uniquification – Generating Unique Content Quickly and Easily

Oh…these ideas apply to way more than just blogs.  If you are doing article marketing or want to develop your own free report (or paid report!), these ideas will help!

Remember that to get good ‘link juice’, you want to have a link from a high PR page, and you need that link to NOT be NoFollow, and you want to use good anchor text in that link.

First, use Firefox as your browser.  Then download two plugins for Firefox:  SEOQuake and NoDoFollow.  To get SEOQuake, just go to http://www.seoquake.com/ and download the plugin.  For NoDoFollow, in Firefox, go to Tools, Addons and browse.  Search for the NoDoFollow plugin.

Next, google your niche keyword + the word ‘forum’ or the phrase ‘message board’.    Visit some of the boards with the NoDoFollow plugin enabled and make a note of which forums allow signature links that are NOT NoFollow.

Join the forums which have good traffic, good PR, and allow sig links that are DoFollow.  Setup your signature with good keyword-rich anchor text.  (Like “Diabetic Recipes” as your link, not “For diabetic recipes, click here” with click here as your link.)

Then, go back to Google and make sure your Advanced settings are set to display 100 results.  Turn on the SEOQuake plugin.  Search the phrase -  site:forumname.com keyword   Replace forumname.com with the domainname of the forum, and keyword with your niche keyword.  This will find specific threads within that forum.  Use SEOQuake to fetch the PR for the results, then sort, descending, the PR.  Basically, this just sorts your Google search results with the highest PR results at the top.

Visit those specific discussion threads, and post a RELEVANT, non-spammy reply, making sure your signature is on.

Repeat.

This allows you to place good anchor-text links in a high-PR page that will follow your link and pass some of the ‘link juice’ on to your site.  As an added bonus, if it is a high-traffic site (which it probably is if it’s good pagerank), you might get visitors directly from the forum.

BUT…should I waste my time on certain keyword phrases?

It’s pretty clear if someone is looking for “cheap antique clocks”, that they have commercial intent…in other words they have a high likelihood to BUY.  As opposed to someone searching for “colon cancer”.  Those folks are probably just reading and researching, with no intent of spending money.

The difference between “cheap antique clocks” and “colon cancer” is obvious.  It’s easy to tell that one might have commercial intent and the other doesn’t.  But what about phrases that aren’t as obvious?

There is a new tool that can help:

MSN’s Commercial Intent Tool

The tool gives a score of commercial (or non-commercial) intent.  You enter the keywords, check the ‘Query’ radio button, and hit ‘Go’.  The scale is 0 to 1, so just multiply by 100 and you have the percentage that the keywords entered have the intent listed (either commercial or non-commercial).

So, if you have a choice between multiple keywords, try using this tool to help discern what is in the hearts of the visitors to your site.

The strategy:

Use a plugin called KB Linker to automatically link certain keywords in your blog to eBay (using your affiliate ID, of course!).

KB Linker lets you create pairs of keywords and links. You create a list of these pairs in the plugin’s configuration panel. Then every time that keyword appears anywhere in your blog, it will be hyperlinked to the URL you have designated.

For example, in the configuration panel you can set it up like: google->http://www.google.com
wordpress->http://www.wordpress.com
make money->http://www.how-to-make-online-money.com
Digital Point Forum->http://forums.digitalpoint.com

etc.

With the configuration above, any time the word ‘wordpress’ appears in a post, it will be hyperlinked to WordPress.com. Any time the phrase “Digital Point Forum” appears in your blog, it would be linked to those forums.

You can understand how this would be useful for making money, once you start tying keywords in your blog to your affiliate links.

The difficulty with eBay is that its links are so long and convoluted.

The tool:

So, I used Microsoft Excel to create a tool that allows me to input my Campaign ID, keywords I want linked, and phrases for eBay to search, and the tool creates the right output to paste into KB Linker.

For example, I want the word “wristwatch” to be linked to an ebay search for “rolex watch” everywhere in my blog, or the word “Canon” to be linked to the ebay search for “digital camera -battery”.

You can grab the tool (an Excel file) from:

eBay KB Linker Tool

http://www.how-to-make-online-money….aykblinker.xls

Summary:

• Install KB Linker plugin in your WordPress Blog.
• Grab the free copy of the excel tool (donations welcome)
• Use the tool to create a long list of keyword/link combos.
• Copy/Paste the list into KB Linker.
• Enjoy the new traffic coming to eBay from your Blog!

All of the resources are free.  There is a link to the resource, as well as a link to the forum thread that uncovered the resource.
Backlink Checker
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1141323
direct link: http://seopro.com.au/free-seo-tools/link-checker/
Check all backlinks to your site including PR, link count, follow/nofollow, anchor
For me this is better than backlinkwatch.
Poster: gerdywerdy

Back Link Manager
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1155805
direct link: http://www.ribix.ca
If you buy link from another sites and want to track them all, this is a right tool to track all your backlinks. This will go through all your backlinks and determine which sites have dropped your domain.
Poster: bigdaddysheikh

Website Analysis
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1034055
direct link: http://www.diagnosticoweb.com/webcheck/
This is a complete website analysis just in one click for someone who want to check PR, validation, Ranks, SERP, Reverse IP, Whois, Value and other important website properties we must know and care.
Not just single website, you can check for bulk domain and all internal pages as well.
Poster: chmdznr

SERP checker (Google top 1000)
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=594884
direct link: http://www.seoserp.com/web_tools/goo…ps_checker.asp
check up to 1000 each time for each click search. Search Engine Results Page is a very important issue for being SEO if you are not listed in top 1000 ranking results for those important keywords searching then you are out of business. Means your site has no weight at all if not in top #1000. Another way to say: your site will gain very little traffic because you are out of 1000.
Poster: Link.ezer.com

Free Ping Tool
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=991460
direct link: http://pingler.com/
It allows you to ping over 90 sites with a single submission. You can even add more ping services to the list if you know of more that you would like to use, but currently we have 92 available.
Poster: scriptillusion

Free Submission tool
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1151097
direct link: http://www.serocket.com/
Very useful and free online tool to submit semi-automatically your site to 500 directories, 100 article directories, 100 social networkings
Poster: hdwills

Article Spinner
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1073313
direct link: http://freearticlespinner.centerofspotlight.com/
Spinning the article, basically replaces words with their synonyms.
Poster: jye999

Sitemap Generator
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1115859
direct link: http://www.flame-ware.com/products/flame-spider/
easy to use and powerful SEO (Search Engine Optimization) web-crawling sitemap generator.
Poster: Simonsbs

Logo Maker
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1117467
direct link: http://logomaker.com/
Design your own logo in minutes with this easy-to-use online logo maker. Get a FREE web-ready logo for your website.
Poster: leadhelper

Web based FTP client
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1052984
direct link: http://www.bossftp.com/
If sometime you wanna FTP, and don’t want to download-install-run a FTP client, you can try a web based FTP client, and one of them is BossFTP.
Poster: thuankkk

URL Shortener
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1147067
direct link: http://www.url2click.com/
URL shortener service like Tinyurl, but this one is much more easy, simple and you can put your targetted keywords.
Poster: elektro

Free Favicon Generator Tool
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1152209
It generates Favicon not just static icon but with animation also
Poster: MactonxD

Online poll generator, outputs html/bbcode
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=932221
direct link: http://sigpoll.com/
create dynamic image & text based polls to place in your myspace profile, forum signatures, forum posts, websites, blogs and many more places – basically anywhere that will accept html or bbcode.
Poster: shacow

Free online MP3 Converter & Downloader
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1157509
direct link: http://www.convertmp3online.com/
Here is a free online tool you can use in downloading and converting MP3′s. You can download Youtube files and convert them into various file formats online. You can also upload video and audio files from your harddrive and convert them into MP3′s online.
Poster: Rian

Web Conference
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1130835
direct link: http://www.livemeetups.com/livemeetups/
free web conferencing tool with Skype conference call and chat integration.
The online presentation solution is easy to use for both parties, presenter and attendees. The presenter logs in and gets channel name and password. Then he provides the attendees with the data and presentation is ready to started.
Poster: Tamara_123

Free SMS Websites
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1138197
direct link: http://www.oosms.com/
sending FREE sms on the Net
Poster: mogeilen

Banner Maker
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=23486
direct link: http://www.bannerbreak.com/
You can create customized banners in minutes! And when you’re done creating your banner the site supplies you with the HTML needed to add the banners to your pages.
Poster: BannerBreak

Tdnam Firesale Scanner
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=407435
direct link: http://www.freshdrop.net/
Searches TDNam’s database for several hot domain’s. Useful for domain collector to looking for closeout, drop domain, etc.
Some of the quick searches are: CVCV, VCVC, CVVC, VCCV, NNNN, NNNNN domains. The scans are updated every hour for now so it’s pretty much almost real time, cause it scans TDNam’s entire database… saving everyone the hassle of doing it.
Poster: gorilla_bob

13 Online Generators for Web 2.0 Design
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=429002
direct link: http://www.cssjuice.com/13-online-ge…web-20-design/
the list of online generator particularly for web 2.0 design.
Poster: longhornfreak

Browser Compatibility Check
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1075892
direct link: http://browsershots.org/
to check your website in multiple browsers (ie 4-7, firefox, netscape, safari, etc..). Some sites look different in others browsers, so its a great way to make sure your site is consistent and user friendly to everyone.
Poster: msjudged_1

Track your site in various search engines
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1082015
direct link: http://www.exactfactor.com/
This useful tool enables you to track your keywords in various search engines and get email alerts when your site position is changed. Get alerts to any email when: Your position is up/down, competitor has passed you, you reached the first page in Google.
Poster: Idan – SEO Master

Bandwidth speed test
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1027111
direct link: http://www.webdomainsbroker.com/speedtest/
testing your bandwidth speed.
Poster: Joseph S

I’m one of those “go-with-what-you-know” guys.  Start with something you feel passionate about, because that is something that you will most easily stick with, and you’ll probably have an easier time finding and building out content for your websites, ebooks, etc.

Still, we can all use some help when it comes to this kind of brainstorming, so here are some questions I like to ask to get the thoughts going:

• What are your hobbies?
• What problem have you solved recently?
• What information have you searched for on the internet recently?
• Go to Yahoo Answers, and plug in a keyword related to a niche you think you like.  Browse through to find out what questions people are asking about that topic.  Can you answer any of them?  (Don’t do it yet…wait until you have a site to link to.  But if you can answer them, that means you have content in your head that people are looking for!)
• What forums to you frequently read?  What forums are related to your potential niche?  (hint: google the word ‘forum’ with your niche keyword)  What questions are people asking on the forums?  What are the hot topics about on those forums?
• If someone offered to buy you lunch if you would present on a subject, and speak for 30 minutes, what would you talk about?
• What have you and your friends been talking about on Facebook, MySpace, etc.?
• What was the last exciting thing that happened to you?  Could you talk about that for 30 minutes?

With these questions in mind, you can usually narrow down from a broad niche to a specific subset.  The next question you need to ask is extremely important:  “How do I monetize it?”  That’s what it’s all about, right?

To figure out ways to monetize the niche, try some more Google searches (replacing niche with your specific one), like:

• affiliate niche
• review niche
• niche accessories

Then try searching Commission Junction, eBay (if you’re lucky enough to be an affiliate of theirs), ClickBank, PayDotCom, $7 Offers, etc., for related products to market.

Hopefully those questions will give you a place to start.  For me, once I pick a niche topic, it’s then pretty easy to drill down into the different aspects of that topic by visiting a site like Yahoo Answers.  That site is worth its weight in gold for determining what information people are looking for.