Selling advertising space:

One of the fastest ways to make money from your blog is by selling advertising space. If your blog is receiving consistent traffic, companies are willing to pay you a monthly or yearly rate for advertising space.
If you don’t have sufficient traffic yet, continue to work on it and you’ll eventually get there.

Setting up Adsense ads:

Placing adsense ads on your site may not be the most lucrative idea for a blog, but it is easy to set up. Most people get discouraged with adsense because there are other options that bring much better returns. I recommend that you start with adsense, and start thinking about other options as your blog grows.

Affiliate sales:

Once you’ve developed a loyal following, you can make money by selling things as an affiliate. As an affiliate, you just recommend products to your readers. If they buy something, you will get payed a percentage of the sale. This approach can easily net you several hundred dollars.

Building your own list:

The best way to get repeat customers is to have a list of loyal followers. For this, you will need to subscribe to an auto responder, I recommend icontact. You will then generate an optin form that will be placed on your blog to help get leads. Once you have those leads you can promote offers as you wish. Make sure that you offer value as well or they will unsubscribe from your list.

Selling your own products:

If you don’t like the concept of receiving a percentage of a sale, consider selling your own products. Product creation really isn’t all that difficult. Create the product and use your blog to promote it. The best part about product creation is that you get to keep 100% of the sales. You can also attract affiliates to help you sell even more.

Find the right market:

The first step in product creation, is deciding on a market. For example, is your product going to be about weight loss, back pain, golf, or pet training? Once you have your eye on a market, it’s time to figure what the market needs. As I’ve stated before, don’t look for something revolutionary. I want you to focus on finding your own angle on what’s already common knowledge.

The main idea behind product creation, is bringing value to the customer. This can be done by creating a consice report on what they are looking for.

Write your report:

If you have a good amount of knowledge in your market, this will be easy. If you are not sure what to write about, you can always outsource.If you are going to outsource, make sure that you are specific as to what you want out of the report.

Set up the sales funnel:

Now comes the fun part, making money from your report. Setting up a good sales funnel will help you make the most money out of the report. To have a successful launch, you can; invite jv partners, set an affiliate contest, give something away for free as a pre-launch, and or create scarcity.

Make sure that you use the pre-launch phase of your product launch to capture e-mails. You’ll need an auto-responder to do this. I use imnica mail simply because it’s affordable and it gets the job done.

Paying your affiliates and refunds:

Having your own product means that you will be responsible for paying out affiliates. This also means that you will have to handle refund requests. It’s important to stay on top of this if you want to keep a solid reputation online.

Recommendation:

If you have a product all set up and ready to sell but are short on funds, I reccomend that you join jvzoo.
By joining, you will be able to set up a sales page, an affiliate program, and sell your product with no upfront costs. Did I mention that also free to join? Check it out, it may be something that you need.

Mindset:

Without the right mindset your business or venture is bound to fail. Why is having the right mindset so important? For one thing, it will prepare you for the many failures that are to come. A good mindset will also ensure that you don’t get sidetracked along the way.

Accept failure and learn from it:

The problem with most aspiring marketers is that they are afraid to fail. You need to understand that success comes from failure. If you don’t take risks, you will never know if your plan or opportunity will succeed or not. Most beginners tend to give up after a few failures. If you are serious about making money online, be prepared to fail and to learn from those mistakes.

Forming the basics:

I understand you want to make money online, but just like any other venture, you must first learn the basics. The Internet isn’t a magical realm that somehow defies the rules of logic. As with anything in life, you will first have to form your foundation. Learning the basics may seem time consuming, but just imagine how many hours you will save if you start on the right path from the get go.

Rinse and repeat:

Most people think that making money online is set it and forget it. That unfortunately, is not the case. Once you start making money online, capitalize on it and expand your business. You need to reinvest money in your business if you expect to grow.

Don’t doubt yourself:

A key flaw most of us have is the desire to reinvent the wheel. When I first started trying to make money online, I wanted to be different. I spent a large portion of my time trying to discover the next best thing. Sorry to break it to you but you are just wasting your time.

Essentially all of Internet Marketing is an evolution of traditional marketing businesses. Aside from ease of access, there is nothing truly revolutionary about it.

Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, hone your skills and be prepared to adapt as policies and procedures change.

As always, I hope you found this post useful in your quest for Internet riches.

engine ranking of our sites.

What are backlinks?

Backlinks are basically links that point from one site to another. For example; a site aboute running pointing to a weight loss site. These links are designed to help the search engines determine how a website should be

ranked. It’s important to note that the source of the link plays a big role in determining the weight of the backlink. Not all backlinks are created equally.

What type of backlinks are there?

There are many types of backlinks. Each method is important in its own way. Because of this, I urge you to implement variety in your backlinking. Here are some of the more common forms of backlinks: Forum links, profile links, in context link, blog commenting, bio links from articles and press releases.

Which are more effective?

This really boils down to testing. You either do your own testing, or you listen to what some of the top internet marketers are doing. The general concensus is that in context links are what matter the most now a days. This is taking into account the recent changes in Google.

Is this an ongoing process?

If you expect to rank well in the search engines, you are going to have to continously build links to your site. This task can be outsourced if you can afford it. Make sure you understand what you are doing before you begin to outsource.

With the recent Google changes, expect to see more push for “social” links. Google is really pushing their social network and it looks like they want to integrate it with their search results. This means that yet

again the SEO game is changing. Good luck in your SEO ventures, and remember to always stay informed.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization or SEO for short, is the use of the search engines to help generate traffic to your website or websites. The search engines are a directory of sorts that help organize what is on the internet.

Each search engine uses their own criteria to determine what websites show up when a particular search is executed. As a website owner, it is to your advantage to optimize your site in hopes of getting better rankings.

The higher your site is in the search results, the more traffic your site will generate.

How do I optimize my site?

In order to improve website ranking, you will need to focus on on page seo and off page seo. On page seo refers to the proper labeling of your content. When a search engine crawler reaches your site, it doesn’t know what your content is about. It is therefore your job to help the crawler understand what your page is about. This will help the crawler decide if your content is relevant.

Off page seo is all about building backlinks to your site. The purpose of backlinks to increase your sites authority in a specific niche. There are different types of backlinks and each type holds its own type of effeciveness. It is recommended that website owners include variety in their link building.

Are the rules of seo always changing?

It is important to note that seo is constantly changing. On page seo alone will not get your site ranked unless the target keyword has little to no competition. Off page on the other hand, is the key to getting ranked but is always changing. Link building methods continue to change in their effectiveness.

If you want to succeed in SEO I suggest that you always continue to keep an open mind. Continue to learn new methods as they become available. Don’t be afraid of change. For the most part, the changes in Internet marketing have been evolutionary and not revolutionary. If your site was affected by new search engine algorithms, figure out the cause and change your strategy. Good luck in your seo efforts.

Social Media:

Whether or not you are successful with social media is highly dependent on the type of site you are promoting. With social media, it’s important to focus on the “social” aspect of the site. Don’t hard sell to your visitors or you will lose them.  If successful, social media can help turn your website into a thriving community full of repeat visitors.

Search Engine Optimization:

If social media is not your cup of tea, perhaps you are better suited for SEO (search engine optimization). With SEO, traffic is generated by means of the search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing etc). This method of traffic generation requires no monetary investment. All that is required is time. Success with SEO boils down to two basic qualities; Understanding keyword research, and knowing how to build backlinks.

Keyword research is crucial for the success of any SEO campaign.  When carrying out keyword research, it is important to look for the following; the amount of traffic that the keyword generates, and how difficult it will be to outrank other websites promoting the same keyword.

Backlinks come into play once keyword research is completed. The amount of backlinks needed to rank well in the search engines,  will be based on the strength of the websites that you are competing against.

Pay Per Click Advertising (ppc):

The methods described above are free to implement with time being the only requirement. If you want to see results quickly, then ppc may the right advertising method for you. With ppc advertising, you will also carry out keyword research and set up campaigns based on those keywords (somewhat similar to SEO). Since there is money involved, I highly recommend that you do plenty of testing before going all out on a campaign.

The general rule of thumb is to have at bare minimum a 1% conversion with your campaign. So for every 100 visitors, you must at least have one sale.  The ultimate success of your campaign is based on your return on investment or roi. When testing each campaign, figure out how much you are spending and how much you are bringing in. If the returns are greater than the costs, start to scale your campaign.

PPC, can be a very stressful game. Proceed with caution.

Other forms of traffic generation:

Forums – are a great place to network and get in touch with like minded individuals. Find a high traffic forum that caters to your niche and become an active participant. Some forums have an advertising section from which you can promote your products. If that’s the case, build your reputation and post count and then head to that section to start offering your services. If your particular forum, does not have an advertising section, you can always bring in extra traffic to your site by placing a link in your signature. Make sure you abide by the forum terms and conditions to avoid getting banned.

Traffic Exchanges – I am not a big fan of traffic exchanges but I’ve read that some marketers have had success with them. If you are not in the biz opp niche stay away from traffic exchanges as they convert poorly. Generally speaking traffic exchange users are looking for two things; and that’s traffic and get rich quick schemes.

Guest blogging – If you are an authority in your niche, consider looking into guest blogging. Browse the web to find a high traffic blog that focuses on your niche. Reach out to the admin and offer to write a guest blog post free of charge. To be more effective, have some sample work ready. You will write a blog post in exchange for a plug to your site.

There are countless other ways to generate traffic to a website. The key is to be creative and to continually test different methods out. Remember that time is finite, so don’t spend too much time and failed efforts.

With that said, I can’t stress enough the importance of setting realistic expectations. Don’t get lost in all of the hype and don’t expect to quit your day job in a short amount of time. If you are serious about making money online, you have to treat this like a business. Know what you want, set the game plan in motion and take action.

Below are some realistic ways to make extra money online:

Adsense – While not as lucrative as it once was, it’s still possible to make a good amount of money using Adsense.

Many choose Adsense because it is pretty straight forward with little to no technical skill required.

If you would like to know more about how to make money with Adsense I recommend that you look into getting the Adsense $100k Blueprint. It is one of the most complete guides out there designed to help you succeed with the Adsense platform.

Affiliate Sales – Another way to make money online is to promote products as an affiliate. Most affiliate networks pay out 50%-100% commissions to their affiliates. The problem with affiliate marketing is that you only get paid based on actual sales. In other words, if you are able to generate hundreds of visitors to an affiliate page, you will not get a dime if all of the visitors fail to make a purchase.

As an affiliate, you have to provide value to your readers. It is not as simple as setting up an affiliate site and expecting people to buy from you. Create a quality site, with quality content, and the sales will start coming in.

If you are interested in becoming an affiliate (or any type of marketer for that matter), you will need some understanding of the basics before taking the plunge.

For aspiring affiliates, I recommend they look into Commission Blueprint Evolution. This manual (videos and software included), will help you gain a better understanding on what it takes to create a successful affiliate website based on today’s ever changing online environment.

Create your own products – The internet provides us with yet another avenue to promote our products and services. If you are a current developer, inventor, programmer, educator etc, you can use the power of the web to connect your message/product with millions of people without all of the costs associated with traditional forms of media.

Are you a gardening expert? Make a digital course about it and sell it to aspiring gardeners. Do you love to cook? Create a recipes book to sell to your readers.

The possibilities are endless when it comes to making money on the internet.

At the end of the day, it’s all about setting realistic expectations, acquiring the necessary knowledge, and then taking action.

The methods described above require one thing that is necessary for any kind of business to succeed, and that’s traffic. Whether foot traffic or online visitors, no business can succeed without interested prospects.

In the next post we will discuss the different ways to generate traffic to a website.

Good luck in your marketing ventures!