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____ Extra income is a welcome sight for most of us
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unless you're already filthy rich and don't really care about
money, but for the rest of you out there who want to make
some extra cash on the side, here is an idea for you. The
internet is a medium where you can generate income in
minutes, but most people don't understand or know how
to start. I'll try to break it down as easy as I can for you to
start making the extra cash you need right away, but you
still need to take time out and read this in order to get the
idea.
Maybe you've heard people say that you can get rich on
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the Internet, but if you are serious about making money on the Internet, remember, it's
not a get rich overnight business. Internet success takes time, effort and knowledge.
There's no easy "get rich quick" method, so you need to spend the time for building an
income stream from your web site. Here I will show you how to start up a web business
by telling you how I make money off the web site like this or blog pages or by redirecting
data to other sites even if you don't have a web site-all for free. I know getting started in a
new idea is not easy but who said it would be easy! I'm here to make the transition
easier for you.
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Getting Started
Lets start off with a web site. Do you have one? If not here is a listing of some of the
good web hosting sites I think that are out there:
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Pros: It's free & web sites are easy to make & good place to practice for skill up
on web pages. Cons: can't get your own domain name, limited on templates you
can work off of & limited on what you can put on page (example you can't put up
any forms of flash media players).
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Pros: Cheap and easy way to make a website. You pay per month unlike many
other web hosting out there which charges per year all at once & a free domain
name. Cons: Not much space given compare to other web hosting*.
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Pros: Cheap $6.95/month, a whopping 300GB of space, free domain name &
free site builder. Cons: Pay per year.
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Pros: Cheapest web hosting out there. Starting at $1.45 per month there is no
hosting company that offers such a low price. Cons: Pay per year & not much
space given*.
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*Space is only required if you're providing loads of pictures, MP3s or anything like that,
but if you're only making it for a web site like this then little space like 2k MB is ok.
Search Engine Friendly Design
Tips and Tricks for getting a web site ranked highly on search engines:
To buy your products or click on your Adsense links - people have to find your website.
Most traffic comes via search engines - so you have to cater to them.
- Consider search engines when designing your website.
- Take time to get your content to be as user and search engine friendly as
possible URL names can be important for many search engines - if they contain
keywords it can help but don't make them too long.
- Try to keep your content succinct and to the point. 300-500 words per page is
ideal.
- Use keywords and phrases intelligently throughout your content.
- Use a unique Title and Description and Keyword Meta Tags on each individual
page of your site.
- Ensure that every page is linked within your website.
- Try to include keywords or phrases around links in the text of your website.
- Use thumbnails (smaller images that can be clicked on to enlarge) for photos
that you want to present on your website.
- Don’t ignore search engines when designing your website – it is harder and
more expensive to retro fit search engine friendly design after the site is live.
- Don’t publish reams of content on a page.
- Don’t publish massive photos or graphics just because you think they look good.
- Don’t cram lots of keywords into your meta tags – use them as they were meant
to be used.
- Don’t copy content from another website and use it verbatim on yours – all
content you or anyone else puts up is copyright to the author – respect that
copyright.
- Don’t copy a competitor’s meta tags and use them on your website.
- Don’t use any tricks like invisible text or keyword stuffing – they will only get you
into trouble!
Internet Access
You may not think the internet speed can affect you on your web site, but it does. Your
work or your productivity will be affected when you can't access your site or update the
site on time because it takes longer then 3 to 4 minute to get to your site or even to
upload your page to the site. I know this from personal experience when it used to take
me like an hour & half or more when it should have only taken me half an hour or so. I
highly recommend high speed internet access, but as always it is not really needed if
you can't afford it. The following are some of the internet services:
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Pros: It's free. Cons: Loaded with adds, slow dial up only & you can only access
10 hours per month.
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Pros: It's only $6.95/month for the first year. Cons: It goes up to $9.95/month after
& it's still slow dial-up.
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Pros: Fast and less time to load up site pages. Cons: Cost twice or more then
dial-up does.
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Banners
They were one of the first ways of making money from a web site, however they are not
so popular now since most surfers don't even look at them. In fact, the click-through rate
(the percentage of visitors who actually click on a banner) has steadily dropped, from
around 5% 4 years ago to less than 0.5% now, but if you have highly relevant, cleverly
designed banners, you can beat the odds. However, you need relatively high traffic to
actually make more than pocket change. In fact, most banner advertising companies
prefer to only pay for actual sales (even click throughs are no longer attractive, since
many people click through because they are paid to, and not because they intend to buy
anything).
Freebies
Under this category are things such as free lotto tickets and various games where you
can win prizes. Often, these are implemented as pop-ups and are much more annoying
than banners.
Affiliate programs
They pay you a percentage of the sales you generate for them, or for each visitor you
send. This is one of the best ways of making money on the Internet. You don't have to
spend time and energy creating your own product. And some of them pay 50%
commission or more.
Google AdSense
This is one of the easiest ways of making money on the Internet for small and medium
sites by displaying relevant, text-based ads from Google AdWords (Google's own
advertising program) and receiving a share of the pay-per-click payment. Sign up for
AdSense.
Other tools
There are many tools that can help you make some pretty big commissions without your
visitors even realizing that you're building income from their visits. For example, several
search engines will pay you a few cents per search made from your web site. If a few
hundred people use your search box, you'll earn a few dollars a day - not bad for a few
minutes of cut & paste a small line of code within the HTML of your web page.
Selling a Product or Service
This is an obvious way of making money on the Internet. To succeed in it, you have to
succeed at three points:
- Develop a great product that is of interest to others on the Web.
- Write a professional web site designed to sell.
- Attract targeted customers to the site.
Lets define some of the common terms that are used when discussing affiliate
programs. For those of you new to affiliate programs this guide should help you quickly
get up to speed on how affiliate programs can make an excellent, and profitable,
addition to your web site. Here are some of the more common affiliate program terms
you'll likely run into, and their basic definitions:
Affiliate: An independent party that promotes the products or services of a merchant in
exchange for a commission. Also an associate, partner, reseller, or referral partner.
Merchant: A company that has set up an affiliate program and has agreed to share a
commission with affiliates who promote their web site, products and/or services. Also
termed an advertiser, vendor, or simply referred to as an "affiliate program."
Commission: The income you receive for generating a sale, lead or click-through to a
merchant's web site. Sometimes called a referral fee, a finder's fee or a bounty.
Affiliate Program: Used in a broad sense, an affiliate program is any type of revenue
sharing program where an affiliate web site receives a portion of income for delivering
sales, leads, or traffic to a merchant web site. In a narrow sense, affiliate programs are
commonly considered those programs that use a pay- per-sale model like our own.
Also termed associate, partner, referral, reseller, or sponsor programs.
Pay-Per-Sale: A program where you receive a commission for each sale of a product or
service that you refer to a merchant's web site. Pay-per-sale programs usually offer the
highest commissions and the lowest conversion ratio. Also referred to as Cost-per-
Action (CPA for short) and generically as an Affiliate Program.
Pay-Per-Lead: A program where you receive a commission for each sales lead that you
generate for a merchant web site. Examples would include completed surveys, contest
or sweepstakes entries, downloaded software demos, or free trials. Pay-per-lead
generally offers midrange commissions and midrange to high conversion ratios (since
visitor purchases are not required for you to be able to earn a commission). Like pay-
per-sale, pay-per-lead is also referred to as a Cost-per-Action or CPA for short.
Pay-Per-Click: A program where you receive a commission for each click (visitor) you
refer to a merchant's web site. Pay-per-click programs generally offer some of the
lowest commissions (from $0.01 to $0.25 per click), and a very high conversion ratio
since visitors need only click on a link to earn you a commission.
Pay-Per-Impression: A program where you receive a commission each time that a
merchant's ad or link is displayed on your site. Pay- per-impression generally offers the
lowest commissions, but a nearly 100% conversion ratio since a visitor merely has to
view the ad to earn you a commission -- and this often results in the highest earnings
potential. Pay-per-impression programs are generally measured in CPMs (see below)
and form the standard of banner advertising for larger web sites.
Conversion Ratio: The ratio of visitors from your site that are "converted" into a sale,
lead or click, and go on to earn the you a commission. A conversion ratio of 5% would
mean that for every 100 visitors to your site, 5 would click-through, complete an action
and earn you a commission. Many factors will influence the conversion ratio, including
how targeted the affiliate program's products are to your visitor's interests, the price and
value of the products being promoted, the merchant's ability to track all sales, and the
overall effectiveness of the merchant's web site.
Click-Through Ratio: The percentage of visitors who click-through on a link to visit the
merchant's web site. Higher click-throughs are preferable although not always a great
measure of success. Pay-per-click earnings are highly dependent on the click-through
ratios. Click-through ratios can often be improved through a variety of means: by making
links more visible to visitors, adding personal comments or testimonials about the
product, or even reducing the number of links a visitor can follow.
CPM: The practice of calculating a cost per 1000 ad displays. It is used by programs that
pay on an impression basis -- with the CPM rate being the amount you earn for every
1000 times an advertisement is displayed. For example, a $5 CPM means you earn $5
every time 1000 ads are displayed on your site. CPM can also be calculated for pay-per-
sale, pay-per-lead and pay-per-click programs by using this formula: Amount earned /
(number of impressions/1000)
Two-tier Commission: Two-tier, or multi-tier, refers to the practice of a merchant paying
commissions to both the affiliate that referred a sale, lead or click, and the affiliate that
referred that affiliate to the program. A descendent of network marketing, two-tier
programs are generally quite legitimate and offer the merchant an effective means to
promote their affiliate program quickly. However, be wary of any programs that try to
charge startup or membership fees to join. These programs should be avoided, as
there are hundreds of others that do not charge to become an affiliate. Some are simply
pyramid schemes in disguise.
Residual Commission: Residual commissions refer to programs that provide affiliates
the ability to earn an income, month after month, for referring a sale to a merchant. They
are usually those that offer some type of service for which the customer is charged an
ongoing subscription fee. Examples include web hosting, tele- communications, and
ecommerce solutions. They offer an effective benefit to affiliates since the affiliate can
earn income for an extended period, perhaps even years, from a single sale.
Tracking Method: Tracking refers to the way that a program tracks referred sales, leads
or clicks. The most common are by using a unique web address (URL) for each affiliate,
or by embedding an affiliate ID number into the link that is processed by the merchant's
software. Some programs also use cookies for tracking.
Cookies: Cookies are small files stored on the visitor's computer which record
information that is of interest to the merchant site. Despite concerns that some people
have, cookies are in no way dangerous -- and can not be used to steal names, email
addresses, phone or credit card numbers. With affiliate programs, cookies have two
primary functions: to keep track of what a customer purchases, and to track which
affiliate was responsible for generating the sale (and is due a commission). Be
especially wary of programs that only use cookies since they have many inherent
limitations: the user can turn them off, they expire after a certain date or time, and they
can be deleted off the visitor's computer. Most programs use either unique URLs or
affiliate ID numbers in conjunction with cookies to track properly. Cookies can then be
used to give the affiliate credit at a later time of purchase, even if the visitor returns to the
merchant's site as opposed to the affiliate's unique URL.
Banner Networks: A whole bunch of networks have popped up to better facilitate the
pay-per-click concept. Most pay-per-click programs are part of a network where the
network acts as middle- man between the actual advertisers and the affiliates which run
the ads. And for this service, the network takes a percentage of the overall revenues.
Third-party Administrators: The best way to get starting in Affiliate Marketing is to sign-
up with one or more of the different Affiliate Networks. Similar to banner networks, an
increasing number of companies have sprouted up to help merchants facilitate their
affiliate programs. Most act as consultants and software providers to merchants, and
thus allow them to cost-effectively outsource their affiliate program operations. For
affiliates, the networks often offer simplified registration, standardized commission
tracking and reporting, and even consolidated commission payments.
The best way to get starting in Affiliate Marketing is to sign-up with one or more of the
different Affiliate Networks. Similar to banner networks, an increasing number of
companies have sprouted up to help merchants facilitate their affiliate programs. Most
act as consultants and software providers to merchants, and thus allow them to cost-
effectively outsource their affiliate program operations. For affiliates, the networks often
offer simplified registration, standardized commission tracking and reporting, and even
consolidated commission payments. Below you will find a list of the major affiliate
network providers.
Commission Junction - Easily one of the top affiliate networks. They have helped set
the bar for affiliate networks.
LinkShare - One of the biggest and best affiliate networks out there. Lots of experience
and highly trusted!
ClixGalore - Large affiliate network that lacks in customer service but is a good choice
for 'niche' sites.
ClickXchange - Pretty good sized affiliate network that offers many different types of
affiliate programs.
ClickBank - ClickBank is a great affiliate network with tons of offers you can make cash
off of!
FineClicks - Medium sized, well-organized pay per lead/sale affiliate network. Lots of
great offers to choose from.
Shareasale - Shareasale.com is a medium sized affiliate network offering pay per
sale/lead and pay per click affiliate networks you can join.
Focalex - Focalex is a leading company in opt-in permission email marketing. They pay
you 40 cents for every new e-mail address you send them or $1 for every thousand pop-
up impressions!
Get Listed on the Search engines
Unless you plan to spend money advertising your web site - you need to get it listed on
the major search engines. The main search engines you need to consider as part of
your online marketing campaign are as follows: Google, AOL, Yahoo!, Overture, Inktomi,
Alltheweb, AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, Teoma and the ODP (Open Directory Project). Some of
the above are technically directories meaning that a human editor reviews your website
before entry into their database. The most well known directory is Yahoo!. The Open
Directory Project is one of the least known but most important directories as it powers
results to Google’s listings among others. Yahoo! is the web’s most visited website.
Google feeds results to AOL and is one of the most popular search engines in the
world. If you focus the core of your online marketing efforts on Google, Yahoo and MSN
you will be well on your way to getting access to over 90% of the search engine traffic
that counts.
How to get indexed
All of the search engines have a facility to let you submit your site. For example, if you go
to:
_____Google
_____MSN
you will be able to submit your website to Google & MSN. It may take up to 4 weeks
before the Google & MSN robot (as called a spider) visits your site. However, it is also
possible that you will get visited by the spider so long as there is a link on the web
somewhere pointing to your site.
How to get paid
They will either pay you via check, direct deposit or PayPal so I recommend you signing
up with PayPal.
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