While I happy to share with them the details of making money online, it started to dawn on me that instead of having to explain each and every time I have a gathering, why not get it down into writing and post it on my blog for them to read. Come to think of it, it could be a good way to drive traffic and at the same time explain to friends and others how to make money online if they are beginners.

Before I move on, I have to make a disclaimer here. While I have success in making decent money online, the same success may not applies to you even if you follow and even go beyond all the steps that I did. The degree of your success in making money online is dependent on a number of factors such as your dedication, hard word, mentality, attitude and many other factors which only you yourself have control over. In simple terms, you are responsible for your own success. Sounds good right!

In this post, I will not go into the exact specifics of how to make money online for beginners. As there are many methods and hybrids methods of making money online, there is virtually no one guide that can provide a clear blueprint to making money online covering all these money making methods. Also, a post of that nature even if I attempt to do it will be at the very least at least a couple of hundreds of pages and more suited for an ebook than a blog post or article and not to mention at least a couple of years to boot. Rather this post will be a sort of overview and steps plus reference to other posts to get you started on the right track to making money online.

Read and understand what “Making money online” is all about
Read through my whole blog. Rather than going through the archives first, I suggest you to go through the “Make Money Online Basics” section first. Pay particular attention to the” Ways To Make Money Online” section. Inside this section, you will find information on a number of methods that people make money online. Take a mental note on those method or methods that appeal to you. Once you have finished, proceed to the rest of the posts on my blog.

Decide on a money making model or money making models
At this point, you may feel confuse and overload with information on how to make money online. This is a very normal situation that will happen to everyone especially mere mortals like you and me. Don’t panic, remember the part on making a mental note on which money making methods that appeal to you. This will come in handy now. Reread the money making methods that appeal the most to you. Also reread related posts on these money making methods. Once you have digested and understand how a money making method or methods works, it is time to proceed to the next stage

Take stock of yourself
This is a very important process which I called “evaluation stage” which is basically to understand whether you are ready to start making money online. I have listed below a few questions that you must answer truthfully to yourself.

1. How much money do you want to make?
2. Are you willing to sacrifice your precious free time to work hard on making money online?
3. Are you willing to learn the fundamentals of making money online?
4. Are you able to withstand the temptations of other make money online opportunities?
5. Are you willing to keep on learning and learning about new stuff to keep ahead of your competition?

Basically, these few questions above are to give you an idea that you should treat this as a business rather than a part time job or hobby. While most of you may not have the ambition to make a 5 or 6 figure income online, most of you will definitely want to at the very least be able to make a full time income out of your online endeavors. You should note that the amount of money that you will be able to make online will be equivalent to the amount of effort and time you put into your online endeavors. This is a universal theory that applies to life, in simpler terms you reap what you sows.

You should also write down your goal and get ready a step by step plan to achieve your goal. If you are really serious, go one step further and create a business plan for your online business. Revise your goals, step by step plan and business plan periodically to see what areas you are falling behind.

More reading and learning
Alright, once you are mentally prepared and ready, you should read and find out more about the money making methods that you are going to start with. Be it affiliate marketing, blogging or making money off Google Adsense, you have to lap up as much information as possible. Look up my “Reviews” section to check out those courses, ebooks, programs, software and tools that will greatly help you in your quest to make money online.

Market research
Once you have settled on a money making model or models, the next step you have to do is to decide on a niche to go into. This is where market research comes in. The purpose of doing market research is to determine whether a particular segment of a particular industry is lucrative enough to go into. At the same thing as a beginner, it is not advisable to go into a highly competitive niche as it will become very discouraging if you do not get some results soon enough. Read up my post on “Where to look for profitable niches” to find out some of the best sites to do market research and find profitable niches.

Preparing and getting ready to make money online
Once you decide on a niche to enter, you should be ready to get started on making money online. Most money making methods requires you to have your own web hosting and domain name. If you have not yet get your own hosting and domain, you can check out my “Recommended Resources” section to find a suitable domain registrar and “Web Hosting Reviews” section to find a most suitable web host. Once you got your domain name and web hosting, it is time to put into action the things that you have learnt.

For example, if you are interested in blogging, set up a WordPress blog and learn how to utilize the full power of WordPress. Learn how to write quality content that draw in traffic like bees to honey. Learn as much thing as possible about your chosen niche. You have to undertake the responsibility of learning as much about your niche as possible and become sort of an expert or authority and also the technicalities of setting up a blog or website.

Learn about SEO and how to drive traffic
This is where keyword research comes in and you will also need to learn about search engine optimization (SEO) and the on page and off page factors (link building) that affects your site’s ranking in the search engines. Search engine optimization (SEO) is all about organic traffic and you also need to learn other forms of marketing and methods such as article marketing, PPC marketing, social media marketing and viral marketing, etc.

In other words, you need to find out what are the quickest and best ways to drive traffic for your site. For example, if your niche is in a highly competitive market, it is going to take you ages to see results through SEO provided if you can wait. The best way to generate traffic and if you have the dough and experience is though PPC marketing. However, please note that PPC marketing is not for the inexperience or meek.

Test and track your results
To optimize your results and maximize your profits, you have to learn how to test and track your results. With results from your testing and tracking, you can make appropriate changes as and when necessary to see increased traffic and conversions resulting in more profits. For example, you can through Google Analytics find out what are your best performing keywords that you can further optimize to increase your traffic and conversion levels. There are also other types of traffic or conversion tracking programs that you can utilize to test and track your results. Another good free website testing and optimization tool is Website Optimizer from Google. This tool basically lets you test and track your web content to see which content delivers a higher conversion rate, ideal for landing pages.

Automate and outsource your online business activities
When you find that you cannot cope with the demands of your online activities, it is time to consider automating and outsourcing part of your online activities to free up more time for you to market and build your online business. Invest part of your income online on good software and tools. One good example will be automating your social bookmarking activities through the use of social bookmarking software such as Auto Social Poster, Bookmarking Demon and RSS Bookmarker.

As for outsourcing, one good example will be content creation. Engage freelance ghostwriters to write articles or even create full products for you if you don’t have the time or do not like the ideal of writing your own content. Automating and outsourcing can also apply to beginners in the beginning although I feel it is necessary to go through the basics manually first to get a first hand understanding of how things work at the most basic levels.

Some stuff to consider
It is important for you to understand that “focus” is a very important point to remember. A lot of people struggle to make money online because they fail to focus on one money making opportunity at a time. Instead, those who struggled or failed to make money online often flirt from one opportunity to another. This is one of the gravest mistakes one can make online. Read up my posts on “Focus On One Money Making Model At A Time” and “Focus is the Key To Making Money Online” to reinforce the need to focus on one thing at a time or one project at a time.

As the internet is ever changing, you must be flexible and always be prepare to incorporate new technologies and try out new stuff to increase your bottom line. Learn to change track if things do not go your way that you have plan initially. There is no shame in changing directions or failing. Just take it that you have discover one more method that does not work.

If everything else fails, go back to basics. Alright, I got this phrase from CSI but then this is a great piece of advice that you should follow. Sometimes, we tend to complicate things so much that it makes things not only difficult for us but also for our traffic or customers. Keep things simple is the way to go!

Well, I think this is it! I hope this will be a good enough starting guide for those of you who are keen to learn more about making money online. For those of you, who after reading this and is still confuse and unsure of what to do, you can email me at admin @ profitablepoint.com with your questions and concerns. I will be glad to help out as long as you understand that I have a full time job plus my online businesses to attend to and may not be able to reply to you as quickly as you would like.

Even though WordPress is essentially a blogging software, it is powerful and flexible enough to be used as a content management system (CMS). Besides that, the easy availability of free plugins and themes make WordPress the most ideal software for building websites of any nature.

A blog can be monetized through many channels such as:

1. Advertising
If you have a blog with decent traffic, you can monetize it through selling of advertisement space on your blogs. Advertisers will pay a premium for blogs that have high levels of traffic and traffic that converts well.

2. Affiliate Marketing
Through your blogs, and especially if you have loyal following of readers, you can try recommending products or services to your readers in return for a referral fee. The key point is not to overdo it and only recommends products or services that you genuinely believe in.

3. Google Adsense
Google Adsense remains one of the most popular ways for bloggers to monetize their blogs. It is very easy to sign up for a Google Adsense account and besides that; setting up of Google Adsense ads is very easy.

4. Paid Postings / Reviews
Paid postings or reviews are another popular and easy way for bloggers to make money. How much you can make through paid reviews is dependent on a number of factors such as traffic and especially page rank. The higher your page rank, the more amount you will get for each paid posting or review.

5. Selling text links
Selling of text links is actually prohibited by Google. The key is to do it discretely and through established companies such as Text Link Ads. Another way is that you can try selling text links through your own blog.

Now you can see why blogs remains one of the best and most popular money making models online. There are probably more ways you can monetize through a blog, but these few ways should at the very minimum get you thinking of starting a blog if you do not currently have one.

For Google Adwords, it’s a Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising program for advertisers who want to promote their products, services and websites. Advertisers bid for the keywords that should show their ads and indicate the cost they are willing to pay per click. For example let’s say an advertiser pays Google $1 for an ad, whenever someone clicks on the ad, the advertiser will have to pay Google $1 for that click. The $1 will then be share between Google and the publisher’s whose site displays the clicked ad.

So how does Adsense arbitrage comes in?

Arbitrage means buy high sell low and it is the underlaying principal behind Adsense arbitrage. Basically, it involves the setting up a MFA (Made For Adsense) web site that is fully optimized for Google Adsense ads. After setting up the site, what you do is to bid a low price for keywords in advertising programs like Adwords and drive traffic to your Adsense optimized sites to click on higher paying clicks. For a simple illustration, let’s say you bid $1 for the keyword “car” and direct the traffic to your website fully optimized with related Google Adsense ads paying you $2 per click. In other words, you make $1 for every every click.

The simple illustration above is not representative of how Adsense arbitrage works in general. In fact Adsense arbitrage is more complex than that. Many people lose huge sums of money on Adsense arbitrage after reading misleading information from eBooks or elsewhere online. Google is also clamping down hard on MFA sites making it harder for people to profit from just setting up MFA sites. But there are still many ways to profit from Adsense without resorting to MFA sites. 

Getting paid for doing online surveys is not something new. In fact, some people are earning full time income just by doing paid surveys at the comfort of their own home. Depending on your location, you can earn anything from $0 to $5000 a month just doing surveys. Opportunities for doing surveys are more readily available to people staying in countries like United Sates or United Kingdom.

To make money form paid surveys, you need to sign up with a survey site which will then send you survey opportunities from time to time. You can get anything from $1 to $150 per survey or even prizes and gifts. There are many survey sites around and most of them are free to sign up.

Although paid surveys are a legitimate opportunity, many people are avoiding it due to the large number of scams and fraud cases involving paid surveys especially those that need you to pay a fee upfront in order to access their paid surveys. Therefore if you want to explore paid surveys opportunities, I would advise against going for survey sites that need you to pay a small fee upfront although there are a few exceptions such as SurveyScout, PaidSurveysOnline and PaidSurveysETC. Although I have no prior experience with these sites, they are recommended by a number of respected internet marketing gurus.

I will be doing a review of paid and free survey sites in the near future, so keep a look out for it. If you have experiences making money from paid surveys, please feel free to share with us.

There are many benefits to selling digital products online.

First the setup for selling digital products is so easy to implement and best of all it can be free. You just need a Paypal account to accept money and that’s it. You do not even need a website to showcase your digital products. You can sell your products through forums and discussion boards and promote your products there provided they allow you to do so. Or you could set up a free hosted blog to sell your digital products too.

Next, the logistics and warehousing problems that arise from selling physical products is no longer an issue here. As the products are digital products, you do not incur logistic and warehousing costs. The delivery process can be fully automated using certain scripts or services saving you much precious time that you can devout to other parts of your business.

The best thing about selling digital products is that you only need to create it one time and it becomes a source of recurring income for you provided the digital product that you created is good of course. If not you can always buy resell rights of digital products from other people and sell them. This is so much quicker compared to creating your own digital products. Although you can save time in selling other people’s digital products, you are in fact helping these people to brand themselves or their business. The trick is to sell other people’s products and at the same thing create your own products for sale.

Due to the ease and convenient of buying digital products, more and more people are buying and that’s means more business and money in the pocket for you. It is no wonder more and more people are jumping on the digital product bandwagon. As you can see from above, the benefits of selling digital products are certainly very attractive. However if you intend to build a brand, you need to be careful of the products that you sell. Make sure you are selling products that add value to people as oppose to filling your pockets.

Think long term my friend!

For a list of good resources on selling information products, check out my “Recommended Resources” section.

With most companies going for restructuring and resizing and merging nowadays, jobs going to countries with lowly paid workers, most of us should be prepared for the day when your boss summon you into his office and give you the white envelope. Sounds scary right!

If you are single and without a family to look after, it may not be that bad a situation but then unless you have huge amounts of cash hidden somewhere, your savings may be depleted in no time. And if you have a family with housing loans to pay every month, the loss of your full time job will definitely bring most of us mortals crashing to earth.

With that in mind, it’s very important for you to create multiple streams of income so that should one stream get affected, other streams of income are there for you to tide over.

Besides the usual alternatives such as stocks, property and business which all require substantial amount of capital to start off with, an online business is the best option that you can get.

With internet access widely available to most people across the globe, it’s understandable why an online business looks so tantalizing. Now let’s take a look at why an online business is suitable for you.

Why an online business?

Just a computer and a internet access to get you started

Unless you are still living in Stone Age, most probably you already know how to operate a computer. Hey! If you are reading this post, you are already more than qualified. Also the beauty of an online business is that you can work from home in your underwear.

Low or no capital requirements

Depending on which money making model you choose go into, the cost of starting is very low, and as a result most people can start off an online business with a couple of hundreds or less. If you go for the free option such as blogging on free hosting sites, the only investment you need to put in is your time and effort.

Reach out to a global audience

There are probably around 1 billion internet users in the world. Imagine if you can sell a product for a profit of $1 to 1% of this user group, how much can you probably make? 1 billion = 1,000,000,000 and 1% of that is a cool 10 million dollars! Can you see the money? Now imagine if you can sell them another and another product over and over again!

You decide your income level

This is the coolest part about having an online business. You decide how much you want to earn and there’s no boss harping behind your back chasing and rushing you to meet deadlines. For those who are thinking of firing your bosses, it’s the perfect opportunity to get into.

24/7 automated business

Is there any way for you to set a conventional business that runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without incurring more costs? Most probably not! But an online business can do that and more. Besides being available to customers throughout the whole day, you can automate practically all your processes and operations and leave you with more time to concentrate on other aspects of your online business.

As you can see from the points above, an online business is the perfect business for anyone to start off with. If you are still indecisive or have doubts about an online business, most likely you will never be suitable for any business. Either you are not open to money making opportunities or you are not enterprising enough to spot opportunities when presented. It’s better off for you to work for people.

I’m not being sarcastic but I’m being frank here. In any business, there are always elements of risks that you have to take and much time and effort is required to build a successful business.

Ultimately you yourself are responsible for your own success and failures.

Being a freelancer means that you exchange your specialized skills, knowledge or time in specific tasks in exchange for money. The best thing is you can set your own price for the work that you render to people.

Now let’s take a look at some of the highly profitable freelance work available online:

• Copywriting
• Graphic Design
• Programming
• Research work
• Tying
• Website Design
• Writing

Although freelancing can be very lucrative, it is also very time consuming. Unless you are starting off with the intention to build a business later on once you are better known and sought after in your area of expertise, you won’t be leveraging your time and energy to maximize profits. Other factors that may deter you from freelancing are deadlines, work volume, etc. Think carefully before proceeding this path.

Here are some freelancing sites for you to market your services should you decide to take this route:

• Elance
• RentACoder
• ScriptLance
• Guru

For a list of money making opportunities and resources for making money, check out my “Make Money Now” and “Recommended Resources” section.

However, not many people choose this path because of a variety of factors. But the advantages of selling your own products can be very tempting if you want to brand yourself or your business in the long run.

For physical products, the work involved initially is a lot more compared to selling digital products. Also you have to factor in logistic, warehousing, inventory costs, etc. If you are already running a brick and mortar business supplying physical products to an existing customer base, bringing your products online is a very viable options and does not incurred more costs except for the setup of your website. Otherwise, please plan and consider carefully before taking this route

Creating your own digital products is a more workable option for those who don’t like the hassle of tackling logistic and warehousing issues associate with physical products. There are many approaches and ideas in creating your own digital products using information and knowledge you possess and those that are found easily online such as:

1. Professional skills
2. Specialized knowledge
3. Personal experiences
4. Public domain content

The skills and knowledge that you possess can be turn into good use here. For example, let’s say you know how to play the guitar well; you can create a video product to teach people how to play the guitar or stuff like that. Or if let say you are a sales trainer or motivation speaker, you can create a podcast product that train people in sales and motivational stuff.

Think of the possibilities here. You have something that a market needs and you create a product for the market and market to them. Once you have a solid product, the only thing left is to get to these people, market to them the benefits and close the sale. Sounds simple right!

For a list of money making opportunities and resources for making money, check out my “Make Money Now” and “Recommended Resources” section.

]]> http://www.profitablepoint.com/make-money-online/sell-your-own-products-online-money-making-models/feed/ 0 http://www.profitablepoint.com/make-money-online/how-do-i-start-making-money-online/ http://www.profitablepoint.com/make-money-online/how-do-i-start-making-money-online/#comments Wed, 12 Sep 2007 09:42:13 +0000 Albert http://www.profitablepoint.com/?p=42 Before you go out and buy a domain, get a web host and start building your site, there are things to consider first. You have to decide on which money making model you want to approach first?

Is it affiliate marketing, blogging, ebay or other money making models?

Which business models interest you more or which model do you think is more suitable for you?

It will be advisable to try out the various models first to have a feel before deciding to focus on one once you understand the basic fundamentals on how to make money online.

Take for example you are interested in blogging, you should decide on a niche area to blog about. It could be your personal blog or something that interest you like photography or football. It could even be something related to your professional career.

The idea is to write about stuff you are familiar with and have a keen interest. It would do you lots of good if you are blogging about stuff you like in the long run.

After deciding on which model to approach, it’s time to sit down and have a game plan. Your game plan should be something along this line:

1) How much money do I want to make?

2) How do I achieve the target?

3) Draw up a daily activity chart.

4) Stick to the daily activity chart.

5) Focus on reaching your goal.

6) Be consistent in your efforts and preserve till you see results.

The part on focusing is very important and please do not be distracted by the seemingly endless opportunities that comes along. By focusing your energy and efforts on one thing at a time, you will see results much sooner. The other thing to take note is perseverance. A lot of people failed because they never persevere till the end. Instead, they stop when they are only “Three Feet from Gold”!

eBay

If you have not heard of eBay or have been a causal user before, it’s time to take a serious look a look at this money making opportunity. For those of you who are not comfortable with setting up your own site, eBay is one option you can consider. Many people have been making serious income from home through eBay.

So why is eBay so attractive?

1. eBay is one big global marketplace.
2. You do not need a website to get started.
3. Ready pool of customers.
4. Get rid of old and unwanted stuff for cold hard cash.

You can start making money on eBay by:

1. Selling physical products.
2. Selling digital products.

There are many ways to source for products to sell on eBay if you run out of old and unwanted stuff to sell. You can find products from wholesalers and dropshippers for yourphysical products. Another way is to get your stuff from garage sales, estate sales, dollar stores, etc. You can even create your own products like keychains, custom jewellry, artworks to sell.

If you intend to sell digital products, you can create your own ebooks, software, music or even resale rights materials that you acquired to sell.

There are many products and choices for you to decide, but the key to making good money is to focus on a hot niche, get ready your products and sell.

For a list of money making opportunities and eBay resources for making money, check out my “Make Money Now” and “Recommended Resources” section.