Earn Money Online - Basic Principles
Making money on the Internet is possible. It's often not easy
and not simple, but it's possible. There are many internet
marketers out there that are making a ton of money following
various approaches. Indeed, there is not such thing as "the way"
to make money on the Internet. It depends on what you're
offering and how you promote it. However, there are certain
standard rules that apply.
First of all, people who surf the Internet are real people like
you and me. If you're trying to promote a silly product or idea
that nobody would even think of buying offline, what makes you
think they're going to want to buy it online? Furthermore, since
the Internet started as a free network (ok, it started as a
military network but then evolved to a more academic network)
many people expect to find things for free and are reluctant to
pay for many services. So whatever it is you will be offering,
make sure to do some market research first to see if there are
any free alternatives for it, that will probably take away most
of your customers. Keep the above in mind, when thinking of a
product you wish to create (e.g. an e-book about a subject you
know well) or when choosing an affiliate program to promote. In
fact, most marketing courses out there currently teach pretty
much the same thing. Find a good affiliate program (or more than
one) or create an e-book about a subject you know well. If you
create your own product, you can use affiliate networks such as
Clickbank to promote it for you and earn a whole lot more than
if you were just one of these affiliates promoting someone
else's product, assuming that the products will have more or
less the same demand.
The biggest issue about Internet Marketing, however, is
promoting your product. Promotion means traffic. You need to let
people know that your product exists and offer a way for them to
buy it from you. The greatest product or affiliate program in
the world means nothing if people don't know about it. However,
a so-so product will still generate sales and profits if you put
it in front of enough people. And by people, I mean people even
remotely interested in that product category. Would a young
healthy person be interested in buying pills online? Probably
not. That doesn't stop spammers from sending these e-mails
though. Is it worth the trouble? Again, probably not. There is a
whole better (and legal) way to attract customers to your site.
Notice that we are now talking about customers and not people in
general. And the way to acquire customers to your site is not
just random traffic but targeted traffic. People who have
expressed an interest to the product or to an area where your
product applies.
So how does someone express interest in something, and how do
you know about it? Opt-in lists? Been there, done that and it's
not too effective. Not to mention the cost and that there will
always be people not remembering opting in and accusing you of
spamming them. The best way by far, to attract targeted traffic
to your site is through search engines. And if you're thinking
"yeah, right, how do I get on the Top 10 results with millions
of competing pages" then you're WRONG! It's not as bad and as
tough as you might think it is. There are still many areas where
you can handle the competitions. There are also profitable
keyword phrases that are not targeted by many sites. And by
that, I don't mean that you get a small number of Google
results. The search phrase "buy low cost affordable XYZ service"
may still return a million results, but if you carefully examine
the first result, you may see that the page is optimized just
for the word "XYZ service" and that with little effort, you can
beat them for the above key-phrase (but not for "XYZ service").
If you're thinking that no-one enters such long key-phrases you
are again wrong! In fact, the more keywords a search query
contains, especially if "buy" is one of them, the more likely it
is that you have a determined customer. And you can really make
an income with 10 or 20,000 highly targeted leads per month on
your website. Also bear in mind, that people searching for "XYZ
service" are not necessarily determined to buy that service,
they may just be doing research, contrary to the ones using "buy
low cost XYZ service" that will have a much higher conversion
rate to actual sales!
So, there you have it, the general principles of earning money
online. Forget the get-paid-to-surf or stuff-envelopes or
whatever scams there are out there! In subsequent articles, I
will mention more about how to optimize your site for specific
keywords, and how to locate good keywords (no point being ranked
number one for the "invisible enterpreneurs" key-phrase which is
searched once per month or so...). In the mean time, you should
definitely familiarize yourself with terms such as SEO (Search
Engine Optimization) and tools such as WordTracker, SEOElite and
Good Keywords. If it starts to seem like actual work, then
that's because it is. Do you really believe that a company that
claims you don't have to know about computers, you don't have to
know about the product, you don't have to talk to customers,
actually needs you so that they have someone to send a check to?
To make money you either have to put in your knowledge and
expertise, your time or your money. Usually all three, but
certainly not zero! If a company claims otherwise, then it's
probably a scam and most likely it has a start-up or
subscription fee (which means that in the end, you're still
giving something, your hard-earned cash). There are no free
lunches in life and the Internet is not an exception.