10 Ultimate Ways To Make Money Online – No Fail Formula

[toc]Despite the ever-growing number of people who claim to be able to make money online, a lot of people still don’t believe it can be as simple as just sitting down at your computer. To be perfectly fair, it’s not. To make money online successfully, you have to treat your online business and your office time exactly the same as you would a regular day job. This means learning the do’s and don’ts, the ins and outs of online marketing and business.

What You Need To Know

More than a few people have grumbled that to make money online, you have to be able to decipher a bunch of gibberish and acronyms like SEO, SEM, and CMS. You also have to know about things like affiliate marketing, AdSense, how to sell advertising space, ecommerce, website flipping, email marketing, or how to sell services online. While there is some truth to this, making a profit off the Internet is really not as difficult or overwhelming as a lot of people make it out to be. It requires some common sense, a willingness to learn, and an ability to experiment with several different paradigms.

The thing to remember when trying to make money online is that ultimately you are the product you’re selling. Whether you have cat photos or crocheted comforters, if people don’t know you’re around, they can’t buy from you. This is often the biggest barrier to successful online marketing, because so many people think it’s a simple matter of “If I build it, they will come and I’ll make money online!” You, your company, and your products and services have to have a strong presence and to fill a genuine need from the point of view of the buyer. Very few people can afford to buy things they don’t need, whether you’re a blogger or a book cover artist. By being able to show them a positive, immediate result from their time and money investment, you will find that making money online through your existing website, or in a number of other ways, is easier than you ever thought possible!

How To Create A Need

In the case of your business, you need to locate a need or a market for the things you create or offer. For our default example, let’s use a freelance blogger. A freelance blogger writes content for a number of different websites on a daily basis, and could be called upon to write just about anything. These people make money online just about every time they sit down to their computer. How?

Freelance bloggers fill a need. Many businesses want hard-hitting, high-quality content for their websites and blog pages to generate visitor interest and interaction, but don’t have the time, the resources, or the personnel to generate that content for themselves. The advantage of using a freelance blogger is that many of these services make money online from producing one piece of content and then turning the article and all rights to it over to the purchaser. This is helpful to both parties because it avoids copyright difficulties and gives the buyer access to content they would not otherwise have, while giving the blogger revenue.

There are a number of ways to make money online that don’t involve writing, however. Someone with a great website can create revenue in a number of different ways. Below are eight very popular ways people use to make money online.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing could be described as “cooperative marketing” as well and be just as accurate. In this type of marketing, a website owner takes a link from another website and publishes it. When a visitor to site A clicks the link for site B and performs a specified action, such as filling out a survey for lead generation, makes a comment, or spends a certain amount of time on the site, or buys a product, the owner of site A gets a commission from the owner of site B. This commission could be as low as half a cent USD for each clickthrough or could be as high as a percentage of traceable sales generated from site A.

“Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.” – Mitchell Kapor

One version of affiliate marketing which is very popular for making money online is Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising (specified below as adsense). In this form of affiliate marketing, a website publisher posts the link to site B. Each time someone clicks the link to visit site B, site A gets a guaranteed payout. Half a cent doesn’t sound very impressive, but if you have a high-traffic website that generates ten thousand views a day, your site could generate $50 a day in passive revenue. Since half a cent is a lowball figure, your revenues could be considerably higher. Of course, this also depends on every visitor to your site clicking through to site B, but as the PPC payout goes up, the percentage you need to make money online goes down.

The advantage of affiliate marketing is that website owners know they only have to pay for the advertising space when a visitor performs a designated action. In addition, affiliate marketing users often find that while their return per unit sale drops somewhat, having a dedicated, relevant network of affiliates helps them make more money online by volume than attempting to sell a product or service themselves. This volume-based business paradigm drives all kinds of products, so it’s hardly surprising that the philosophy behind it has been adopted by people seeking to make money online.

The disadvantages of affiliate marketing as a way to make money online include:
-Finding the right products or services to promote to your readership;
-Not having sufficient traffic at your site to make affiliate marketing profitable;
-Having to create strong sales copy for both your own products and someone else’s;
-Making sure your readership is prepared to buy something from your site.

Of course all minor disadvantages, but nonetheless I try to be as clear as possible.

If any of these factors are out of joint, it really doesn’t matter how aggressively you pitch the product. Pushing too hard can be even worse than not promoting a product at all, reducing your ability to make money online. If your blog doesn’t attract readers with a strong incentive to buy, affiliate marketing may not be the correct choice for you. Many website owners treat affiliate marketing as another way to make money online, not the “only” way to make money online. This is called monetization, and is the beating heart of creating online revenue.

If you have decided upon going down this road you should read this post about 5 great affiliate marketing programs for beginners and take the next step. Click Here

AdSense

Google’s AdSense program is affiliate marketing with a twist, because it allows subscribers to make money online right from their website sponsoring ads that hold the top slots on Google’s search engine. A lot of people view this as a scam because it seems too simple. Just post an ad and I make money online as affiliate revenue through AdSense? What’s the catch?

To be honest, there are several. AdSense is not a means to get rich quickly and make money online. There are reports of subscribers making five-digit commissions each month via AdSense, but many of these people are the first to say AdSense by itself is not a way to make money online in the short term. Over the long term, however, the time investment makes AdSense worthwhile to the savvy Internet user.

“I never tried to make any money the first 1.5 years it was running. I just concentrated on providing a good service. About 2 years after I started the site It started to do good revenue from AdSense” – Jeremy Schoemaker

Jeremy is the guy on the picture above for the huge check, you can check his post about this check on his website here

AdSense is an offshoot of Google’s AdWords program, which is a major source of Google’s revenue at nearly thirty percent. When discussing affiliate marketing, we talked about PPC advertising. This is the basis of AdWords. Companies bid for ad space on the first page of Google’s search results, which is where any website wants to be. Rather than relying on search engine optimization (SEO) and Google’s own algorithms to draw traffic, these websites pay to have their content showcased. Companies pay from two cents to more than $15 a click to secure these coveted first-viewing spots.

With AdSense, Google gave subscribers the opportunity to make money online by “feeding” content onto sites whose keywords relate back to the ads in question. The way AdSense works is to pay website and blog owners on a per-view or per-click basis for hosting ads. This pays per thousand views (impressions, often abbreviated as PPM) or clickthroughs. AdSense typically pays less for impressions than clickthroughs, but for a site with lots of traffic, this is a fairly easy way to monetize your blog or website.

While AdSense may seem superficially to be easy money, there are things you have to do to make money online working with this service. A lot of people fail to read the Terms of Service and learn only when it’s time to get paid that they violated the agreements and now get no revenue. This does not automatically mean it’s a bad system, but it does place the onus for making sure the hosting site is in compliance on the host. Additionally, generating traffic and using standard best practices for attracting visitors to your site, like SEO, is still essential. If your site gets a lot of traffic, AdSense is a good way to make money online.

Sell Advertising Space

AdSense is one way to sell advertising space quickly and easily, but there are other ways to make money online by offering ad space on your site or blog. This is particularly popular in the publishing world, where a number of people use cooperative or affiliate marketing to create a constellation of related businesses. The problem with this is that many people find themselves hosting ads for their competition. However, many website owners view this as a marketing paradigm where they will ultimately draw more traffic to their own site as a result.

Consider E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy for a moment. Authors and small presses who sell advertising space for links to the Fifty Shades trilogy benefit by creating extra traffic based upon her presence on their sites. This is because the major search engines use algorithmic text analysis to detect hot topics and bring them to the top of their results. Because the content or topic of the ad is part of the text of the site, the search engine pushes the site up in the rankings. This is an example of how to sell advertising space and increase your site’s search engine presence at the same time.

Many people sell advertising space as a means to make money online and find it doesn’t work as well as they expected. This is almost invariably because of ignorance concerning best site practices. The ads you sell advertising space to need to be in harmony with your site. This means they should have a similar theme, color scheme, and important keywords to your site’s overall theme. An ad for snowboards on a site dedicated to homemade tchotchkes is unlikely to draw much if any attention, making it a poor choice to sell advertising space to.

“Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.” – Leo Burnett

One of the leading companies in the world for advertising is LeoBurnett

The crucial things to remember when considering whether to sell advertising space are:
-You have to have content. If your site doesn’t have good content, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling to make money online, because the viewer is unlikely to buy.
-Your site needs traffic. It doesn’t matter how many great ads you have in one place or how aggressively you sell advertising space if no one’s looking. Good SEO practices and strong sales-related content that attracts viewers and discussion also makes your sold advertising space more lucrative.

There are a number of ways to sell advertising space, including PPC, PPM, and on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Many people choose to make money online by selling ad space at a flat rate for a set time. When these advertisers see results, they tend to come back. Most people who want to make money online through advertising treat the advertising as an important but secondary part of creating revenue. The best way to consider this is as an additional revenue stream over and above the income your site is already generating from other sources, including your own products and services.

eCommerce

eCommerce should rightly be an article unto itself, because it encompasses every facet and means to make money online. This includes people who buy, sell, lease, and create or generate money from online sales and activities. Nowadays, to some degree, just about everyone has some tie to eCommerce and derives some form of income from the Internet. For purposes of this discussion, we’ll focus in on eCommerce as a way to make money online for your business. In this case, the form of eCommerce we’ll be discussing is the sale of goods through an online platform as amazon.com (the king on this subject) does  without much consideration to advertising. You can use Amazon Associates to make money online easily, on that post a share 5 easy steps to get started.

The first really successful form of eCommerce came in the form of the Internet Service Providers themselves. These were the pioneers who developed the security technologies people use today when buying or selling things on the Web. The next big leap in how to make money online came in the form of eBay. This auction site has spawned dozens of imitators and also catapulted PayPal to prominence as the chief online payment system in the world. Today, nearly anything can be bought or sold on the Internet, making this a great way to sell products and make money online.

“if you build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful” – Jeff Bezos, CEO of amazon.com 

The obvious problem here is getting a product to sell. Grandpa’s old golf clubs are salable, sure, but you can only sell them once. The same goes for collectible items such as Beanie Babies, old-school G1 Transformers, or hand-blown glass dolphins. To transform eCommerce into a steady way to make money online, you have to have a product that can consistently be renewed.

However, people who make craft items from tea cozies to chainsaw sculptures of bears can also sell their wares online, and eBooks are fast overtaking “dead-tree” books as the preeminent way to connect authors and readers. All that is really needed to make money online this way is a place to sell, a product to sell, and traffic to the site. This can be the hardest part of eCommerce  but this is where social media and SEO can help. By setting up Facebook pages for your products, a Twitter account for your business, an email address and profile through Google Plus, and a simple blog, you can make money online by selling products with just a few clicks.

Like any other way to make money online, eCommerce requires an engaging, content-rich site for your visitors. By playing to their interests and the things they need, you can help people find your products quickly. Using social media to get the word out about your products is a good way to make money online, but it means you’re setting up a real business. If you treat your business as a hobby just because it’s run from your laptop instead of a brick-and-mortar storefront, it won’t pay off. And always remember, you have to spend at least some money to make money online through eCommerce or any other way.

Website Flipping

Most people have seen or at least heard of TV shows featuring “flippers.” These people buy, renovate, and sell distressed properties as a living. Like just about everything else these days, house flipping has an Internet equivalent that serves as a way to make money online: website flipping. The best analogy between home flipping and website flipping is, instead of buying raw land, building materials, permits, and hiring a building contractor, most home buyers purchase a home that’s already built. In the same way, a website flipper buys an established website on speculation as a way to make money online.

Website flipping involves purchasing an existing website, improving its traffic and overall usability, and then selling it to an interested third party to make money online as a result of the work involved. For example, a website flipper finds a domain that could be making ten times the revenue it is, but is languishing near the bottom of the search results on a given search engine. The buyer realizes he could make money online by building up the site and selling it. He has the coding and site building and maintenance information he needs. Even better, he can purchase the site for a nominal amount, which he has available.

The deal is made and the flipper takes over the website flipping with a plan to bring in more traffic and make it more profitable. The investment of time and effort is largely dedicated to pulling the existing site down and refining what’s there. Oftentimes, website flipping is the reason for “Under Construction” banners on websites people have visited for years. The logic behind this is that people seeing the website flipping process may be tempted to try to duplicate the results, which are often the result of proprietary knowledge and cuts the flipper out of an opportunity to make money online.

Once the site’s content and appearance have been brought up to scratch, the flipper then launches a virtual PR campaign letting people know the “improved” website is now open for business. This could cost anywhere from nothing except time to time plus a substantial financial investment, depending on the results the website flipping is intended to achieve. As the site’s potential profitability grows, the flipper begins looking for interested possible buyers to make money online from the site. Once a deal is made, the “flip” is complete and the process begins all over again for the flipper.

Website flipping requires a fairly minute knowledge of good website design and structure, including coding, HTML, JavaScript (if applicable) and other common website programming languages, online advertising, and how to make money online from a properly functioning website. However, a savvy investor who knows and understands how to make website flipping work can make money online easily doing work they enjoy. This makes website flipping something worth considering for the tech-savvy online entrepreneur. Take a look at this article on 10 tips to make money flipping websites

Email Marketing

Of all the ways there are to make money online, email marketing is generally agreed to be the hardest but most generally profitable way of making money online. There is an endless list of do’s and don’ts for email marketing, and in fact, a poorly designed email marketing campaign can actually cost you money rather than giving you another way to make money online. For every person who says “Don’t try to make money online this way,” there are two who swear email marketing is the best and most direct method of getting a potential client’s attention. As usual, there is truth in both these points of view. Here are the pluses and minuses of email marketing for your online business.

-The Good

Done properly, email marketing is an excellent way to direct traffic to your site and make money online. Only about forty percent of emails are ever opened, which means if yours is one of them, your email marketing is already one hundred percent closer to success than if it just sits in an inbox. A good email marketing campaign starts with a good subject line that will get attention but doesn’t look “spammy.” This encourages the reader to open the email.

Then there’s the message itself. Don’t get fancy with the fonts and colors. Avoid stationery in your email marketing campaign; save that for snail mail, if appropriate. Keep your text spaced so it’s easy to read, use a common font like Times New Roman, and stick with basic black or another dark, high-contrast color that works with your brand. Hint: Red is never a good choice. This should be used only for emphasis and extremely sparingly, if ever. Don’t be wordy. Make your point and move on. Finally, close your letter with a clear call to action: a site link they can click to learn more or some other means of contact, an invitation to connect, and a clear statement of how or why what you’re offering will benefit the reader.

-The Bad

Although email marketing is a good way to make money online, there are some pitfalls. Many people report emails from parties they don’t recognize as spam, whether they are or not. Too many of these reports will result in your email account being monitored or blocked regardless of whether it’s reasonable or not. For this reason, your marketing emails should be carefully directed to make sure they wind up in the right inbox with the consent of the people your sending the email to.

Perhaps even more problematic is the statistic that out of all emails, only about forty percent ever get opened. Out of that, maybe thirty percent are actually acted on. This can make an email marketing campaign seem like a complete waste of time and resources rather than an effective way to make money online, but as long you keep to some basic, common-sense rules, you can mount an interesting and effective campaign.

I have reviewed 7 email marketing programs that will help you decide which one to join if you choose to go down this road.

Rules for Email Marketing:

-Personalize your communication. Would you want to help someone make money online if you didn’t know who they were and were sure they didn’t know who you were? Of course you wouldn’t. Know who you’re trying to contact and make sure your email reflects that.
-Know the numbers. Most email marketing campaigns contact people in blocks of fifteen to twenty people at the outside. Sending an email to too many people at one time can wind up your email in a spam folder or even get your email account blocked by the provider. Your email provider can tell you what their triggers for spam are and give you tips on how to avoid them. Always follow the terms and conditions for your email provider, especially if you’re a small or private account holder.
-Make your message clear. A fuzzy, complicated, or confusing message will often wind up consigning your marketing campaign to users’ recycling bins.
-Show a clear benefit. Making it clear why the people you’re reaching out to can benefit from your business will help you make money online more quickly and ethically.

Sell Services To Make Money Online

One of the most popular ways to make money online is to sell services. Some of these include professional Twitter users, people who create Facebook posts, and bloggers, but just about any service you can find in the real world can be found online. Most of the services people make money online from are Internet-oriented, however, such as web design, SEO consultation, and blogging. There are all kinds of ways to sell services in this environment.

We’ll return to the previous example of the freelance blogger for this. A freelance blogger generates content for clients as a way to make money online. This form of eCommerce s fairly stable because it demands only that content is needed, which it always is on the Internet, and that someone is willing and able to create that content. The freelance blogger offers both a product and a service that can be constantly renewed, allowing clients who lack the time, knowledge, or ability to create the product for themselves to obtain what they need at a mutually satisfactory rate of pay. This creates a symbiotic relationship between the freelancer and the client, because each of them get something of value out of the arrangement and make money online when they buy or sell services.

You don’t have to be a professional writer to make money online by selling services, but you do have to have an intimate understanding of the service you’re offering. An SEO consultant needs a different skill set than a web designer. A professional Tweeter uses different skills than a Facebook poster. While there is some overlap, the best way to sell services and make money online is to become a stable expert on one or more aspects of the Internet and then tailor your offerings to match what you bring to the table.

The biggest obstacle people encounter when trying to sell services is the question, “What makes your service different from XYZ?” You need to be offer something unique that adds more value and increases your chances to make money online. Being able to say “I sell services in search engine optimization consultancy, blogging, marketing via email, and marketing via social networks” sounds a lot better than “I sell services writing Tweets.” Diversity is the best way to ensure your ability to effectively market and sell services you have to offer to make money online!

Summary

As you can see from the examples above, it’s not hard to make money online. The most successful online entrepreneurs have learned how to diversify ways to make money online by doing a lot of different things all at one time. What many people forget or never realized is that the success or failure of a given person who wants to make money online hinges on their ability to accept small financial windfalls at the outset and treat their online business as a growth industry. Additionally, having a more diverse portfolio of capabilities for doing business through the Internet makes it more likely you can make money online regardless of whether one aspect of your business is profitable or not.

There are about as many different ways to make money online as there are people in the world. The question the online entrepreneur needs to ask is what they have to offer potential clients and how to position the goods and services they have in front of the people who are most likely to benefit from them. All the methods given above have their benefits and drawbacks for people seeking to make money online.

One thing that has not been considered are some of the drawbacks of having an online business not directly related to the question of how to make money online. In the following section, we’ll look at some of these briefly.

What To Watch For When Working To Make Money Online

Most people who set out to make money online do so because they either want to be their own boss or they are required to be home much or all the time, making seeking a regular job outside the home impractical. Many of these people seek the freedom of not having to punch a time clock or answer to a single boss. However, there are some important factors that people who want to make money online should be aware of when deciding to launch an online business.

The Downside
-Tax issues: As a small business owner, you are responsible for your own taxes. Since most of your work will be undertaken on a cash or independent-contractor basis, it is up to you to keep track of your earnings and know the tax laws for your jurisdiction. It is rare that an online employer will deduct taxes for you. While this means you make more money online in the short term, if you aren’t diligent about recording your income, you could lose up to 25% or more in interest and penalties on your end of the tax year bill.
-Lack of benefits: People who make money online generally pay for their own health and other insurance, 401(k), and so on. This needs to be considered when you decide to make money online, because unless you have a working spouse with a solid job and good benefits, insurance alone can take a big bite out of your income. But the approach I teach on how to make money online is all about taking the necessary steps at a time and taking precautions., so with my vision this point doesn’t really count. We are aiming at this by starting with a part time hobby to then turn it onto a full time income stream.
-No Internet connection or no electricity means no work. Unlike many jobs, making money online demands your power and Internet stay operational at all times. If these glitch for any reason and for longer than a couple of hours, you could be missing opportunities to make money online and not know it until the power comes back on, if ever.

The Upside
-Set your own hours: Your business should be treated as a business rather than a hobby when you out to make money online, but with that said, you can generally do what you like. There are people who make money online and only work an average of twenty hours a week while pulling down the same or better income than people working forty-plus hours a week.
-Choose your assignments: As you become more proficient in ways to make money online, you will also find you get more choices in your assignments and the people you do business with. While exercising this ability injudiciously can cause you to lose opportunities to make money online, it also gives you more flexibility and exclusivity in your clientele over time. This is an important factor to consider, because many people consider the freedom they achieve to be more selective in their working hours, environment, and professional connections well worth the relatively minor problems they could incur when they set out to make money online.
-Travel the world When you run an online business your only tool is your computer, if you have everything set up correctly you can work from wherever you want. In fact as I write this article I’m in a hotel suite in Saint Bart about to head out to the beach.

Final Thoughts

There isn’t any one right or wrong way to make money online. Some ways have more benefits than others, while others allow for a more diverse income stream. Just about every Internet marketing guru has their own take on the best way to make money online, but what works for one person’s personality and schedule may not work for the next person. Some people prefer to work a regular nine to five schedule, while others work better earlier in the morning or late at night. A word of caution here: If you make money online, make sure your online time is consistent so clients know when and how to reach you.

For the person who wants to make a little income on the side, sell a product or service, or just have the freedom to come and go from their job as they please, seeking out ways to make money on the Internet is an ideal financial choice. As long as you keep methodical records or your income and expenses and keep up on your taxes, you can make an entire career out of making money on the Internet. Just remember the first law of business: The Customer Is Always Right! If you can do this and have a salable product or service, you’ll find it’s very easy to make money online. Try some or all of these methods yourself and see how simple it is to get paid for things you’d probably do for free!

Now please do me a favor after writing this huge article and take action. I would also love to hear your story so feel free to share below.

To your success!