Lots of people turn to the internet as a way to make money online. However the biggest problem people face is being overwhelmed by information. They read, read and read even more and the end result is total confusion. Months can go by with very little action being taken and when people do get started they seem to think that they’ll make money fast. This just isn’t the case and if you think you’ll be able to give up your day job in a matter of a few weeks you are very much delusional. Unless of course you already have skills in internet marketing and SEO etc.
However if you have no skills in keyword research, competition analysis and search engine optimization I suggest that you just get started NOW. Age of a website is one of the most important factors in being ranked well by Google so the quicker you start creating sites and get them indexed, the quicker you will make money. Although I am still very much learning how to make money online myself, I am at a place financially where most people would like to get to. Put it this way, I earn more than Caroline Middlebrook! And I can bet you that I earn more than the average “make money online” blogger who still thinks that getting readers is what’s needed.
So anyway, let’s get to the crunch. If you know nothing about making money online but want a system that will allow you to get started quickly, then here is my guide and this is what I would do if I was starting again. It should be seen as a fast track method ideal for those with limited time due to having a day job and a family to look after.
1. Decide on 10 topics. I suggest you go to ezinearticles.com for ideas. Basically look at the subcategories and turn these into topics for a blog. Stay away from business and finance topics because these are notoriously difficult to get traffic for. My advice is to look at home, hobbies and leisure because there are plenty of people searching for these topics, there are loads of things you can write about and there are also many advertisers (usually). Try and choose a good cross-section of topics such as:-
Motorbikes
Lawn care
Babies
Tropical Fish
Scuba Diving
2. If you don’t have any money to spend you should set up a couple of accounts with blogger. Don’t have more than 5 blogs on the same account and also make sure that you vary the topics on each account. In other words, don’t have 5 blogs all about tropical fish on one blogger account because this will look a little strange if you happen to get a visual inspection.
If you have the money to spend then buy a domain name and get some hosting with host gator. When starting out will only need Baby Croc but if you are keen to get loads and loads (eg 20 or more) of domains then you should get a aluminium reseller account.
Having the keyword in your domain helps a lot so basically you would make up something like Motorbike Chaos or Lawn Care Fanatics. You don’t have to worry too much about the exact domain name, just as long as your main keyword is in it.
3. You might feel overwhelmed at the thought of writing 5 articles per blog meaning you need to write 50 articles. Don’t worry, if you just want to fast track you’re way to creating blogs what you just need to do is write a paragraph instead of a whole article. Let’s just say you’re creating a blog on motorbikes and you want 5 blog posts written. What you would do is decide on 5 article titles e.g. Harley Davidson Motorbikes, BMW Motorbikes, Kawasaki Motorbikes, Motorbike Helmets and Motorbike Maintenance. Just write a quick paragraph for each article and publish it. You can do your research on the company websites or at ezinearticles.
4. Blogger blogs can often get indexed themselves however you should always try and get at least a few links pointing to your blogs. This is much easier than you might think. Just go and create an account with Mister Wong, Mixx and Propeller and add each of your blog’s posts to these social bookmarking sites. I have chosen these particular sites because they have a good high Google Page Rank and allow you do get indexed fairly quickly. Personally I use Bookmarking Demon 4 to submit to all the sites I want.
5. If you’ve decided to go down the route of creating bloger blogs you will want a way to see what visitors you are getting. I suggest you sign up with Statcounter as it’s fee and pretty good. Just follow the instructions on how to add the code to your blog.
This whole process shouldn’t take you long at all and within a week you’ll probably have 10 blogs most of which will be indexed and they can then be allowed to start the aging process. Once you have followed the above advice you can then start reading more on SEO, keyword selection, competition analysis, back links, blog farms and all the other things that Griz, Vic and Court now teach you.
Go back through your blog posts and start turning them into proper posts of about 500 words or so filled with lots of nice juicy keywords. Re-write some of the articles and submit them to article directories and do blog comments etc. Taking action is one of the most important things you will have to do when learning how to make money online and if you simply procrastinate and read lots of blog posts instead you really don’t have any chance in making it in this business. You might also need to practice building confidence.
Showing posts with label seo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label seo. Show all posts
Monday, 9 June 2008
Thursday, 22 May 2008
Free Ways to Make Money Online
If you want to earn money online but have little or no money then there are a number of options available to you.
Blogger
Blogger is basically the only blogging platform I have found that is free and you are allowed to make money from it in basically any way you wish. You can use Adsense and also affiliate links. Just as long as what you have created is not spam and you have looked at the TOS generally. The disadvatage to using blogger is that you don’t really own what you have created. You aren’t allowed to sell your blog, an if you do sell it you probably won’t get as much for it as you really deserve. Also, who knows, blogger might go bust and you will lose everything. This is very unlikely to happen however because it’s owned by Google and they have a very healthy bank balance as far as I know.
Some people might say that you have an advantage with blogger because it’s owned by Google but I tend not to find this to be the case. However you can get indexed without even getting any links but in order to get ranked in Google you need anchored links.
Wordpress.com
Google really seems to like wordpress.com and you don’t even need to get much in the way of links. The problem is that it’s very difficult to make money from wordpress directly due to them being very strict about this. You can’t have adsense or click bank affiliate links. They do allow other types of affiliate links from the likes of commision junction. Just be careful about how and what you write about. Basically, wordpress.com is for social bloggers rather than internet marketers so be careful not to sound too promotional.
Squidoo
These are basically pages that you can make on just about any topic you desire. You can fill the page with text, photos, video, ebay auction and all sorts of other things. You can get a squidoo lense ranked fairly well in Google but you still need to get back links via normal sources such as blog comments and article directories. The downside to squidoo is that it’s very cluttered and if a visitor arrives at your squidoo lens, they can easily get distracted by all the other links and banners available. However unlike bigger and wordpress.com, you can sell your squidoo lens if you like. I have not done this personally however. I basically use squidoo for the purposes of getting links and just fill my lenses with a bit of text that contains a anchored link plus I also stuff them full of ebay and amazon modules just to pad it out. I make a little bit of money but it’s nothing great.
Hubpages
This is a great way to start making money with Adsense very quickly. However they do take 40% of ad impressions so it’s not as good as having your own website. Of course the benefit is that you can create as many pages as you like and pretty much any topic. If you get some anchored back links to you hubs then google will often rank you very well so it’s easy to get quick traffic. Yahoo also loves hub pages. You need to be careful about what content you create though. If you are going after a overly saturated market such as payday loans or weight loss then you need to make sure that your content is extra special and isn’t just a rehash of everything else. I make pretty OK money with my Hubs and it’s a lot better for me personally than squidoo. Hubpages has a much more simple and clean layout so is better for ad sense CTR.
Of course, in order to be able to make money from these free methods you still have to understand SEO. However using these free methods of making money online will only cost you time and will allow you to experiment with SEO and understand it better. Once you have a basic grasp on making money online you can then spend some money on things that are important - ie links. There are many systems/services that you can buy into but not all of them are worth the money as you can read in this 3waylinks.net review.
Blogger
Blogger is basically the only blogging platform I have found that is free and you are allowed to make money from it in basically any way you wish. You can use Adsense and also affiliate links. Just as long as what you have created is not spam and you have looked at the TOS generally. The disadvatage to using blogger is that you don’t really own what you have created. You aren’t allowed to sell your blog, an if you do sell it you probably won’t get as much for it as you really deserve. Also, who knows, blogger might go bust and you will lose everything. This is very unlikely to happen however because it’s owned by Google and they have a very healthy bank balance as far as I know.
Some people might say that you have an advantage with blogger because it’s owned by Google but I tend not to find this to be the case. However you can get indexed without even getting any links but in order to get ranked in Google you need anchored links.
Wordpress.com
Google really seems to like wordpress.com and you don’t even need to get much in the way of links. The problem is that it’s very difficult to make money from wordpress directly due to them being very strict about this. You can’t have adsense or click bank affiliate links. They do allow other types of affiliate links from the likes of commision junction. Just be careful about how and what you write about. Basically, wordpress.com is for social bloggers rather than internet marketers so be careful not to sound too promotional.
Squidoo
These are basically pages that you can make on just about any topic you desire. You can fill the page with text, photos, video, ebay auction and all sorts of other things. You can get a squidoo lense ranked fairly well in Google but you still need to get back links via normal sources such as blog comments and article directories. The downside to squidoo is that it’s very cluttered and if a visitor arrives at your squidoo lens, they can easily get distracted by all the other links and banners available. However unlike bigger and wordpress.com, you can sell your squidoo lens if you like. I have not done this personally however. I basically use squidoo for the purposes of getting links and just fill my lenses with a bit of text that contains a anchored link plus I also stuff them full of ebay and amazon modules just to pad it out. I make a little bit of money but it’s nothing great.
Hubpages
This is a great way to start making money with Adsense very quickly. However they do take 40% of ad impressions so it’s not as good as having your own website. Of course the benefit is that you can create as many pages as you like and pretty much any topic. If you get some anchored back links to you hubs then google will often rank you very well so it’s easy to get quick traffic. Yahoo also loves hub pages. You need to be careful about what content you create though. If you are going after a overly saturated market such as payday loans or weight loss then you need to make sure that your content is extra special and isn’t just a rehash of everything else. I make pretty OK money with my Hubs and it’s a lot better for me personally than squidoo. Hubpages has a much more simple and clean layout so is better for ad sense CTR.
Of course, in order to be able to make money from these free methods you still have to understand SEO. However using these free methods of making money online will only cost you time and will allow you to experiment with SEO and understand it better. Once you have a basic grasp on making money online you can then spend some money on things that are important - ie links. There are many systems/services that you can buy into but not all of them are worth the money as you can read in this 3waylinks.net review.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
