During the 15 months that Court’s
Internet Marketing School has been
around, we have discussed literally dozens
of ways to make money online. Many of you
are quite new to the site, and many others
will be introduced to the site by searching
for information contained in this article.
In order to help everyone to better
understand the ways people go about
creating an online income, I wanted to
provide a simple list, complete with a
simple explanation of each method. I will
also try to point you toward some resources
that you can use to dig deeper into
creating online income.
#1 - Starting a
Blog
Blogs are websites that people use to
share information. The basic idea here is
that the sharing of free information can
bring visitors to your website, and you can
in turn make a profit from that traffic.
Most blogs will show the latest articles
(known as posts) on the homepage, making it
very easy for people to find the latest
information that has been shared.
Examples:
People use a variety of methods to bring
traffic to a blog including
search engine optimization,
social media, paid advertising,
email marketing, and press releases.
Recently there is a growing trend of
bloggers using traditional media such as
television and radio to gain exposure to
their blogs, but in all honesty this is
only happening for elite level
bloggers.
Search engine optimization is obviously
my favorite way to make money with a blog.
My SEO efforts create an endless stream of
new visitors to my sites every day.
Unfortunately, SEO is one of the most
misunderstood fields in internet
marketing.
To help my students, readers, and YOU
get off to the right start with using the
search engines to create a passive income
online, I’ve created an email mini-course
entitled “5 Days to Success With Keywords”
that walks you through the essential
information you’ll need to get off to a
fast start in building a low maintenance
income on the internet. I’ll also share
some of the dumbest mistakes I’ve made as
an internet marketer - you can learn a lot
from the things I’ve done wrong over the
years.
Just type your email address into the
box below and you’ll be able to dive right
into the information. And don’t worry -
I’ll never sell, rent, or share your
information with anyone. You’ll get nothing
but value-packed content from me. Enjoy
it!
To make money with a blog, people use a
variety of different methods including
selling advertising space, products, and
services. Many other blogs make great money
by using
affiliate marketing, which is selling
products for others in exchange for
commissions.
This method is a great way to go,
especially if you want to start casually.
You can start a blog with no pressure, and
allow it to build up over time. For more
information on this method, check out this
post:
Starting a Blog.
One of the least understand benefits of
blog ownership is blogs are by far the
easiest way to get search engine traffic.
After over four years of making money
online and teach hundreds of others to do
the same, I’ve realized search engine
traffic is the most appealing. It’s
residual - my search engine rankings send
me visitors 24 hours per day, 365 days per
year - whether I’m in my home office or the
Bahamas.
Quality sites can bring you a very
steady stream of traffic and you can always
make money with traffic.
#2 - Starting a Content
Website
This method uses the same basic idea as
idea #1. You will use free content to
attract visitors to a location where you
can sell advertising and products.
Technically, a blog is a content
website, but for the purpose of this guide,
‘content websites’ are the traditional
content sites that aren’t blogs. There are
a lot of ways to create content websites.
Usually people use content management
systems like Joomla,
Drupal,
and Mambo to
manage the content.
You may be wondering to yourself what
type of content people use to create
content websites. These sites can be built
around literally anything, but many of them
review products and services or report on
news specific to an industry or niche.
Like idea #1, people use a lot of
different methods to bring traffic to
content websites, such as
search engine optimization,
social media, paid advertising,
email marketing, and press
releases.
Examples of successful content
websites:
#3 - Affiliate
Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is the process of
promoting products for other people and
companies, in exchange for commissions. For
example, let’s say that you have a site
that provides people with home loans. I
could sign up as an affiliate and then push
people to your loan site. When people get a
loan, you will make some money and will pay
me a commission. I would be the affiliate
marketer and you would be running an
affiliate program.
There are thousands of different
affiliate programs that you can use to make
money online. Here are some examples of
some of the more well known programs:
- eBay - eBay’s affiliate program
pays you commissions when you get
people to sign up for eBay, and also
pays some commissions if the traffic
you send ends up buying something on
eBay.
- Amazon - Amazon’s program pays you
commissions for pushing people to
Amazon. You earn a commission when a
person you pushed to Amazon buys a
product. Amazon commissions start at 4%
and go up from there and depend on how
many conversions you can get.
Affiliate marketing is often combined
with a few of the other ways to make money
online. For example, bloggers often use
affiliate marketing to make money from
their blog traffic. List builders (see list
building section) use affiliate marketing
as the primary method of making money with
their lists. They will usually send their
list an affiliate offer (an offer to buy a
product or service) around once per month
(sometimes more or less often).
Affiliate marketers often stay under the
radar, but for a good site that teaches
this process, visit Super Affiliate
Zac Johnson.
#4 - List Building
List building is one of the more
aggressive and powerful ways to make online
money. The method combines amazingly well
with affiliate marketing, and most good
affiliate marketers rely heavily on
building lists to scale up their
businesses.
A good list builder will usually set up
a site specifically to capture names and
emails. You have probably done a search in
Google to find a page that offered you a
free product. All you have to do to get the
free product is type in your name and
email, right? By downloading that free
product, you will probably be signed up to
be on that marketer’s list. He will then be
able to communicate with you in the future
and will send you and everyone else on the
list offers. A certain percentage of the
people on the list will take advantage of
those offers and this will get the marketer
paid.
Good list builders will come up with
ways to help the people on their list,
which will keep them on the list for a
longer time period. They are able to create
a win-win. Over time, their list grows
larger and larger which provides them with
larger and larger income. Good affiliate
marketers sometimes end up with millions of
names.
To build their lists, list builders
usually use a service like Aweber,
which helps them to create forms to capture
information, and stores the names and
emails in a database for future
communication.
List building combines with quite a few
of the other methods, including blogging,
affiliate marketing, lead generation, and
starting an online service business.
#5 - Lead
Generation
Generating leads can be an extremely
lucrative way to create money online.
Mortgage leads, for example can be sold for
more than $40 per lead, with no promise of
conversion.
Usually the process of
lead generation involves setting up a
site to bring traffic, and then funneling
traffic to a page where the visitor
requests more information about a product
or service. In the case of mortgage loans,
the visitor would request more information
about a loan. The marketer doing the lead
generation (the person who created the
lead) will then sell the information to a
mortgage broker or company, who will in
turn call the lead to try to get them to
get a loan.
There are literally hundreds of
different industries that rely on lead
generation including:
- Loans
- Finance
- Weight Loss
- Real Estate
- Credit Cards
- Cell Phone Plans
Savvy marketers will set up businesses
that capture leads in these and other
industries and can make some truly killer
profits.
To find lead generation programs, I
would visit CJ.com - they
manage affiliate programs and lead
generation programs for hundreds of
companies.
#6 - Starting an Online Service
Business
Those who become good at generating
leads will often transition into creating
their own service businesses. They usually
realize that while they are able to make
good money selling off leads, they could
make more by creating businesses for the
leads.
For example, a marketer may create a
site at some point that provides people
with good information about finance. They
then go through the lead generation process
to create and sell leads to an experienced
financial planner. This goes great and the
marketer makes great money, but eventually
realizes that the financial planner makes a
lot more from those leads than he does.
At that point, the marketer will often
find a financial planner to partner with,
or will become a financial planner himself.
The leads are already there so the
transition isn’t too complicated.
Selling services online usually takes a
few simple steps:
- Bringing traffic to a website
- Generating a lead
- Selling to that lead
Since the first step in the process is
bringing traffic to a website, the method
is often combined with other ways to make
money online including blogging and list
building. Many times, people that use this
method will also purchase a good amount of
paid advertising, as long as they are able
to convert that traffic into clients.
Examples of online service
businesses:
#7 - Creating
Products
Those that make the most money online
are often those that create their own
products. These products are often
informational and can be downloaded by the
purchaser.
For example, a savvy marketer will do
research and then create an information
product that will teach people how to lose
weight. The product will probably be sold
as an ebook or as a site that has a paid
membership. The marketer will then use a
variety of methods to bring traffic to the
site including affiliate marketing (the
marketer will recruit affiliates), paid
advertising, list building, and sometimes
blogging.
Since an informational product costs
basically nothing to deliver, there is
often great money in creating this type of
product. I would highly recommend getting
some experience before using this method
because there’s a lot to it.
#8 - Setting up an Online
Store
The old fall-back is creating an online
store that sells tangible products. Some
people will buy products at wholesale and
sell them at retail for profits. Others
will drop-ship, which is the process of
selling a product before you buy it. You
hold a list of what you can buy products
for and sell them at an increase. Your
supplier will then ship the product for
you.
This method is often combined with many
of the other methods including list
building, lead generation, affiliate
marketing, and creating products.
Examples:
Hopefully this list is enough to get you
started. While there are literally hundreds
of ways to make money online, this list
contains some of the most powerful. Adding
one or more of these to your current
arsenal may also help some of you to be
more successful with what you’re doing
now.
And remember - before you can use any of
these methods for making money online, you
have to master the process of getting
traffic to your websites. Keyword targeting
is the single fastest way for you to learn
how to pull that traffic from the search
engines.
Let me get this out of the way - there
are millions of ways to make money. The
issue for me has always been finding ways
to make money that will give you the
lifestyle you want.
Some Methods For Making Money
Aren’t Worth It
I had a really high paying job that also
demanded my entire life and I wasn’t happy
at all. How is money fun when you don’t
have time to do anything with it?
This article isn’t going to talk about
every method for making money under the
sun. Instead, I’m going to focus on ways to
make money that actually can provide you
with a decent lifestyle.
Make Money Blogging
Blogging isn’t easy - at first… The
first 8 months I had my blog I didn’t make
much at all. A few hundred dollars per
month isn’t exactly what I would consider
to be a decent income. 16 months later
Court’s
Internet Marketing School (this blog)
produces over $20,000 in income per
month.
Here’s the thing about making money
blogging - you have to be committed to the
long term. The best way to go about this is
keeping your real job so
that there isn’t any pressure. That way you
just focus on growing your site without
using it to pay the bills.
I will say this - the key to making
money with a blog is to get it to rank high
in the search engines. I’ve created an
email mini-course called “5 Days to Success
With Keywords” that outlines what I do to
create an excellent full-time income
online. I also share some of the dumbest
mistakes I made as a new internet marketer.
You can save yourself months and years of
wasted time by not doing the same dumb
things I did.
Just fill out the form below and I’ll
send you the first installment right away.
And don’t worry - I’ll never sell or share
your information with anyone. You’ll get
nothing but high value content from me.
Enjoy!
For more information on blogging and
making money online, visit these articles
and sites:
Make Money Blogging, how to make money
online, make
money.
Selling Services
Online
One of the most ridiculously lucrative
ways to make money is by selling your
personal services online. I personally sell
internet marketing and SEO consulting with
my blog and that’s one of the reasons I can
produce so much income with it.
No matter who you are, you probably have
expertise in some area. You may be really
good around the house, you may understand
personal finance, you may be a lawyer, you
may understand real estate, or have some
other skill. By using the internet, you can
establish yourself as a person of influence
and that influence will be worth great
money, as long as you can present yourself
as a solid option as a consultant.
If you don’t feel like you have a skill
right now that can translate, by all means
get one!! Learn a lot about something and
get going with your business. For example,
every day people are searching for
information about cell phones because they
don’t know which one to buy. You could
learn a lot about the phones and offer a
service to help people select the right
phone. You will of course then sell the
phone to them, earning to commissions.
Set Up An Offline
Business
I, of course, don’t love this option
because I love the leverage of the
internet. I have had clients in
Russia, England, Poland, Australia, the
U.S., Canada, India, and Japan. The
internet gives me a worldwide reach and
that’s why I can do really well without
ever leaving my own home. I don’t even have
an office and that rules.
Where most people go wrong is that they
think they need a brand new idea to start a
business. The truth is, there are plenty of
ways to make money that people are already
doing. You can duplicate an idea and still
do amazingly well.
Instead of continuing to search for ways
to make money, I personally would think
about what you’re the best at. Get going on
setting up your business and dream big.
