You Don’t Need a Website, But it Helps

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I can tell you that there really are ways to make money online. The trick is to wade through all the crap MLM and quick money making schemes that litter your inbox every day. For this tutorial, we’ll consider making money online to be any activity whereby you accept payments and generate income online, without a physical store. Also note that this was not written for the experienced online marketer who is probably using one or all of these strategies already. It is more for the newbies, rookies and curious tire-kickers looking at trying their hand at Internet marketing.

Back in the early days of the Internet, about the only people making money online were people selling information products about how to make money online.  Then the Internet craze hit in the late 90s.  All of a sudden, the climate shifted to the fantasy that all you had to do was throw up a website and the money would come pouring in.  Boy, did that end up getting a beat down.

Fast forward again to the dot com Internet bubble in 2000 and boom, money-making opportunities via the Internet were written off.  Then, some savvy Internet marketers spent time and money and discovered elaborate ways to test and improve everything from search engine traffic to conversion rates and the seeds were sown for today's Internet entrepreneurs.

Step 1:

eBay:  Yeah, that's right ...eBay.  Before you start snickering, I'm going to let you in on a little secret.  eBay is a goldmine for marketing information, especially for newbies.  More importantly, eBay is just about the only place on the planet where you can inexpensively make real money online, right now, while you're learning. 

That's because you don't need a website or a domain name, but you'll still get a crash course in writing headlines and web copy.  I can tell you straight up, if you don't learn how to write effective web copy, you will have a hard time promoting a website, products or services online.  You'll also learn about online payment processing via Paypal or one of the other third party payment processors.  How about shipping and receiving?  Customer service?  It's all there to learn while selling on Ebay. 

Step 2:

Get yourself a website:  Although you don't need a website to make money online, there are two good reasons why you should.  I'll get to them a bit later.

Notice I mentioned get a website?  Well, you can build your own or you can buy an existing one.  My most successful site is the existing one I bought. Either way, your money-making opportunities increase if you have a website.  

Step 3:

Sell products and services online:  If you followed Step 2 and have a website, here's your first good reason to have one.  You can sell your own physical and information products from your site.  I'll tell you why learning PPC advertising is important for this later.  You'll need a cart and or the ability to process online payments, so plan your business before launching a site. 

Paypal allows you to get started accepting payments on your site right away without a merchant account.  If things take off, you can move forward and get a full blown merchant account later.

Step 4:

Affiliate marketing:  Don't have any products or services to sell?  No problem.  With affiliate marketing, you can offer third party (someone else's) products and services and receive a commission for every sale or referral made through your affiliate ID.

Now here's reason number two for having your own website and it's another secret I'm going to let you in on.  

If you're going to jump into affiliate marketing and buy traffic through PPC, you will pay less for your clicks if you have a real website, with real content to go along with your affiliate landing pages.  I'm serious ...and it's because Google has a quality score that rates the legitimacy of your site.  Authority websites get preference on bid prices and ad placement.   

In addition, Google has limitations on how many PPC ads that can have a direct affiliate link from the PPC ad to the product page from your affiliate link.  Bottom line, you will be more successful at affiliate marketing if you have your own website.

Oh ...One more thing.  If you decide on selling physical products or services online either as a direct marketer or as an affiliate and you're just starting out, you'll probably need to generate the traffic required to makes online sales pretty quickly using Pay Per Click (PPC) ads.  My colleague Perry Marshall is the foremost authority on PPC.  So much so, that even Google has consulted him.  Need more info? check out this Guide to Google Adwords review of Perry Marshall's ebook.

Step 5:

Google Adsense:  Again, you'll need a website to display relevant Google PPC ads on your site and Google will have to approve your application.  If you're site is a content-based information site with some decent organic search engine rankings, Adsense is a no-brainer.  You should be using it.  The one caveat is that you will need a large site (meaning a boatload of pages) to make anything more than pocket change.

I never disclose sales figures, but I can tell you that part of my success with Google Adsense is the fact that I have over 2500 published web pages online.  If you use the Google Adsense business model, be prepared to get a lot of content pages online ASAP.

Quick tip - You can increase your content page count by adding and promoting a forum on your site.  First, forum pages can contain quality written content.  Secondly, the pages are generated dynamically, meaning they are generated as members write or reply to posts.

Step 6:

Write content:  If you've got an Adsense account and you're writing here for HowToDoThings.com, you're already making money online, but there are more ways to make money writing content. 

Although HTDT doesn't actually pay its contributors for submitting content, there are websites out there like Associated Content, Helium and Mylot  who may pay you for writing and submitting articles.  Another caveat to this business model is that quality counts.  If you write crap and or plagiarize content, you don't get paid.  Fair enough?

Step 7:

Become a freelance service provider:  Hmm ...What's this all about?  In a nutshell, if you're a copywriter, web designer, graphic artist, computer coder, etc., there are a number of websites where you can offer up your services on a per job contract basis. 

Sites like Elance and GetACoder offer freelancers a marketplace where they can bid on available jobs posted by potential clients.  The freelancers (you) then bid on the projects posted by potential clients based on particulars like price and experience level.  Freelancing like this can also lead to full-time employment or exclusive preferences for certain types of work.

That's because many experienced marketers would rather test out a potential freelancer's work instead of handing off a big job to one web design company or computer coder.  Many times a freelancer that makes a good impression ends up becoming the exclusive service provider for the client.  The freelancers that I have hired were so reliable they now get all my business.

So there you have it.  No BS - No MLM or quick money making schemes and no spamming.  I have one suggestion, try one or possibly two of these methods, get good at it, then add another marketing channel. So, what are you waiting for?  Let's get on with it. 

Comments

Can you tell how to give free ads on various sites?

By Taukir Ahmed 40 weeks 4 days

    Mylot.com is a messy site and now that "everyone" can sign up to write, "everyone" is doing just that, and writers in the USA cannot compete with the overseas market, as in many companies who outsource. HTDT isn't going to make me rich, but it's fun, however I enjoy writing political commentary on Nolanchart.com a great deal more, when I have time. I tried Odesk.com and it was really awful, again too much competition from other countries! How do you have 2500 published web pages? I manage 3 different websites, but even with those I doubt I have 500!

    Raven West, J.D.'s picture
    By Raven West, J.D. 22 weeks 5 days