A Quick Guide To Making Money Online

By: Ejike Arinze

It has often been said that Internet is a Gold mine where you can find so much money on the table. This is true. But more often than not most people get frustrated in their quest to making money online. The reason being that they jump into a business too soon without learning the curves. They read all the hyped sales letters cum programs on the net from the so called "Internet gurus" and they get hurt for believing them line, hook and sinker.

The fear of failure had always made a lot of people to stick to their 9 - 5 paid jobs even when such people no longer want those 9 - 5 jobs.O.B (Just Over Broke).

The big question here is: How can one make money from the internet and how soon can this be.

There are various ways one can make money on the internet. Basically, these are divided into two broad categories: 1) Having to sell your own goods and/or services, 2) Becoming an affiliate.

For the purpose of this article, we are concentrating on how to make money as an affiliate. This is because; you can achieve making money online almost immediately as an affiliate. The logistics of doing this is minimal. You may or may not have a web site. You do not need to have a customer service unit and there is no need for you to keep inventory of the goods being sold.

But who is an affiliate? An affiliate is a person who sells other people's products on the internet and receives a commission for every sale they make. A company sets up an affiliate program which gives them a unique URL that can be used to send traffic to their website. If a visitor purchases something from that website, the affiliate will earn either a percentage of the commission or a flat fee. Thousands of people make great incomes selling and promoting other people's products online.

The ability to make money online without having your own products and doing your own customer service has helped many people tremendously. If you are tired of being broke, doing the 9 – 5 job, disabled, or retired or sit at home mom or have any other desire to be able to work from any location, then affiliate marketing can provide an excellent source of income. Talk about financial freedom and time liberty. It's got them all.

Getting Started: As an affiliate, you need to wisely choose the products you want promoted. If you are new to the game, it is better to choose those low priced products with high commission rates. My recommendation is to have products that are priced less than $100 with a commission outlay of not less than 50%. Again, having selected your products, one of the first things you need do to start making money online is to build a list. It has always been said that the money is in the list. With a big list, you are as sure as being a successful affiliate. However, people will teach you how to create a webpage, and how to drive traffic to your site but you don't get a ready made list. You have to build one. The question here is how one who is new to internet business builds his or her list. This brings us to the second point.
Setup A Squeeze Page: To start building your list immediately, you will need to set up a squeeze page. This is where you send your customers who are searching for your information and products, to enter their names and email addresses in order to get that information. This way you build up your list. Nevertheless, your squeeze page must have these four basic necessities: 1) An attention grabbing headline 2) A benefit list of why someone should give you their name and email address 3) A call to action telling your prospects what to do and why they should do it 4) An offer – what are you giving them in exchange for their names and email addresses.

Article Writing and Submission: In marketing your products, article writing comes very effective. This is the most effective ways of driving free traffic to your site. You write articles that relate to the particular niche in which you are involved in. By the time people read your articles consistently, you become an authority in such niches and when you recommend any product to them they are more likely to purchase from you. You can always get Ghost writers to write articles for you. So this shouldn't worry you if you can not do it. Furthermore, you should have a very interesting resource box that shows your prospects how to locate your website and invariably buy your products. You can therefore submit your articles to article directories to help drive traffic to your site.

Promoting Your Products Using Paid Advertisement: This is about the best form of promoting your business except for the cost. However, in advertising through pay-per-clicks at the search engines like google, overture, yahoo etc, you only pay when prospects click on your ads requesting for your information. But by and large, if this is done well, this is the best and fastest way of achieving your goal of making money online.

Though these tools are not exhaustive in helping you to make money online, they will nonetheless jump start your making money online in any of your chosen niches. You are your greatest obstacle to making money online. Set goals and dedicate yourself to those goals. You may not turn into a super affiliate overnight, but with experience and dedication you will be on your way to making a reasonable income online working from the comfort of your home.