“How Do I Make Money Online?”
PART #1
I created this mega-article as a special free gift - to give a helping hand to anyone who is asking the question "How do I make money online?" There's no catch! This article is completely free - and is, essentially, an ultra-condensed version of what you will find in the 99-page Internet section of my 330-page eBook. However, make no mistake - the information in this article packs a punch! I've done my best to make it the ultimate summary of the current playing field. If you apply these principles well, they could get you off to a very good start with making money on the web. If you like what you find here and are serious about learning more about how to make money online - check out my eBook. Enjoy! - Alex Newman, January 2009 ***** This article on making money online is divided into four separate PDFs: PART #1 - TRAFFIC PART #2 - CONTENT PART #3 - MONETIZATION PART #4 - TWELVE "RULES OF THUMB" THAT I LIVE BY Read / download the other three parts now - absolutely free - at: http://www.money-while-you-sleep.biz/how-do-i-make-money-online.html *****
PART #1 - TRAFFIC
"He Who Controls Traffic, Controls The Keys To the Kingdom." -- Mike Filsaime, multimillionaire internet marketer Introduction It's really simple. If you are going to be able to make money online, you need to learn how to drive web traffic. It is an art-form. If you do not know how to drive traffic to your web site, your offers or your advertisements, you might as well forget trying to make money on the internet. Without traffic, you might as well not even bother having a web site. What would be the point if no-one visits it?
However, if you have the traffic, you will pretty much always be able to generate revenue. So, the first essential rule-of-thumb of the internet marketer is this: Don't just expect the traffic to suddenly start appearing by itself. It won't - unless you start doing the right thing. Traffic costs - one way or another. Either time, money or other resources. Be prepared for this. Essentially, you can buy it, you can attract it through having something people want, and you can increase your exposure by maximizing the reach of your network. But whatever you do, you will need to invest resources into getting traffic. Once you have the traffic, it is relatively easy to turn it into money. Give me a million visitors a month, and I will make bank. Getting the traffic is definitely the hard part - and you need to make sure it is not costing you more to obtain than it can provide in revenue. Cost of customer acquisition versus revenue from that customer remains, as with any form of marketing, the quintessential statistic. Perhaps one of the most important things to grasp in the art of getting traffic is the art of getting people's attention and interest. The world is saturated with advertising, free content, and web sites. You have to stand out - and be able to generate attention, and then sustained interest. As Seth Godin said, simply being good, is not enough - you need to be remarkable. You need to make a splash, and you need exposure - or you will simply not be noticed. Traffic has two factors - quality and quantity. You want both. Quality, simply, means that the traffic is comprised of the kind of visitors who are likely to buy - and there are innumerable ways to "narrow the targeting" and distill the traffic down to those most likely to buy whether it is by geographic location, age, gender, or interests - such as the kind of web sites that they already visit. If you are going to attract traffic, you need to understand first that there are many methods and systems by which it can be gained. And each system has its own set of rules and idiosyncrasies that can ensnare the unwary or unskilled. I've created a list summarizing fourteen of the top traffic-generation strategies. Each of these is a classic, tried-and-tested method - and total mastery of any of these methods will pretty much put you on course. However, this is not overnight work and will require research and practice. There are master internet marketers making huge fortunes from each of these methods - as well as many who are floundering and struggling. Each method is a complete subject in and of itself and will take a while to learn and master. I would choosing a handful to make a serious study of. I have included many essential tips you will need in order to gain superiority / competitive advantage. Top traffic-generating systems - the list: 1) Search Engine Optimization - SEO. Ultimately, the objective is "to create keywordtargeted pages of high quality content that rank highly in search engines for terms that your user demographic are likely to type in when they are seeking what you have to offer". That's the theory, anyway. In practice - it's a highly complex subject. The good thing about SEO is
that if you do manage to crack it, you can sometimes be getting a nice stream of quality, free, targeted traffic for a long time. However, you have to be prepared to create a lot of valuable content first - and to fine-tune your pages with regard to what search engines "like". The bad thing about SEO? If the search engines change their algorithms or decide that you are trying too hard to "game" their complex rules - and you are reliant on search traffic for your income you can fall from grace overnight. Essential rule number one: Observe Google's essential guidelines for "On-Site SEO". One of the interesting things about SEO: You can have great web pages, with brilliant content - but unless they are "keyword targeted", they may well only get very limited search engine traffic and occasional "long tail" visitors. Keyword targeting is an art, as well as a science. And it's important to understand it fully in order to get the best from it. In brief - a) make pages for humans, and keep them natural. Don't "keyword stuff". b) Attempting to rank for a one-word keyphrase such as "music" or "mp3" is almost impossible - try aiming for three or four word phrases. c) Keep your pages related to the main overall theme of the site. d) Don't try to optimize any one page for more than one keyphrase - but be sure to use a few variations in the phrase in your page. 2) Link building. Links - the lifeblood of the internet! Link building serves a dual purpose: Getting traffic, and getting pagerank. Link building is a very complex topic. There are a huge number possible ways to do it, rules to follow - and a huge number of ways to get penalized if you get it wrong. There's no way I can summarize this one in a couple of lines, suffice it to say that it is an important skill if you want to make money online – and it is an essential component of SEO. I've written about it in depth in my eBook - and there are also numerous guides out there. 3) Offline promotion. A gigantic subject - and I have written about it at length in my eBook. Quick hint for now - make sure you give people a good reason to type your URL into their browser when they get home: Typically a special offer or great free gift. We live in a marketing-saturated world. Just printing your URL on your business card or baseball cap is not going to give anyone much incentive to go to your web site. 4) Sensational quality content. If your materials are really good - people will link to them and tell their friends. Example: A blog or site with consistent, high quality, interesting, useful or entertaining content, will gradually build traffic and subscribers. Cream still floats! 5) Crazy free giveaways. This is a challenge - because there is a lot of free stuff out there. You have to go bigger. But if you do so, people will freak out and love your site. See also "RuleOf-Thumb no. 3" (in part #4 of this article). Another thing - the internet is big. People will simply not see all that is out there. You don't necessarily have to be better than the competition; You can simply be as good as, but seen by more people. 6) Viral free tools. If you have the tech skills, create an incredibly useful piece of software or widget, and give it away. Bonus points if it links back to your site. You might sell other related products, or monetize through advertising. Classic example: www.flashmp3player.org Downside of this method - software often becomes obsolete quite fast (or gets copied / improved upon by others) and you must either create something new or lose your traffic. 7) Viral video. Go to one of the really big video sites and look at all the preposterous
nonsense that gets into the "most viewed" section. Then go and make a video of your hamster juggling peanuts. Link through to your site! Bingo! Your site will be inundated with views from fifteen year olds with no credit card - just what you wanted! I'm being sarcastic - but you get my point. Seriously though, viral video is all the rage. Make your videos short, attentiongrabbing, desirable, and make sure they guide users to your site. Investigate services like Tubemogul to post your videos to several sites. 8) Free tutorials. A few tips: a) Achieve dominance through both completeness of coverage of the subject and through superiority of content. b) People LOVE free video tutorials. c) Break your tutorial content up into a larger number of smaller videos or PDFs, rather than the other way round. This helps people find what they are looking for - and also gives you more ranking power. d) Do your research first - and see if you can find topics that everyone is looking for but less tutorial info exists on. e) Make sure you include suitable disclaimers when giving "advice" of any kind. f) A niche site focused around a database of free tutorials related to different aspects of a subject, might be a good way to go. 9) Forum posts. The key here is quality. Pick a forum that is related to your niche, and about which you have some knowledge. Make sure it is one which enables you to leave a link in your signature. Then, contribute to the forum. Give people good quality! The secret - aim to achieve popularity. Be helpful and upbeat and you will be on the right track. Don't get sucked into online arguments. And remember - even "subtle" attempts to spam forums are usually highly transparent. More so than you realize. 10) Email list. I use Aweber to manage my email list and have found their service great. A few simple tips: a) offer users something free and fantastic for joining. Make it relevant to your for-sale products. b) Don't just hammer your list with sales pitches. Nurture. Offer them good free content and make them glad to hear from you. c) Learn the art of the "squeeze page". 11) Getting traffic from the big sites. Each of the big sites gets tons of traffic. And most have methods by which you can divert some of this towards you. Try this: Pick a handful sites in the "Alexa top 1000" whose user base fits your demographic. Learn their terms of service inside out. Hint: many of the biggest sites such as Google, eBay, Craigslist, Myspace have been "gamed" to death. You might have better luck with second-tier sites - but be sure to contribute and not spam. 12) Affiliates. If you have a product for sale, you can attract affiliates to drive traffic with the prospect of earning income. The fundamental rule? Your site needs to convert. In other words, the more easy you can make it for affiliates to achieve sales, the more likely they are to send you traffic. 13) Buying traffic - PPC - banner etc. This is another big subject. The best thing about this method? That you can literally turn traffic on and off like a tap. If you are prepared to pay for it, you can literally send unlimited traffic to your web site. However, you need to be aware of traffic quality. You want to target your traffic as closely as you possibly can - and narrow it down as closely as you can to users that are going to buy your product or service. Use whatever demographic targeting methods are available, and employ as many testing methods as you have at your disposal to learn about your customers. If you are going to send high-volume traffic - i.e. through banner traffic: Make sure your
server can handle the bandwidth. Obviously, if you are buying traffic, you will want to be turning it around and making more money than you are spending. Typically, this doesn't happen straight away - but through careful observation of campaign statistics, and adjustment of the many factors involved in a campaign, performance can be improved. 14) Building community. This might be creating a forum, Web 2.0-style profile site or other network. The key here is to "empower your users." A good community enables people to find "their people", gives them an opportunity to be heard, gives them a way to promote their own goods or services, etc. The more you are able to help a certain group of people, the more likely they are to flock to your community site. A very popular community site can achieve massive traffic and revenue. Be warned, however, there have been many spectacular failures. And keeping the thing running can be an insane workload. END OF PART #1 ***** This article on making money online is divided into four separate PDFs: PART #1 - TRAFFIC PART #2 - CONTENT PART #3 - MONETIZATION PART #4 - TWELVE "RULES OF THUMB" THAT I LIVE BY Read / download the other three parts now - absolutely free - at: http://www.money-while-you-sleep.biz/how-do-i-make-money-online.html ***** © Alex Newman 2009
DISCLAIMER: “How Do I Make Money Online?” by Alex Newman (“This Article”) is provided for the purposes of general information, ideas and entertainment - and is not to be considered as, or as a substitute for, specific business advice or any other form of professional advice. No guarantee is made as to the accuracy, timeliness, usefulness or profitability of This Article and its contents, nor of the suitability of This Article and its contents for any purpose whatsoever – and Alex Newman (“The Writer”) specifically disclaims all liability arising in conjunction with use of these materials. Ideas from This Article are implemented at your own risk. None of the contents of This Article are recommendations to buy, sell or trade anything. If you are undertaking a business or investment enterprise, or are in doubt over legal / business matters etc, please seek appropriate professional / legal advice. DISTRIBUTION: You are welcome to make copies of This Article and give them away, print them out, link to them, post them on your web site, include them as bonuses with your own products etc – but only on the strict condition that they are left absolutely intact, unshortened and unedited, with all links remaining unchanged.