This is probably not big news to anyone out there but I have to put it down on this website in order to get it straight in my head.

So much of trying to make money online has you feeling like you are floundering around….there are so many instances when you wonder what you should be doing.

The question at any given moment is: “How can I make the best use of my time, right now, in order to increase my bottom line?”

Should I be writing new articles for my money site? Should I be building links to all of the posts that are not indexed yet? Should I be building links to my posts that are already getting some traffic? Should I be searching for new keywords to target? Should I be out there pitching guest posts to try and get high quality, relevant links from related websites in my niche?

And so on.

Well I had a series of events recently that caused me to examine these questions, and really look at my direction with my online business. One of my online gurus sort of chewed me out and accused me of not taking enough action (he was right). And then I looked back at some experiments that I have done over the past year or so, and saw what progress I had made, and what actions I had taken that had really made a difference.

Here is what I learned.

My big gains in internet marketing have always happened at the page level. A single page starts taking off, and I put more work into that page, and good things happen.

Not at the level of a website.

Not at the level of the keyword.

But at the level of the page. One article. A single article on my website. This is where success always starts for me. Somehow I get an article that takes off on my site, and it becomes a super page.

For example, I can remember when I was not even getting 100 uniques per day. I was scratching and clawing and trying all sorts of stuff and finally I had a breakthrough and managed to hit the magic 100 per day mark with visits. How did it happen? A single page on my site was pulling in traffic. And it was doing so from multiple keywords, not just one. This one article was getting like 60 visits per day, and the rest of my whole website was getting the other 40 hits.

I also notice that when I have success at the page level like this, comments usually increase. I start getting regular comments on a page, because it is obviously getting a smooth flow of traffic all of a sudden. And the comments produce extra content that the search engines obviously like to see as well.

And of course, these successes I have had with individual pages was always driven by links. Sometimes a “quality” link (like a real link from a real website) or sometimes a bunch of lower quality links that I have created myself, and sometimes both. But always driven by links.

And I can also look back and see that when I saw a single page sprout up a bit and start seeing some success, I would throw more links at it and keep doing so over time and that has produced good results.

Basic stuff, but how often have I sat here and worked on internet marketing and not been driving links to a single page until it is performing the way I want it to? Pick a page, and make it a super page. Pick one URL, and boost it. Pick one page, and expand the content on it and then throw mad links at it.

Regardless of how big your website is, you still have to look at each individual page and treat it like a separate website, and build links to it if you want to see real traffic.

I have something like 1,250 articles on my website and I don’t even think that Google is indexing half of them. Why would they? There are no links pointed at most of them. It is all about the link juice.

Lately I can see that my best performing pages on a website are those that pull in traffic from lots of related keywords, and thus get a lot of traffic each day. They do not just get traffic from a single keyword. And they have lots of links pointing at them, and they rank well for their main keyword, but they also get a ton of extra traffic from related keywords.

Build up a single page, with lots of related keywords in it, and build a variety of links to it.

Keep building links to that one page until you reach some sort of ceiling (like being #1 in Google for the main keyword).

Rinse and repeat.

I think some keywords lend themselves to this better than others, obviously. So like say you have two keywords, “A” and “B”. Maybe they are both worth about 100 bucks per month in advertising revenue if you are ranked at the top of Google.

However, keyword “A” may have very few related words that draw in traffic, while keyword “B” may have about 5 to 10 related terms that get quite a bit of extra search traffic.

The secret is to find keywords that are like keyword “B”, and target them in a long and detailed article and then just keep throwing links at that article until you are getting decent traffic.

Going for keyword “A” is frustrating because it is like climbing a very steep mountain, and there is not much reward as you go. Even when you are on page one of Google, you are still not seeing much action. You have to get all the way to #1 to really see the payoff. Even though it is a $100 dollar keyword, you may only be seeing like 15 bucks in revenue per month when you are at the bottom of the first page of Google.

Keyword “B” is not like that, and you should be seeing plenty of action and traffic as soon as you hit the front page, without even being in the top 3 spots. This is due to the extra keywords you will hopefully be ranking for as well, that are all bringing in extra traffic.

I have like 4 or 5 pages on my main site that are like keyword “B”, and they rank well and bring in lots of traffic from related keywords too.

Now I am going to deliberately start seeking out more keywords like “B” and make more “super pages.”

Pick one page. Boost it. Win.

Are you looking to make money with Adwords, or find some other method of making money online that can boost your income and give you some extra money on the side? If this is what you want to do then you might have heard how you can buy traffic with Adwords and then somehow turn that traffic into more money, thus turning a profit. Once you have such a system set up, then the idea is that the money will just keep rolling in.

Now there are several different ways to make money online and I have experimented with several of them, and I have also used Adwords to purchase traffic and try to use it to boost my income. I can tell you right now that making money with Adwords is going to be a very steep learning curve indeed. There are several reasons why you should hesitate to make this your primary method of trying to make money online:

1) It is expensive. It is really dangerous to do proper testing with Adwords and try to turn a profit with it. You may find yourself spending hundreds of dollars every day but only making about half of what you are spending or even worse. Obviously this is not sustainable and can get you into trouble pretty quickly. There are other pay per click platforms out there that offer cheaper clicks and cheaper traffic, and some of it may be very high quality, but the volume is just not there compared to Adwords. In order to really compete and drive serious traffic you are going to have to use Adwords, and that means dealing with potentially razor thin margins that are risky to try and maintain.

2) It is competitive. If you break into an established niche, tough competition can eat you alive in the pay per click game. They might even take a loss on purpose just to drive you out of the game before you even get started. Sounds far fetched but it does happen in some niches.

3) It is advanced. Start with the basics and learn how to drive traffic with seo first. Later on, after you have mastered that, then you will know the true value of keywords, understand more about the long tail and how to dig deeper to find profitable variations and so on. Without some knowledge of the basics you are going to be struggling to make sense of an Adwords campaign that may be struggling to turn a profit until you have optimized it properly.

Making extra cash in your spare time could easily be just about anyone’s goal in a tougher economy, especially since a person may have idle time and think that they might make money on the internet. “Why not just do something productive while I am sitting here watching television?” they might think. It is possible to make extra money online, but it will probably require you to shut the television off, at least when you are getting started and learning the ropes. Making a part time income online within a short time frame is a very realistic goal, but you either have to be:

a) Incredibly smart, or
b) Incredibly hard working, or
c) Both.

If you are very smart and you know exactly what you are doing, you might be able to build websites that can generate passive income for you, but this will still take a mountain of work and effort on your part, even IF you know what you are doing. Even an expert internet marketer has to throw up lots of different material and test, test, test in order to see what the winners are, then multiply their income by focusing on what is working well. There is no magic wand when it comes to building passive income streams from seo other than to test several niches at once or be very persistent with a single niche. If you want to see extra money roll in quickly then you will need to use a shotgun approach, test lots of topics, and work like a madman.

Now if you are not smart enough to do this type of website building and testing, then you might resort to plain old hard work without the risk involved. It is possible to make a straight buck on the internet by putting forth an honest effort. This is most readily done by writing content for other web publishers who want to outsource the writing to you. Of course the amount of money you make will only be limited by the speed and the quality with which you can crank out quality articles about any given topic.

Now there are other ways to make a buck online but not many of them are as simple and as straightforward as writing new content for people and their websites. Learn how to do this, get faster at it over time, and you are laying the foundation for a future business for yourself. Eventually you can then build your own sites and make money passively from them with the knowledge that you gain from learning SEO.

Do you want to make cash and earn more money on the internet? If so then there are a few solid ways to do so without getting caught up in useless scams that only try to take your hard earned money away from you. Let’s take a look at a few methods.

One idea that does not get a lot of press is that of article arbitrage. Here is how it works. There are two groups of people out there on the internet involved with writing articles: those who need them written for new material for a website, and those that sit at their keyboard and pound out new articles for money. Web publishers and freelancers. Webmasters and writers.

Now the website owners do not want to write the articles themselves so they pay others to do it for them. Well they pay different rates for different quality levels, and of course there are many different marketplaces for doing this on the web. For example, there are freelance job boards, but there are also websites that are set up to automate this type of exchange, such as Textbroker.com.

So one thing you can do is find someone who is attempting to buy some slightly higher quality articles…..something more than the typical penny-per-word stuff. Say they want 10 professional articles written about the jungles of South America or something, and they are willing to pay 12 dollars each and they need to be 500 words. So in a case like this, you would take on the work and then outsource it for cheaper, while still doing so at an acceptable quality level. So you might pay about 7 bucks each to have these articles written by various authors from another website.

So you are not writing anything, all you are doing is paying one source to provide a service and then selling the proceeds to another source. Without too much deception you are simply connecting a seller and a buyer, and taking a commission for doing so. In this case, you would make about 5 dollars per article times 10 articles which is 50 bucks. Not bad if you can do this on a regular basis or at even higher volumes.

The reason I bring up this idea of article arbitrage is not to give everyone a super idea about how to make extra money. The point is that there are a million ways to dive into a market in the online world like this, find inefficiencies, and then capitalize on them. You can make cash by doing a number of different deals in the online world.

Many people who want to make some extra money in a tough economy are interested in starting a free home based business. Of course there are not a lot of opportunities to start a brand new business for no money down, especially if they are legitimate ideas that can actually turn a profit of some sort. There are dozens of scams out there, especially in the home based business market, and they all have various kits that can make you thousands of dollars each week if you only send them $21.95 plus shipping or some such thing. There are many, many scams out there and very few real opportunities, so you have to be careful if you are looking to get into this market so that you don’t get led astray.

I can help you up to a point by illustrating one technique that actually can be built into a real business, starting with no money at all. Sign up for a free blog on Blogger.com and start cranking out quality content. Later on, when you have built up some decent value into your new website, you can worry about how to make money from it. Better yet, if you do your homework, you can choose a topic going into it that you know will be profitable and has the potential to make real money.

There are many internet marketers out there who would be able to take a free blogger blog and turn it into a real asset within less than a year if you put a gun to their head. Take away all of their websites, all of their money, and give them the task of creating an online empire that can generate real cash, and these people will be able to deliver. They can do so because they know how to:

1) Choose a profitable topic.
2) Target keywords with new articles.
3) Build links to their articles in order to rank in the search engines.
4) Use advertising or affiliate products to make money from their website.
5) Expand on their success and grow an income stream even larger.
6) Repeat all of this with another free website to make even more money.

So yeah, if you know exactly what you are doing and you know how to work like a dog and test lots of niches in a short amount of time, then you can make money online without investing a single penny of capital. You can use free blogging platforms and still build up a full time income.

Do you want to earn quick money? If so, then here is the number one recommendation for you: head on over to a freelance writing website on the internet and start finding some articles to write.

Then sit down at your computer and start writing articles until you are blue in the face.

Then go to sleep and wake up the next day and do it again. If you really want to earn money and you are desperate to do so then this is a sure way to make some cash.

Now when you first start out writing articles like this, you may be somewhat slow at it. In fact, you may only be making around a few dollars an hour. However, if you keep at it and learn some of the tricks, then you should be able to get to the point where you are cranking out about 5 to 7 articles per hour. This can be quite nice if they are worth 3 dollars each or more (most are) and you can see how working a few hours each day–really working–can bring in a healthy level of income.

Now some people may complain that they cannot possibly do well at this type of work, and that they will never compose articles fast enough to make it be worth their while. I say, these people are only making excuses, and are not willing to practice and improve. Consider getting Dragon Naturally Speaking and a decent mic so that you do not have to type at all, for those of you out there who are still doing the hunt and peck thing. Then you can easily do 60 words per minute or even higher and you can still make good money at composing articles.

Like I said, you may do terrible on your first few tries, and you may get some that are rejected and have to be revised. That is OK. Keep at it, and you will get faster and have far fewer revisions to do. Soon you will be able to sit down for 5 hours and make at least 50 bucks without any problem at all.

Everyone is looking for free easy money but the ideas presented here are actually hard work. You have to provide real value and that is why you are being paid. Learn to do the job well and do it fast and you will be to create extra income whenever you need it.

It can be difficult to find a legitimate home based business out there, especially when you are searching the web looking for opportunities. There is so much hype and crap out there and just about everything is a scam. Most ads lead to ridiculous offers where they want you to send them $29.95 or even more to get started with some stupid kit for making millions at home. The vast majority of it is junk and no one really makes any money with any of it, except for the scammers who are peddling the scams.

Now this is the part where I tell you about a legit alternative, right? Well it is true that there are real ways to make money with a home based business, but I will at least be up front with you by pointing out that they require real work. In fact, the domain name of this website is utter crap because you will probably have to work like twice as hard making money from home as you would if you just went out and got a day job. But it is possible to make money online and in some cases you do not even have to know what you are doing.

There are 2 basic ways to make money online: actively and passively. Both require a crap load of work. The only difference is when and how you get paid.

A simple form of active work is writing freelance articles for money. Anyone can sign up for Textbroker or other similar websites and write crappy blog posts for a few bucks each. You may even write some higher quality stuff as well. In the end you can probably make around 10 to 30 bucks an hour if you really work hard at this type of work. No special skills are required and if you keep practicing at it you will get faster and make money quicker as you go along. It is not glamorous but just about anyone can do it and make money and get paid for their work.

A more passive form of home business is to build up a web site and publish your own articles on it. Then you can promote your stuff and get free traffic from the search engines and make money from your visitors. You can do this by running ads or by pitching products or offers. Either way you can make passive earnings this way so long as you build up a sustainable flow of free traffic. Not easy by any means but really nice if you can make it work. This method will probably require lots of learning, lots of testing, lots of dedication, and plenty of patience. Once it pays off though you will be golden.

Here are some internet business ideas, some that I have read about and a few that I have actually used to make money with myself.

1) Freelance writing - I have made money doing this. Pretty simple to make decent money at it, but that does not mean it is easy work. In fact, I can think of nothing more grueling than to try and work a full 8 hour day of doing nothing but cranking out articles on various topics for a few bucks a pop. If you can sit there and type them out with a robotic demeanor, then you can probably make between 10 and 25 bucks an hour doing so.

Another thing about freelance writing is that you can do it every day. You can do it 7 days a week, and on holidays. There is unlimited demand for new articles to be written, so you can pretty much just keep writing for more money as you see fit. It scales well. And for fast writers, it pays pretty decent. But it’s hard work.

2) Seo – if you want to flip the article writing economics on its head, then write and publish your own articles, then build links to them to rank them higher in the search engines. This is a sure path to making long term residual income, but only if you work hard and work smart. Most people have to make a lot of mistakes trying to do this before they get it right.

So a big part of making money with search engine traffic is all about testing. You have to test new topics for websites and test new keywords and see what makes traffic show up. There are keyword tools out there to help you with this but ultimately many of them are wrong (even the good ones) and you only learn by doing. The second part of the equation is whether or not the keywords and topics you choose are profitable, even when traffic does show up. In some cases you may get a mountain of search traffic but it may not be easy to turn it into money at all. So you have to keep testing new things and find things that work and then scale those things up so that you can multiply your earnings.

There are other ways to make money online but if you start with these two then that can give you a foundation of knowledge that can then carry you into other areas.

Are online data entry jobs lucrative enough to check out? Is this a viable way to make extra money on the side? My opinion is that it is not, as there are other alternatives that will pay more than online data entry and be more sustainable in terms of future work.

What I would recommend for someone who is just starting out in trying to make some extra money on the internet would be to go sign up over at Textbroker first. This is the start of an online journey in terms of both making money and also in terms of learning about how search engine optimization works. Once you start writing articles for other people and doing that to make extra money, you will start to see how the game is played a bit and how you need to compose and construct articles in order to make money on the web.

You see, most people who are ordering articles to be written by freelance writers are going to then publish those articles and promote them so that they receive free search engine traffic. This is a long road to passive income that can be built up slowly in order to generate a solid online income. If you just start out by trying to build new websites with the idea of receiving free traffic and then turning that traffic into money, then you are going into the game without much of a knowledge base. Writing freelance for a while can help to give you a glimpse at what works and what does not.

For example, you will start to see how to compose articles in order to target a keyword term. You will get an idea of how to work the term into the article, how many times is appropriate, and how to work in related terms, and so on. You will also learn about what topics make for good money makers and what topics are not having articles requested to be written about them. For example, there is a huge market for financial articles about debt but not so much for articles about thrift stores. Why? Because there is no money to be made in driving traffic on the web to look at a thrift store article. But there is potential to make money when people are looking at debt consolidation or other related keywords, so you can get a better feel for what topics can do well.

You want to make money stuffing envelopes? This is an awful idea that most people think at first has some real potential. They might see an advertisement that tells them that they can make extra money working at home by doing so, and they can easily sit and stuff an envelope while watching television and relaxing. The truth of the matter is that there is almost no real money to be made in this manner, and even if someone payed you in a fair manner for doing so your hourly wage would be so low as to be pathetic.

More frequently what happens is that people who try to make money in this manner end up being scammed by ordering some ridiculous kit and actually losing money over it. Now there may actually be some legitimate envelope stuffing jobs out there, but if there are, I can assure you that they pay mere peanuts compared to the money you could be making.

For example, anyone who is already on the internet reading this and has 2 brain cells to rub together could just as easily head on over to Textbroker and write some articles for a few dollars each. Now I know this is not exactly passive income, nor is it the path to millionaire riches, but it is much better than being scammed out of $29.95 plus shipping and handling and you will also make some actual, real, money by doing this. Some people will be better at it than others and if you can type really fast and compose intelligent articles then you can probably make a decent hourly wage of over ten dollars per hour writing freelance articles.

You could also avoid any envelope stuffing scams and go create a bunch of new articles and post them on Hubpages or something. If you do that and promote your work there you can earn money passively through advertising or affiliate sales. Most people who try to do something like that only put up a few articles and they do not really do the proper amount of promotion in order to get their articles receiving daily search traffic, so they don’t make any money and therefore they think that it does not work. In fact it does work but you have to put in the effort in order to see the payoff.

Rather than watching television and trying to do mindless work to get paid, how about getting busy on the web and implementing some real money making ideas instead?