So you want to make money online, and yet you have no idea how it works or how to even get started. This article will attempt to walk you through the basics of getting your business up and running.
For starters, here is a brief overview of the process that can lead to the creation of a $200,000 dollar website.
But let’s dig into more detail and find out exactly how you should proceed in order to build your online empire:
* How is money made on the internet anyway?
* What if I do not know how to start a website?
* How do I choose a topic for my site?
* How do I choose a domain name (dot com) for my site?
* How can I create articles that are unique, interesting, and valuable to my readers?
* How do I go about promoting my website and generating traffic?
* How do I turn a stream of web traffic into income? (monetization)
* What if I fail?
* What if I succeed?
How is money made on the internet anyway?
There are actually hundreds, if not thousands of different ways that people generate income online. For example, some people have a high traffic website that makes money from advertising. Others might sell products, either their own product that they created, or other people’s products (that is known as affiliate sales, when you sell other products for a commission).
There are more elaborate ways to build an online business. You may have a discussion forum with extremely valuable information in it, and then charge money to each person who wants to access the community. This would be a membership website model.
But the basic idea that we are going to focus on is that you build up a high quality website, start getting free traffic from the search engines, and then turn that free traffic into income through the use of simple advertising. Google makes this very easy to get started with using their AdSense program.
Some internet marketers look down on AdSense as sort of being the “training wheels” of making money online, but it is a very powerful way to monetize a website. In some cases it is the best way, in other cases, you might be able to figure out a way to raise your eCPM. (eCPM stands for “earnings per thousand impressions” and it is a measure of how much money your website typically makes for every thousand people who visit it).
So if you have an eCPM of 20 dollars with AdSense, and you average about 500 visitors to your site per day, then you would make about 20 dollars in income every 2 days or so.
Some people experiment with different business models after they have a steady stream of traffic and they are making some money using AdSense. For example, they might try selling an eBook that they created to see if that is more profitable than the advertising was. If their earnings go up, then they would switch their business model to selling eBooks. If not, they switch back to the AdSense, or try something else.
Because AdSense is so easy to set up and test on a website, it becomes sort of a baseline for income generation. I would recommend that you start with AdSense and at least test it out to see how it converts for your traffic stream. If it does poorly then you can always try to find another way to monetize. However, if you pick a decent topic that has some good profit potential, this should not really be an issue.
For example, my flagship website was averaging around $2,000 per month in earnings using advertising, and when I attempted to monetize differently, the earnings always dropped. Traditional internet marketing wisdom kept telling me to find a more efficient and profitable way to monetize, but after every experiment I kept returning to Google AdSense. So in some cases, advertising may really be the best fit for you particular website.
So ultimately, money is made on the internet based on attention. If your website gets a lot of attention, then you can make money with it. If your website gets pretty much no traffic at all, you are not going to make money. Earning income online is thus a matter of developing a high traffic website.
In my experience, it is a mistake to be lured by the false promise of making money from social traffic. Internet marketers will try and convince you to chase social traffic from websites like Twitter and Facebook. In my experience this is a mistake, and the only traffic that you should try to chase is search engine traffic. That means putting up high quality content and then building links to it. If you are doing “social networking” and attempting to boost your daily traffic stats using Facebook and Twitter, you are wasting your time in my opinion. The key to earning steady income online is to build up regular search engine traffic.
What if I do not know how to start a website?
No problem. Once you have a dot com picked out for your idea, the web host that you choose to host your website will help you to get your website started. You need 3 things basically to get up and running:
1) Choose a dot com and purchase it for 10 bucks per year or so.
2) Choose web hosting (get shared hosting to start with, cheapest plan available) and purchase hosting from a company such as Hostgator or Bluehost.
3) Install WordPress on your new dot com and start blogging.
If you do not know how to do any those 3 things, no problem. Choose either Hostgator or Bluehost, call them up, and they will walk you through the entire process. Seriously. They will do this because they want your business so badly.
Things have gotten much easier in this area. If you can manage your email online, then getting WordPress up and running is not much different. They have reduced it to being a one button install at this point. If you get caught up somehow, simply call their 24 hour support line and a human being will talk you through it.
Could not be easier, really. Your total cost and expenses for a domain and hosting should be less than $100/year. You only need a “shared hosting” plan, nothing fancier.
How do I choose a topic for my site?
You need a topic for your website and then you need a brandable domain name to go along with it.
What I would suggest as far as topic is that you brainstorm a list of things that you are good at, interested in, knowledgeable about, and so on. Write down all of these topics that you could at least come close to claiming “expert status” in. You don’t have to be a certified expert in your topic, but you should be able to “talk the talk” fairly easily.
Ask yourself: “Could I write 5 articles in a row about my topic, and not run out of ideas or talking points?” If you cannot get up and talk for hours on end about your topic, then you might look to find something that you are more knowledgeable about. You want to either BE the expert or at least be able to emulate one. If you don’t have authority when it comes to your site topic, then how can you expect to build an authority website? You want to be able to talk with confidence when you write articles online.
Once you have a suitable list, narrow them down by profit potential, and choose the most profitable one. This can be difficult to do because ultimately you would have to use some sort of formula that figures in search volume (how many people are searching for your topic every day online) and also profitability (how much each visitor to your website is ultimately worth).
Say that you have a niche that deals with celebrities and the search traffic amount is really enormous, but the ad clicks are almost worthless. Because of the high volume you might still be able to make very good money with such a niche.
On the other hand, say that you have a site about a rare disease that has a very expensive treatment. Maybe the search volume is much lower in this case but the higher dollar ad clicks make up for it. Thus, you may do well with this type of niche too.
Instead of proposing a complex formula for estimating profit potential, I would recommend this simple solution:
Only go after profitable topics based on the cost of the service or product, not based on volume.
This helps to protect you in the long run because if you build up a business around something that people pay a lot of money for, then it will be much easier for you to monetize your website in different ways.
For example, if you build a website about celebrity gossip, your revenue-per-visitor is going to be extremely tiny, and if your traffic drops then your bottom line will be affected instantly.
On the other hand, say that you have a website about a very sophisticated computer hardware system, and you make hundreds of dollars from a single affiliate sale on your website. A drop in traffic may only affect your earnings slightly in this case, because it only takes a few sales for you to earn a decent income stream.
So I would recommend that you look carefully at what people are ultimately advertising in your niche, and what the cost of the products and services are. If it is fairly low cost (say, under 20 dollars) then I would avoid the niche. If the products and services tend to cost more than that, it is probably worth pursuing. Also, keep in mind that some forms of monetization involve recurring payments, and these niches can be especially profitable. For example, the insurance niche is much more competitive than something like, say, tennis rackets. Why? Because tennis rackets are a one time purchase, and insurance payments are recurring….sort of “set it and forget it” type of a purchase. So the people who are paying for targeted traffic regarding insurance buyers are going to pay a lot more money than people who are trying to sell tennis rackets. The insurance people know that each new customer who signs up with them is going to be worth a certain amount of revenue over the years, and this will be worth a lot more than a single tennis racket purchase.
There are some topics online that are ultra competitive and overly saturated to the point that they are impossible to rank for. Insurance is one of them. I would steer clear of credit cards, loans, adult topics, gambling, web hosting, and internet marketing as well.
That said, I would still urge you to choose a topic that tends to be “low volume + high profitability” rather than the other way around. Go to where the money is, and earning income from your traffic stream will be a whole lot easier.
How do I choose a domain name (dot com) for my site?
Now you need a domain name, the actual w w w thing, the dot com.
What I would advise you to do is to choose something that has brand value. No hyphens aloud. Max of one keyword per domain name. And always choose a dot com rather than a dot org or a dot net.
So if your topic is “interior decorating” I would advise you to go with something like:
www.gorgeousLivingRoom.com
Or
www.decoratingQueen.com
rather than something like:
www.best-interior-decorating.com
or
www.expertInteriorDecorating.com
Notice that the first two examples have more of a brand name going for them, they are not just generic keywords, like the second two examples are.
Don’t worry so much about getting your keywords into your domain name. Rather, make sure it is a catchy brand name.
Of course, you will have to go to your web host and check to see if the domain name is available or not. If it’s not, you may have to brainstorm alternatives. Never pay more than 10 bucks per year for a domain, and never use hyphens!
How can I create articles that are unique, interesting, and valuable to my readers?
Go to Google and do a search for your main topic. Skip the first page of results and start glancing at each and ever web page that ranks on the second and third page of the results.
In most cases, all of those results that show up 11 through 30 for your topic are going to tend to be generic, me-too content.
You will probably know what I am talking about when you read it.
For one thing, it won’t be very exciting content to read. It will be boring. Stuff that reads like this:
“Red tables are red, and could complement other red colors in your kitchen layout.”
This type of content is boring and just seeks to rank in Google for the purpose of getting traffic.
My argument here is that you have to create content that has a purpose other than simply ranking in Google. In other words, you have to actually care about your readers, and thus care about your articles.
If you just put up 600 words with a nice headline and hope to make money, then what purpose are you really serving on the web? You are just more “me too” content at that point.
This is to be avoided. Instead, you want to build a “real” website, one that you actually care about.
This should not be too difficult given your expertise and interest in your topic. If you cannot build a “real” website about a topic, then go back and start over, choosing another topic that actually gets you excited. Your website has to be about more than just a means to get traffic an make money.
For example, my parents started a website about travel. Their topic is much more narrow than this, of course, and they are doing very well with the site. Their readers actually care about the content and subscribe to get more of it. They post stuff because they think it will genuinely help people. For instance, they will stay at a place and actually make a walk through video of it in order to review it for others. Their site is successful because they are genuinely helpful.
Every time that you sit down to create a new article on your website, you should have this same sort of “how can I be extremely helpful to my readers” mentality. If you build your site like this, one page at a time, then you have a much better chance of having your content spread via word of mouth (an extremely powerful marketing technique in the online world).
Boring content loses. Interesting, helpful, and insightful content wins.
Create amazingly good articles and you will build a solid foundation on which to earn income for years to come.
How do I go about promoting my website and generating traffic?
This is the hard part. Creating amazingly good content is actually the easy part. Publishing dozens or hundreds of articles on your website is the easy part. Actually promoting the site to the point that you are receiving free daily search engine traffic is tough. Getting several thousand unique visits per day is a very tough, long term goal. Yet that is what I recommend that you work towards, as that is what creates serious long term value, and huge income.
I would urge you to ignore pretty much all marketing and promotional methods except for one:
Link building.
Yes, building links is hard work. Yes, it takes time and energy and creativity. But it is the only thing that will ultimately get you to your income goals.
Social media may or may not help you to build these links that you need. I would certainly not count on it as a promotional strategy. If you can create truly amazing content, then you might be able to build links by simply sharing your stuff among Facebook, Twitter, etc. But those methods have never worked for me and I would not count on them working for you either.
Go to Google and search for your topic keyword. See those websites that come up on the first page of results? You want at least one or two links from one of those sites.
That is your number one promotional goal when you first start your marketing push. I would recommend that you go pitch a guest to these websites in order to try to get a link back. You can learn more about doing that right here.
After you have a “premium” link or two, I would recommend that you start building a few “manufactured” links as well. These are generally posted on other websites and you usually have to trade an original article for them in order to get a link back. Such arrangements usually result in weaker links than the guest post idea, but they can still be valuable in helping you to rank your website.
There are various networks out there such as Build My Rank and a few others, but I would recommend that you start your search for this type of link building at TheContentAuthority.com
I personally outsource this sort of promotion, though I do not spend very much each month on it. Slow and steady is the way to go with manufactured links.
Make sure you make getting a “premium guest post link” into your number one priority.
How do I turn a stream of web traffic into income? (monetization)
Start with AdSense. If that fails miserably, you may have picked a poor topic to begin with. There is a small chance that you can experiment and make good money even when AdSense is a complete dud.
The way to find out is to do 2 things:
1) Look at what the other websites in your niche are doing to make money (do a Google search for your main keyword, look at the top 10 results, etc.)
2) Experiment with other forms of monetization based on what you discover.
Even if you are making good money with AdSense, you may want to follow this 2 step process just to test things out and see if you can possibly monetize more effectively.
In some cases, an idea for alternative monetization might fail, but you can still take advantage of your efforts. For example, maybe you see eBook sales as a possibility. So you write an eBook and attempt to sell it. If this should flop, you can always start giving away the eBook for free in attempt to earn natural, organic links.
My philosophy has always been to give away massive value with my website for free, and then seek to monetize indirectly with advertising. The reason I tend to do this is because this model seems to make organic link building easier for me. If you wall off your best content and make people pay for it, then that content will not really be able to generate free links and strong word of mouth for you. On the other hand, take your absolute best content and make it totally free, and people will have a greater tendency to share and promote your content for you.
Here is a great approach: do a search for your main keyword and look at the top 10 or 20 results in Google. Are any of them charging money for content? If so, then you have your growth strategy:
Create better content than what they are charging money for, and then give it away for free.
This will allow you to build links and gain attention, which you can later monetize via advertising or affiliate sales.
Many internet marketers would suggest “Develop and build your own product that you can sell, as this is more efficient than income from ad clicks or affiliate sales. If you sell your own product, you get to keep 100 percent of the sale!”
I think that is bad advice. Instead, develop the same exact product/service/information, and then give it away as free content on your website. This is the secret to building good links.
Once you have the attention, once you have ultra premium content and it is generating organic links and real word-of-mouth referrals for you, you will be unstoppable. Turning attention like that into income is quite easy.
But having a killer product to sell and no traffic is a recipe for failure. Better to “give away the farm” in order to build traffic and links.
One more key concept: monetize later in order to capture more link building and referral traffic in the early days. So do not put up ads until you hit at least 100 uniques per day, possibly more. This will help you to build links rather than to funnel people off to your advertised products, etc. A clean site with no ads at all is more likely to get real links and genuine referrals rather than a website that is plastered with tacky ads or a heavy sales push.
What if I fail?
If you use the methods that I outline here then you are mostly bootstrapping your way to profitability. The most you can lose is about $100 per year in overhead and you might also waste some money on link building as an additional expense. I would recommend that no one spends any money on link building or promotion until their website is making a small amount of income to begin with. This way you will not get in under water and be taking big risks.
For a while I was reinvesting all of my online income into more promotion. If you can do so then this makes a lot of sense, until you are at your desired income level. I would recommend that you reinvest a high percentage of your earnings until you reach your income goal.
If you fail, you will have wasted time and very little money. Hosting and domain names are cheap (shared hosting should run about 5 to 10 bucks per month).
Just start one website and do all of your writing yourself. If you try to outsource the entire process then you are basically gambling because you do not really know what you are doing yet (until you have built up a successful website yourself first).
If you start one website then your risks are greatly minimized. Basically you are only risking your time invested and less than $100 bucks. If you go for a year and do not even see a trickle of income coming in yet, then you might consider that a failure.
What if I succeed?
Then your website will start to show signs of life and you will be getting tiny amounts of income coming in on a regular basis. For a long time you will probably have days where your site earns nothing at all, and other days when it makes a few dollars. But eventually this will change and you will be having days when you average about 10 bucks per day or so, and maybe you will see peak days of around $20 dollars.
Things get exciting for me when I am hitting $30 dollar days on occasion. Keep it up and some day you will have a $100 dollar day.
At some point I had to take a look at my day job and realize that I was losing money by going to work and earning $13.50 an hour + benefits. I did the math and found that I was actually making somewhere between $100 and $200 an hour when creating new content for my website. It is difficult to gauge this number because the income does not show up from new articles for at least a few months, but then it keeps coming in continuously each month. But I was earning more than my day job paid me at some point, and I decided I wanted the freedom to pursue even higher returns with my internet marketing.
So I had to seriously consider quitting my day job, which is always going to be a scary transition for someone who has never taken the plunge before.
Later on I had another challenge in my marketing career when someone offered to purchase my main earner for quite a bit of money. I had to decide which I wanted more, the lump sum (that could generate income on its own through investments) or the website which was already generating around $2,000/month.
It is awfully nice to have these sort of problems and be faced with these sort of decisions. Should I sell my site for $200,000, or keep it and let it keep paying me $2,000 per month? Decisions, decisions.
This is the sort of challenge that you may be faced with if you choose to build your own business online and become successful at it.
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Awesome tips.. Sucha long read. Am exhausted but thrilled and motivated.