In today’s gazette I want to show you 9 ways you can make money online.
You don’t have to use them all, but when you combine even a handful of these, they can add up to a nice full time income. And there’s nothing like earning full time income from a part time endeavor.
If you’re starting from scratch, it will take a little time, but when you get one income stream started, it is easier to add on other income streams.
It all starts with setting up a blog or website where you share information and help people with a topic you enjoy researching and writing about.
Once you have one site getting filled with content and generating some website traffic, you can start monetizing it using any one of the following 10 methods, or a combination of them…
1. Affiliate Commissions
Affiliates earn a commission from product or services they recommend. Affiliate marketing has been around for almost 20 years now and it has changed quite a bit through the years. “Review sites” were popular for a while until Google Panda knocked most of those out, especially the sites with thin content.
I earn most of my affiliate income by recommending products and services through a network of sites and blogs, including this one. I also earn by sending recommendations to subscribers of my opt-in email lists. This strategy has always worked well, though it’s much harder to get emails though the myriad of spam filters nowadays than it was say, 5 years ago. But it’s still worth the effort!
The real secret to affiliate marketing is growing a following of people who like and trust your work, then you can start earning money as an affiliate.
2. Residual Affiliate Income
If you’re going to get into affiliate marketing, you need to always be on the lookout for opportunities to earn residual income. Residual affiliate income is money you earn over and over after making an initial sale.
For example, one program I promote is called “TrafficSwarm“, which I use to get a steady flow of traffic. I also refer members to it so they can get traffic from it. In return, I earn a monthly commission from each member I refer, for as long as they stay a member.
If you plug a handful of residual affiliate programs into your websites, you’ll build a nice base of commissions that will hold steady, even through slow times.
3. Your Own Product Sales
Putting together a product of your own can seem like a daunting task. But it doesn’t have to be. If you can commit to writing even for just 30-45 minutes a day, you can have your own ebook in a month or so. Or you can take a shortcut and publish red-hot printables in just a day or so. The best part is that you do the work once, then sell it over and over and earn money from it for years.
Having your own products has another built-in benefit that can pay huge dividends — you can open your own affiliate program and get others promoting for you. This strategy ballooned my business way back in the late 1990’s and basically enabled me to quit my day job. With just three products I paid out more than $250,000 to affiliates, so that’s a lot of income I never would have made without them.
If setting up and running an affiliate program seems like a lot of work, you can simplify the process by using a service like WarriorPlus, Clickbank or JVzoo. They take care of the whole process including taking your orders via credit card or paypal, handling refunds and even paying the affiliate commissions.
4. PLR Product Sales
It may surprise you to learn that many of the products you’ve bought from gurus were simply products they bought the rights to, then tweaked as their own. Anyone can do this including you. There’s nothing underhanded about it as long as you’re offering solid content at a fair price. If you want to sell products of your own but you do not have the time required to create them, then this is a good option.
One of the places lots of web publishers get products to customize and sell as their own is this plr product vault. In fact, it is used by many of the gurus I know. I’ve even used it myself with excellent results. Members get access to more than 1,000 products in all sorts of niches. New products are added weekly and the products can be used to monetize websites and blogs in different niches. You can even start your own affiliate program with many of the products.
A good strategy for selling PLR products is to offer a product for less than $10 then when the sale is made, immediately offer an upsell for a larger product or membership. A percentage of customers will always buy the upsell and even the customers who stick with the basic product get a great value for their $7 or whatever you decide to charge. Plus, you get to build a super-responsive “buyers list” that you can sell other products and services to.
5. Web Services
Performing services such as website design can be lucrative, although sometimes time consuming. I offer a done for you blog building service that my clients love, and pair it with web hosting and site management. If you like to do that sort of thing there are always lots of people in need of design work.
Another popular service these days is link building for SEO. But instead of focusing online for clients, a better strategy a lot of people overlook is offering their services locally. I’ve done SEO work for clients locally who almost always refer new clients to me.
You can earn quite a bit of money locally and there are many other services you can offer local businesses as well, including video work, Google+ setup, directory submissions and more. Some people even sell services like that then outsource the actual work at Fiverr.com!
6. Membership Revenue
I think everyone doing business online should have at least one membership based site. Take the niche you enjoy working in most and load up as much great content as you can into a private area of your site. Include personal help or coaching for your members. You don’t have to charge a lot. Even a $20 a month membership with 100 members will net you a nice $2,000 a month revenue stream.
Another great bonus you get with your own membership site is the ability to offer residual income to affiliates who promote for you. Give them 50% of the monthly dues for all the members they refer and you can expand your program easily.
If you’re worried about the support it requires, you may be surprised at how little time it actually takes once you have everything set up. If you’re using WordPress, a great plugin for member sites is called S2 Member. They offer a free version as well as premium versions. It makes setting up a member site easy, and you can collect payments via paypal. Or if you want an easier solution click the bannner ad below…
7. Licensing Your Products
Licensing is a top income producing activity for many content publishers. You basically take a collection of your products and bundle them into either a membership site or a downloadable PLR package and sell it to others who need their own content. Along with the content you include the rights such as private label, resale rights, giveaway rights, master rights, etc.
If you decide to try this strategy, you should limit the availability of your licenses by selling either a set number of packages or by only opening the offer a few times a year. This keeps competition among your clients to a minimum and adds value to your offer.
8. Ad Sales
Once you have a steady stream of traffic in place, an easy way to monetize your site is to sell ad space. I sell a variety of ad space at this site and it provides a steady stream of income. While I do it manually, there are lots of scripts you can use to automate things if you want.
9. Adsense Commissions
Adsense is Google’s program that pays web publishers to show ads for their Adwords clients. This is a nice passive way to monetize a site or blog. I’ve used Adsense on this site in the past and seen single day profits of as much as $80. But I found that Adsense ads get much better clickthrough rates on sites that are not in the Internet marketing niche.
I have used Adsense on blogs in other business related niches such as finance and insurance and found that there are many niches where advertisers will pay a lot of money per click.
If you’re going to use Adsense to monetize a site, I suggest you use a tool such as Spyfu to do a little keyword research first. There you can type in a keyword or keyword phrase and find out how many advertisers bid on it, how many times a day it gets searched, and how much the advertisers are paying for each click.
One note about monetizing with Adsense: Google constantly changes their search algorithm and many of their updates directly affect your Adsense revenue. That can create some extra work trying to keep up with their constant updates.
I hope today’s gazette helps you open an new income stream or two online.
Remember, diversification is an important aspect for every business owner. When you diversify your income sources properly, it gives you peace of mind knowing that all your eggs are not in one basket. Should one strategy fail or fall behind, another strategy picks up the slack!
