CONTENT
MID LEVEL
INTERNET INCOME
The idea of making money from the internet has always appealed to me, in large part because doing things on the internet is one of my hobbies. It would also be nice to think that one day I might be able to live off this type of income and not have to go to work. I certainly haven't reached that stage yet, but I earn some useful pocket money. It certainly occurs to me that if I can earn say $100 per year from one web site, that if I were to create 10 web sites that could become $1,000 and with 1,000 web sites that could become $100,000. So far the only thing that has stopped me is that I enjoy writing about things I feel passionate about. Some people put all sorts of drivel on internet pages for the sole purpose of making money. Currently that approach does not interest me much. So my limitation at the moment is that I haven't managed to find 1,000 things that I feel truly passionate about.
I have found that if you create good content your pages will tend to get high rankings in the main search engines, Google, MSN and Yahoo.
Affiliate Programs
The first income I earned from the internet was through the associate programs at amazon.com and amazon.co.uk
I didn't go out of my way to earn money using this. I just happened to have some web pages about my favourite musicians, authors and movies. I though it would be useful to help people to purchase relevant items by steering them to the appropriate pages at amazon. I later learned that I could earn a commission by doing this. After signing up for an affiliate with amazon you are given an identifier which you imbed in your links. Amazon recognises the identifier and credits your account for purchases made by visitors who came to amazon from your web pages.
Here is an example of the type of panel I put on my web pages to drive visitors to amazon and $$ into my account.
| Code 1 | IndoChine on DVD |
Code 2 |
 |
Indochine is sometimes available from Amazon. Click the image on the left for code 1 (US) pricing and availability and the image on the right for code 2 (Europe). |
 |
You can take your income from amazon in the form of money, but I choose to receive gift certificates. I then use these to fund my own amazon purchases.
If you are interested in becoming an amazon associate click on these links
There are many other affiliate programs other than amazon, so if you are interested in finding them you could do a search on "affiliate programs".
In most cases to participate in an affiliate program you will need one or more websites. I host mine on DotEasy.
With DotEasy, for US$25 per year ,you can register your own domain and get up to 10 email addresses linked to that domain. You also get plenty of storage space. More than enough for most purposes. If your web site proves to be very popular then you may run out of monthly bandwidth quota, in which case you can trade up to a more expensive plan at DotEasy. If you need to do this it is likely that your website will be generating more than enough income to cover it.
I am still amazed at how many small businesses have email addresses that end @gmail.com or @hotmail.com etc. It looks so unprofessional, when just for $25 a year they could have their own domain and email addresses.
There are also exchanges such as ClickBank, which act as a kind of affiliate system for people who don't have their own technology for doing this. There is more on ClickBank below in the section about information products.
ebay
Obviously you can buy and sell things on ebay. Personally I have done more buying than selling, however I have sold a few items, which were surplus to requirements.
It is important that when listing an item you think very carefully about what you put in the header and the description. Some people only search ebay's headers so you are more likely to attract more bidders if you pick a heading which includes words that interested people will search for. Most importantly make sure you get the spelling right. I have picked up bargains when in buying mode, because I found items with incorrect spellings, which would have gone for much more money had the spelling been correct.
For example I just searched on "dr who" and found 4930 items being offered. When I searched on "doctor who" 6218 items were found. About 30% of the items appeared in both lists. That was because their experienced sellers had written the headers to include "dr doctor who".
Nice clear photographs are very helpful as is a good description of the item, it's fine points and it's flaws. It is important to point out any problems very clearly, otherwise as a seller you are likely to receive negative feedback. If you get too much negative comment, people won't buy from you.
If the item is an antique of some sort or has an interesting story, it is well worth doing some research and including that in the description. Not only does it make the item more interesting, but potentially increases the number of potential buyers. For example I was once looking for items about King Henri IV of France. I ended up buying an antique map because it featured a vignette of Chateau de Pau. In the description the seller had mentioned that the Chateau de Pau had been where King Henri IV had been brought up. Without that mentioned in the description the only potential buyers might have been antique map collectors.
Information Products
I have tried selling one information product, which I built myself, from a web site, which I also built and promoted. The results were less than outstanding considering the effort put in. The product was a recipe ebook. I have also tried selling information products for which I had purchased reseller rights. The ebooks being sold were about how to make money from the internet. The financial results were poor, but the product helped you to build your own web site, build email lists, promote the products and accept payments. I learned a lot from it, especially about the use of auto responders, so it was well the purchase price.
The great thing about ebooks is that no physical exchange of goods takes place so there is no packing or shipping costs. The buyer simply downloads the document in .pdf or some other electronic format, straight to their computer. The web site needs to be able to accept payment from purchasers and once the payment has been approved provide a page from which the download can take place.
I haven't done it, but it seems that the best way to sell such products is by either getting affiliates to sell the ebooks for you, or by building mailing lists that you can promote the products to. Some people also sell them through ebay.
One way to make money is to sell information products for other people. This can be done through exchanges such as ClickBank. You can create links to suitable products from your web pages or blogs. Of course people will only follow your links if they first find your pages. The link immediately below is to a blog which discusses ways of staying healthy. It also promotes ClickBank downloadable information products on health related issues.
There are a number of information products which give you guidance on how to go about making money through your web pages and blogs. Here is one which addresses the issue for bloggers:-
Payment for Advertising
If you have web pages with content then companies such as Google will pay you to carry their adverts. You will see Google Adsense advertisements on most of the pages on this site. The income from Adsense comes from advertisers who pay Google to display the adverts using Google Adwords. The trick apparently is to try to get as many people to click on the higher paying Adwords adverts as possible. Various people sell courses to help you analyse and modify your content, so that you will attract more visitors, create a context which will attract higher paying adverts and persuade visitors to click on them. You will be penalised if you start clicking on your own adverts or pay other people to do so. Click on one of the links below if you want to sign up or obtain more information about AdSense and AdWords.
AdSense adverts can be put on blogs as well as on normal static web pages. Some blogs have very high numbers of visitors so it should be possible for them to generate good income. To see an AdSense enable blog...
It seems there are people who also make money by buying clicks on AdWords and then selling them again using AdSense. I haven't tried this yet, but it seems the trick is to use AdWords to purchase clicks cheaply by paying for very targeted key phrases (i.e. very specific, because general key words tend to cost a lot per click. e.g. clicks on the word "insurance" are likely to cost much more than say clicks on the phrase "low cost motor insurance in Europe") and then directing visitors to high paying AdWords advertisers through AdSense. This type of click trading is often referred to as "AdSense Arbitrage". There are people who sell courses on how to go about making money this way.
Another variation is people who get lots of hits on their pages and approach advertisers directly requesting payment for impressions or clicks on their advertisements.
There are a lot of articles about internet business successes, which can be useful for stimulating additional ideas for creating money making opportunities on the internet, at this blog:-
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