How to Start Making Money Online for Beginners

When I first set out to make money online back in 2010 or so, I had no clue where to start. I had zero experience and basically figured shit out as I went, hoping for the best.

Along the way, I learned a lot about the different methods of making money online that require no upfront investment. I’ve blogged about many of them to share my experiences with others, so this post is kind of a roundup of all the 100% newbie friendly methods I’ve personally tried in the past.

Paid Surveys

Take surveys online for stupidly small amounts of money, usually as low as fifty cents per survey and as high as somewhere around ten bucks, sometimes a bit more if you’re lucky.

Before you sign up and start taking surveys, you’ll need a free Paypal account and it needs to be verified.

You can sign up for your account today and you’ll need to link it with a bank account or credit card in order to verify it, which can take up to five days or so.

If you don’t have a bank account or credit card, just sign up for a free prepaid debit card instead and use it in place of a credit card in order to verify your Paypal account.

Mechanical Turk

If Amazon products have any value to you (which they probably do, considering they sell just about everything under the sun), then you can start earning some extra cash to shop on their website by completing mundane and repetative tasks over at Mechanical Turk.

Sign up as a worker. View the available HITS. Pick ones you can do and don’t hate too much. Submit them. Get paid tiny amounts of money per task. Watch it add up.

Use the money to shop on Amazon.com or let it accumulate until you have enough to withdraw the amount to your checking account, if you have one.

Getting Paid Faster

Oh by the way…if you get sick of waiting 3-5 business days for your Paypal money to show up in your prepaid card account, I highly suggest that you sign up for a free Paypal debit card.

It’s free and it will allow you to transfer funds from your Paypal account to a physical debit card instantly. No waiting.

Once you get the card in the mail, you can spend your money as soon as it shows up in Paypal and you click a couple buttons to transfer the funds.

Fiverr

After you’ve taken more surveys than a sane person can stand and saved up a good little chunk of change, it’s time to head on over to Fiverr to climb up the ladder by one step.

Think of something that you’re good at which doesn’t take up much of your time at all. Keep in mind you’ll be paid $3.92 by each customer who pays you to do this thing, so be sure to pick something that makes sense for this amount.

Deliver your orders for the gig on time and to the buyer’s satisfaction.

Consider creating another gig or two and start making more money from those additional gigs.

Work hard to get a good handful of positive feedbacks from your buyers and you’ll be promoted to a level 1 seller. Keep it up and they’ll promote you to a level 2 seller.

Get an outrageous level of good feedback and on time deliveries, and you might even become a top seller.

The point is, once you begin to move up in levels you are allowed to create extras for your gigs.

These are like upgrades for your main gig. They can be $5, $10 or even $20, depending on your level.

For example, if you are offering to make an eBook cover for one of your gigs, then a good idea for an extra would be to deliver the same eBook cover in a different file format, such as PSD.

Just keep delivering on time, keep the feedback positive and soon you’ll be making a nice little bit of extra cash via Fiverr orders.

Sell Your Shit

In the meantime, go through all your old shit and see if you’re holding onto any items that you may be willing to part ways with and list them on eBay to see what you can get for them.

And while we’re on the subject, list anything you own that you’re willing to trade for something more useful on Craigslist as well.

Freelancing Sites

Your work over at Fiverr should have helped you in figuring out what your talents are on the web, so now it’s time to take those skills to the next levels.

If you can write, you need to sign up for both oDesk and eLance right now. Seriously, go ahead. I’ll wait for you. This will all be here when you are done registering.

These freelancing sites will give you opportunities to earn much more than you are being paid on Fiverr or other micro gig sites.

Here is a quick rundown of how they work.

First, you look for projects listed on the site that match your skills. If you think you can get the job done in the requested amount of time, you place a bid on that project.

A bid is the amount of money you are willing to accept in order for completing this job for the client.

The lame part is that you will be one of many others bidding on the project, and the competition on these sites is very stiff.

Until you get some positive feedback in your profile from happy customers, bid on the lower end and once you can demand a higher rate of pay, you will find yourself in a much better position to scale up.

For Artistic Types

For those of you who don’t write, maybe you are creative but prefer to make things with your hands like arts and crafts…?

If that sounds like you, then I definitely see the opening of an Etsy shop in your near future.

If making handmade crafts like greeting cards, jewelry or even furniture is something you can do well, then you can start a profitable business online entirely through this badass marketplace.

Okay, so maybe you fit into yet another category of creative types. If you’re one of these people, you probably don’t make artsy crafts and writing isn’t your strongest area.

However, you can create some mean fucking shit in Microsoft Paint. Leave you alone with Photoshop for an hour and you can make jaws drop even further!

If graphic design is more your trade, then consider trying out the crowdsourcing site 99Designs, where you can create logos and other graphics for branding for a chance at winning the client’s money in a design contest.

Just don’t waste too much of your time on sites like these, as the odds of getting paid anything are stacked against you rather overwhelmingly, I’m afraid.

Crowdsourcing Sites

Now that we’ve covered all of those, I have a couple sites that have somehing to offer all creative types, but especially those who have a knack with branding and words.

SquadHelp and NamingForce are pretty similar for the most part, though there are some differences worth mentioning that I don’t have time in covering.

New products, companies or websites all need a name. The people behind them go to sites like these to tap into the collective creativity of the crowd, of which you are just one person.

You suggest names based on their product descriptions, business plans or domain specifications and if the contest holder likes one of your suggestions better than ALL the others submitted (not too likely), you may actually make some money.

Otherwise you make nothing at all, so don’t devote hours of your day to this.

How to Make Serious Money on Fiverr

If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know I am a big fan of Fiverr. Mostly because I saw the massive potential in the concept even in its earliest days. I knew it was going to be huge and it has since exploded into a highly profitable venture for thousands of sellers.

But it’s no big secret that being a seller on Fiverr is…less than appealing, in a sense. I have heard so many people say that Fiverr isn’t worth your time at all unless you can find a gig that takes up zero time and can be automated as much as possible.

The Problem With Fiverr Gigs

One example of a gig that might meet that criteria is selling an eBook or some sort of pre-written content or other digital product that has already been created. Okay, sure. That’s fine. It takes almost no time and if you can get enough people to bite, then you could feasibly make a good chunk of change.

But using the eBook gig as an example, you run into a few problems.

First of all, if it’s an eBook you wrote yourself then you are probably way better off selling it somewhere other than Fiverr, since you are forced to sell it at only five bucks to start out. If it’s something you didn’t write, you have to have rights to sell it and if you actually do then chances are, so do tons of other people. Some of which may also be on Fiverr.

And keep in mind that Fiverr takes their $1.00 out of every gig you sell. Then Paypal takes their very small share too. This leaves the seller with a measly $3.92 per gig sold. Pretty lame, right?

Yes, I would say so. But I’m going to tell you what the real secret to making a shitload of money on Fiverr is. If you want a hint, it’s not automation or finding some shortcut.

How to Make Serious Money

The way to make serious money on Fiverr is to work your ass off until you get promoted to a Level 1. Then work even more until you’re at a level 2.

Why is this the secret sauce? Because once you are a level 1 or 2 seller, you can upsell your buyers on all your gigs.

There are some really lame examples of this and there are also some brilliant sellers who are really approaching this the right way and making bank.

So first of all, how do you get promoted to level 1? If I remember right, you just have to get positive feedback from like 10 buyers and you have to deliver your gigs on time as promised, consistently. It’s not asking much.

At one point, I got promoted to level 1 but then I got busy with other stuff and didn’t really have time to explore it. However, I recently went to the site to browse around a bit and saw two striking examples that I really wanted to share with you today because I think they will help inspire you.

Adding Extras to Your Gigs

The first one is a seller who offers an illustration gig in which she’ll draw a head shot of you as a caricature. See the screenshot below for more details.

Yes, she’s a top rated seller. That’s hard to achieve. But by no means impossible. Just keep at it and you can get there too. Now check out the description for her gig below.

Pay close attention to what she says here. Notice that she makes her $5 gig seem worthless in comparison to her upsells for this offer.

She makes it clear that the $5 headshot is for personal use only and she retains full copyright to use them for promotional purposes. She even includes her signature on the artwork, unless you pay extra to have it removed. This almost forces you to go for the upsells.

She also offers you the full copyrights if you pay an extra $100. This is very effective because it’s still much less than you will probably pay elsewhere for something similar.

Promoting Affiliate Programs

The second is a seller who offers to setup and design a very basic website for you with a small catch – you must sign up for web hosting through their affiliate link to “offset their time,” as the seller puts it in the gig description.

I’m not even sure if this is allowed on Fiverr, but considering that they have been promoted and are in the levels system then I imagine they either don’t know or don’t care. Either way, this is incredibly smart. They have tons of good feedback and this is a great way to start making affiliate commissions cheaply and easily. See the screenshot below of their gig.

The reason this works is simple. People that need a website will automatically have an equal need for hosting of that site. So this makes perfect sense for them and web hosting is priced low, which makes this the perfect type of affiliate offer to promote with a complementary service like web design.

Assuming you’re using some sort of theme or template based system for setting up the sites, this becomes a very quick and easy task for anyone who knows how to do this.

In Conclusion

I think it’s pretty clear at this point that Fiverr can bring in some serious money if you stay with it for a while. That DOES mean slaving away in the beginning…but it appears to pay off once you are promoted and assuming you have just an ounce of creativity.

Why Newbie Affiliate Marketers Fail

So a while back, I started a little mini-series of posts on the core concepts of affiliate marketing. It was basically just a bit of my commentary regarding some of the most challenging aspects that newbies seem to face when trying to get started.

More recently, I expanded a bit on this topic by emphasizing the importance of making your affiliate offers unique in order to give them better chances at success. Since the last one began to drag on longer than I had planned, I decided to break it up and continue with a few additional observations in this post today.

Want to know what my other theories are about why you’re failing as a new affiliate?

We covered the possibility of your offer not standing out from the rest, but here are two more pieces of advice I have based on what I have learned so far.

Products Are Not Relevant

Plain and simple. You are failing because the products you are promoting are just not relevant to your niche, your site, your overall marketing style.

This could very well explain why it’s fairly important to choose a niche early on and stick with it, rather than let yourself lose focus and try ten different things at once.

Easier said than done, of course.

It’s probably like trying to choose a major when you start college. You may not be totally sure of what it is you want to focus on, which is normal. You can always change it later, or it may evolve on its own with little effort needed on your part. But the point is that just like a major, your niche isn’t set in stone.

But you do need one. Without one, you can’t really be making any progress towards a concrete goal, can you?

So what’s the take away from this mistake? If your website is about dog training, don’t push personal care products. Because those two things have basically nothing in common whatsoever. People who go to your site don’t want your recommendations on anything but what they came there for – dog training stuff.

Give them what they want and I’m guessing you’ll see an improvement in conversions almost immediately.

Does this mean you can’t also promote personal care stuff as an affiliate? Of course not. You just need to do it in the right place, where it is relevant. That could mean starting another site, but don’t end up with too many irons in the fire when you’re just starting out.

No Experience With Products

Okay, so maybe your affiliate products make sense wherever you happen to be promoting them. Great, that’s a good start!

But…have you ever used the stuff you’re trying to sell to other people? If the answer is no, there is a good chance this is part of the problem.

How many car salesmen have you encountered that had never driven the cars they were trying to sell you? Probably zero. On the contrary, they know the cars they are selling quite well and can answer any question about them in most cases.

They take you on a test drive to show you everything about the car that there is to love, in the hopes that you agree and buy the damned thing, right? Well affiliate marketing should not be much different.

The point is, who would buy a car from someone who had simply read a few paragraphs about it before trying to sell it? No one! They could do that on their own, the salesman offers zero value if that’s all he can bring to the table.

Same goes for affiliate stuff. You need to have firsthand experience with all the products you are promoting if you want to actually succeed. You must know what the hell you’re talking about, or no one will buy any of it.

Does this mean you have to buy every product you want to promote? No, not really. In fact, many product creators are more than willing to provide you with a review copy if you contact them as a serious marketer who is interested in promoting their stuff if it passes your quality check. And by the way, never promote anything which doesn’t either.

So these are just the opinions of someone who is relatively new to all of this herself. Anyone else have anything to add to this? Please share in comments.

Making Your Affiliate Promotions Stand Out

A while back, I posted some of the main challenges that new affiliates face when trying to enter the internet marketing scene.

I will even be honest and admit that some of those issues are ones which I struggle with myself, though I am getting better as I continue to learn more.

So what can you do to help your affiliate marketing efforts gain traction?

While I won’t claim to be an expert, I have noticed some techniques being used around the web which seem rather effective to me and I try to keep a mental note of them as I encounter each.

Also keep in mind that my recommendations and ideas of what might be good ideas are based on two aspects of my personality. The first is as someone who is interested in selling, the second as someone who may be interested in buying.

Make Your Offer Unique

What do I mean by “make your offer unique?” Well, it’s pretty self-explanatory. Nothing cryptic here.

You basically need to somehow set your offer apart from everyone else who is promoting the same stuff.

Your job as an affiliate is to give people a reason why they should buy through you, rather than directly or through a different affiliate for the same product.

There are probably tons of ways to do this, but one of the more popular methods that I have seen is offering a unique bonus to anyone who buys through your affiliate link.

There are even several plugins available for WordPress which make this process easier and more automated, though I haven’t personally tried any of them yet.

The attractiveness of this strategy is pretty easy to pick up on. People like it when someone who they already know of and trust to some degree (they signed up for your list after all) send them recommendations, and are going to jump all over the idea of getting an exclusive bonus that complements the product they buy.

What should you offer as a bonus? That’s basically up to you, but it could be just about anything. Just make sure it goes with the product you’re promoting so that the extra incentive is there and it makes sense.

In my opinion, this is probably something you will only want to bother with for high-end products you promote or it may very well no be worth the investment of time and work to create your bonus material.

John Chow’s Bonus Example

For example, I signed up for blogging superstar John Chow’s list recently and a couple of weeks ago I received an email from his autoresponder series that was promoting a rather expensive affiliate program for a turnkey sales funnel type product.

His bonus for buyers who purchase through his link? Everything from an Apple iPad 4 and a review on his blog to live coaching and tons of John’s own products thrown in to sweeten the pot.

In fact, he claimed in the email that the total combined value of the bonus items he was offering was $8,500. Wow, right?

That be a lotta bonus incentive, folks.

Two other important lessons from this email before we move on. John made the offer time-sensitive, telling subscribers that they only had 72 hours to claim this deal and get the bonuses or they lose out on all the extra goodies.

Secondly, he does an outstanding job of reassuring his subscribers of just about everything without coming across as desperate or insincere. This is somewhat of an art, to be honest.

For example, he shares his own results from this particular product when he says that this program generated over $50,000 for him in a single month (sheesh!).

He also adds some extra text following his list of bonus items to back up his claims of the value for each one. He explains that yes, people really do pay him $500 for a review on his blog and that iPads really do sell for the amount he listed.

And the process for claiming the bonus items was pretty simple and straightforward. He simply asked buyers to forward their receipt to him.

So what are your thoughts on this type of promotion? Share in the comments.

Setup Websites for Local Businesses

If you’re looking for ways to make some extra money, you should consider offering your services to local businesses who don’t have a website. Truth is, you don’t have to be a web designer or graphic designer to setup a basic website for most local businesses.

What most companies need is something functional, modern and conducive to bringing in more business. This is relatively easy to achieve and you don’t need to have tons of tech skills to do it.

Assuming you have already found a small business that needs an online presence, the following list includes the bare minimum you’ll need to get them started. Even if you’re not a web designer or developer.

Register Domain

Choose a domain registrar and register a domain name for the business. Talk to them and find out what they prefer. Most companies would like to have their business name as their domain, though this isn’t always the case.

Do a preliminary search to see if their company name is available as a domain and grab it up quickly if it is. If not, explain to them and discuss alternatives or variations. Be sure to read my blog post on choosing brandable domains for more tips.

Anyhow, I use NameCheap for registering all of my domain names. 5 year registration should only cost you a little over $50. Price this service however you see fit to make a profit.

Buy Hosting Package

Next up on the to do list is to purchase hosting for your client’s website. Personally, I use HostGator and highly recommend them based on their outstanding customer service and insanely low pricing for dependable service.

You can use the domain you registered for your client’s website to create an add-on domain in your own HostGator account, saving on hosting costs. This is obviously only appropriate for businesses that will not be updating or maintaining their own site content and would like to just “set it and forget it.”

There are tons of options for hosting packages and really it will depend on your situation and the needs of the business you are creating the website for, so we’ll move on to the next item for now.

Customize Design

So now you have your domain set up and your hosting taken care of, that means it’s time to either create a custom design for the business website or select a template or theme for the site instead. One of the main decisions you will need to make at this point in the process is what type of content management system you plan on using for the client’s site.

WordPress Themes

WordPress is a very popular opensource software made for blogging, but which is also commonly used to setup websites and is highly flexible overall. If you choose to use WordPress for your client’s website, you will need to choose a theme to alter the design or you will need to create a custom theme using PHP.

This depends on what your client wants and if you don’t have the skills to do this yourself, simply outsource it.

There are tons of free WordPress themes available for download across the web, as well as a wide selection of premium themes as well.

Free HTML/CSS Templates

If the business you are creating a site for needs a static, no-frills type of website then you may opt for an HTML/CSS template instead of installing WordPress, which generally offers a more robust and interactive place on the web.

There are tons of free HTML/CSS templates available to download from several sites, or you can create one yourself. Both HTML and CSS are actually very simple and easy to learn if you spend a short amount of time reading up on the basics and then playing around with them on your own for fun in your spare time.

Of course you can always outsource this too, but it’s almost too easy to justify finding another person to take care of it. Easiest way to get the design right if you choose this route is to simply download a theme that the client likes and then make the edits manually until they are satisfied.

Upsell More Services

Of course, the last piece of advice I will leave you with is to upsell your web design and setup services with complementary add-ons that your client will almost have to say yes to. See below for a couple of effective examples.

Logo Design

What kind of company has a website but no logo design? None that I’d want to do business with, wouldn’t you agree? A professionally designed logo is imperative for any serious business, and if your client is interested in a website then they are going to be just as interested in their online branding.

Not a graphic designer? Check out the top-rated sellers on Fiverr who offer logo design services for as low as $5. Some even offer several design concepts per gig. Online sweat shop for your outsourcing needs? Yeah, kind of…

Awesome results at almost no cost to you? Definitely.

Of course mark up the logo design add-on so that it makes you a nice profit. You can easily sell a $5 logo design for $50 or more.

Content Writing

Last but not least, what good is a website that doesn’t have any content? Yeah, not much at all it turns out.

Every website needs content to drive traffic and provide information to its visitors. But who is going to write this stuff anyway? You don’t think your client is going to provide this for you, I hope. Uh-uh.

Explain the importance of content marketing to your client and offer them a writing service to set them up with at least the basics – an about us page, homepage, services/products and contact us page.

Sell Your Product Using JVZoo – Free Report

If you are a regular reader, then you know I have blogged about JVZoo a few times in the past. I think it’s a really great selling platform with tons of benefits for beginners who are looking to make some extra money online.

JVZoo really opens the door for new possibilities. Anyone can create an info product. It can be as simple as writing an eBook on a topic you know well. Just download OpenOffice and start writing. Export it as a PDF with one click, and you have an instant eBook on your hands.

Might want to add a graphic for the cover image, but that can be easily outsourced for as little as five bucks. I recommend this seller from Fiverr for eBook covers (both 2 and 3 dimensional).

Don’t have a website to sell your eBook? Find out how to start selling it through JVZoo and how to start an affiliate program, so others can help you sell even more. This report is 100% free and will walk you through the process of getting your first product set up and will make it possible to start earning today!

To your success!

Creating Email Coupons With AWeber

As we have mentioned in the past, AWeber is probably the best email marketing solution available and comes with all the bells and whistles. There are literally tons of creative ways you can use your Aweber autresponder series to promote your own products, affiliate products and just keep in touch with your subscribers.

One of my favorite things about AWeber is their followup email message editor. Not only do they provide tons of nice looking templates, you can also save your own custom templates to save yourself some time.

Why Offer Email Coupons?

So let’s say you have a product that you sell online. Maybe you offer a free report to build your list, which is a fairly common practice. Someone discovers your website, opts-in to your list and they receive the first follow up message in your autoresponder series, which usually includes the link to the freebie you promised them.

A couple of days later, they get an email that pitches your paid product that relates to the freebie they downloaded initially. They may buy it, they may not.

If they don’t decide to buy after they get the first email, you can always offer them a special subscriber discount by creating a coupon followup message in your AWeber account. I did this for one of my own products recently, see the screenshot below:

How Can I Offer Email Coupons?

There are two steps to this process. The first one is to create a discount payment button in your Paypal account. The second is to create the followup message in your AWeber account. Both are pretty simple and easy to do, but we’re going to run through the steps real quick in case you aren’t sure how to weave all of this together.

Step #1: Create Payment Button

Okay, so login to your Paypal account and click on the tab that says “Merchant Services” from the main navigation bar across the top of the screen. Next, click on the option to create a payment button for your website. You’ve probably already done this when you setup your product to begin with. But we’re making a second button for the same product, the only difference between the two will be the price.

I suggest adding something to the item name field, other than just duplicating the product name since that’s probably what you entered for your original payment button. Add something like “subscriber discount” to the item name so you can tell them apart more easily.

Decide on how much of a discount you want to offer in your coupon, and enter the new amount in the price field. When you have all the other fields filled out as you want, then generate the button code. Be sure to select the tab that says “email” instead of the default tab which has a code to insert in your website.

We want the email link, which should look like the image below:

Step #2: Create The Followup Email

Now that you have copied and pasted your payment link in a notepad document (a good idea, so do it!) we are ready to head on over to AWeber and create the followup email. Login to your account and click on messages from the main navigation. Click on the big green button that says “New HTML Message.” You can load a template if you want to use one, or you can just start with a blank email and just insert the coupon, if you prefer.

Once you are in the message editor, then click on the icon that says “Coupons” from the navigation bar and drag it into the message editor.

See the screenshot below:

Dragging the coupon icon into the editor will make something appear like in the image above. You can edit the text however you like. Include your product name and the amount of the discount. Then we’re going to create a payment link at the bottom, like the one in my example email shown at the beginning of this tutorial.

To do this, highlight the text in your email that you want to use for your link. In my example, the text was “Click here,” but you can choose whatever suits you. After you have it highlighted, click on the link icon in the text editor. Remember that you must first double click on any text in the email in order to edit it. This will make the text formatting toolbar appear at the top, like shown below:

In the popup box that appears, we’re going to paste the Paypal link we just copied and wait for the link to validate, then we’ll finish it off by hitting enter and clicking outside of the message. Hit save and then enter in the number of days before your subscriber will receive the coupon in their inbox.

There you have it! Easy as 1-2-3!

JVZoo + Dropbox = Sales Without a Website

We’ve talked a little bit about JVzoo in the past, but let’s go over the basics in case anyone isn’t familiar with them already. JVZoo is an online affiliate network for product creators and affiliate marketers to connect and promote digital products.

The greatest thing about them is they are absolutely free and it’s easy to get your first product setup right away.

Setting Up Your Product Sales Page

So when you go to add a new product to your account, it will ask you for all the details and somewhere in the form it will ask you if you’d like to enter a URL for the sales page or if you’d rather use their instant sales page.

Choosing that second option will generate a very plain looking template (which tons of others are using, of course) and you can edit the text, but not much else.

Obviously if you have your own website, it makes sense to just host the page on your own site. To use JVZoo on your site, all you will need to do is copy and paste the button code for the product and paste it into your site where you’d like for it to appear, usually on the sales page for whatever you are selling.

But what if you don’t have your own site yet?

Hosting Your Sales Page on Dropbox

In a previous post, we explained how to use JVZoo button codes to sell products on Squidoo. All you have to do is copy and paste the button code, just like you would do on your own website if you wanted to sell stuff from there.

There is another option as well. I have also devoted at least one entire blog post on the greatness of Dropbox and it’s many uses. Here, yet again, it comes to the rescue.

You can essentially use Dropbox to host an HTML webpage that you created in Windows Notepad in only a few minutes. Please don’t get scared at hearing the dreaded “H” acronym. I promise it’s super easy.

Technically, if you wanted to do the absolute bare minimum that is required, you could simply paste the button code into a new Notepad document, save it as an HTML file and call it your “sales page.”

To do this, paste the code in the window and then choose “Save as” from the file menu. Enter a name for the file, then add .html afterwards with no spaces. From the drop down box, select “all files” instead of “text files.” Then make sure the other drop down box below that is set to “UTF-8″ and finally click save.

Customize a Sales Page Template

The best way to go, in my opinion, is to simply download a landing page template and enter the details of your product by editing the file in Notepad. This is NOT complicated or difficult, so don’t stop reading because you are convinced you won’t be able to do it.

After you download and edit your template, just log into your Dropbox account and open the public folder. Next, upload the file there and then right click on it and select “copy public link” then click the copy button in the dialog box that pops up.

If you don’t want people to see the Dropbox link, just head on over to Goo.gl and shorten it. This is a good idea anyways, since it allows you to track the number of clicks on your product link.

Affiliate’s Guide to Niche Marketing Success

If you are interested in how to make money online, then one of the first methods you’re bound to encounter in your online research is affiliate marketing. Familiar with the term already, huh? Not surprising.

Affiliate Marketing in a Nutshell

If you’ve done your homework on this subject, then the idea of making money online as an affiliate is likely to excite the hell out of you.

Am I right? It’s okay, admit it.

Just think for a moment. There are tons of companies online who have already created and established successful products which have proven their profit potential on the market.

Now someone is telling you that these same companies are willing to pay you oftentimes insane commissions for any sales of their product that you are able to make. We’re talking 50%, 60% or even 100% commission rates here!

Whoa, wait a minute. Slow down! What’s the catch? How do I get into this exclusive club of badass affiliates, it must be tough to be accepted!

Nope, not at all. Pretty much anyone can sign up in just a few moments and get their customized affiliate links to start promoting these great products.

Think about it, it makes sense. The company starts an affiliate program because they want to increase sales of their already popular product. Why would they be selective when it comes to their affiliates? You guessed it. They wouldn’t be.

Affiliate’s Pipe Dream vs. Reality

Technically speaking, the process of making money as an affiliate is quite simple at its core. You sign up for a program, get your links and then all you have to do is get people to click on those links and end up buying the product you’re promoting.

Almost seems too simple, right?

Well, it kind of is. Remember when you were in grade school and your mom signed up for that fundraiser that meant you were stuck with a hundred boxes of chocolates or cookies that you needed to sell? Think back to that.

What did you end up doing with all those boxes, how did you get rid of them?

Most likely, you sold the majority of them to your family members and neighbors. Grandparents, babysitters, cousins. People you knew back then. Your network of contacts in grade school isn’t very broad, naturally.

But when you’re a newbie to making money online, your online network of leads isn’t going to be very broad either. You’ll be excited to get started and might register as an affiliate in fifty different programs, but that will just mean you get stuck with fifty links for products that you don’t have any buyers for.

That doesn’t do much good now, does it?

Affiliate Marketing Channels

So how do you get potential buyers to click on your affiliate links then? That seems to be the secret sauce, after all. There are many different platforms you can use to promote your affiliate products and offers, so we’re going to run through a quick list of your options.

Your Own Website or Blog

Ideally, this is the best way to promote affiliate products in most cases. When you have already established a presence on the web through your own site, blog and social media, affiliate promotion becomes a breeze. It means you already have an audience who is interested in the types of products you recommend, which is the whole goal.

Unfortunately, if you’re just starting out, you aren’t likely to have this advantage that more experienced affiliates have worked hard for.

Don’t worry though. I highly recommend that you read my previous blog post which explains in greater detail how you can make money without a website.

Email Newsletter or Autoresponder Series

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic, online sales and promote affiliate products. Of course, it’s going to be a bit of a challenge as well for newbie online entrepreneurs.

There are a couple reasons for this. The first is that it takes some time (not to mention a lot of hard work) to build a list of subscribers. It’s not going to happen overnight, so don’t expect it to.

You have to give people a good reason to sign up for your newsletters, and you have to keep them convinced that your communications are worth their time if you want them to open your emails.

The second reason is cost. While there are some decent free services out there, it’s generally advised that you opt for a more professional and full-featured email marketing provider.

While you may not be able to afford this at first, it doesn’t mean you can’t get a head start on writing some email swipes for an autoresponder series, once you have started making enough each month for a professional email service.

An autoresponder series is a collection of themed emails which will be drip-fed to your subscribers over a period of time. The idea behind it is to nurture your leads and eventually promote products and make sales out of your subscribers.

Social Media and Web 2.0 Sites

This is probably the easiest route of the three options in this list, especially for the beginner. Since it’s free and easy to get started on most social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, this may be a great place to start.

But just be aware that it will still take time and work to gain followers or likes, so be prepared to break a sweat and be patient since it also isn’t going to happen overnight.

Really the goal is still the same if you start on social sites. You are still working towards building an audience, a following, a readership. That’s the benefit that site owners have, after the work has been done. But it doesn’t matter if you start that way, or with social sites.

Both can lead to success. Though eventually, you will need both in order to maximize your potential.

Site owners who have resisted the new wave of social sites and all the opportunities they offer will suffer as a result, just as those who only have a presence on social sites and don’t eventually get a website of their own will also be missing out.

Also, don’t forget that sites like HubPages, Squidoo and eHow could also be considered in this group. As you probably already know, I love using Squidoo for this type of thing. It was perfect for me since I had great content that I wanted to share with people, but didn’t have the platform established where people could find it.

Thanks to Squidoo, my lenses have great pageranks and get tons of traffic. I can also send people from my lenses to my website or blog, which can turn them into regular readers.

In the next part of this guide, we’ll cover more tips on how to start promoting your affiliate products. Stay tuned!

Zerys Review: Make Money Writing Content

In a previous post, we listed 10 different content writing sites where freelancers can make some extra cash online with their skills.

Today, I’m getting more specific and I want to share my experience with a company called InteractMedia, a site where writers can sign up to make money by writing content.

The customers who post projects and writing jobs on InteractMedia use another product of the same company, called Zerys. We’ll go into more detail on why Zerys is exciting for marketers on another day, since that’s an entire blog post of its own.

I was fortunate enough to be a customer support representative for Zerys in its earliest days, so I’m very in touch with the core values and ethics behind the site and the outstanding team that runs it.

I have used Zerys as both a writer and a customer, to better understand how the system works. I highly recommend it for both writers looking to make some extra income and site owners or marketers who need web content.

The Signup Process

If you’re interested in being a writer for InteractMedia, head on over to their website and click on “Writers” in the menu bar, then select “Apply.”

The application process is very simple and painless. All the usual details are asked for, plus a 500 word writing sample. This can be work you did for a previous client, you don’t have to write a unique sample for the application.

During the application process, you will be asked to choose three different subject categories for which you have the most writing experience.

There is an incredibly long list to choose from, and they continue to drill down to more specific sub-categories for what seems like days. Keep it as broad as possible, so as not to limit yourself.

Once the staff at IM have reviewed your application and approved your writer account, they will assign you an initial rating between 2 and 5 stars.

Don’t worry if it’s not as high as you would have liked, since good ratings from your future clients through Zerys will be the determining factor from that point on.

Find Writing Jobs

Once you’re accepted and your account is all setup, you can login to the site and you will have access to the job board.

Writers who have ratings of 5 stars will be able to see all jobs posted on Zerys, while lower rated writers will only be able to view jobs by clients who have specified that they will accept work from lower rated writers.

The job board neatly categorizes all the available writing jobs on the site for which your rating is acceptable. The most important information is visible from the job board, including the title, word count and the rate per word that the client is willing to pay.

When you find a job that you are interested in, click on the title and you will be able to view more details posted by the client.

This can range from very little detail to outstanding and detailed instructions, depending on the client. I would recommend not accepting jobs that are unclear or confusing, as this will typically only hurt you and waste your time.

You have five minutes to review the details for the writing job before you must decide if you want to accept the assignment or not.

Submitting Content

Most writing jobs on Zerys specify a keyword or keyword phrase that the client is trying to rank their content for.

The client also specifies the keyword density, word count and may or may not include a link or attachment for you to review. The purpose of this is to let you become better acquainted with the style and tone expected for the writing.

The editor that you will be using when logged in and writing is quite helpful. It monitors your keyword density as you type out the article, as well as the word count.

This makes it easy to not end up with something too long, too short or under optimized for search engines.

When you are done editing and ready to submit the content for the client’s approval, the site will check your content using Copyscape. This ensures that you are not copying someone else’s writing or submitting content that is not unique.

Interacting With Clients

Once the client has reviewed your submitted content, they have several options.

They can either:

Approve your work and assign you a star rating between 1-5, based on the quality of your writing (this means you get paid)
Request a revision and provide instructions for how to edit your content (this means you will need to make the appropriate changes before you get paid)
Reject your work and choose not to use your content (this means you don’t get paid, but you still keep the rights to your written work)

The nice thing about both revision requests and rejections is that you have no real obligations in either scenario.

You don’t have to do any revisions if you think the requests are unreasonable. You just won’t get paid for the writing, but you will keep the rights to your content and can use it for any purpose you see fit in the future.

If your work is rejected, you won’t get paid for it. But you do have the option of blocking that client, if you think it was unfair. This will ensure that you no longer see projects posted by them in the future.

Getting Paid

Writers must have a Paypal account in order to receive payments for their approved content through InteractMedia. Minimum payout is $20 and payments are sent every two weeks.

For all writing that is approved by the client, you will get paid for every word you write.

The rate per word is determined by the client and displayed clearly on the job board before you choose to accept it or pass on the assignment.

Conclusion

If you’re a freelance writer who is looking to make more money for online clients, then it’s pretty obvious that InteractMedia is worth a test drive.

If you use popular sites like eLance to find writing work, then you will probably love writing for InteractMedia.

Another neat perk of writing for Zerys clients is that you can negotiate reasonable rates for long-term projects they are managing, which means you can secure more consistent and steady jobs. That equals more consistent online income for you, which is always a plus.

Happy clients will likely give you many direct assignments once you have provided them with solid work, so get started today!

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