Money Schemes - Learn How To Make Money Online

When it comes to making your fortune online there are plenty of people who’ll tell you that you “don’t even need a website”. What they are talking about here is PPC affiliate marketing. You pay for clicks using an advertising network such as Google’s Adwords and then redirect the potential lead onto the website of the person selling the product you’re promoting. Sounds easy right? Well I’ve made money that way, but it also comes with it a big risk, you’ve got to spend money to make money, and for beginners I think there is a better way.

If you want a low risk way of making money online then you’ve got to be looking at having at least 1 website or blog. I look at this way, a website is a bought domain with paid for hosting. A blog (what I’m talking about), is a free account on somebody else’s domain e.g. Blogger or WordPress. I know that’s not technically right but from here on in that’s what I mean when I talk about Blogs or websites. Your Blog could be your website (like this site) but that just confuses things

The way in which I decide how to publish my content comes down to 2 factors, how much do I know about the subject and how much money do I think it will make? If I don’t know a huge amount about a subject then I go down the website route. It’s not hard to put together 6-7 pages of content to act as a base site and then maybe add a new page every few weeks when I’ve got something original and new to say. Because I’m not updating every day it’s not a big hassle to add extra content to a static website in this way. But to do this I need to think about roughly how money I’m going to make, a domain name costs me around $7 a year, a basic hosting account on which store my website costs me around $20 a year. Other than my time that’s my total outlay for my new website (I know people who’ve lost 50 times that much on their first day of PPC affiliate marketing). As long as my new website can make more than $27 a year then I’m in profit and making money online, woo hoo! To date I’ve set up 15 websites like this and they all make a profit, some much more than others but they all cover themselves and then some.

If you decide that you know a lot about a subject then a blog could very well be the way to go. A blog is like an online diary, or more specifically a list of published articles stored in chronological order. The thing with a blog is that you need to update it on a regular basis. People read a blog just like a diary, they expect to see something new on a regular basis, people view a website as something less personal and much more static. The main advantage a blog has is return visitors, if you can write a compelling blog your visitors will come back again and again. This is much harder to achieve with a static website. The other advantage is that you’ll find plenty of services that will host your blog for free, and you can’t beat free! Whilst you may not be able to customise every option of your blog there are still plenty of ways to monetise a blog on the Blogger or WordPress systems.

For my money I see a better return from creating websites rather than Blogs, but the potential is there to make serious amounts of cash from blogging, you’ll just need to have plenty to say, update daily and put in the work.

Adsense for my money is the easiest way of making money online, in fact if anybody knows any easier ways could they let me know about them? For those of you living on Mars and not in the know Adsense is Googles ad-serving technology that allows you to publish adverts for various products/services/websites on your own website. Back in the day this was nothing new, however what Google did that was a little different was that it served the adverts dynamically instead, not only that but it made them context sensitive. What this means to the man on the street is that if you design a web page about “The Joys Of Golf”, any Adsense blocks that you publish on that page will show golf related ads (that’s the theory anyway, and to be fair Google do have the content adverts nailed). If adverts are relevant not only are they more likely to get clicked but they also add to your page. I almost forgot, in the majority of cases you earn money when somebody clicks on an Adsense advert, it’s a PPC (Pay Per Click) program.

The Adsense program is closely linked to Googles Adwords program. The Adwords program is where the people doing the selling bid on keywords. If they opt-in to then these are the people whose adverts will be showing in your Adsense blocks. In short Adwords is for sellers, Adsense is for content publishers. In order to use Adsense you will have to apply for an account, the website on which you want to publish ads will then have to be approved by Google. Most websites do get approved, a possible reason for this is that Google gets a percentage too, Google are not stupid! As long as your website isn’t made for Adsense (do not make websites only to serve ads, bad content will get caught out!) you should be ok.

The basic steps for making money from Adsense are as simple as:-

1. Think of a subject that interests you and you can write original content about (Yeah it’s that easy?!).
2. Create your website OR get somebody else to create your webiste for you to update OR get a Blog.
3. Apply for the Adsense Program.
4. Copy/Paste blocks of Adsense code into your website/blog source.

It gets even easier if you’ve already got a website, just apply and add.

That’s a very simplified version, there are a lot of tweaks and tips available to help you make the most out of Adsense but this is just an Adsense Overview. I’ll break down those steps at a later date. I clear $1500 every month from Adsense and over the weeks I’ll be explaining what I do, how I do it and maybe even more importantly why I do it. I don’t have huge amounts of traffic, just original content and some good ad placement. Whilst Adsense may not be the biggest online earner it’s a great way of getting started, you don’t need huge amounts of traffic or any real outlay. It’s also a really satisfying feeling when you cover those hosting costs for the first time! It’s also not that hard to fund your beer money using Adsense.

I’m a big fan of Adsense, I think mainly because it was something that really helped to turn my life around. Before I added Adsense I was lucky if my website made $2 a month! It’s a great program and I’d urge anybody thinking about making money online to sign up.

Sorry, sorry, SORRY. In my defence this isn’t going to be all about making money online, it will also act as my personal blog, yes it gets worse!

So who am I to write about making money from the internet? Let me start by telling you who I’m not. I’m not some sort of self proclaimed guru that sits at home whilst thousands of dollars role into my bank account each day. I’m not somebody who makes all his money from telling other people how to blog about blogging, this blog to date has made me exactly zero, zip, nada. I don’t record conversations and then try and pass them off as some sort of cutting edge content and flog it using ClickBank.

I’m just a normal person, Paul Barlow, aged 28 from the Isle of Man in the UK. I started work at the age of 18 as a software developer, 7 years later I came to the realisation that there were street cleaners and ass wipers getting paid more than people writing software so I decided a change was required. I ended up working for the government and life was hell. That’s when I thought about looking towards the internet for making some extra money, long story short, it worked. The extra money allowed me to go back to writing software (more for fun than anything), and my online money has grown ever since. I’m now self employed, have some degree of financial freedom and get to spend a lot more time with my wife and daughter. I’m not rich but I make a good living online, I’d be making a much better living if the US Dollar, British Pound exchange rate would sort itself out!

I’m going to use the blog to spill my guts on the ways I make money online so that hopefully some of you out there stuck working for the man can break free, or at the very worst have a bit more cash in your pockets. I’ll only be talking about the methods that I’ve personally used and made money from, I’ll warn you now, most of these are not get rich quick schemes and will require some time and effort to show results. They do pay though, and when it comes to making money online I find that getting paid is the most important thing.

The ODP (Open Directory Project) located at www.dmoz.org should never be under estimated. The directories aim is to make some order out of the internet and to do this is uses thousands of volunteers to act as editors. Any website that you see featured in the ODP has had to have passed the watchful eye of at least one editor, because of this manual processing of the websites the major search engines take significant notice of the Open Dierctory Project.

Google for example bases its directory on the ODP and let’s face it, Google isn’t going to include a website in its own directory that it doesn’t trust. It’s this trust gained by being approved by an ODP editor that can help your search rankings. Whilst the ODP may not generate much in referral traffic what it can do is provide a signifcant boost to your natural search placements. However, it is this trust issue that has become the problem, a lot of webmasters now ignore the ODP because they consider it corrupt, that editors only edit for their own personal gain. Whilst there are bad editors, there are also a lot of good ones, and in terms of SEO it is best not to ignore the ODP, it is after all free.

One of the biggest complaints about the Open Directory Project is that it can take a long time for your website to be included (6 months or more), this is simply down to the number of submissions. If you can find a highly targetted category then you stand a better chance of being included faster. It may also help to find a category that is edited by somebody who is not also editing a broader category. One of the best ways of achieving this is to look at the regional areas. Another thing to think about is your entry, do not write promotional material, got that? NEVER write promotional material when attempting to get a listing in the ODP! The more an editor has to change your application to make it acceptable the less likely you are to be entered into the directory quickly, or maybe more importantly at all. They are volunteers and under no obligation to add your website, it’s in your websites interest to make life as simple as possible for them.

These are my main pointers for submitting to the ODP, do each of these and you stand a great chance of your website being listed:-

• Have original content that can’t be found elsewhere on the internet
• Spell check your website, the ODP is about quality information and not design
• If possible have a friend give your website a once over before submitting
• Make the title that of your company, or failing that your website, either way do not stuff keywords
• Your description should be as simple as possible, just say what you do and what is found on your website, DO NOT USE PROMOTIONAL LANGUAGE! Excellent, best etc should not be used.
• Only submit to one category, make it the most relevant one.

At the end of the day a listing in the ODP can be significant, it’s also free. Stick to the rules, be patient and you should be ok.

Is your small business still relying on a Hotmail address as it’s primary e-mail point of contact? If you are then you’ll not be surprised to learn that there are many more just like you, literally thousands of small businesses still rely very heavily on Hotmail. To be fair, Hotmail is ok, the new Windows Live Hotmail web interface is very nice, but there are a few problems associated with sticking with Hotmail. The number one problem for most Hotmail users, be they personal or business is spam, Hotmail seems to get more than it’s fair share, much MUCH more. Anyone who has used Hotmail for any length of time becomes aware of the anount of absolute rubbish that manages to make it into your e-mail inbox. The second problem is professionalism, you’ve got your own domain, you’ve got your own webiste and yet anybody who wants to contact you has to use a Hotmail address. Doesn’t look very good does it? There also the matter of client security, a lot of people are afraid to send to a Hotmail e-mail address just in case there address gets added on to some soprt of spammers list. In truth this shouldn’t happen but if peoples perceptions damage your business then there’s very little you can do.

Once you have used a Hotmail address for your business contact then it’s actually quite difficult to break away. Microsoft were quite sneaky with Hotmail, they have avoided using publically documented protocols for access and instead gone their own way. They also do no offer the opportunity to have your e-mail messages forwarded automatically like most other mail services. In order to get your Hotmail mail forwarded you’ll need to either subscribe to a forwarding service that can handle Hotmail, or alternatively download some software to do your own forwarding. Deciding to suddenly not bother at all with your Hotmail account can be a dangerous, can you remember all of the webistes your submitted your contact details to, not to mention your stationary?

One piece of software that does this is GetMail Evolution, it’s a small program that you run whenever your computer is on and it forwards messages from POP3, Hotmail, MSN and Windows Live Hotmail Accounts to another account. Not only this but when you reply, your reply will come from your new address updating your potential customers records. It’s really quite a simple solution to the breaking from Hotmail problem. By ensuring that GetMail runs when your computer starts there is no way you’re going to miss any e-mail that do manage to find their way into your old Hotmail account.