Can You Make a Living Online?

This is a great way to get noticed, and promote yourself or your products or services. There are hundreds of article publishing sites on the internet today. Most of them are basic database systems set up to let folks upload their articles and get them noticed by the search engines, and in the process, let's these sites get noticed.

Article directories mainly do this to be able to advertise or sell advertising on their site, so when someone types in a keyword, it sees an article, gets clicked onto, then the reader sees ads as well as the article. And most of these article publishers will let you be known as an author, which in turn, lets you place links to your affiliate sites, product pages or other links to get whatever it is you are looking to get with the article.

Either way, writing articles to be published and shown on the internet is a great way to get yourself noticed. And there are many folks out there that have made a great living doing this, but keep in mind that it's not a get-rich-scheme or an overnight success story type of venture, it takes time. You might write and publish hundreds of articles before you start to see many views and/or clicks to your links noted therein. But it can be done and has been proven time and time again.

Here are a few do's and don'ts you might want to consider when article marketing:

Do's:

1. Write actual articles, not just open advertisements
2. Write and submit them on a regular basis
3. Capitalize the first letter of each word in the title.
4. Check the spelling several times while writing.
5. Write your own articles, not re-written from someone else.
6. Make sure they fall between 400 & 600 words.
7. Make your author resource box look professional

Don'ts:

1. Don't capitalize all letters in the subject line.
2. Don't use bold, underline or other attention getters.
3. Don't place links in the article body.
4. Don't cloak links in your resource box.
5. Don't submit more than 2 links in the resource box.

These are some of the main items to pay attention to, there are others. Please contact me with other thoughts or suggestions. I'd be happy to add them to these lists if I see their value.

Thanks,
James

There are so many ways to make money in affiliate programs, it's not even funny. This has got to be one of the original ways to make money on the internet. You can be in an affiliate program with Walmart, Amazon.com, GDI (Global Domains International), and virtually any company you can think of, not to mention possibly millions of online products as well! These range from digital products (such as e-books or software) to "How to" books to cars to land to pretty much anything you can think of.

Over the last dozen plus years or so, about all companies and online entrepreneurs have started adopting the method of letting others be 'affiliate' of theirs. Which means that when you sign up to be an affiliate for the said company, you get an ID name and you can advertise your ID or link(s) and when a purchase has been made, you get a piece of that sale, based on their allotted percentage or amount agreed upon in their contract.

This can be a very lucrative venture if it's done right, and your description of 'right' is as good as mine. It's getting to be that the word 'affiliate' is starting to get blurred into another well known word that is bad to the internet...spam! This is because there are more ways to advertise your affiliate link than can be imagined. You can send them out via e-mail (spam), post them on Squidoo lenses (spam), write about them on Hub pages (spam), post them on classified sites like Craigslist (spam) and on and on.

So how do successful affiliates get their links on the internet , make sales and not get listed as spam? Good question, I think it has a lot to do with content and some creativeness. For instance, I have signed up for bunches of affiliate programs over the years, and I want to get them noticed, you won't see them here, you will see links to my personal pages which have them all over them, or on a video, but I won't be able to post direct links to them here, if I do, they will be seen as spam. You have to be subtle in your articles, ads and writings, give folks what they need in information, then let them dig deeper and find your links, and they will!

The key here is to get your reader interested in what you have or know about, then let them want more, search for more of what you have. Many folks at this point will say you need to be an 'expert' at what you are writing, talking or showing. And I do believe this can be a great way to go forward with this, but I also believe in the truth, if I'm not a real expert on a subject or niche, I don't want to try and make you believe it. If you think I am, then great, hopefully I will teach you something and you will sign up for one of my affiliate programs or buy a product or service. But I'm not going to lie to you and say something like, "I am an expert in domain publishing, I know all there is to know about it and you need to sign up for this"! But if you see something in it to be of value to you, or feel you could make money at this like me....well go for it. Just remember that I didn't say I was something I am not, I was just good at getting you the info you needed to decide for yourself.

Below is a great such example of a video ad, where you see how this man is making thousands of dollars a month in this domain company. You notice in it that you will get your own site and could do the same in time as him. But you have to realize that it will take time and you have to work at it and learn to either be a great salesman and pass out cards or flyers to people direct or advertise your link to many folks before you start to see income, and you will if you work at it. Anyway, good luck at anything you try and may God bless you in the process.

You must be able to get traffic to your site or promotion. It's just plain and simple knowledge that you must acquire when you start looking to make money online. You can sign up for 100s of affiliate programs, have thousands or products to sell, but you won't gain a member or sell one item if you don't have traffic to your links and sites.

Here's where the tricky and many times, down right exhaustive part comes in. There are many ways to drive traffic to your offerings. I list a few below, but there are many more out there. So take your time and sift through these when you are starting out, it will take time and patience with any of them. Some cost and some are free, I suggest trying free ones to start, unless you have some disposable income right out of the gate.

Pay (*per*) Click

This is one of the best ways to get traffic if you have some money to invest and take a little time to research keywords. Because it's exactly what it says, you have to pay for each click you get. And you have to compete with many other people doing the same thing. Google, Facebook or any other search engine around will gladly let your link be clicked at $2.00 or more each, versus many others only willing to pay $0.50 or so for their clicks. It's like a bidding process, you gamble that you can get a keyword click for a certain amount and not the other guy. Use tools like a keyword search tool and others to find out what words are getting the most hits and make sure the competition is not too high. All I got to say here is good luck and have some money to start getting real traffic this way.

Traders of Traffic

This is one of the easiest ways to start out getting some free traffic. It's definitely not something you want to do for very long, but good to get started with. The way they work is you sign up (for free for most), and you have to click through web pages to earn credits to get your page seen in the same manor. There are many out there and they do get traffic, even if it's quick, but your page(s) gets in front of people. Do a search and you will find them everywhere. Here are a couple that have worked good for me:

TrafficG: Click here

Free Traffic Bar: Click here

Advertising Methods

There are many of these, I am just going over some of the main ones for now. This list is not exhaustive, do some research before you jump into any type of advertising, especially the costly ones, even though many ways are free.

>Banners are a good way to advertise, but have fallen somewhat in the last several years, we see these everywhere, I think people are just tied of them.

>Use forum and classified ad sites to advertise your products or services, but be careful, many of these will kick out a few lines and a link, deeming them as spam, which I don't understand, everyone is doing this to get traffic or make sales. But I think a lot of these sites just want the human interest stories to get their site attention and not have you click away from their paid ads, etc.

>Direct link trades with other site owners is a great way to get links back to your site(s). Many site owners are willing to post your links and get you to post theirs on your sites. This just takes a bit of work, you have to contact the owner in many cases and ask them, but many are going to look at your site and make sure it's up to par with what types of sites they want their links on. But it is a great way to get links out there to your sites, this also helps get search engines to notice you!

>Blogs, Squidoos & Hubs oh my! As you know from reading this, Squidoo lenses are great ways to get your personal and business self noticed. Just as blogs have for years and Hub pages are similar to Squidoo lenses, but I tend to like the latter better. The down fall in these is traffic, you do have to get the links to these out there just like anything, They have their own built in traffic from other readers readers, but that's limited and interest goes down like with anything. Twitter and Facebook are some of the best ways to do this, and now doing fan pages is a FB extension that is working well to get attention.

>Articles as mentioned above is another good way to generate traffic. Many people submit many articles and use rotators to get them out in bulk. The main thing here is to set up the resource boxes and author bios to show the right links you want seen there. And it's always good to use services like Aweber and others to track where your incoming links come from. This helps you find what works best.

Like I mentioned earlier, this is just a small portion or ways you can get traffic, just be diligent to do some research on other ways as well. You need to work on ways that serve you best and what you are trying to accomplish.

This is another huge word in the 'make money online' arena. It also ties in by a large amount to affiliate marketing as well. A blog is really just a web site, but it's done in a way that it looks like an ongoing log of thoughts, entries and articles about certain subjects, all peppered with affiliate links and showing lists of side column links as well.

It's a great way to if nothing, get many free back links to your other sites. As you will notice, this Squidoo lens will be linked to my blogs and other web sites, so it to can be added into my list of notable page links.

Another way of monetizing a blog is to place in your other codes of money making links, such as Google Ad Words (where you see a list of ads and the Google Ads note). This is where you would sign up with Google and get your code to paste into the blog side bar or in your article, then when folks click on the ads, you get paid by Google. You can also get these from Amazon.com and many other retailers that want you to help them sell products.

Just look around and do some searches for money making blogs or bloggers and you will see that some folks have made a decent living just off blogs. It does take some time, as with many online ventures, but it can be rewarding as well as challenging. Below are some resources for more info on blogging.

If you've ever looked on ebay for anything (and who hasn't?), you will see store after store that people have set up to sell items on ebay. From small computer parts to industrial parts to video game & accessories and on and on. This is or was a great way to sell online. I say was because it has become ebay has become so saturated with low cost items of everything you can think of, it's hard to place every day items to be sold or auctioned off.

My experience from where ebay is, is that you have to either have a lot of items for sell and in demand. Or you have to have items of value that are not already selling like collectable coins or rare baseball cards. The main thing I tell everyone who asks it something will sell on ebay is to look on ebay, if it has multiple listings and is not hardly selling, there's your answer. If it's not listed, it will probably sell, if it's of any real value to someone or a collector.

A while back I sold some older Hallmark ornaments, they did pretty good as long as they were rare or I sold them in complete or close to complete sets. Now when I look to sell any of our many ornaments we collected over the years, I just look them up on ebay and if they aren't selling, why post them? It's a matter of supply and demand at the highest level right now. If it's in demand, get some and sell them, if it's saturated on ebay, hold on to whatever you have and either wait til it's demand properties goes up or use it as a nice gift to a grandchild or sibling's birthday! Good luck with your ebay ventures.

Another way to sell on ebay, which is free, is ebay classifieds. I'm guessing it is trying to compete with free ad sites like Craigslist and others. It's a good way to get the word out locally, because it's for local sales, just remember as in Craigslist, what out who you deal with, and only deal with cash only, no online payments or promises to pay you other ways! You can also buy used cars on ebay motors, but again, be careful not to get swindled, always do research on the autos you plan to purchase.