We are asked all the time “How can I make money on the Internet?” or “Where can I learn how to make money on the Internet?” In fact, we’re asked often enough about how to make money online – and we have a vested enough interest in making sure that people do it appropriately, without spamming and following the rules and observing best practices – that we now offer this article.
All this said, we can’t emphasize enough that this article is for beginners. It is for the casual beginner who is interested in dabbling online part-time, and making a little money to cover their expenses, or perhaps to supplement their income. It is not an article for someone who is looking to earn millions on the Internet (which can certainly be done, but which requires a whole different level of time and investment) – for those people we recommend Mark Widawer’s [destination content has been removed at other end :~( ], and Joel Comm’s excellent book, The Adsense Code (actually we’ll be recommending this latter for you beginners, too – read on).
Ok, ready?
There are three things that you need in order to start making money on the Internet:
1. Something that you are both knowledgeable and passionate about.
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2. A website where you can write about that passion and showcase that knowledge.
3. A domain (the www.address.com for your website) so that people can go to your website, learn from your knowledge, and take actions which generate income (money) for you.
Right now you may be wondering “well what sort of actions will people take which will cause money to come my way?” And we’ll get to that in a minute, I promise.
But first, take a minute and think about what you’d like to share with the world on your website? What special knowledge do you have that causes people to come to you with questions? Something that you could write about in your sleep. Do people always ask you about your recipes or how to garden? Are you the one everyone calls when looking for that special gift, or book, or movie? Maybe you’re the go-to person when someone needs to figure out what is wrong with their car, or their electronic or stereo equipment. Or, are you a collector? Do you have a fabulous collection of rocks, or salt and pepper shakers, or rubber bands?
It really doesn’t matter what your passion and special knowledge are – it just matters that you have one – something that you can talk about all day without getting tired of it – and that you are willing to dedicate a website to.
Ok, got something?
That’s step 1 done!
Step 2 is that you’re going to make a website about it. It’s much easier than you think. Basically, you’ll just be writing stuff down about something you already know all about!
That, however, requires step 3 – you need a domain where your website can live – your domain is your .com name. When you put “http://www.” in front of your domain, it becomes your website’s address on the World Wide Web, which is known as your “URL”. For example, our domain – where you are reading this article, is http://www.TheInternetPatrol.com.
This too is easier than you may think – in fact we’re going to give you a link to do that in just a moment. But first, let’s talk about your domain name. Nowadays, it’s usually the case that the most obvious domain names are already taken. So you need to get creative in coming up with a domain name.
Here are the three things you need to think about and know when it comes to selecting domain name:
1. It should somehow relate to the content that will be on your website, so that when people see or hear your domain name, they’ll have some idea of what will be there.
2. It should be easy to figure out how to spell it if someone says it outloud – imagine that you are being interviewed on the radio and the radio host says “and what is the URL to your website?” You want the radio listeners to be able to figure out how to spell your website address, so it should be very easy to figure out how to spell it. For that reason, try to stay away from words that can be spelled more than one way.
3. It should be easy to remember.
Now, all this said, it’s also important to bear in mind that if you stick to these three points, it won’t really matter that much what your domain name is – the main thing is to get it up, and to create a great website at the domain. This is definitely one of those cases of “if you build it, they will come.”
Oh, and read our article here about whether it matters if you use upper case or lower case letters in your domain.
Ok, ready to find a domain name?
Think up several domain names that you would like and that suggest what your website will be about. Whatever anyone else tells you, we believe that for crediblity, you really need to have one that ends in .com (not .org or .net or .me, etc.). The reason to think up several is that the odds are good that the obvious ones will already be taken, so think of several with which you’d be happy, so that the odds of one being available are better.
Whatever you do, avoid setting up your site on a service like blogspot.com or wordpress.com, where you will not end up with your very own domain name. Nothing says “amateur” like having your website address be “myname.blogspot.com” instead of your very own domain.
Here are a few of the registrars (places to register domain names) that are out there – they offer varying levels of services (some will host your website and make it very easy to set up, others offer other things – so check them all out before selecting one):
Ok! Now you have your domain, and a website at that domain! All that’s left is to start writing your information in the template! This creates your website.
Here’s a little hint – it’s little, but it’s critical and it is what will set your website apart, and cause people to start coming to it: in order for people to find your website, you have to impress the search engines (like Google, Yahoo, and MSN). If you impress the search engines, they will reward you by leading people to your website when they are searching for things related to the subject of your website. How do you impress the search engines? First, be sure to write a new article or entry or page (depending on how you set up your site) at least five days a week. Even if it’s something really short, create a new entry at least five days a week. This should be easy for you, because you’re writing about something you are passionate about, and could write in your sleep, right?
Second, make sure that what you write is original and useful. You know how you hate it when you are searching on the Internet for something, only to find that when you click on a link for a site, the site has almost no useful information, just more links? Well, search engines don’t like that any more than you do. So make what you write (known in this biz as your “content”) fresh and useful and interesting!
And third, whenever you write something new, think about what you would search for to find that information, and then make that the title of your entry. Are you writing about how to store chocolate so that it doesn’t bloom? If you wanted to know how to do that, what would you search for? You might go to Google and type in “how to keep chocolate from blooming” So, make that the title of your entry about storing chocolate to keep it from blooming. Think about who would find the information in this article useful – people who want to know how to keep chocolate from blooming, in this example – and what they would type into Google (“How to keep chocolate from blooming” in this example) and make that be the title of your article.
Ok, that’s it! Now you know everything you need to know in order to get your own website set up, and to have people come to it! Have fun!
Oh, wait, you want to know about the “how to make money” part still, right?
Ok, here you go!
Once your website is set up, the very first thing you want to do is sign up for Google Adsense (those are the “Ads by Gooooooogle” that you see everywhere on the web). You may feel a little squeamish about this – after all, will you offend your readers by putting ads on your website? The answer is right at the beginning of this paragraph – you see them everywhere now, even on big corporate websites.
So, no, you won’t alienate or offend your readers. In fact, it turns out that many readers appreciate these Google ads because it points them to things that they may be interested in. This is because, you see, Google does a very good job of making sure that the ads actually match what is on your website. Got a website about chocolate? There will be ads for more things relating to chocolate. Got a website about how to barbeque? The ads will be for things relating to barbequing. And so on. And every time one of your site’s visitors clicks on one of those ads, you get a little bit of money.
Now, you may be wondering to yourself “How much money can I possibly get from some little ads on my site? I’ll be lucky if it pays for itself, right?”
Wrong. Let me tell you that my own friend Joel Comm earns more than $25,000 a month from Adsense (and I’ve seen the checks). Of course, Joel is an Adsense expert, so unless you are ready to become one of those people who commits their full time to earning money on the Internet (in which case, again, we highly recommend Mark Widawer’s [destination content has been removed at other end :~( ]) you probably won’t earn that kind of cash (although if you apply yourself and take advantage of Jeff and Mark’s knowledge, it’s entirely possible). But it’s quite possible that you could earn several hundred to several thousand dollars a month. And, lucky for us all, Adsense expert Joel Comm actually wrote the book on how to do it. Seriously. That’s Joel’s The Adsense Code, which we highly recommend you get, now. Applying Joel’s wisdom and advice to your own site will ensure that you start earning a decent income with Adsense.
Order “The Adsense Code” from Amazon right now
Ok, now, there is one more easy-to-do thing that you can do to start making money on the Internet. Sign up for the Amazon affiliate program. Through this program, if you recommend anything that Amazon sells (books, electronics, music, food, you name it) on your site, you will get a commission on those things. It’s very easy to do – you just sign up at Amazon for an “Amazon Associates” account, and then when you want to recommend something, you use the Amazon link generator to generate a special link which you put on your website. When somebody buys something through your link, you get a commission.
Sign up for the Amazon Associates program
So, how will this all work?
Let’s say that your passion is Sound Recording. So you set up a domain, “HowToRecordAtHome.com” (by the way, unlike some things on the Internet, it doesn’t matter whether you use uppercase or lowercase letters in your domain name and URL – it all still goes to the right place – so whenever you have a domain name with more than one word in it, try capitalizing the first letter of each word when you put it in writing – it makes it much easier to read and recognize – see the difference between and http://www.TheInternetPatrol.com ?) – anyways, so you set up HowToRecordAtHome.com.
You write several articles, all about different aspects of home recording. You put the Google Adsense ads on there, and you will get ads for things such as home recording equipment. This is useful to your readers – the visitors to your website – because they are reading your site because they are interested in home recording. So they will want to know about home recording equipment.
You may also want to recommend some good books on home recording, so you will go to Amazon, and build and put on your site a link for a book such as:
Home Recording for Musicians for Dummies
And you may also want to put up a link for your favorite high quality headphones, like this:
Now, your visitors come to your site to learn from your knowledge. You are giving that to them, along with both recommendations based on your knowledge (through Amazon links) and links to other resources for things related to the subject (the Google ads).
It’s a win-win situation – they get to learn from you, and in return, you get to earn money from their interest in the additional resources you offer.
And that’s how you make money on the Internet.
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