The Best Ways To Make Money Online
By Marc on Aug 27, 2008 in Make Money Online
Three of the best ways to make money online are as follows:
1) Blogging
2) Content Sites
3) E-commerce Sites
Blogging is one of the best ways to make money, because for my money it is the easiest way to get started. Just last week after trying to convince him, my best friend got himself a laptop. He is convinced, as well as I that ecommerce is the best way to make money. I agree with him but I also think it is the hardest way and will take the longest to pay off. For this reason I told him to start a blog about his journey into the e-commerce world.
I’ve said it multiple times now; the easiest and best way to make money online is by creating content sites. If you would like to learn more about how to make money working from home creating niche blogs, check out the link.
Now for the best way to make money from a long term point of view the answer is ecommerce. The reason I say this is because with my niche blogs they are set and forget to me. I create the site and build links and just let them earn. I’m not worried about taking down top spots on Google, but just ranking well enough to bring is some passive income. Once they are making good money the plan is to sell them off in order to get redesigns on my ecommerce stores. But now I’m getting ahead of myself.
Right now I have 4 ecommerce domains. I’ve been running BookMarking Demon on the domain as well as commenting on do follow blogs. The links I have been sending to the domains are for the main keyword I’m targeting with the site. As soon as my domain gets indexed for the main keyword I’ll set up a yahoo store. For $39.95 a month plus a onetime activation fee of $50, I’ll have my own ecommerce store. At this point I can start building my pages and adding products to the store. But the basic store template is very plain and won’t convert that well. However, it’s a cheap way for me to start working the SEO side of the store. Once I start getting some traffic to the sites, I’ll sell some content sites and pay a third party to redesign my ecommerce stores to be better looking and achieving higher conversion rates.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it
If you would like to learn more about the topics in this article please download my free ebook. All you have to do is enter your name and email and you’ll get instant access. Again, you can find it here
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9 Comment(s)
By Terence Chang on Aug 27, 2008 | Reply
Marc:
Hold your horse for a second. You are picking Yahoo as your online store platform?
Yahoo Store can easily cost your $5000 to customize your store. I had nightmare two years ago, when I want to get out of Yahoo to my own host.
The site seems to be control under a company in Australia. The communicate is very poor. I could not get my domain transferred to my own hosting for 2 weeks. That means that I lost business for two weeks.
There are many many free e-commerce store script out there. If you really want to use Yahoo hosting, be sure not to host your domain records with them.
Good luck to your adventure!
By Marc on Aug 27, 2008 | Reply
What do you use for check out (Google?)
How do you manage you back end?
I would like to learn more about what your talking about, I would like to spend less if possible, I just wasn’t sure what options are availibe for a developer with you coding skills
I look forward to your answer.
Thanks
Marc
By Terence Chang on Aug 27, 2008 | Reply
Two years ago, my partners setup an account with Yahoo small business hosting with e-commerce store. He setup both domain and web hosting with Yahoo. Before I took over the site, we realized that the proprietary language used to write the e-commerce store is called RTML. It’s very hard to understand it. So we were looking for solution to create a great layout and template for the site. We got a quote back from the company, which is recommended by Yahoo and other Yahoo store owners.
The quote is about $5000 to start with.
There are many advantages to host with Yahoo.
1. List on Yahoo market search and get indexed quick by Gooogle.
2. Their store allows you to do many things that other store script can’t or don’t. For example, up sell, cross sell, promotion code, tier pricing and shipping slip etc.
3. You import/export your inventory data and transaction data with Quickbook.
However, there are some disadvantages with Yahoo hosting too.
1. Customer Services Sucks!
2. They are expensive
3. It’s very hard to customize store layout with RTML.
4. To use advanced features mentioned above, you need to change your RTML to take the advantage.
5. Server is slow sometimes.
6. Hard to get out.
I am glad that we finally got out there.
Now I am hosting my sites on shared hosting servers.
1. Cheap but good enough share hosting at ANHosting.com
2. Free open source PHP e-commerce script from Zen-cart.com
3. Got cheap SSL from RapidSSL.com
4. Setup up PayPal standard account
5. Use PayPal express with zen-cart
6. I customize my own store layout. Yes. There are some learning curve, but it’s PHP. So you can learn it fast or find resources easily.
I have been running my stores with this setup for years now. There are some disadvantage with zen-cart though.
1. Lacking some nice features. For example, up-sell, cross-sell, quickbook integration, import/export features. There are third-party plug-ins for those, but I have not really trust those plug-in or play with it.
2. It doesn’t support search engine friendly URL, but it will still be index no problem.
So I am looking into a new open source PHP e-commerce store. The following one is very promising. It looks very pretty too.
http://www.magentocommerce.com
Regarding to Google Checkout. I don’t think it’s ready for the prime time. The integration with Zen-cart is not very stable for unknown reasons. Google checkout is cheaper than Paypal, but it require user to have Google account.
When I move to PayPal Payment Pro, user don’t have to be PayPal members. They just simply provide their credit card information. So I stick with PayPal for now.
Hope that answer your questions.
TC
By The Net Fool on Aug 27, 2008 | Reply
Are you getting traffic and SERPs for these posts? Seriously Marc, I want to see some of your content again… it’s been too long
By Small Businessman on Aug 29, 2008 | Reply
These are truly helpful topics you have and I like reading them since they are little nuggets of knowledge. Please keep them coming. Cheers!
By Marc on Aug 29, 2008 | Reply
@The Net Fool - Yes, becuase of the new articles I have 4 new keywords in the top ten. But thats not saying much because I had very little natural traffic anyway. The new keywords have brought in between 23-9 depending on the keyword and the articles aren’t evan and month old and I haven’t build any links yet. If fact I’m going to make a video to talk about this.
@Small Businessman - thank you
By Neugent on Aug 29, 2008 | Reply
Please post more regularly. It would be more helpful if you could use videos to explain your tactics. Please consider it as an option
By Marc on Aug 29, 2008 | Reply
By Stephen-Online Marketing on Sep 17, 2008 | Reply
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