How To Make Money Online

Let me start off by saying that there are a lot of different ways to make money online. I prefer to get into projects that continue to make money, even after the work is done. When I started learning how to make money online I was looking for passive income, what I have come to find is that nothing is really passive in this business. However, by developing sites that don’t require a lot of time to run you can leverage your time across many different websites. I’ve chosen to work 3 different angles within my business model.

Blogging - Of the three business models I use is blogging. Blogging is the most time intensive, however the fringe benefits are high. When you are starting out, you’re going to have a lot of questions, with a blog you begin to accumulate friends and they will help you out when you are stuck on something. It is truly amazing when you find yourself stuck on a problem with your website and you put a post up and you get an answer you were looking for. With your blog you can make money selling advertising space, affiliate products, and sponsored reviews.

Content Sites/Niche Blogs - it is important to not put all of your make money eggs in one basket. With that said, google adsense is the most appealing business model I have found. To give you an example I own a site about cheap airsoft guns, last month it pulled in 40 dollars and I’ll I did to get that money was to build additional links.

E-commerce - I’m going to start off this section with a disclaimer, I currently don’t run any ecommerce sites. The reason why, is that my current motivation is to make enough money so I can travel and play and not have to work all the time. For me to not have to work all the time and be able to travel I need to make around $2,000/month. 2K a month should be doable between the blog and the content sites if I put in a solid year of work. However, in the future I think I’d like to have a family and when that happens I want to be making more than this. So, for right now I’ve picked 8 niches and registered domains. I’ve been slowly sending links to the domains so when I do develop them out I will already have some keyword authority for my main keyword making it easier to rank for the long tail keywords. Long term, I think e-commerce sites are the way to make money on line.

For more information on making money online go back to my homepage through this link and read Bigshot Blogging, my ebook for 71 pages of condensed information on blogging. All you have to do is enter you e-mail address, the e-book is FREE! Click Here

May Traffic And Income Report

Alright here is the traffic and income report for the month of May. Not impressive but factual, I need to spend more time on my blog. Here we go

Traffic

- 4/5/08-4/30/08 - 5,606 (215/Day)
- 5/1/08-5/31/08 - 3,908 (126/Day)

Where did the traffic come from?

Direct - April - 1,671 (% 29.81)/May - 1,190 (% 30.45)
Search Engines - April - 1,156 (% 20.55)/May - 1,094 (% 27.99)
Referals - April - 2,783 (% 49.64)/May - 1,624 (% 41.56)

Alexa - 138,851
- was 123,509

Technorati - 30,790
- was 21,635

Posts - 255
- was 246

Comments - 4,021
- was 3,781

RSS Feed - 738
- was 661

Inbound Links
- Google - 130
- was 129
- Yahoo - 7,231
- was 6,650

Page Rank - 2
- was 2

45n5 ranking - 126
- was 43

Income $171

1) Commision Junction
- Go Daddy - 0/was - 0

2) Paydotcom
- Wordpress Dream Theme - 0/was - 0

3) ClickBank - 31/was - 0

3) Hostgator - 0/was - 0

4) Direct Ad Sales - 115/was 0

5) Other Income - 25
- Relaxationtips.org

How to Target the Right Niche

As John Williams, President of LogoYes and Entrepreneur said in his latest article about Image & Branding with Entrepreneur.com, “It’s a common misconception that if you’re not casting a wide net with your marketing, you’re leaving money on the table. Actually, the opposite is true. It’s more expensive and usually less profitable to sell a range of products to a wide audience. Furthermore, if your product or service is too similar to a competitor’s, price will always be an issue. When price is your only point of comparison, it’s tough to build a successful brand. Targeting a niche market is a great way to avoid these issues and make your company stand how.”

John also states a very important factor that home business owners need to completely understand, “First, a broad category, like small-business owners, doesn’t constitute a niche. A niche is a much more narrowly defined group of prospects.”

So let’s highlight some of what John suggests to look for:

• The common-denominator needs to be pinpointed: You need to find a market that differs from the rest and then market your product and service to that market. As John uses the “Attorney” example; Attorneys have special document copying needs, so you provide copying services targeted only to attorneys specifically. TIP: Using Google Alerts, you can effortlessly monitor what is being said online about you, your company, your products, and your competition. It shows results from the Web, Google News, and Google Blog search. All of this competitive intelligence can then be sent directly to your email inbox.
• You have a better solution to offer, than what your competitor offers: You need to provide a “true” value to your audience, above and beyond what your competitors offer. So let’s say for example you offer a WordPress theme, as many out there do. But you need to separate yourself from the herd by maybe considering a 100% money back, telephone support, free installation…etc. But you can only determine where you can do better than your competitor by doing a little spying on them first.
• Economic factors to attain a decent ROI: If you are working on a budget, you must find ways to inexpensively but efficiently market your service or product. One of the latest books published by Mike Dillard, “Building On A Budget” is a great way to start out. It provides ways to successfully market your product for less than $500 a month.
• Your target group is large enough to generate the revenue you need to remain in profit: You need to have a large market, period. It needs to make monetary sense to market to who you are promoting to.
• You need to market to prospects who’s needs aren’t being met, or who needs are being met as well as you can: Focus on looking for an “over-looked” market or one that isn’t being serviced properly.

I’m going to use Mike Dillard, CEO of Live Five Star Marketing LLC, as a prime example of “why” he is now a successful self-made millionaire.

Mike saw an opportunity and seized it. The opportunity was to help network marketers and direct sales distributors find better ways to market their products and services online. To also help the majority who fail (HUGE market and one that was untouched successfully) finally have the success they have been looking for.

Now his new line of competitors are struggling to top what Mike does. But in my humble opinion, they are wasting their time, “unless” they can tap into “another” area that will help the same market.

You just need to open up your eyes and look around you before you leap. Experimenting with your hard earned money in a niche that is completely covered in every area isn’t the best thing you can do for your online success. It’s time to wake up and become creative and watch what is around you.

Maybe even ask yourself what needs you have that ARE NOT being met and go from there for a niche. To me that’s one of the best ways to create a niche product or service.