I'm sick and tired of it. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to spend a single red cent until I actually started earning money online. Unfortunately, I didn't do that at first. I own a few domains, bought a couple products, and here I am, still struggling to earn some decent money online. But the damn title of this hub is how to start earning money if you don't have any. So let's get started.
The Absolute Easiest Way to Start Earning Money Online
Blogs. Blogging has exploded on the internet in the last few years. And what was once simply an online diary is now a way for developers to log their progress on new projects, companies to communicate with their employees and customers, people to discuss a variety of topics from politics to video games (and the politics of video games!), and people like you to earn money online.Why blogging?
You have no money to pay for a domain and hosting for your website, right? You have to rely on free hosted websites. Unfortunately, if you're trying to pitch a product or run a review website and it says, "Hosted by LifeConquestPages.com" at the top of your page or your URL is dvdreviews.freehostedwebsites.com, it doesn't look like the professional image you're trying to portray. With blogs, you don't need to keep a professional image. Blogs have this informality about them that makes them appealing to visitors. You can write like a human being. Two great free blogging services are Blogger and WordPress. Both use different blogging software. I prefer WordPress but Blogger is easier to use.
What do I blog about?
This is the most crucial part you need to work out before starting any online venture. What you need to do is select a niche to blog about. Why is this important? Because you want your blog to cover as much of one topic as possible, because you want to have a set of keywords you can use throughout your blog which will help you rank well on the search engines, and because you want to know how much competition is out there!
An example...
Let's say you want to make a blog about video games. Okay, video gaming is a niche. Let's see how much competition there is out there. I did a search on Google for "video games" (no quotes) and got about 510,000,000 results. When you build your blog, one of the highest quality sources of traffic is search engine traffic. But the keyword "video games" pulls up over half a billion websites. This is where you do some keyword research.
I use SEO Book, which utilizes Yahoo! Search Marketing's keyword tool (giving actual numbers of how many searches were made for specific keywords) and estimates the number of searches on Google and MSN Live Search. I did a search for "video games" and "computer games" (no quotes) and found some interesting information.
Over 1.7 million people searched for video games, and almost 300,000 searched for computer games in January 2007. If you scroll down, you can see other keywords which were searched for fewer times. With good search engine optimization (SEO) of your blog or website, you can get the top results for some of these keywords which are less in demand. Within some of these keywords are subniches or microniches as well. Less than 12,000 searches were made for "kid computer game" (no quotes) and even fewer for similar keywords. Maybe you could blog about computer games for children. I did a Google search for "kid computer game" (no quotes) and found 131,000,000 results. I found 29,300,000 results for "child computer game" (no quotes) and it gets less than 7000 searches a month.
See what I'm doing? I'm looking for keywords I can use and a niche I can blog about that will increase my chances of getting search engine traffic. In general, the smaller the niche, the less competition.
So at what point do I actually make money here?
The easiest thing to do is just place contextual PPC (pay-per-click) ads on your blog. Depending on content of your blog, different ads will be show, and will generate revenue when someone clicks on them. Google AdSense is the most popular PPC service. The Yahoo! Publishing Network is another one. And there are dozens of smaller PPC services out there. These are free to sign up for, but be careful not to confuse AdSense with AdWords and the Yahoo! Publishing Network with Yahoo! Search Marketing's Sponsored Search. These are for advertisers, not publishers. If you ever want to start using paid advertising to promote a website, then check them out. Microsoft adCenter is another PPC service for advertisers.
Another great way to earn money online is by promoting products, referring them to your sponsor, and earning a commission on sales. Where do you find products to promote? ANYWHERE. ClickBank is great if you want to sell digital products. It's easy to set up and there are thousands of products to promote. PayDotCom is another marketplace for affiliates. Commission Junction has a huge selection of products and services from major companies. Amazon runs its own affiliate program if you're interested in promoting physical products. Keep in mind that promoting physical products like those at Amazon will earn you less money per sale because of the associated costs of production, shipping, etc.
