Top 10 Ways to Make Money Online
Posted by Holly in Blunt Honesty, Make Money, Resources, Top 10 Tips
Do you want to make money online? Too many websites offering products related to making money from home, are over-promising and under-delivering. Here are some techniques and methods to honestly make money online now.
1. Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs offer you a way to make money online by promoting products for people or companies. You do not need to have your own product and when you promote for the company and sales are made, you earn a commission on the sale (either a percentage of the profits or a flat dollar amount). You can promote the product through writing about it on your website, blog, Squidoo, or on Social Networking Websites. If you want to find some affiliate programs to join, you can look through Clickbank, CJ and ShareASale to start.
2. Build It & Sell It – Or Buy It & Build It
If you build up a niche website with high-quality content related to the topic of your site – you can either keep the site as it is or you could sell it for a profit. Personally, I’ve made numerous niche websites over the years and a lot of them are receiving targeted traffic, but not making much money. They may have Google Adsense ads on them, but are still not making the type of money I would like them to. If I don’t want to work on marketing that website, I could sell it to someone who actually has a product that relates to the topic of my site. Recently, I sold a website I built up for three years (it was not profiting at all and I didn’t have time to deal with marketing it) and I got a quick $3000 for it on Flippa. Some people call this “Blog Flipping” or “Site Flipping.” It works to make a quick chunk of money, but not sustainable unless you are driven to create numerous blogs, build them up, and resell them. Alternatively, you could buy a website on Flippa, build it up and profit from it.
3. Membership Websites
Residual income is the way to make money online. People sell ebooks and products online all the time – but to make a real sustainable, lasting income is by either having your own membership website or by promoting (as an affiliate) a membership website that you believe in. The key here is to only promote a membership website or program that you have tried, or are currently a member of – and vouch for it 100%. With so many scams online these days, it can be tough to find such a membership program. As of now, I can honestly tell you that I do believe in a few programs out there. Blog Masters Club is one – by David Grisley. It is currently not open to the public (just filled all slots) but if you direct people to signup on that page and they later make a sale, you will make a residual commission on their membership. You can still join and promote David’s other free products – and his affiliate signup page is here. Yaro Starak is also an honest marketer with a great membership site called the Membership Site Mastermind and strangely enough it is currently not taking on any more students. I think it is a good thing that they are not taking on every new person that wants to signup – because they truly to do provide individual training and help through their membership sites. Just like the other program – if you direct traffic and they signup to be notified when the program is available, you will still receive your commissions. Yaro also has other free reports you can promote as an affiliate and signup here. Lastly, a membership site that I am a part of is Easily Answered – it is a program that allows members to join and ask questions directly to the experts in related online marketing fields.
4. Product Creation & Sales
If you have your own product, you will make more money by selling it online. If it is a digital product, or one that can be downloaded (ie: software or e-book) you will profit even more. Obviously, product creation is not for everyone. But if you are an expert in a particular field, and want to share your knowledge on the subject, creating a product and selling it online is a fantastic way to profit. You can sell your product and use either Paypal, Clickbank or CJ (to name a few) to securely process payments. If you want to profit even more, you can then take that digital e-book and sell it as a paperback as well through Lulu’s Self-Publishing program. I put my ebook Honest Riches into a paperback format (see it here) and have realized I receive a lot of sales this way – a lot of people prefer to have a paperback rather than online document or e-book. Once you go through the Lulu process and your book begins to sell, it will also be picked up and sold by other major book chains; such as Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com and more international bookstores online. Alternatively, if you want to make more money and have a great software idea – you can have a software program created, and sell it repeatedly for constant profits. All you need is one good idea – one thing that might save a user time, provide some entertainment or solve a problem. You can pay a programmer on Scriptlance a minimal amount for them to create the software (make sure you own full rights to it) and then you can sell it or provide it for free online. Example of software program types include: iphone applications, wordpress plugins or any other general software that can be used on one’s computer.
5. Banner Ads
If you have a website that is receiving a decent amount of traffic, you could make money from banner advertising. This is a technique that has the potential to make a person a lot of money, but only if their website is receiving heavy traffic. For banner advertising, you can use Google Adsense ads, Text Link Ads or BuySellAds.com. You join one of the sites, and put a small piece of code onto your website. People can purchase ads on your website and you can charge a set amount per month, for certain ads to be placed in certain places on your website.
6. Pro Blogging
If you enjoy writing, and want to make money online as a professional blogger, then this is an option for you. Being a professional blogger is tough for many people because a person needs to know how to attract a wide audience, provide fresh content daily, as well as understand how to direct readers to take a certain action. I read a report written by David Risley about blogging, and he explained his thoughts on how bloggers don’t understand internet marketing enough, and internet marketers don’t understand bloggers. If a person can incorporate internet marketing into their blogging efforts, a lot of cash can be made. It is true. David is a prime example of this – and I believe his statements are true about bloggers and marketers. Personally, I’m learning how to incorporate the two together, on my blog here. So, if you want to be a full-time blogger and make tens of thousands of dollars per month from your blog, then being a Pro Blogger is the way to go. If you want an excellent resource and free report about what it takes to be a Pro Blogger - Read the Six Figure Blogger Blueprint, by David Risley. Another excellent resource on Pro Blogging is Darren Rowse’s Pro Blogger website here.
7. Free Reports & One-Time-Offers
An internet marketing method that can take your income from zero to thousands is this one. What you will need is to create a free, high-quality report on a certain topic or idea. The report will help people in some way or another. You will also need a domain name and a website that is hosted online. If you need a good webhost, I recommend Bluehost. This technique, which I employed on one of my websites several years ago increased my income by an extra $36,000 for that year. As soon as I took it off my site, that income disappeared. So what that means is this can dramatically increase your income in the very instant you put it online and set it up on your website. It will take some work to initially set it up – but once that’s done your only job will be to increase traffic to it. In the near future I will be writing a special report or article about how to create a free report and one-time-offer. I will provide you with every resource needed to do this – if you want to be notified of when that is posted on here, please subscribe to my RSS Feed here. As of now though, I do thoroughly explain the entire process in Book 3 of Honest Riches. Here are the basics of this technique: Create a free report on niche topic, get traffic to that free report, user will fill in email address to download their report, and immediately after filling in their email address, they will be redirected to a special one-time-offer page. Your OTO page will provide a bunch of high-quality ebooks and software programs at a special low price if they take advantage of their one chance to get it at that price. If they don’t buy, they can cancel that and go directly to their free report download page.
8. Social Media Marketing
If you haven’t joined Twitter yet, now is the time to do so. Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and Youtube (and many others) are all social networking websites that can help you increase targeted traffic and build up your reputation and income online. Social networking websites can be used to drive targeted traffic to your website or blog. My main website receives about 10%+/- of the total traffic from Twitter, with Facebook trailing closely behind. One method to increasing visitor satisfaction is to create a simple welcome page for users who are visiting for Twitter, for example. Instead of linking to the homepage of your site from your Twitter account, link to the special page created specifically for Twitter followers. You can give them a free gift or downloadable product to thank them for visiting. Whatever you do, try not to bombard fellow Twitter users with ads and sales pitches. Use these venues to build up a network of trusted friends and business partners. It’s a great way to interact with like-minded people, while increasing your website traffic and building your list. Perry Belcher created a short video explaining how to use Social Media Marketing for your online business.
9. Clothing & Brand Creation
This method is for the creative types, who enjoy graphic design and the creation of stunning graphics. If you are not that creative or familiar with creating graphics, then you could pay someone to create one for you. Once you do that, you can join Cafepress for free, open up a shop and upload your graphic. You can then choose which types of shirts and other products that you want sold with that graphic on, and set the prices. Anything above the set Cafepress base price, will be your profit – per shirt or item that is sold. If you have a niche website, you can take advantage of that and create a graphic, sell some items that relate directly to the niche product. This can create a nice income stream, especially if the topic of your clothing is popular or controversial.
10. Mailing Lists & E-Mail Marketing
E-mail marketing encompasses tactics which are used to correspond with possible clients and website visitors. Traffic your website receives from social networks and all other venues, ideally will join your e-mail list. Some Internet Marketers use e-mail marketing as their main method to profiting online. It is highly profitable if you are tactful and do not spam people. E-mail marketing is also an integral part of all of the other money-making methods listed above. It goes hand-in-hand with the other marketing techniques. In very basic terms, when targeted website traffic visits your website, you do not want them to read a little post and then leave (and never return). You want to direct them to join your “list.” You may offer them a free gift and in return they fill out their e-mail address and their details are automatically stored in your autoresponder e-mail management software. In the future, you can send out mass mailings to your list if you have some more free information or a product that you want to tell them about (either yours or an affiliate product promotion). This can be very profitable.
Personally, I use Send Studio’s E-Mail Marketer software to manage my list. There are no monthly fees and there are a lot of great features. With a high-quality list, it’s possible to send out one e-mail and make thousands of dollars from that single message. One important tip I have is this: create a short series of high-quality useful messages to send out that relate to your website. Do not try to sell the reader anything at all in the first 5 messages. If your readers are loyal and enjoyed what you provided, they are more likely to buy from you in the future if you promote a product to them. I’ve seen Internet Marketers take e-mail marketing too far by sending out spammy-type e-mails every single day trying to make a few quick bucks. Those tactics will annoy your readers and they will unsubscribe – it will also damage your reputation and word spreads fast online. So, if used tactfully, e-mail marketing is highly profitable.
If you found this list useful, and you want to know how to implement some or all of the techniques yourself so you can make money online, take a look at Honest Riches. Honest Riches is my comprehensive Internet Marketing guide for people who want to make money online, with Honest Methods. All topics above are covered in depth, with visual tutorials and step-by-step guidance. Over 35,000 copies have been sold. It’s available in e-book format or in paperback here.
26 Responses to “Top 10 Ways to Make Money Online”
Leave a Reply
Garry
17. Jul, 2009
Great post Holly . . . glad to see you back!
Holly
18. Jul, 2009
Thanks Garry!
Great to see you on here!
Anna
18. Jul, 2009
Excellent synopsis! Good for new marketers to be able to look at things so granularly and see what the possibilities are – and probably good for seasoned veterans as well. I think its important to know what strategy you are working on (or should be working on) and make sure you focus on that particular strategy till you bring it through to success.
Holly
18. Jul, 2009
Thanks Anna!
I’m hoping it will help some new marketers out there who may stumble upon this site.
Davin-The Viral Sanctuary
18. Jul, 2009
Hi Holly, that’s a great list outlining ways to be profiting online. I think I’m going to pick up that David Risley book it looks great. I’m having a tough time keeping up with my blogging lately…really trying to get a few other things done. Hopefully I can get back to it at a better pace soon!
Thanx Holly…great post..
Oh, and by the way…for the readers visiting here. I highly suggest you do pick up Holly’s Honest Riches guide. It’s exactly how many of us readers here started online ourselves…you won’t find a better book for getting started anywhere. Honest Riches has it’s great reputation for a reason!
Holly
18. Jul, 2009
Well thank you Davin!!! That is very nice of you.
I agree that it can be tough to keep up with blogging – but totally necessary if you want to be a pro blogger. David’s free guide is awesome Davin – and I’m sure his book is too. I have been working on following his suggestions in the free guide first – before buying any of his stuff. I look fwd to buying his books too though – he has really mastered the art of blogging and marketing.
Dave
18. Jul, 2009
Good post Holly… succinct and no BS… I love seeing your blog post feeds come into my mailbox!
I have to agree with Davin… Honest Riches is pretty much da bomb diggity.
In the 2+ years since I was bitten by the IM bug, I have spent money on a LOT of educational materials… for folks just getting started in Internet Marketing it is VERY frustrating to buy educational products, that take you part of the way, and then drop you off right before the meat of the “HOW TO” is delivered.
If I had Honest Riches 2 years ago? It would have saved my $2000 to $3000 dollars!
Thanks again for all the integrity and love and care for others that you poured into that book Holly!
Hope you and the J man are keeping COOL!
Dave
Irish Tom
18. Jul, 2009
Excellent report Holly
This all makes a lot of sense and some I was not familiar with, but now I will utilise it.
I have to also agree, my “Honest Holly IM Bible” is the best purchase I have made to date on the internet. It is a no brainer to follow and is a must for both newbies and experienced IM’s.
I have recently discovered a few very interesting new programs which, if they work, will be very valuable to our members, but I want to test them first. I am always a little sceptical with new stuff untill it is properly tested. As soon as I am satisfied with the results, I will let you guys know.
I am also pleased Holly, you are now activly promoting your Honest Riches..this is a fantastic book and deserves to be promoted. Everyone who got it so far has benefited greatly from it.
To be honest, when I bought it, it was more or less for only 3 chapters, but once I got it and I printed it off, I find every section of great value and I refer to it almost daily.
Thanks again for a great post and also for sharing your trip with us. Sorry you missed the triple digets down in our neck of the woods..LOL..
Have a great weekend
Tom
Holly
18. Jul, 2009
Thank you Tom! I appreciate the comment and it is about time I take a more active role in promoting my book! So thank you! It’s always good to see you on here. I really look forward to hearing how your other projects are going and how you like the things you are testing out now. Anything honest, real and effective at helping us work online is great to know about. You have a great weekend too Tom!
Klaus at TechPatio
18. Jul, 2009
Thanks for posting this. I never knew that #9 was possible. Do people really use that, I mean, sell own-designed clothing through their website that way? I imagine having a Honest Holly t-shirt would be kinda cool
Holly
18. Jul, 2009
Thanks Klaus! Actually at http://www.shoemoney.com Jeremy sells his tshirts (he handles the printing rather than cafepress) – and then when a user buys it and takes a picture with it on – he uploads their photo to his site and the person ends up gaining exposure (if they have a website they are linked to) that way! Pretty creative ways to earn money online! I’ll see if I can create some cool looking HH shirts!
Bill Vlasak
19. Jul, 2009
A few years back I started a blog on a blog server similar to Blogger and the free Word Press blog site,and also joined a number of their groups.Having little IM experience at the time I joined groups just to gain traffic but had no regard for matching relative niches.Needless to say , my inbox was inundated with bloggers from the far east and Australia trying to promote all kinds of fashion wares.The point being that T-shirt sales have been around the internet since it started and I sold ‘nada’ .
Failure can be disheartening and also a good teacher.Hopefully I am a bit wiser now and make use of advice given by honest marketers like Holly Mann,David Ogden,David Risley and Matt Garrett along with Sylvie and Michel Fortin to name some of the best.There are many honest marketers sharing their wisdom and experience but how do we know whom to categorize as such ?
Holly and the Davinators started The Honest Marketing Movement for that purpose and I for one would love to see increased membership with very strict rules so that we all know where to turn for IM help with confidence..
All of you commenting above for this post know the truths in those’ top 10 ways to make money on the internet’ and in “Honest Riches” .Promote this blog and The Honest Marketing Movement.The RSS feed for this blog is on my blog.
Scarlet
25. Jul, 2009
Hi Holly,
I’m amazed at your story. You’re a strong woman. You had a motive, and that was to provide a better future for your child. Job well done, you have succeeded. I wanted to ask a question though. How hard was it to start affiliate marketing for you? I have honest Riches, the first book and have read it. How did you promote your affiliate links? Did you create your own website or blog? How did you begin not knowing what to do?
Holly
27. Jul, 2009
Hi Scarlet – if you bought the older version of HR – you can email me and I can send you the newer version. It may help you and give you a lot more ideas about what to move forward with. When I started affiliate marketing, I did create a website and wrote articles which gained a high ranking in the search engines for related terms. I then promoted products that I thought were useful at the time and started getting a lot of sales or affiliate commissions that way. I think the reason why it worked is because the site gained a high ranking in google for competitive terms. I did a lot of on-site search engine optimization (which can be done easily if you have WordPress and the All-In-One SEO plugin installed) – I explain and teach all of this in depth in Honest Riches – the newest version that is out. I hope this helps!
Shai
27. Jul, 2009
Hi Holly and everyone,
I am very happy to see you back Holly with a lot of great information. I used to be a big affiliate of yours on Clickbank when your first ebook came out.
I just wanted to point out about #9 on your list using cafepress.
We opened a cafepress store, http://www.cafepress.com/bigtimewireless , with our company logo and started offering t-shirts and other items for free to customers who bought a cell phone from us.
We can tell you that we got a lot of repeat customers. They loved that they got personal attention when they received a package with their name on it and it was a t-shirt or sports bottle. We had only 2 actual sales from cafepress of loyal customers, but we decided to open it more as a promotional tool than a sales tool.
Also, just wanted to mention that we use Elance for several tasks that need to be done quickly or that are very time-consuming. When you talk about blogging and other issues, it may be a good idea for some people to find a provider on Elance. Some providers are very affordable and provide excellent services. I can recommend a few if needed.
Wish you all the best of luck. And thank you again Holly for all your work and advice in the past few years.
Holly
27. Jul, 2009
Thank YOU Shai! I’m happy to be on here blogging regularly! I really enjoy it. That’s great you use Cafepress and Elance. Your Cafepress store looks great. I really like your logo/design.
Thank you also for offering additional info for people who need a freelancer. I also know of a great graphic designer (freelancer) if anyone needs that. 
Sudeep
29. Jul, 2009
Hey Holly ,
just dropped at your site from Zen Habits .. I like this article a lot … but well .. affiliate marketing has never interested me and neither got good earnings from them .. But thanks for explaining different other ways of making money online ..
Holly
29. Jul, 2009
No problem Sudeep. Thank YOU for stopping by here. I also really liked the Zen Habits article – Leo’s stuff is incredible. His writing is really helpful and to the point. Well thanks again for visiting and maybe stop by again? Take care!
Personality Marketing
30. Jul, 2009
Classic Holly! You are pumping out the goodies nowdays! Glad to see it!
I need to get that paperback! Yesssssssssssssss.
Is it in the same layout as the ebook? Landscape style?
gotta grab it!
Holly
30. Jul, 2009
Thank you very much JK! I was inspired to add more quality content after reading David Risley’s free guide on blogging. And about the paperback – I’d like to send you a copy.
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Nigel
25. Aug, 2009
Hi Holly – you say you have a new version of Honest Riches out. I purchased a copy about three years ago – liked it a lot. Was that old or new?
Thanks for all your contributions.
Holly
14. Jan, 2010
Hi Nigel – sorry for not replying sooner – I do have a new version and if you have any proof of purchase, I can send you the newest one – just email me at replytoholly (at) gmail (dot) com..
Michael
05. Nov, 2009
I like your idea of generating revenue by buying existing websites. It seems to be such an overlooked opportunity to make money online. The biggest advantage to me is your buying a website with traffic and revenue, so you’re ready to go. Smart idea.
Holly
14. Jan, 2010
Thanks Michael – it is a great way to profit. Some people do this all the time…like house flipping..they call it site flipping.