• Affiliate Marketing
You probably already know affiliate marketing as it’s one of the most “veteran” online moneymakers out there.
In a nutshell, here’s how it works:
- You set up a website or blog or social media presence or email newsletter or whatever. Basically, you can use one of these or a combination… however you want to get your marketing message out there.
- You pick a hot affiliate niche market — one with many potential customers. Look at trends and what’s hot on sites like Amazon, for example.
- You provide useful content as well as marketing messages aimed at your prospects.
- When you promote products, you don’t sell your own. Instead, you become an affiliate and market the products of others. When customers on your site click on a link to buy, they are taken to your affiliate partner’s site to complete the transaction. You get a commission for every completed sale. You don’t have to worry about shipping or customer service!
The problem with affiliate marketing, like many other home business options, are the so-called gurus and get-rich-quick programs that suggest affiliate marketing can be done fast and with little effort. Odds are you've read claims of affiliate marketing programs that say you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a month doing almost nothing ("Three clicks to rich!"). Or, they suggest you can set up your affiliate site, and then forget it, except to check your bank deposits.
The reality in affiliate marketing is much the same reality in other work-at-home ventures; there are a few who are filthy rich, a good number who are successful enough to meet their goals, and a ton who aren't making anything. So, the question isn't really whether or not affiliate marketing is a viable income option (it is), but whether or not you can make affiliate marketing work for you.
Only you can decide that. But to help, here are some tips.
• Selling on E-Business platforms
One of the quickest ways to get started selling online is to leverage the power of “third party” sites. E-commerce giants like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy are powerful sales and marketing platforms with a built-in prospect base. Millions of people already visit these sites to shop. And they are ready to buy — that’s why they visited the site, after all.
On these sites, they make it easy to set up your own “shop” where customers can browse your products on offer — no need for you to set up your own website or anything. And you’ll find a built-in search feature so that interested prospects will find your particular online storefront.
Plus, you use their shopping cart. In short, you avoid much of the expense and hassle of setting up an “independent” e-commerce website.
And, with Amazon, you can even have them fulfil your orders. No fuss, no muss. Amazon says there are more than two million sellers on their site, representing 40 percent of all sales. So you’ll be in good company.
With eBay, the procedure is very similar. You simply first become an eBay seller. Stay in good standing and make sure you’re PayPal verified. Then you can sign up for your store. Again, here you take advantage of eBay’s reputation, reach, and sales and marketing infrastructure to sell your own products.
Etsy is focused on handcrafted and unique items. It has 1.5 million sellers around the world. Like Amazon and eBay you can set up your own online shop on the site.
All of these sites, as well as other third party sites out there, really are a very easy way to get started selling online, although you do have to pay fees to the provider.
A few pro tips: use clear, high-quality photos of your products; keep your product descriptions detailed and specific: and look at what your competitors charge to help determine pricing.
Selling via an online marketplace and your own site
Or, like many business owners, you could do both. That is, have a standalone ecommerce site and sell on Amazon, eBay or Etsy (or another marketplace).
"I think it's smart for any new online seller to start off on marketplaces to learn the business and get your feet wet," says Kawula. "Afterwards I strongly believe you need to create your own website."
"When we first started, we really didn't have any experience with building a website so we took a shortcut and set up an Etsy shop," says Chai. "This allowed us to generate sales and income via Etsy while we simultaneously worked on building our site," she explains. "Now, we see both platforms as playing an equally integral role: The Fleet site is home base for our loyal customers to receive updates, browse new items and take advantage of sales and promotions while the Etsy shop acquires fresh buyers that hopefully are eventually converted into Fleet site users for future orders."
The bottom line: "Having your own ecommerce site allows you to have more control over your brand, products, pricing and promotions," says Vosika. But "at the end of the day, it's important to be visible wherever your customer is likely to look for your product, so I see all these channels as complimentary."
• Blogging
Yes, good old blogging is still chugging along in 2017. By providing valuable content on a regular basis you attract like-minded prospects who are interested in information and products related to your niche. They want to keep reading to find out more and buy.
These are folks primed to buy the products you offer up either through ads, affiliate links in blog posts, or whatever. Why? Because you’ve been providing useful free content. They come to know, like, and trust you. And that’s just exactly who you want to be reading your blog and seeing your marketing messages too.
But, importantly, you also make your website, your online storefront, very attractive in the eyes of Google when you frequently and consistently add useful information in the forms articles, video, and more. That means you appear higher in the search engine rankings (most people don’t go beyond the first page). And that means more people — prospective buyers — make it to your site.
One thing to keep in mind with a blog: make sure you focus on a specific niche and stick with it. That will make it easier for you to create content, for the search engines to find and rank your site, and for your prospects to stay loyal.
Here is how to make money from a blog: - Set up your blog
- Start creating useful content
- Get off your blog and start finding readers
- Build engagement with the readers that come
- Start making money from the readership you have through one or more of a variety of income streams
Sounds easy doesn’t it! On some levels the process is simple – but you need to know up front that there’s a lot to each step and below I’m going to give you some pointers on each including some further reading.
Here’s how to make money from a blog. - Start a Blog
In order to make money blogging you’re going to need to have a blog. While this is pretty obvious it is also a stumbling block for many PreBloggers who come to the idea of blogging with little or no technical background.
If that’s you – don’t worry! It was my story too and most bloggers start out feeling a little overwhelmed by the process of starting their blog. - Start Creating Useful Content
A blog is not a blog without content so once you’ve set your blog up you need to focus your attention upon creating useful content. What you choose to create will depend a little on the topic that you choose to write about (on that note, most successful bloggers have some focus to their blogging whether that be a niche or a demographic that they write for).
The key with creating content is to make it as useful as possible. Focus upon creating content that changes people’s lives in some way will be the type of content that people will value the most and it will help people to feel like they know, like and trust you – which is really important if you later want to make money from your blog.
Further Reading on creating content: - Get off your blog and start finding readers
As you create the most useful content that you possibly can it is easy to get very insular with your focus and spend most of your time looking at building your blog. Many bloggers have a ‘build it and they will come mentality’ with their blogging but this is a bit of a trap.
If you want to make money from your blog you need to not only focus upon building a great blog but it is also necessary to get off your blog and to start promoting it.
There are many ways to experiment with growing your blog’s audience that I’ve written in previous blog posts and talked about in podcasts (I’ll share some further reading and listening below) but it is important to enter into all these strategies remembering that you should not just be looking for ‘traffic’ but ‘readers’.
Start by thinking carefully about the type of reader you’d like to have read your blog. You might like to create an avatar of that reader (sometimes called a reader persona or profile) to help you work out who you’re trying to attract.
Once you know who you’re hoping to have read your blog ask yourself where that type of person might already be gathering online. Begin to list where they might be gathering:
• Are they reading certain blogs? List the top 3
• Are they participating in certain forums? List the top 3
• Are they listening to podcasts? List the top 3
• Are they engaging on certain social networks? List the top 3
• Which accounts are they following on each of these social networks? List the top 3
Each of these places that you reader might already be gathering has opportunities to develop a presence whether that be by leaving good comments, offering to create guest posts or simply by being helpful and answering questions.
With this list of blogs, focus, podcasts, social media accounts in hand you will have some good spots to begin to hang out and create value.
The key is to build a presence, to add value, to foster relationships – not to engage in spammy practices. - Build engagement with the readers that come
With sustained focus upon creating great content and finding readers for your blog you’ll begin to notice people visiting your blog and engaging with your content.
At this point you need to switch your focus to engaging with those readers and building community.
Respond to comments, reach out to those readers personally and do everything that you can to keep them coming back again and again by building a ‘sticky blog’.
Look after the readers you already have well and you’ll find they spread the word of your blog for you and help make your blog even more widely read.
Having an engaged reader is also much easier to make money from. - Start making money from the readership you have through one or more of a variety of income streams
OK – the first four steps of starting a blog, creating content, finding readers and building engagement with those readers are important foundations that you really do need to get in place before you’ll be able to build long term income for your blog.
There’s no avoiding that what we’ve covered is a lot of work but if you do it well you’ll be setting yourself up well and giving yourself every chance of being able to make money from your blog.
With these foundations in place you’re now ready to start attempting to make money from your blog but you do need to be aware that just because you have set up your blog, have content and have engaged readers that the money won’t just automatically flow.
It takes continued work and experimentation to make money from your blog.
I’ve written many articles here on ProBlogger on the topic of making money blogging and will link to some suggested further reading on the topic below but let me share a few introductory words on the topic first.
Just Check out : https://problogger.com/make-money-blogging/
• Niche E-commerce
As a startup internet entrepreneur, you work alone most likely. At least in the beginning. And that means you won’t be competing directly with the titans of e-commerce like Amazon or the online outlets of major retailers like Walmart.
You don’t have the start-up capital, warehouse space, or logistics system to set up an online store with thousands of different products anyway.
That’s why, as a solopreneur one of the best ways to succeed is to narrow your focus. In other words, you have to find your specific niche. This way you can focus your marketing, your web content… everything on that one subject. You become a go-to expert, you appear high in the search engine rankings for that topic… it’s win-win all around.
In the ideal world, this niche will match up with one of your personal interests so you can take advantage of your expertise and do work you truly enjoy.
But the most important factor is that there is a market for products in that niche. For example, you might be really into 16th century French poetry. But not most people.
So you need to figure out those hot trends and markets that are current right now.
Weight loss products are always big. So are natural health cures, supplements, herbs, etc. There are many markets out there. Be sure to pay attention to the news, your social media feeds, articles in newspapers and magazines, and the best-selling items on Amazon and eBay to figure out what markets you might try entering in.
• Your Own YouTube Channel
The top “YouTubers” can make millions each year. Take PewDiePie who’s made more than $15 million in the last year filming himself playing video games among other things. But you don’t need millions of views to make money on YouTube.
Some ideas for valuable videos: how-tos, unboxing (where you open a product for your viewers), reviews, travel, music, comedy… the list goes on. There are so many niches that the millions of people who visit YouTube every day are into.
So how do you make money with YouTube?
- Set up your YouTube channel. This is where your videos will live.
- Upload videos consistently. Keep a schedule so you can build an audience. Be sure to describe the content specifically in your video description. Make sure your videos are of good quality and contain good content your audience will enjoy. That doesn’t mean you need a fancy camera — a smartphone will do at the beginning.
- Put the word out on Twitter, Facebook, to your email marketing list, and beyond. You can even share the videos on social media or embed them in your blog or website. You want to build up those views.
- Be sure to respond to comments from viewers. Stay engaged to create fans.
- Monetize by allowing YouTube to include ads on your videos. When viewers click on an ad, you get paid (you split that with Google). The more views = more revenue for you.
• Selling Ebooks
The internet has blown apart the traditional publishing world. Along with every other type of information, this medium has revolutionized the distribution and selling of books. These days ebooks, electronic books, are where it’s at.
They can be purchased online and then instantly downloaded to a computer, tablet, or ebook reader. Ebooks in just about every genre sell in the millions each year. And ebooks represent about 20% of all book sales in the United States.
The best part is you don’t have to be a big name publisher with deep pockets to get in on this action. As a solo internet entrepreneur, you can sell ebooks directly from your own website as well.
You can sell your own words or sell a public domain work. Ebooks can be novels, nonfiction works, how-to guides, collections of blog posts or essays… the sky’s the limit really.
Once it’s ready, you simply upload it to your website or seller account on Amazon and start promoting it. The search feature in Amazon will help. But you also want to hype the book on your social media, to your email list, on your blog and website… all with a link to buy the book on Amazon through Kindle Direct Publishing.
You have the potential to make quite a lot of money. Take Mark Dawson, who self-published his crime thriller series on Amazon, and is now making in the millions each year.
• Develop Apps
Smartphones…everybody’s got one these days, whether it’s iPhone or Android. Tablets are popular, too. What do people use them for? It’s all about the apps. Social media, games, useful tools, fun stuff.
You can get in on the action. Of course, you’re not going to be competing with the likes of Pandora and Pinterest. But you can come up with a niche idea that addresses a need that people have and create an app that meets that need. It could be a tip calculator, better photo storage, a list — with illustrations — of yoga poses, podcast downloader and organizer… the list goes on.
You don’t need to be a programmer. You’re the idea person, and you hire people to create it. With the availability of programmers available for very cheap rates that you can hire on sites like Upwork, it’s not a problem. Of course, the exact amount you’ll pay your developers depends on the complexity of the app.
One thing. You should create your app so that it works on both Android smartphones and Apple iPhones. That way you maximize your customer base.
Some parts have been taken from diffrent Bloggs And Websites.
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