Making Money Using Clickbank – Where Do I Start?

Clickbank is probably one of the best known affiliate programs online. But you’ve signed up with them & now you don’t really understand the site or know what to do to start making money. (If you haven’t yet joined their affiliate program, you can by clicking here)


Your first thought is maybe to promote as many products as you can, more products equals more chance of profit right? As I mentioned in a previous post, Wrong!


Before we get into the promoting products side of it, let’s just look at Clickbank & see what everything means.







Looking at the image above, we have signed in & clicked on the “Marketplace” tab at the top of the page. This then brings up a list of all the niche categories. if we click on one of those it will then bring up a list of sub-categories relevant to that niche (see image below)








For this example I am clicking on “Mens Health” I am then going to click on the advanced search option at the top of the screen….






By clicking advanced search, it will enable us to narrow down our search so we can find the best products for us to promote.


Take a look at the screenshot below. You will see that I have ticked some options for our search.






Let me explain why I have selected to search around these parameters:


“Gravity” – If you searched google on the term Clickbank Gravity, you will find a lot of views, explanations & opinions on it, everyone being different.


It’s not unusual for a product on clickbank to show a gravity of 161.10, this means that 161 affiliates have sold at least ONE in the last month BUT one could mean one affiliate has sold 1000 units.


So it’s a very unclear piece of information. I always choose a gravity of under 100. But I would eliminate a product that showed a really LOW gravity say 12 when we go through the results.


The other two parameters I have ticked & altered are the intial sale in $ & the average sale in $. They are just averages I like to use.






The last parameter I tick is “Vendor has affiliate tool page available” that means that we are able to get Banners, pre-written emails, sometimes tweets all ready for us to use on our website or email to our email list (if we have one)


Depending on how you intend to promote the product, you may not need affiliate tools, but I want to be able to get banners/ads so I always choose this one.


Right, so let’s see what products our search returns.


Majority of results appear to be selling Male Enlargement Products (it’s now I wish I’d chosen a different niche as an example) But we shall carry on regardless, we’re all adults here right?





This was the top result (I chose to sort results by gravity high to low) & you will see we have gravity of 57.65, an average sale of $36.61 & it shows an average rebill of $36.53 so this means that we have the chance of a recurring income if the customers continues to subscribe (not all products offer a rebill option)


I have highlighted some text under the product description which reads pebible.com/affiliates. This is exactly what we are looking for, this is the page where we get our banners etc. (our affiliate tools)


If we go to that page now……






I have scrolled right down to the bottom, that is usually where you will need to go if you can’t see the tools on the page. We need to click on “Or Skip Registration” (see arrows) you can fill in the info in the box above if you like, but that’s usually just a way of them getting your email address so you go on their mailing list.


By clicking there we are greeted with our tools page & as you scroll down you will see Banners, Email Swipes there are even three promotional videos you can use. It all depends how you wish to promote this particular product.


Now the MOST important thing is your “Affiliate Link” & you will find it on the tools page (see below)






Without this link you wont be getting any commission AND where it says CLICKBANK ID within that link (URL) you MUST REMEMBER to insert YOUR Clickbank ID. So if your ID (this is the username you chose when you first signed up to Clickbank) was ABC123, you affiliate link would be ” http://ABC123.pebible.hop.clickbank.net ” Without your code inserted Clickbank will not know whose link got the sale you see.


How you promote your product is totally upto you & you will find subjects like that in a variety of posts on my website. The banners can sit on your website Or you can place them on other peoples websites (see post)


On all Affiliate Tool pages you will see HTML code under the supplied banners, you simply paste this code onto your website NOT FORGETTING TO INSERT YOUR CLICKBANK ID !


OR you could right click on the banner, “save image as” & then use the image that way. When you use it on your site or use it as an advert on someone elses, just link it to your affiliate code URL.


I hope this explains the basic outline of Clickbank for you & how you can alter the search & find the products & codes you need.


As always feel free to leave comments below & let everyone else know how you are getting on.

10 Steps to a Successful Affiliate Marketing Strategy

The landscape for affiliate marketers has changed significantly over the past year.

From tighter legislation for affiliates, to Google cracking down on thin affiliate content, and a general increase in competition on the web, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for affiliate marketers to get ahead in the game.

Despite this, many smart individuals and companies continue to generate millions by staying one step ahead of the rest.

So, what is it that affiliate marketers need to do to succeed in 2015 and beyond?
1. Go one inch wide and one mile deep

Many first-time affiliate marketers make the mistake of going one mile wide and one inch deep: trying to dominate forty niches in their first few years.

When you hear about friends making millions from Clickbank products, and marketing products in emerging niches, it can be tough to stay focused.

The price for losing focus, though, is having a portfolio of 21 websites in random niches all with a pitiful domain authority generating next to nothing in sales.

By all means, experiment with different niches once you’ve achieved a level of success you’re happy with on your first website, but to begin with go one inch wide and a mile deep.
2. Create content that your competition can’t compete with

One of the biggest challenges facing affiliate marketers right now is the need to prove their value as middlemen in the value chain.

One of the biggest advantages affiliates have over established brands, and one of the greatest opportunities to add value, is the ability to be agile and act quickly with content marketing.

While brands spend months approving their content strategy and holding fruitless meetings, affiliates can be creating content of such a high standard, that competitors simply won’t have the resources to compete with, and Google would be foolish not to drive traffic to.

This is the strategy that we’ve adopted for most of our affiliate marketing sites at Venture Harbour.

Take Qosy for example. Every 4-6 weeks, Qosy publishes a 3,000 – 8,000 word guide educating readers on tough buying decisions, such as how to choose the best scotch or an engagement ring. While not all of these posts contain affiliate links, affiliate links are often added if a site we’d be recommending anyway has an affiliate program.



It’d be hard for Google to argue with this content not adding value. After all, some of the guides have received close to 10,000 shares and have been used by the brands themselves to educate their own customers. Generally speaking, each guide takes about 40-50 hours to produce, and is benchmarked to beat the best existing piece of content on the topic in virtually every aspect (from design and share-ability, to page speed and on-page SEO).

Over the next year I think we’ll see more and more affiliates adopt this kind of strategy.
3. Build a brand that adds value to the consumer

It’s no surprise that Google’s brand-bias is strengthening. For many affiliates, this is quite a concern, as affiliates haven’t traditionally had to concern themselves with building a strong brand.



When you look at the leading sites in insurance, travel, property, personal finance, and homeware, it’s interesting to note that many of these sites are affiliate sites. They’re also strong brands.

Moneysupermarket, Agoda, Houzz, Which, LastMinute.com, and Compare.com are all ultra-successful affiliate sites due to the strength of their brands, their editorial integrity, and the value they offer consumers.



Over time, affiliate marketers will find it increasingly difficult to succeed without a brand that user’s trust, so consider what you’re doing to develop the brand of your affiliate website.
4. Build a foundation of recurring affiliate revenue

With affiliate marketing, there is no assurance that your current strategy will work in a month’s time. Whether it’s due to Google updating their ranking algorithm, your favourite affiliate program shutting down, or media buying costs increasing, you’d be wise to mitigate against the possibility of major changes.

There are two very effective ways to do this: diversification and by building your recurring revenue.

I’ll talk about traffic diversification in a moment, but let’s first talk about recurring revenue.

Most affiliate marketers focus on one-time payouts, which is generally smart as, due to inflation and the ability to earn interest, $100 today is worth more than $10 per month over 10 months.

The problem is that one-time payouts don’t protect you against major changes in your strategy. That’s why I recommend building up a portion of your affiliate revenue in recurring revenue.

Obviously, the feasibility of this approach depends on your niche and what products are available to promote. If the option is available, I’d highly recommend building a foundation of recurring affiliate income so that you peace of mind that no matter what happens you still receive a certain amount per month for the foreseeable future.
5. Don’t rely on a single traffic source

In February 2011, many successful affiliate woke up to find that they’re probably going to go out of business in a matter of weeks or months, no thanks to Google releasing the initial panda update.

The same thing happened again when Google launched the Penguin update in April 2012.

It’s happening to brands who’ve built up organic Facebook Page audiences, and it’s going to happen time and time again across many third-party platforms whose business model revolves around selling eyeballs.

Some of the people hit by these updates were good friends and clients, which is why I’ve been preaching about diversification of traffic ever since.

Ideally, you should own your audience – not rent it. If you absolutely have to rent it, rent it from multiple sources.
6. Be prepared for mobile

In November 2014, mobile accounted for 46% of all affiliate clicks and 26% of all affiliate retail sales. How does this affect the individual affiliate?

For one, if you’re directing traffic to sites that aren’t mobile friendly, you’re probably losing a lot of potential commissions.

Google have also started to send some rather blatant nudges to webmasters that their websites should be mobile friendly. In November, they launched a mobile-friendliness checker and began experimenting with displaying whether a page is mobile-friendly or not in search results.



So, having a mobile-friendly site could become a good strategy for outranking your non-mobile friendly competitors in the search results.

Another consideration is that with more people using and purchasing from mobile devices, certain niches, products, and search criteria will rise in popularity, and can be capitalised on by forward-thinking affiliates.

Needless to say, if you’re not prepared for mobile, you’re preparing to be left behind.
7. Get in front of breakout and seasonal trends

Affiliate marketers have been taking advantage of trends for a long time. Yet, new trends continue to breakout, creating hundreds of new weird and wonderful multi-million dollar niches every year.



So, how can you find out what trends are likely to emerge in 2015?

The first differentiation to make is between seasonal and breakout trends. Seasonal trends are recurring, and often predictable, peaks in popularity that you can prepare for in advance.

Google Trends is your best friend for identifying seasonal trends. While you can just type in a keyword to see how it’s search volume fluctuates throughout the year, you can also use the category functionality to find seasonal trends in specific industries.



Breakout trends are much harder to predict. From electronic cigarettes and online TV, to selfie sticks and cinnamon flavoured whisky, even the most experienced industry experts often have a hard time predicting as far as six months into the future of their industry.

Regardless, reading the predictions of experts in your industry is a good place to start. If you want to know what products might be worth promoting in the travel industry in 2015, for example, you might want to experiment with search queries like:



You could even try to predict which countries are about to increase in popularity, and begin promoting hotels, flights, and other products that might help people traveling to that area.



Finally, there are a lot of great websites like TrendWatching.com that can help you estimate where the World is heading. Ultimately, though, knowing what’s around the corner comes down to having an acute awareness of what’s being talked about and piquing people’s curiosity in your industry.
8. Promote products that raise your affiliate income by an order of magnitude

When I began affiliate marketing, I promoted products ranging from $0.10 commissions to $100 commissions. It soon became clear that, while having a large volume of low commission sales can create a solid foundation for your affiliate revenue, true growth comes from high commission sales.

My strategy for growing affiliate sites has always been to find products that add value to the site’s readers, and that also have the potential to increase the site’s revenue by an order of magnitude.

If you’re currently generating $1k per month, what products will get you to $10k? If you’re at $10k, what do you need to do to get to $100k?

The answer is usually quite simple: you have to add an extra zero onto the size of your commissions or the amount of traffic you send to publishers. More often than not, this requires a refocus on which products you promote.
9. Focus on topic targeting, not keyword targeting

Google’s attempt to reduce the SEO community’s focus on keyword targeting hasn’t exactly been subtle.

From removing keyword data in Google Analytics and exact-match keyword targeting in Google Adwords, to improving their understanding of similar terms, it’s becoming harder for digital marketers to target individual keywords.

While on the surface this may seem like bad news, it’s arguably a blessing in disguise as it encourages a shift towards topic-targeting, and a focus on capturing long tail traffic.



Instead of trying to rank your content for ‘best gardening tools’, you might instead focus on creating an in-depth piece of content on the topic of gardening tools that helped gardeners choose the right tools for their garden.

By taking this approach, it doesn’t matter whether you rank for ‘best gardening tools’. What matters is the aggregate amount of relevant long-tail traffic you receive to the content.
10. Experiment with unusual content formats for recommending products

A few years ago I heard the story of how an app developer tried to download the Amazon app to make a purchase from his phone, only to realise Amazon didn’t have an app.

He developed an unofficial Amazon app, which was effectively just an app that displayed their website in an iframe. Of course, every single product included his affiliate link – so he earned 5-8% of every sale bought through the app.

Because Amazon didn’t have an official app, his app became extremely popular, making him a very, very, rich man.

I wanted to end on this point to get your creative juices flowing. Most affiliate marketers do the same old thing in a different niche, when the biggest rewards are usually reserved for those doing the exact opposite.

In 2012, I created WhatIsMyComfortZone.com (a calculator that measures the size of a persons comfort zone). Essentially, it works by filling out a survey on what challenges you’d be willing to overcome, and then it spits out a breakdown of how your score compares with other users, along with a few recommendations.

If a user said they wanted to skydive, their results page would include a link to book a skydive. While I never expected to earn anything from these (what’s the likelihood of someone impulse booking a skydive?), I decided there was no harm in making these links affiliate links.

To my surprise, I checked my AffiliateWindow account after 12 months, and what do you know, a bunch of people did impulse buy a skydive, earning a $40 commission per sale.

While a few skydiving referrals hardly made me rich, these two stories will hopefully give you some ideas about alternative formats for affiliate marketing.

Imagine if, instead of writing another 1,000-word review on the top 10 products in your niche, you developed a calculator or a quiz that used a series of criteria to automatically redirect them to the product that’s best suited for them?

Above all else, 2015 is going to be a year where affiliates need to get creative, outthink the competition, and really prove their worth in the value chain.

What are you doing to make that happen?

Make Money Online: 100+ Tools and Resources

Making money online is a dream for many, but the simple fact is that it's often just as tough as making money offline. Due to requests, we've put together a list of the most popular money making methods today, many of them focused on blogging and peer production.


A word of caution: for the sake of completeness, we've included a small number of sites that have been criticized for their ethics. If it sounds too good to be true, it generally is. Commenters are welcome to share their experiences of the various sites.


Get Paid To Write








Weblogs, Inc. - Apply to blog for one of their ninety plus blogs or submit your own topic idea. They will pay you per post that you write and you must meet their minimum post requirements.


PayPerPost - Get paid as much as $500 or more a month writing articles and reviews of their sponsors on your blog.


Blogsvertise - Their advertisers pay you to mention and talk about their websites, products and services in your own blog.


Review Me - After your blog has been accepted in their network, they will pay you $20 to $200 per post that you write.


Smorty - Earn $6 to $100 dollars per post you write on your blog. Amount paid for each post depends on the overall popularity and page rank of your blog.


SponsoredReviews - Write reviews for their advertisers' products and services on your own blog. They charge a 35% transaction fee for their services.


LoudLaunch - Blog about the advertisers campaign releases that meet your interests. They pay once a month.


Blogitive - Get paid weekly via PayPal for posting stories that interest you.


BloggerWave - Select the advertiser opportunities that best suit your blog and write reviews on their products and services.


InBlogAds - Write about websites, products, services and companies on your blog and get paid for it.


BlogToProfit - Make $250 dollars or more by writing new posts on your blog.


Creative Weblogging - Write 7 to 10 posts per week for their network and they will pay you $225 per month.


WordFirm - Make money publishing books as a freelance writer from home.


451 Press - Write for a blog within their network and receive forty percent of all generated revenue.


Digital Journal - Network of bloggers that get paid to report on newsworthy articles through their blogs.


BlogBurner - Sign up for a free blog and get paid for writing new posts. Your commissions are generated through Adsense clicks.


Squidoo - Earn money by writing your new blog, or choose to donate your earnings to charity.


About.com - Become a paid guide writing articles for About.com. Compensation depends on the growth of your page views.


DayTipper - Earn $3 for every short tip you write and get published.


Helium - Earn a share of their advertising revenue by writing articles in their channels.


Dewitts Media - Get paid to write your own blog. This site requires you have a minimum page rank of 3 to sign up.


BOTW Media - Make money writing a blog for their blogging network.


CreamAid - Get paid to submit blog posts in their directory.


BlogFeast - Generate revenue from pre-installed Google Adsense ads when you blog in their network.


Mashable - Mashable hires freelancers and new staff, offering one of the largest platforms for tech bloggers.


Advertising Programs








Google Adsense - Most popular pay-per-click advertising provider. Make anywhere from $0.01 to $5.00 plus per click on site relevant ads.


Text-Link-Ads - Approve or deny the advertiser links that appear on your site. They pay you 50% of the sale price for each text link sold on your website.


BlogAds - The average blogger makes anywhere from $50 to $5000 dollars a month selling blog ads. To participate in this program you will need to get sponsored by someone in their network.


LinkWorth - Here you will find eleven different options to fit your advertising needs. Choose from text based advertisements, sponsored ads and paid blog reviews to name a few.


CrispAds - Access to over six thousand advertisers in their pay-per-click program. You choose the advertisers that suit you best.


Chitika - Offers six types of advertising to fit your needs.


AzoogleAds - Delivers targeted advertisers to their network of publishers to bring you the most profitable solutions.


Vibrant Media - Offers in-text contextual based advertisements.


MediaFed - Place advertisements in your blog's RSS feed to generate additional revenue.


Qumana - Embeds ads directly into your posts. Ads are generated from keywords that you select. Not particularly popular with readers.


PeakClick - Austria based pay-per-click provider. Provides automatic insertion of site targeted ads.


DoubleClick - Offers a full suite of products for publishers that enable you to forecast, sell inventory, serve ads and analyze campaigns online and through other digital channels.


Tribal Fusion - They offer reliable payments, free ad-serving technology, a dedicated account manager and up-to-date, real-time reporting, with a 55% payout. Must go through an approval process.


AdBrite - Approve or reject any ads purchased for your sites. Also gives you the ability to sell ads direct with "Your Ad Here" links.


ThankYouPages - Shows ads based on demographics and relevancy. Majority of traffic must originate from U.S.


Clicksor - Inline text link advertising, underlines words directly in your posts making them clickable advertisements. Once more, we'd say that inline ads are not popular with regular blog readers.


TargetPoint - Contextually and search targeted pay-per-click ads.


IndustryBrains - Place relevant contextual text listings and graphical ads on your site.


BloggingAds - Post one-time ads on your site. Pays via PayPal.


BulletAds - Performance based online advertising network.


AdsMarket - Match your traffic to handpicked advertisers with top-converting products and services.


ROIRocket - Targeted campaigns specific to your marketing needs.


AdKnowledge - Offers complete outsourcing of your advertising management. Runs ads in websites, email and search engine inventory.


Yes Advertising - Payouts for running ads from their sponsors. Also offers a referral program that pays 20% of the referred webmasters earnings.


RevenuePilot - Offers pay-for-performance and pay-per-click advertising for your sites.


SearchFeed - Integrates paid advertisements into your site's search feature.


Bidvertiser - Display text ads on your site and advertisers bid for placement.


Pheedo - Monetize your RSS feeds with this program.


ValueClick media - Generate revenue by displaying ads through banners, pop-unders and rich media. Be warned that pop-unders are unpopular these days.


OneMonkey - Another text based advertising program.


Yahoo Publisher Network - Use the internet giant, Yahoo, to display targeted ads on your site.


Q Ads - Monetize your site by placing ads anywhere you can add a picture.


Affiliate Networks and Programs








Amazon Associates - Link to Amazon's products and services and earn up to 10% of the sale price. Converts well for product-focused sites.


ClickBank - Over 10,000 products to promote with commissions as high as 75%.


Commission Junction - Promote the advertiser's products and services in exchange for a commission on leads or sales.


LinkShare - Pay-for-performance affiliate marketing network. Gives you the ability to use individual product links on your site and generate revenue from sales.


Affiliate Fuel - Serves as a middle man to bring publishers and advertisers together to promote products and services.


LinkConnector - Affiliate marketing network that offers a zero tolerance fraud policy to keep you safe while conducting business.


LeadPile - Affiliate network that allows you to generate and sell trade leads to the highest bidder.


Forex-Affiliate - Affiliate program that allows you to earn commissions from trading Forex (currency exchange) online.


incentAclick - CPA (cost-per-action) affiliate program that guarantees the fastest ROI in the industry.


AdPlosion - Earn revenue by selling leads, clicks and products from their advertisers. Also runs an incentive points program in addition to your commissions.


AffiliateFuture - Another affiliate program that pays you for generating leads, sales and clicks.


ClixGalore - Affiliate network consisting of 7500+ advertisers for you to choose from.


ThinkAction - Affiliate network that claims to have the top payouts and the possibility of earning over $100,000 dollars per month.


RocketProfit - Affiliate network, pays via check after your commissions reach $25 dollars.


CafePress - Earn affiliate commissions by selling your personally branded merchandise.


Avangate - Make money selling popular computer software titles through your site.


Paid Social Media Programs








Dada.net - Social site with a revenue sharing program that pays you for referring friends and driving traffic.


Jyve - Pays you to provide answers, advice and peer support to people in need of some help.


Cruxy - Specializes in social video, but serves as a venue to sell your digital media.


BitWine - Get paid to give advice and answer questions for people, on subjects of your interests and choice.


Ether - Make money answering questions for your peers over the phone. You set your rates and call availability.


UpBlogger - Social network site that pays you based on the amount of visits you receive to your uploaded content.


JustAnswer - Help others solve their problems and earn money for your knowledge.


MetaCafe - Upload your videos and earn money based on the number of views you receive.


ChaCha - Get paid to offer support to members of their community.


AssociatedContent - Earn money by uploading your videos, text, audio and images to their site. Earnings are determined by the exposure you receive from your content.


myLot - Pays you for posting, commenting and using their social network.


KnowBrainers - Another site that pays you to get involved with the community and answer questions. Optionally you can answer questions through the RSS feeds on your own blog.


Everything Else That Pays








Google User Research - Google Pays you money to participate in their user research studies online.


Microsoft Research Panel - Get paid from Microsoft for providing feedback on their products.


Amazon Mechanical Turk - Amazon pays you to complete simple tasks that their computers can't understand. Payments are a matter of cents.


eJury - Earn $5 to $10 dollars per verdict rendered as a mock juror for practice trials.


WorkingSOL - This company pays you to handle technical support for many large companies. You can work from home on the computer or by phone and decide what times you are available.


Appingo - Always looking for experienced copy editors and proof readers. Must submit a resume.


IntelliShop - Pays you to shop at stores in your area and write a review of your experience.


Mahalo Greenhouse - They pay $10 to $15 dollars per site you submit to their directory.


Focus Pointe Global - Get paid to join their focus groups and voice your opinion. Available to teens and adults.


Agloco - Sign up, download their toolbar and get paid to surf the internet. This site has been criticized as a "pyramid scheme", although the founders deny the allegation.


Arise - Make money providing phone, web and email support and sales for 40 plus companies in their network.


CraZoo - Earn money for starting new threads and posting in online forums.


Tutor.com - Get paid to tutor people online.


ForumBoosting.com - Make money posting in forums across the internet.


Share-A-Pic - Earn money by uploading and sharing your pictures on their website.


Opuzz Voice - Earn money by doing voice overs for their clients online.


SlashMySearch - Get paid to search the internet with their search engine.

Affiliate Marketing – Top Tips for Newbies!

Affiliate marketing’ seems to be an ever-increasingly used buzz-word. As a thriving and growing industry, being an affiliate is now accessible to everyone – from the full time internet marketing professional to the person wanting an additional part time income.

So what is this affiliate marketing malarkey all about? Well in the context of this article, I’m going to exclusively deal with online affiliates – that is, running a website to promote the products and services of another company so you can earn commission.

You’ve probably heard of, or used, some of the really big affiliates. Here are just a few of the most popular:

Moneysupermarket
GoCompare
MoneySavingExpert
Quidco
MyVoucherCodes
Kayak

These are big players making an absolute fortune every month. However, they have huge advertising and marketing budgets to match. My point is though, that affiliate sites are, for many of us, natural and usual parts of our online purchase flow.

How does affiliate marketing work?
Let’s consider a customer going online to buy a camera. They want a Panasonic camera so they hop on Google and search for ‘Panasonic cameras’. The first hit is the Panasonic site – they click through, browse the range and make a purchase:

Outcome: Customer buys product, manufacturer/retailer makes money.

Now let’s think about an alternative scenario. A customer wants to buy a digital camera but doesn’t know which one. They go on to Google and search for ‘digital camera comparison’. The first hit is for Which.co.uk so they click through and have a browse.

Once they’ve found one they are interested in purchasing, they can select ‘compare prices’ which shows the prices various online retailers are offering. There is a button saying ‘go to store’ next to each. The customer then clicks through and buys the camera.

Outcome: Customer buys product, affiliate site (Which) makes commission, retailer makes money (albeit slightly less due to paying commission).

You might be wondering why a company would pay commission that cuts into their profits. The reason is that they didn’t have to pay anything to market/advertise the product – the affiliate did that. It gives the company more ways of getting to their audience whilst effectively ‘out-sourcing’ the marketing cheaply. Win-win for the company and the affiliate, plus the customer is still happy.

Easy money?

If you could build a time machine (using a Delorean of course), you could go back 5, 10 years and make a fortune from affiliate marketing, very easily. Back in the ‘old days’ you could throw together a site, whack on some banners, and buy some heavily optimised links and you’d coin it. Those days are pretty much over I’m afraid!

Being an effective affiliate today that makes money isn’t easy. It takes knowledge, skill, flexibility and a lot of determination. If you’re someone who gives up easily on things then affiliate marketing isn’t for you!

Affiliate marketing requires a mixture of skills – including sales, marketing, SEO, consumer psychology, content writing, Content Management System knowledge, data analysis, negotiation and accounting. You also need to be passionate about learning, willing to be self-critical and love all things web.

I don’t say the above to put you off being an affiliate – being an affiliate can be financially rewarding and very satisfying. You just need to be dedicated to it and not expect to make your first million in the first month!

Without further ado then, here are my top tips for new affiliates:

1) Find A Niche

The first step of starting out as an affiliate is the most important one – deciding on which product/service you’re going to market! You can be an affiliate for almost anything these days, from cosmetics to cars.

It’s vital not to just jump in and choose a niche without giving it a lot of thought. Many markets are absolutely saturated and will require a huge amount of time and money to rank well in (online gaming and payday loans to name just two). Other niches may be new products that haven’t been tapped into yet and may provide easier pickings.

Remember this though – whatever market you want to get into, there will be others doing the same! Think carefully about what you can bring to the table in terms of content and value to your visitors.

2) Research

One of the mistakes I made in my main affiliate site was not doing enough research before I started building it. I assumed that because I knew loads about online poker, that I knew my target audience. I was wrong! Whilst I did a good job in terms of building content and SEO, I failed to do basic stuff like thorough keyword research.

The outcome was this – I ranked very highly for quite a few terms – however they had low search demand and were ones that don’t convert well. Fail!

Any new web project requires thorough research. I know some affiliates that will spend weeks, if not months, researching and planning before they’ve even installed a CMS. Think of it like redecorating a room; a decent paint-job will need decent preparation – sanding things down, washing walls, masking things up…boring stuff but essential for a good job.

So what should the research involve? For a start, keyword research is vital. This involves brainstorming what you think your most important terms are. You can then use tools such as the Google keyword tool to find out what people are actually searching for.

Don’t just think about the volume of searches though – you also need to think whether a given term will convert into a sale/click-through. Consider the following – ‘free poker’ has 301,000 (broad) matches on Google UK per month., whilst ‘high stakes poker’ has only 12,100. Whilst the latter has far, far less search demand, it shouldn’t take a genius to work out that it stands to make the affiliate more money in commission. The word ‘free’ is usually to be avoided as it indicates the searcher has no intention of spending money (it’s often used as a negative keyword in PPC campaigns).

Also, consider how many sites are competing for a given term – using the examples above, Google UK suggests about 65 million pages for ‘free poker’, whilst ‘only’ three million for ‘high stakes poker’. The more competing pages, the tougher your job is going to be to rank for them!

3) Choosing an Affiliate Company

Once you’ve chosen your niche, you’ll next want some companies to promote/be an affiliate for. Here is another part of the process where it’s worthwhile investing some time into research. Some companies have bad reputations in terms of having predatory terms or late payouts. Do some searching on Google and relevant forums to find out what other people’s experiences are.

Before you sign up, make sure you have read the terms and conditions of the affiliate agreement. Yes this is a boring task but ensure you know what you can and can’t do. This avoids problems months down the line and losing income.

4) Domain Names – Choose Wisely!

Don’t skimp on the domain name; get yourself a nice ‘brandable’ one, either one that hasn’t been registered yet, or is being sold (try sites like www.sedo.com). Avoid ‘spammy’ ones like online-casino-bonus-codes.com. They look naff, they sound naff, and in any case, Google isn’t so keen on ‘exact match’ domains any more. As an example, look at our company – what looks more trustworthy and like a ‘real’ brand – koozai.com or digitalmarketinginsouthamptonandlondon.com?

Trademarks

Be very, very careful about buying a domain with a brand name/trademark in it. The vast majority of affiliate agreements will state this isn’t allowed – essentially to cover the danger of visitors mistakenly perceiving the affiliate site to be an actual part of the real brand.

Certainly within the poker affiliate niche, I’ve known people to get away with doing this for a while (I guess the companies gain income so weren’t too bothered). In contrast though I also know of a person who had a long-established site, making good money, and then out of nowhere had the company he was marketing shut down his site and demand the domain name be handed over.

I personally don’t feel the risk warrants it, and it’s not worth damaging your reputation as an affiliate. Ultimately, buying a keyword-heavy or trademarked domain smacks of being lazy. A skilled affiliate can take a ‘brandable’ name and turn it into a profiting site.

5) Kick-Ass Content

One thing pretty much anyone in the digital/online industry would agree with these days is this – your site needs awesome content. With both consumers and search engines more savvy than ever, now is the time to invest into content which really adds value to your site, is informative for visitors and drives sales.

This means – no generic/copied text; no meaningless drivel written just to appease the search engines. It means well-written, well-researched content that gives the visitor the information they want and need to decide whether to buy. It means striving to be better than your competitors and getting creative about what to have on your site.

6) Build A Brand

Don’t be another bland affiliate site with the same sort of content on it. Get creative, find out what your audience wants, keep up to date with your niche. Is there a new product in your niche? Be the first to review it.

Always ask yourself – what else can I cover in my site that would add more value than what my competitors offer?

A brand is something you build up over time, gaining more and more trust from the online community. It’s a long term investment that can reap huge rewards.

7) Write about something you love

If you’re starting from scratch as an affiliate, the best advice I can give you is, start with a product or service that you’re genuinely passionate about. For me, this was online poker. If you’re writing/blogging/building a site about something you love, it’s a lot easier and a lot more fun. The passion you can bring to the site will be picked up by your visitors and will provide authenticity, helping to boost conversions.

If you’re writing about something you don’t know anything about, it will show! It also makes coming up with content ideas much easier – the geekier you are in your niche, the better!

8) Embrace Social Media

If you’re serious about building and growing your site as a brand, I can’t stress how important it is to fully utilise the power of social media. If you’re not bothering with this, then you’re instantly giving your competitors an edge over you.

Social media should be seen as a natural extension of your site. At the very least, make good use of Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. Don’t expect overnight results from social, this is a ‘slow burner’ but will pay dividends. Invest time into making useful, regular updates that will engage with your visitors and potential visitors.

If you have video content (for example, product reviews are great), get yourself a YouTube channel and promote it. Presentations and PDFs can be promoted on Slideshare and other sites.There are hundreds of social media sites out there – don’t be afraid of using the more niche ones if you think there’s value to be had from them.

Your job can be streamlined to some extent by using tools such as TweetDeck and Hootsuite to schedule your posts in advance.

9) Get Analytical

You must, repeat must, get into the habit of analysing your traffic. Google Analytics is the obvious place to start, but other tools such as GetClicky are good too. Make sure you’ve got relevant goals set up so you can monitor the effectiveness of your site.

Traffic numbers are obviously important, but also check out metrics such as ‘bounce rates’ (how many people click away after one visit), demographics etc.

Don’t skimp on the time you spend using Analytics. You may find data and statistics boring but if you’re going to be lazy with this part of your business, you’re never going to maximise the effectiveness of your site and will continue to ‘leak’ opportunities.

10) Convert, Convert

Your goal isn’t to get traffic – it’s to get traffic and then convert them into sales/leads which you will get commission from. Ask yourself this – would you rather 10,000 visits and 10 sales, or 1000 visits and 20 sales? Don’t get trapped into ‘vanity’ figures of high traffic.

So your aim is to strive to continually improve your conversion rate, getting more and more value from your visitors. Consider doing ‘A/B’ testing where you assess which parts of a webpage can be improved.

It goes without saying but without traffic, your site’s a dead duck. Gaining traffic comes gradually as a result of building up content and back-links. However, what good is traffic if it’s not converting into sales/click-through? Pretty much none!

Here is where another skill an affiliate needs comes into play – Conversion Rate Optimisation. Remember, your goal is to attract visitors, give them the information they want, then get them to click through to the site of the actual company.

A key to this is having effective ‘call to actions’. Essentially you need to make it very clear to the visitor what they should do next. Don’t just have a page of text describing a product. Have a button or link that says ‘buy now’, or similar. Make it stand out. Experiment with button colours, sizes and placements.

11) Embrace Change

Online marketing is changing all the time – consumers are more savvy, SEO is more difficult, and the market as a whole is more and more competitive. You need to be prepared to change not only your site, but your approach, skills and attitude. If you don’t then you’re not going to succeed in the long-term, it’s as simple as that.

Affiliate marketing is not an industry where you can ‘bury your head in the sand’ when things go wrong or when Google changes their algorithm overnight. You must take the emotion out of your business decisions and be ready to embrace change as and when it’s needed (and also anticipating it).

12) Learn From Your Peers

Interact with other people in your niche. Ask and answer questions; be inquisitive and curious and don’t be afraid to take criticism.

Attend events – there are loads of affiliate expos and conferences – these are an excellent way of meeting fellow affiliates, the companies you’re promoting and hear updates on the industry.

If you can get a ‘mentor’ this can be a great way of learning from someone who knows their stuff and has already made a ton of mistakes you can learn from. Some affiliates will effectively offer mentoring in exchange for you using their affiliate-affiliate links (i.e. they get a cut of what you get a cut of!)

Forums are great as they allow you to ask questions – a popular use is to ask for a ‘site review’, where other people can critique your site, from an SEO or user experience point of view. I’ve done this before and it’s hugely beneficial. Getting someone’s objective input on your site can be a real eye-opener!

13) Be Patient – Very Patient

Unless you’ve magically found some massively under-exploited niche, you absolutely must be prepared to work damn hard and wait for results. The money isn’t just going to start rolling in because you have a live website with an affiliate link. I remember the day after I’ve put my first affiliate site live, logging into the PokerStars affiliate site and being surprised to see no commission!

See this as a long-term game – keep working on your site, adding content, building social, building links, and blogging; eventually the results will come. Aim to be the very best and most informative site in your niche and you will succeed because you will attract visitors. You’ll also start building a reputation as an authority in that area which will have the knock-on effect of people mentioning and recommending you online.

14) Outsourcing

There may well come a time where either you can’t physically do all the work yourself, or you don’t have the knowledge. In this case you will need to consider out-sourcing work – be it content, development, SEO or other.

The good news is that within the affiliate industry, there are plenty of people providing freelance work, from small one-off tasks to on-going work. Finding a good person needn’t be difficult, or expensive. A lot of freelancers are recommended using word-of-mouth. If you’re a member of a forum relating to your niche, you can often come across people there. Failing that, there’s plenty of websites where you can request/offer work (such as Elance). I’ve even had some success for small jobs on Fiverr.com.

Once you’ve got someone good that you’ve used, hold on to them! Good content writers are an invaluable asset. Build relationships with the people you buy services from, treat them well and they’ll be more likely to cut you favours (such as completing work at short notice) in the future.

15) Make Loads Of Mistakes

Make mistakes and learn from them! The beauty of this industry is that you can never know everything (anyone that says they do is lying). You will make mistakes – this doesn’t make you a failure as an affiliate marketer – far from it. Learn from them, try something different and move on. If you mess something up don’t beat yourself up about it or give up – persevere, work consistently on your site and you will succeed.

Rather than thinking ‘I really screwed up there’, view everything as results – made a mistake? You still got a result – just not the one you wanted! You must keep a positive attitude and move on. If you’re going to just give up when you get something wrong you’re in the wrong industry.

Summary – Just Do It!

I’m conscious that some of what I’ve written in this post will put some people off – however my intention is to make you have a realistic approach to being an affiliate. I personally love affiliate marketing, for all its faults.

It’s challenging, it’s rewarding and you can learn loads from it! The beauty of it is that anyone can start doing it with minimal investment (a domain name and web hosting is all you need to get going) making it easily accessible. With easy to use, simple Content Management Services like WordPress available free (along with thousands of templates), you can be up and running in hours.

Learn loads, make mistakes, have fun along the way and hopefully make money!

Passive Income Opportunities for New Internet Marketers In 2013

Today a lot of youngsters are willing to quit their jobs and be their own boss working from home. The concept of making passive income has become so popular that the teenagers are aiming towards a professional career in this internet marketing industry. However, lots of newbie marketers struggle with the question - where should I start! Here, you will discover some startup ideas that can make you the first cash online in this 2013. No matter if you know nothing about online marketing, these methods will help you learn more and maximize the potentials while having fun!

Passive income opportunities for a new internet marketer in 2013

Most of these methods are already being used by thousands of marketers around the world. But these are basics of internet marketing and hence anyone should start with one of these ideas. These are newbie-friendly methods, can be adopted without a huge investment and have enormous potentials of generating passive income.

#1 Blogging:

You don't have to be a PHD to start writing on any topic on your blog. If you're interested about something and want to write on that topic, you can launch your blog overnight (yes, even with one post on the website) and initiate your IM venture. However, it will take some time to drive visitors to your site, but once you start generating views, you'll start making money! Just keep producing high quality, search engine friendly, relevant content and follow the basic marketing methods. Your blog will soon be listed on the first page of all major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.

#2 Affiliate marketing

If you know how to sell a product, affiliate marketing is possibly the best online money making idea for you. You don't even need a website to make money from affiliate marketing. But you definitely need to prepare a plan and tell the product-owner about your plan. If the plan is something unique, effective and most importantly out-of-the-box, you can literally make millions promoting others products. However, affiliate marketing has become a competitive market-concept today. You should start making money, once you've learned the ins and outs of an industry.

#3 Cost Per Action (CPA)

This is another noob-friendly method of making money online. The concept is entirely based on generating traffic. If you know where to find targeted traffic and can drive them to a specific website, you're half way done. Once the traffic is directed to your website, you will need to get them engaged with an offer you're promoting. If they are converted, you will make something between $1 and $30. This method may sound not-so-promising, but trust me, thousands of new, inexperienced marketers are making $1K to $2K per month just promoting these CPA offers.

Passive income generation online: tips for new marketers

1. You might be struggling to bank the cash first time online! Don't panic, if you're working with a target, you will soon observe the changes and money rolling into your account.

2. Don't just stick to one over-saturated method. Think something unique, something out-of-the-box, something of your own. Brainstorming, trial and error will lead you to the right path making passive income online.

21 Businesses You Can Run From a Laptop

Maybe you’re a young kid who wants to start a business. Maybe you’re a college grad who wants to create a job (rather than finding one). Or maybe you’re a corporate mouse who’s fed up with the rat race.

In any case, the internet has opened up a world of opportunities for the entrepreneur-at-heart. Here are 21 businesses that you can start today and run entirely from a laptop and an internet connection.

Development

#1 Web Developer

According to SBA.gov, there were 29.6 million small businesses in the US and Ad-ology found that 46% of small businesses don’t have a website.

#2 Mobile App Developer

In 2010, the International Telecommunication Union reported that there are over 5 billion cell phones in the world and 1 billion of them have mobile broadband subscriptions.

#3 Blog Maintenance Provider

As tracked by BlogPulse, there were 126 million blogs on the internet in 2010 and most of them suck. Most bloggers think they just have to write, post, and auto-tweet. So if you know how to properly post a WordPress blog post, you can offer this as a service to serious bloggers.

Graphic Design

#4 Logo Designer

Since there are 29.6 million small businesses in the US alone, that’s 29.6 million potential logo customers. But most of them already have logos… Yeah, but very few of them have good logos.

#5 Web Designer

According to Pingdom, there are 234 million websites on the net. Like small business logos, most of these websites look terrible. And even the good ones, as you’ll soon see on Retire@21, know the value of continually improving the design.

#6 Book Cover Designer

Right now, there are over 32 million books on Amazon and every one of them has a book cover. According to UNESCO, over 1 million books are published per year. This doesn’t include eBooks.

#7 Mobile App Designer

Much like mobile app developers, there’s plenty of need for mobile app designers. Companies usually contract out to both developers and designers separately to create the app.

#8 Computer-Aided Designer

CAD drawings are typically 3D mockups and virtual prototypes that companies create prior to manufacturing a product. Pretty much every product design starts as a CAD drawing.

#9 Web Theme Designer

According to WordPress.com, there are over 53 million WordPress sites and about half of them are self-hosted. This means, WordPress alone has about 26 million sites that need themes.

#10 Videographer

In 2009, Zappos reported a 6% to 30% increase in sales for products with video. Website owners realize that video converts higher than any other form of content, so they’re starting to contract out for that work.

Writing

#11 Author

According to Authors Guild, a successful fiction book sells 5,000 copies and a successful nonfiction book sells 7,500 copies. Also, Jenkins Group (a premier publishing firm) reports that 70% of books published don’t make a profit. Don’t let these stats discourage you, but it’s hard to make a living as an author.

#12 Editor

Part of the reason books usually don’t earn back their investment is because they have to pay for an editor. You’ll likely earn more as an editor than an author.

#13 Copywriter

With 126 million blogs, there are 126 million websites that need content. If you’re a good writer and knowledgeable about a niche topic, reach out to the top bloggers in that niche and ask if they’ll pay you to write for them.

#14 Transcription

According to Worldwide Freelance, some industry estimates suggest that up to 50% of all non-fiction books are ghostwritten. Often, these books start as audio recordings and the ghostwriter transcribes and spruces up the content. This is just one way to make money as a transcriber.

#15 Translation

English is the universal language of business, but there are roughly 6,500 other languages in the world. Books, websites, manuals, etc. all need to be translated to other languages.

#16 Blogger

Much like authors, few bloggers make a living strictly from blogging. To attract advertisers, you typically need a couple thousand unique visitors per day. Think of a blog as a platform to attract other business opportunities.

Internet Marketing

#17 Search Engine Optimization

234 million websites compete to rise to the top of search engines. If you know how to optimize websites, you can help website owners save a lot of money on internet advertising.

#18 Search Engine Marketer

The other side of search engines is paid search. It’s not unusual for internet marketers to have $500,000 per month budgets for PPC (pay-per-click) and CPM (cost-per-thousand-impressions) advertising.

#19 Social Media Manager

Don’t let companies outsource their social media campaigns. But a service that helps people set up their Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus profiles is completely legitimate.

#20 Email Marketing Manager

Michael always tells you that the money is in the list, but it takes a lot or work to maintain that list. If you offer to create and automate the email newsletters, it’ll take a lot of pressure off their backs.

#21 Affiliate Marketer

To date, ClickBank has paid out almost $1.9 billion to affiliate marketers. Affiliate marketing is another way to make a living as a blogger and it’s the primary way that Michael makes money.

So what…

I know I gave you lots of big stats and that can be overwhelming.

To put it into perspective, Michael has partaken in or hired out at least 14 of these 21 services; this includes over $30,000 on web design updates to IncomeDiary.

There’s a lot of money to be made on the internet. If you have a laptop, an internet connection, and a working brain, the only thing holding you back is you.

Top 5 Affiliate Program Marketing Tips

Congratulations on making the decision to become involved in affiliate marketing!

The most difficult part of the home based business process if finding out what type of work you want to do, and affiliate marketing has proven itself to be a viable option for thousands of people across the globe.

You may feel overwhelmed with information in the beginning, but there are a few main things you should focus on as you're preparing to launch your first campaign. Here are the 5 tips that helped me the most as I launched my first affiliate marketing project.

Choose a product or subject you are familiar with. While a product may be popular and successful, the less familiar you are with the subject matter the less likely you are to make money within that niche. You'll end up spending more time on research than you'll spend marketing. Stick with what you know and the rest will come easily.

Build a strong content site. One of the most popular phrases online is "content is king," and it's the truth. Building a website full of articles about the product you are trying to promote will make you appear as though you are a knowledgeable authority. People will trust you more and, as a result, will be more likely to make a purchase from you.

Avoid overusing banners. Banners may seem like a great advertising tool, but they're not. Banners scream "advertisement" and most people try to avoid advertisements at all costs. If you must advertise, you're better off with a small text ad or blurb on another website or blog. Besides, most banners look ugly and unprofessional - you don't want to attach that sort of stigma to your business.

Explore different affiliate networks. Just because someone you know is experiencing success with a certain affiliate network or merchant program does not mean you will. As a matter of fact, in most cases your success has nothing to do with the reputation of the affiliate network, but has everything to do with the amount of effort you put forth. Explore a handful of different networks and incorporate products from each into your campaigns. Ignore those who complain that they're not getting paid enough - they're probably not working very hard.

Conduct thorough research and educate yourself. Don't just choose a niche or product because it sounds interesting. Take some time to do a little bit of keyword research and determine what is popular and what is not. Look at other affiliate sites and determine what is making them successful. Try to determine if there is a niche that is yet untapped that you can take advantage of.

Remember, affiliate marketing is not easy, but it can be incredibly lucrative if you're willing to put some time and effort into your campaign right from the start. Feel free to leave comments with questions or to share your most recent affiliate marketing experiences. I'd love to hear from you!

Happy Affiliate Marketing

10 Creative Ways To Make Money Online

If you’d claimed it was possible for the average guy on the street tomake millions of dollars online just a decade ago, the chances are good you’d have heard nothing but laughter in response. Today, though, there are countless Internet millionaires who turned a great idea into obscene profit, used the power of the web to promote their offline business or simply worked their butt off to sell their skills online.

While it’s unlikely that you’ll ever earn enough to buy your own private island, there’s nothing to stop you from using your skills to make a comfortable living online. In fact, while the media would have you believe that online success stories are limited to just a few lucky, hard working people who stumbled on a great idea that went on to make millions, the reality is that there are tens of thousands of people who make a living exclusively online. Here are just ten ways you can join them.

How To Make Money Online

1. Sell Stock Photography

The Internet has caused an explosion in the demand for stock photography. As the number of media and commercial outlets has increased dramatically with the growth of online media there’s an enormous need for high quality stock photos.

Yuri Arcurs is the man everyone turns to for their stock photo needs. As the world’s top selling stock photographer he sells an image every 8 seconds, 24 hours a day (that works out to over 4 million images each year). Arcurs makes millions of dollars each year simply by being the best at what he does. There are lots of great photographers in the world and the barrier to entry is as low as ownership of a camera, but Arcurs has managed to build a reputation online for consistent, high quality and imaginative images.

If you’re a professional photographer (or even just a hobbyist) you should consider the possibilities of selling stock images online.

2. Tweet For Sponsors

SponsoredTweets.com is an online platform that allows you to make money on Twitter by charging sponsors for communicating their advertising messages to your followers. You set the amount you want to get paid for every tweet you make, choose a category and select keywords you want to work with. You then wait for advertisers to contact you and take you up on your offer, paying you the amount you specified for each tweet that you make.

All throughout the process, the tweeter has full control over his or her account, and may choose the wordings of the tweets, or may choose to reject the tweet altogether.

3. Blog for Ad Revenues

If, however, you already have a blog with a devoted following it should be easy for you to leverage your readers into hard cash. Ad networks such as Google AdSense pay big money to place their ads on your site, and you’ll receive a payment every time a reader clicks one. While it’s easy to go overboard and fill every spare pixel, if you place your ads well it’s possible to make a comfortable income from your site.

One of the most successful bloggers around today is John Chow, a Canadian blogger who makes more than $40,000 a month through ad sales and other revenue streams. Ironically, his blog is about ways to make money online.

4. Sell Affiliate Products

If you have a flair for sales copy you could try your hand at selling products for affiliates. While many people take the seedy route of selling diet pills and penis enlargement products, if you want to keep your conscience clear you’ll find that Amazon runs a very successful affiliate program that allows you to make money advertising any of the products for sale on their site. eBay also have a pretty good affiliate setup, with their top affiliates earning $1.3 Million a month, WOW!

5. Write an e Book

In recent years the self-publishing world has exploded online to the point at which you don’t even have to run your own site in order to promote a book. Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo are just a few of the sites on which you could self-publish today, with commission rates of around 70% available on every sale.

The number of eBooks on Amazon reached 8 million last year, and Amazon stated that eBooks are outselling hard backs 2 to 1, 62% of ebook sales fell into the Thriller and Mystery genre, so if you feel that you could pull this style of genre off then you will be in for a good chance of sales.

26 year old self published author, Amanda Hocking from Minnesota makes more than $2 Million a year from her ebook sales. Amanda Hocking’s stories about, trolls, vampires and zombies and  ‘supernatural teen romances’ sell for $2.99 or for as little as $.99.

6. Become a Virtual Assistant

Every small businessman would love to hire a full time assistant to take care of the little things, but many simply can’t afford one. Thanks to the Internet, though, they can now hire part time assistants who work for a whole host of clients, and all at a much lower cost than a full time staff member.

If you work from home this may be a perfect opportunity to make a consistent income. Virtual assistants can earn $20 an hour in return for booking travel tickets, interacting with clients and dealing with the daily needs of small businesses.

7. Lease Your Skills

Most people have at least one skill that carries a market value, though until now that skill may have been impossible to monetize in the traditional job market.

Sites such as 99Designs, Elance, Freelancer and iWriter allow people to hire out their skills as writers, coders, designers, translators and lots more on a contract basis. Freelancing sites are a great way to boost your income in your free time, and with enough motivation and hard work you could find yourself earning a comfortable full time income from them.

8. Selling on eBay

eBay is a great way to turn your unwanted things into a little spending money, but it isn’t just a place to sell your old Star Wars action figures. In fact, eBay’s global marketplace can offer a great way for canny traders to buy and sell their way to profit. By buying wholesale you can sell anything with a mark up. Even better, if you have the skills to make things people want to buy you could start your own home-based craft business, selling to customers around the world.

Matt & Amanda Clarkson are a successful couple who so far have managed to make over $8 Million in eBay sales.

9. Become A Mobile App Tester

People that are rather uncertain of their application development potential can still make some money through the usage of iPhone apps.

People that have the time and desire to test iPhone apps and discover bugs can be rewarded payments for their efforts. uTest is one such application. Individuals that have signed up will also build some reputation on the basis of the testing they have done so far.

Better reputation signifies access to more profitable app testing opportunities.

10. Designing T-Shirts

Finally, if you have something of an artistic streak you could kick off the next viral sensation with your own range of funky, arty t-shirts. Sites such as CafePress allow users to upload their own t-shirt designs and sell them on their personal online store.

You can also contact distributors such as threadless.com or designbyhumans.com to release your t-shirt designs to the masses.

If your designs catch the eye you could be looking at enormous profits when they take off in a big way.

Checkout our article The Top 10 Tips On Starting Your Own Successful Clothing Line, this should give you an idea on how to kick things off.

Conclusion

As you can see, to make money online you don’t have to be particularly skilled with computers. You don’t need to be know how to build your own website from the ground up, and you don’t have to be a mogul with millions of dollars to invest in success. If you have any kind of artistic skills, creativity or business savvy you can turn it into profit.

In short, you should understand that the online world is just like real life. The same opportunities are there for the taking, but instead of drawing your customers from just your home town you can reach out with your great ideas to the far reaches of the earth.

So why not start today?