Can I Make Big Money Online

Guest Post by Chris Johnson

In keeping with George’s idea of helping newcomers to the make money online club, I thought I might give what little advice I can on the subject.

1. Choose what you’ll do.
This seems harder than you’d think. The trick is to pick a vehicle that you know you’ll enjoy, so that promoting and working on it will be a labor of love. Whether it’s blogging about a subject you know, setting up lenses and hubs on Squidoo or Hubpages, writing articles on Helium or selling items through eBay or another webstore like Zlio, make sure it’s something you enjoy.

2. Choose what you’ll promote.
If you have your own product, that should be primary. If not, then choose products from sites like Paydotcom.com, Clickbank, and Commission Junction. Make sure to position them so that you have them in strategic spots, but that they don’t have the effect of disrupting your content. Speaking of content, in-text advertising like Kontera (who has a decent payout) will help you to monetize your everyday content.

3. Choose how you will promote your site.
Social networks are key for this, but developing relationships with site owners who support your content is also key. Reciprocal links are almost a must, and cross promotion on your site shows you care about their success, too. Don’t forget to include a link to your site in your emails, on any articles you write, and every profile page you have.

4. Control costs.
Choose your hosting service carefully to insure the quality of service they provide is worth the cost you pay. Make sure your merchant processing software’s fees are competative and that they have monthly fees that are reasonable. Go with cheeper variations of your site’s name when you register a domain name, but try to stay in the .com standard.

5. If you know something about a niche area, like horse training, make your own site about it and charge a reasonable fee for your expertise.
One option to definately explore for the non-HTML’ers out there is the Seamonkey Project at www.seamonkey-project.org. This is a great program for building professional looking web pages. It is a little limited in what you can do, and some HTML will be needed, but hey, it’s free so you can’t go too far wrong.

6. It WILL take time to get off the ground, so keep your head up.
I’ve been doing this for a couple of months and I am just starting to see what could be construed as “income”. Every post on every blog by every make money online guru I’ve ever read has said it takes time. But once you get off the ground and get some readership, the possibilities are endless.

Guest Post by Chris Johnson

There are a lot of paid programs out there that you can try out to make money online, but many of them end up badly. While reviewing a forum on such oportunities, I checked into some of the programs they mentioned. The disproportionate amount of screens appologizing for the program closing, it was never their intent to have any one lose money, etc was staggering.

So, can it be done for free? That depends on how much work you want to put into it. Sites like Helium.com, Hubpages, and Squidoo will pay you for writing articles and pages about what you know, and some will pay you to play games like Moola.com and uVme. You can also try blogging for money by writing reviews at places like Blogvertise. Or if you have talent with a camera, try your hand at Shutterstock.com. There are plenty of free resources out there, but the trade off is that it takes longer.

This is where the number one skill of any webpreneur comes into play. Patience. If you expect to start a venture and within a week be rolling in the dough, think again. It takes time to build your blog or website’s reputation up through networking at places like Blogcatalog, Linkshare, and Linkreferral. Many social networks also help in spreading the word, but as they are SOCIAL networks, you need to participate and show the rest of the community that you take it seriously.

Some paid services will be unavoidable. You will probably need a domain name, and some advertising is necessary. But GoDaddy.com is fairly inexpensive, and sites like ScratchBack allow you to spend a small amount of money, called “tips”, to appear in another blogger’s “Top Spots”. They can also pay you for the same privilege. Adwords is also a possibility, but you’ll probably want to wait untill your readership will justify the expense. Just remember, persistence and patience are the most important tools that you possess. Keep at it and you will realize the benefits.

Chris Johnson is a regular Joe, living in West Virginia, who dreams of making money online without spending money to do it. If you’d like to follow along with his quest, check out www.thechrisjohnsonproject.com.