Monday, May 18, 2009

3 Simple Tips For Making Money Online Even If You Don’t Have Anything To Sell!

Have an idea about making money online but don’t know where to start?

There are several ways to make money on the Internet – even if you don’t have a product to sell. Keep in mind that running an online business takes time and effort, just like running any business. However, you can get started without any products, which is one less roadblock for most people wanting to start a business.

You don’t need to be a computer expert to run an online business, but you do need to either be able to set up a website, or have the resources to pay someone else to do it for you.

Here are 3 simple ways to make money online even if you don’t have your own product:

Affiliate programs
Being an affiliate means you are selling other people’s products, and you get a percentage of the sale, or you make a small fee for each person who requests more information. Most major retailers offer affiliate programs, along with many smaller retailers (with lots of good products and services). It’s not a good idea to try to compete with an established retailer like Wal-Mart, Target, or Circuit City. A better way to make money is to find a “niche” that serves a smaller group of people, that you can easily reach.

For example, rather than selling sporting goods to everyone, you might start a fishing site that sells canoes and fishing products to people who like fresh water fishing. You can also find smaller retailers who may offer more specialized products to those who know a lot about fishing, while selling the basics from Wal-Mart to beginners.

A good place to start is Commission Junction (http://www.CJ.com), and you’ll get an idea of the products you can offer. Be creative in finding your niche, start with something you know a little about, or enjoy doing, and before long you can be making money online!

Adsense from Google
Adsense is an advertising program from search engine Google.com (there are other advertising programs you can offer, but for now Google’s is the biggest and most popular). By placing ads on your site, you earn money for each person who clicks on the ad. Google will automatically determine which ads are best for your site, based on the topic of each web page. All you have to do is place the code on your web page, and Google does the rest.

You can also sell individual ads, and determine your own terms and price. But using a program like Google is simple, and if your set gets a lot of visitors, you can make good money. Again, the best way to succeed is to find a niche, create a website around that topic, and Google will be able to determine the best ads for your visitors.

Write a “How-To” booklet
If you don’t want to sell other people’s products, but don’t have a lot of money to create your own, a simple way to get started is to write your own “how-to” booklet. Pick a topic you know enough to write about, and start writing. Information products are always good sellers – the key is to solve a particular problem. “How to catch fresh water fish” or “How to plan a fishing vacation on a tight budget” are possibilities for the fishing niche mentioned above.

To learn more, do a search for “creating information products” or “writing e-books”, and you will find lots of resources. Once you create your product, Clickbank.com offers a simple service to help you sell your information product, and there are others to help you get started.

Again, be creative, there are lots of problems out there that people need help with. And offering a good solution can make you lots of money!

Making money online takes more than just building a website. You need to pick the right products or services. Then you need to find the right audience to sell those products and services. Then you need to promote your website to enough people so you can make money. For now, you should have enough ideas to get you started – even if you don’t have a product to sell yet!

3 Simple Steps to Your Own Website - Explained.

So you want to build that website – for whatever reason, perhaps you’ve started a business or simply wish to share pictures of the new addition to your family. Let me tell you it’s easier than you think – all you need is directions that you can follow and you will soon be online.

Let’s talk what it will cost upfront. For $10 - $20/month you can have a working website (Imagine: www.yourname.com), available to anyone in the world with internet access. That’s a trip to your favourite fast food joint. (Yes, you can afford it!) There are also some ways of getting a free site – still residing at www.yourname.com, but lets learn about all those weird internet terms first.

There are 3 basic components required to building a personal, custom website.
You need:
- A domain name
- A hosting account and
- Content written in HTML or some other web language.
I know, what’s a domain name!!!?

Here is an analogy I teach:

You live in a home that is built on a certain piece of land (that you rent or buy). That piece of land has a specific address.

Your website (a collection of individual web pages) sits on a hosting account that you rent. That hosting account is found at a specific address – called a domain name.

Your Home Your Website
Your Street Address: e.g. 1 John St, Anytown
Your domain name: e.g. www.yourname.com
Your plot of land Your hosting account
Your physical house Your web content

Here is the 3 step process:
STEP 1: Choose your address
STEP 2: Rent some space on a computer connected to the internet
STEP 3: Build the house you want and place it on the space you bought in step 2

Let’s explain each step:
STEP 1: Choose your address (a domain name)
With the internet you can choose what you want your address to be (your domain name). What are you selling? What would make a cool name? Understand that after over 10 years of public internet access – a lot of good names have been taken. So get creative, and be unique but understandable. An easy place to start with is your full name for a family/personal site or your product name for a business site. Make a list of about 10 possibilities that you like in this format www.yourdesiredname.com Move to the next step.

STEP 2: Rent some space on a computer connected to the internet (A hosting account)
With a quick search for the words “Web Hosting” on the internet, you get a list of web hosting companies – all eager to sell or rent you some space on their computer. GoDaddy.com and 1and1.com are some recommended companies – feel free to look into others, but there are thousands upon thousands – so don’t waste your time searching for the cheapest (you pay for what you get, but $10+ will get you a decent hosting account.

Many of the hosting companies will either give you or sell you your choice of domain name at the same time you start your hosting account. Bring out your list from STEP 1, and when instructed in the purchase process, enter in your first domain name choice. You will be informed if that name is available or not. Keep trying out your names in order of your preference until you find on that is available. Finish the purchase process and let the hosting company instruct you on how to access you account. (They’ll send you an email – and if you go with one of the companies I recommended, you can call them with your questions.)

STEP 3: Build the house you want and place it on the space you bought in step 2
You have some choices to make here:
A - You can ask someone to build you a site.
B - You can build it yourself.
C - Use a free website builder – (like a blog)
Each has its pros and cons.

The first option is great if you can afford it and can find someone reliable. If you want cheap, post a job at your local high school – someone in computer club will be able to help you for really cheap. The problem is that they may not always be around when you need them to make changes. Enter choice B

It’s great to learn a new skill, and you can learn for free online – just invest a little time. Remember once you know how… you own that knowledge forever and you will never depend on someone else to build your site. Again search online for “how to build a website” They will tell you how to design, build and upload your site onto your hosting account form STEP 2.

If you don’t really require a customized design and all you want to do is place some text and perhaps some pictures online. I suggest starting what’s called a blog - these are often free, and have a really simple “HTML CODE FREE” way of adding your content. All you do is type and publish. You can often still have your own domain name here, but each blogging company is different. Again search online for blogging – and read what the various companies offer.


Content
There is one thing that is really important and that ONLY you can do! That is come up with the content and the idea. Think about what you have to offer and what problem it solves for your visitors and prepare your content so as to answer that problem. E.g. You write great jokes. People are looking for jokes… your website should give people some jokes and perhaps they can register for your daily joke email.
Write simply, write short, write clearly. As time goes on, remember to keep your site fresh. Keep the content updated and relevant to your ideal visitors.

The goal of this article was to give you easy steps of how to get a website for yourself. Naturally you can learn more about each step, and there are many people who can give you help, but now you can start the journey. Create your list of domain names, purchase a hosting account (including the domain name you want) and build your site and keep the content fresh.

In future articles I’ll take about next steps:

- “I build it, but they ain’t coming to see it.”

- “I built it, but nobody’s buying”

- “I built it, but I don’t know how to improve it.”

A journey of a million miles starts with one step – so go to step 1 and start. (Don’t worry – this is not a long journey – but it’s exciting!).

Here to Help You!

Thanks for reading,
Your Rich Cousin
(Author and Business Success Story) Get the free e-book that got me started and helped me start making money at http://www.richcousin.com It's so straight forward and easy to understand AND you will have the support you need to start making a great income online.

3 Quick Ways To Start Your Own Online Business In Less Than 24 Hours

The Internet and online business especially are becoming more and more popular by the day in todays world simply because people are starting to see the true benefits of the web, consumers are starting to trust the web more, and more importantly, the start up costs for a online business are next to nothing compared to the offline world of business start ups.

The only set back most people run into when wanting to start one of their own online business is How and Where to get started.

I did a search under the keyword term "home based business" and the search results returned 575,000,000 results for that keyword alone.

That's a pretty intimidating number for someone wanting to start their own home based business on the web wouldn't you say?

These were the same obstacles I was up against when I first ventured into the online world of business.

But I didn't let that stop me and I hope that won't stop you either from wanting to start your own online business.

So, I saved you the hassle and put together 3 of the quickest ways for ANYONE(that's You) to start their own online business with next to no investment required and can get started in less than 24 hours.

Are you ready? I hope so.


Business Model #1. Affiliate Programs.

Affiliate Programs are simply programs set up by the business owner for others to sign up for and promote for the business owner for a agreed upon commission(usually between 10 - 75%).

The great thing about Affiliate marketing is it doesn't cost you a single penny to get started, you don't have to worry about refunds or customer service that come with owning your own product.

All you have to worry about is generating the traffic to your affiliate link and collecting your commission cheques.

This is the quickest way to get started online... Period!

Here's a few Affiliate Directories to give you a start:

Associate Programs - http://www.associateprograms.com

Refer It - http://www.refer-it.com


Business Model #2. Resell Rights.

Resell Rights are simply products that have already been created and are available to anybody who is willing to pay for the Resell Rights to market them.

The upside to this is you get Ready-To-Go websites with PROVEN sales letters that convert. The best part of all is... you get to keep 100% of the $Profits$.

The draw back is you can't claim those products as your own. The original creator of the product maintains full rights. You just get to keep all the profits.

Not such a bad trade off wouldn't you say?


Business Model #3. Private Label Resell Rights.

Private Label Resell Rights are simply products that are ready to be branded with your name to it.

What I mean by that is you get full rights to the product or products and are able to claim them as your own even though you didn't create them yourself.

This is the fastest way for anyone to start a online business who really doesn't have any experience or knowledge on how to create their own products.

The other really cool thing about Private Label Resell Rights products is they come with Ready-To-Go websites which then again saves you time and money in having to create them yourself.


Well there you have it, 3 Quick Ways To Start Your Own Online Business In Less Than 24 Hours.

The easiest way to locate any of the above via the search engines is by entering something like this into there search engine web form:

affiliate programs + "what your niche is"

(Note: make sure you use the quotations around what niche you want to target. Very Important!)


This will save you time and target your search much better, where as if you were to just enter 'affiliate programs' into the search engine web form you would get a gazillion results, leaving you frustrated.

Now, the only thing left for you to do Right NOW is make a decision on what you would really enjoy doing as a business online.

Once you've figured that out the only thing left for you to do is put together a... Plan For $Profit$.

3 Legitimate Reasons For Getting An Immediate Product Refund

So now that you've finally decided to purchase that product and can't wait to try it out, you have to find out that it does anything else but what you've expected. Don't worry, you still have a chance to get your money back with the following tips for getting an immediate product refund.

1. False advertising

"Get 10.000 hits to your website in 24 hours". Such tempting promises might sure make you wanna flip out your credit card immediately. But when you apply the methods or use the software and have to find out that those 10.000 hits might really result in 10, then this is a legitimate reason for requesting a refund. Unfortunately it's not always that easy. Many vendors get around such false advertising by stating in the fine print that these results cannot be guaranteed. Therefore always keep an eye on such statements and if you cannot believe what's advertised then search for product reviews using your favorite search engine.

2. Product outdated

Believe it or not, but I've seen products that were still advertised and happily took the money out of the customers' pockets but were totally outdated or didn't work anymore. I once bought a product that could not be downloaded anymore but still had the sales page up and running, it even displayed the current date indicating the end of a special promotion. Every attempt to contact the creator of the software failed and after I read in a forum that I wasn't the only one not being able to download the software, I contacted the credit card processing company and got my money back.

3. Usability

Not every software is as user-friendly as Windows (you got the joke, right?!), which can be frustrating if you want nothing more than use it immediately. For most complex software products there exist written tutorials that exactly describe how to use them and sometimes even video tutorials that make the product handling even easier. If you've read and watched all tutorials and still cannot manage to use the product, then state this to the creator and you should get that refund.

If you've contacted the product creator and still were not able to get a refund despite some legitimate and acceptable reasons, not all hope is gone. Most marketplaces offer a refund guarantee for products that were sold through them (e. g. Clickbank offers its customers a general refund policy of 8 weeks after the product purchase, for a vendor like PayDotCom you have to contact the credit card processor like Paypal which has a refund policy of 60 days).

It is always suggested to clearly state the reason for your product refund and to keep a friendly communication style. Even if the product is not worth a single penny it doesn't make things easier when you insult the creator. Try to show that you've really tried to use the product in an efficient way, maybe attach some screenshots, include suggestions what could be better, etc. The product creator might loose you as a customer but still can benefit from your experience and will most of the time happily give you the refund.

Whatever you do, please be fair. It's just not right to purchase a product which you badly want and then request a refund to get your money back but still continue to use the product. Most marketplaces (Clickbank, PayDotCom) tolerate 2 or even more refunds, but after that you might not be able to purchase anything again through the specific company.