Money Schemes - Learn How To Make Money Online

Rather than start answering individual questions I figured it would be easier if I just did a post about how I make money online. This isn’t so much about the networks I use as the actual tactics I use to make money.

My Standard Recipe

1. First and primarily I build content websites and not blogs. I have one golden rule when creating any new website for myself, and that’s only to create websites about subjects that interest me AND that I can provide original content for. In short I only write about the things that I know about. Some of these websites might get updated several times a week and others barely once a month but whatever content I add is my own and is always written to be of some benefit to whoever ends up reading it. If it’s a major project I will custom build a template, if it a small website I’ll probably for for a freebie template.

2. Once I have my website I then perform lots of basic SEO checks and keyword optimise it. For me my first lot of traffic always comes organically from the search engines, as long as your content is original and interesting then linking and referral traffic tends to build naturally from that. At this point I should actually be promoting and marketing using the social networks but to date I’ve not had much to do with them, this is something I will be looking at in some detail in the future. If you are struggling to attract natural traffic then read the SEO Book, download WebCEO and if needs be consider spending a few dollars on some links even if only for the first month or so.

3. This is where the interesting part starts, making money. So I’ve got my new optimised (for visitors and search engines) website, the next step for me is always adding at least 1 Adsense block. This is very effective with new quite small websites because your visitor may not find all the information they want, a text Adsense advert can actually be of real value. I will leave the new website with only Adsense ads for 1 to 2 months. If there is no traffic in a niche no matter how well placed you are and you’re not seeing anything from Adsense then this is the point at which to stop and try something new.

4. In the time Adsense is running I will look through the various affiliate networks (Commission Junction, Trade Doubler, Click Bank, Never Blue Ads) and try and find any good fitting deals. Do not waste your time with affiliate deals that do not match your websites content (no matter how big the commission), you’re just wasting space. If I find a nice product I’ll add it to my website, as a rule I will create a whole new page for the affiliate deal rather than just use a banner. Adding value for your visitors as well as pre-selling is vital.

5. At this stage my new website is making a little money from Adsense and slllooowwwlllyy starting to convert the odd affiliate deal. It’s making money.

6. So my website isn’t so new at this stage and has nice amounts of traffic, now is the time to add another ad network. Kontera has been a nice earner for me and doesn’t tend to have any bad affects on other ad networks. My website is now earning money from several pay per click networks, affiliate deals and building a nice mailing list. THIS WILL ONLY WORK THOUGH IF YOU CAN KEEP PUMPING OUT ORIGINAL AND INTERESTING CONTENT.

7. Once a website has several thousand unique visitors a day I start to think about direct ad sales. This can take anywhere between 12-18 months. I treat every website I create as a long term project with the guaranteed money from direct ad sales each month being a great goal to target.

Selling Software & My Original Products

1. Besides making money from advertising and affiliate deals from content websites I also sell my own software. I can’t really give you much guidance on this other that to say that if you’re not a software developer I suggest you check out Rent A Coder. For a small outlay you just might get yours hands on something that you can sell over and over for many years.

2. Build a website using the recipe above for each product you wish to sell, key elements are home, product, FAQ, support, privacy & terms. Use the PAD standard to gain hundreds of free 1 way links, press releases are great for promoting new products.

3. This is the only point at which I would ever use Adwords or any other PPC advertising network. I do not use PPC networks to advertise anything other than my own products simply because if you’re promoting an affiliate product via Adwords then you can bet that another 10 affiliates are doing the same thing (inflating bid prices). This makes making money in this way very hard, some pro’s make a fortune this way but they are spending very big in the first place.

So as you can see I keep things really simple (ads, affiliates, newsletters, original products) and as low risk as possible. I can’t recommend spending hundreds/thousands of dollars on any website until you have found a niche that proves itself both with PPC and Affiliate sales. Because I have kept things so simple to date it also means I have lots of room for expansion in the future e.g. my first steps into blogging with this blog. Hopefully I’ll be starting my first forum website soon as well as starting to do a little bit more with Adwords and affiliate deals. As you grow and get sales you can start to negotiate improved rates, I’m sure that this is how the so called super affiliates make so much money. That is my next target.

Surprises don’t get much better than unexpected money turning up in your bank account and thanks to Commission Junction I had a little bit of that action this week! The last time I spoke about Commission Junction was because I’d had a bit of a falling out with them over an advertiser. To cut a long story short I was invited on board an advertisers program (by the advertiser) made a load of sales for them only to be booting off because of the content of my website. It was crazy for a few days, as far as I was concerned my earnings were being forfeited and Commission Junction could go and take a running jump! That’s how it was left, or so I thought…

Turns out that the evidence I supplied was enough for Commission Junction to not withhold my earnings and to honour the sales I’d made. I haven’t checked to see if the advertiser in question still uses them but either way it was nice of them to stand up for the little guy here. This week they paid me, as it’s bonus money I wasn’t expecting I’ll probably by investing it in some form of making money online scheme, or maybe it’s time I dabbled again with Adwords.

Whilst I was away from Commission Junction I’ve been experimenting a bit with another affiliate network, NeverBlueAds. It’s still early days but even at this early stage I’d say that NeverBlueAds has the potential to be the most profitable affiliate network I’ve used to date. I’ll report back in a month or so when I know better but if you’re looking for some high quality prducts to promote for a great percentage you could do worse.

Pay-Per-Click in whatever guise you take it has to be the easiest way of making money online. For most people it may not be the best way of making lots of money but when it comes to giving you a morale boost there is no easier way of earning a few dollars. It’s no surprise then that as Google sloooowly leans more towards an action based model for Adsense there is no shortage of new PPC brokers trying to get you to show ads for them. I only hope they’re properly prepared.

Back in the day when hosting and bandwidth cost several hundred dollars a month I was out there giving software away for free. At 4 meg a download my costs were pretty high, that is why I turned to advertising. I tried several CPA schemes that although well targeted they didn’t convert well at all. Banner advertising just didn’t seem to work on my website. It was then that I found a company also offering PPC ads so installed them. In the first month I made a couple of pound, nothing like enough to cover my costs. In order to try and get more clicks I decided to embed some simple ads into the software I was giving away, it did work a little bit but click through rates will still way below 0.05%! That’s when I hit on the idea of instead of just showing the ad link, why not open it for them? (I’ve got to point out that the company in question had nothing in their TOS about software clicks) So that’s what I did and was it an eye opener! In the first week of putting the new ad enabled software out my account was showing a balance of more than £2000, what’s more because of the randomness of the adverts being shown and the random factor of whether to open them or not and the fact that only 1 add would be shown per user per 2 weeks everything looked normal in the stats. This carried on for several more weeks until I was due to get paid, I bottled it. You see I’d only planned to cover hosting, not turn a profit so when I saw the figures involved I closed my account without payment. I put my hands up, stopped that version of the software in it’s tracks and told the advertising company that all my “clicks” should be refunded to the advertisers. What happened next surprised me, they admitted that they had no idea that many of my clicks were not valid, not only that but they invited me back to create a new account and use it properly. I declined because by then I’d discovered Adsense and was earning very good totally legitimate money with them.

So the question is fair game or fraud? Google have made a huge investment in removing click fraud from Adsense, with all these new PPC providers popping up I only hope that they are putting the investment in to run a fair network for their advertisers and publishers alike. If not then it’s going to be here today and gone tomorrow which nobody wants to see.

I’m faced with a bit of a dilemma this morning. Commission Junction have contacted me regarding the rather short “shove it up your ass” e-mail which I sent after they threatened to close my account. Well I say contacted, it’s far more of a sorry we didn’t mean it and we really do value our publishers because that’s where we make all our money sorry sorry sorry type of e-mail. They also explained that they were only acting on the instructions of the advertiser had no idea about the relationship between the advertiser and me and that they’d be more than happy to leave my account (and commission) exactly where it was.

The problem I have is do I back track? Do I say all is well with the world and just carry on as if nothing has happened or do I close the account? My heart says close it, my head says keep it, if only for the e-bay affiliation?

It would also help if I had a way of contacting them, the e-mail was sent from a no-reply address that bounces and none of their messages show in my CJ inbox. I have a feeling that apathy could be the winner here.

My previous experiences with Commission Junction have not been that great, there was that one time when they closed my account without telling me but left their advertisers adverts running. That was a bit annoying, it also earned them there first strike from me. They don’t really appear to do anything for affiliates, it’s all about the advertisers for them, 1 look at the rubbish percentages will show you that.

In the last 24 hours they’ve managed to hit strikes 2 and 3 and I’ve now asked for my account to be closed. The main problem here is that I’ve been stitched up like a kipper, one of their advertisers has taken me for a ride and Commission Junction are more than happy to go along with it.

A few weeks ago I was contacted by a company to promote an event. They’d found one of my sites, loved the look of it and we’re really keen for me to sign up with their affiliate program (through CJ) and get earning. It was a personal e-mail from one of their marketing representatives, I know this because I replied and we had a very nice exchange of ideas going forward. So I used my existing CJ account to sign up, was approved after several days (during which they reviewed my website again) and then set about integrating their creative’s into my content. The site in question isn’t really a money maker but more of a hobby, I’m not overly bothered about the money from it so the very low commission percentage was not a problem. After a couple of days I checked my stats and low and behold the program was doing great, a 15% conversion rate for them, just under $500 in sales and I’d earned a little bit as well.

Jump forward to last night. I get an e-mail from the advertiser stating that due to my website containing illegal content they were pulling the plug. Maybe just a coincidence but I was only 1 or 2 sales below getting a better percentage for the rest of the month. As for the illegal content, that’s utter crap. I’ve always been very careful with all my websites and I’m certainly not interested in getting into legal battles over the sake of a hobby website. A t the first sign of a cease and desist order I’d alter whatever it was they were complaining about. To date nothing like that has ever happened. Besides the website contains nothing but text content and links, if I remove that text then the website doesn’t rank and they don’t sell. It has been a great way for them to make some very quick sales earn a wedge and then not have to pay any commission, great. That’s strike 2 for Commission Junction for allowing any old company to sell stuff through them.

Then I got another e-mail this morning this time from Commission Junction themselves. As I expected all commission is to be forfeited. Not only that but I have somehow violated their TOS and have 5 days to respond. Maybe I upset their nan or something? Strike 3. I am also a Commission Junction customer, without me and other affiliates hosting ads for their advertisers they don’t have a business. Completely ignoring the fact that their is nothing illegal about the content of my website there is also the small matter that the company in question bloody contacted me personally AFTER reviewing my website. They then accepted my application (that they had asked me to make) after reviewing my website again. After I’d earnt just enough money for them they then decided my website was not suitable and I got shafted. I gave Commission Junction a response in less than 5 days, shut my account now and void any banners that are showing, I don’t want to be earning their advertisers another penny.

I know it’s slightly of subject but this is what really worries me about Google’s edging towards CPA. It is just switching the potential fraud from publishers to advertisers, and when you’re dealing with a big advertiser as an individual you’re screwed from the start.

By the way I’m now on the lookout for a good CPA affiliate network, what’s your favourite?

There are some affiliate programs out there that have been flying below the mainstream radar for years. Take for example ClickCash.com, everybody has heard of ClickBank, how many of you have heard of ClickCash?
The ClickCash program has been running since 1996 and has paid out tens of millions of dollars to affiliates who help to promote the iFriends network. ifriends is an adult webcam service, it’s been around for a long time and is one of the most respected in the industry and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, US News & World Report, Forbes, PC Magazine and many more

How Do I Earn $50

Sign up on the ClickCash affiliate program. That’s all there is to it, sign up for free and they’ll instantly credit your account with $50. Even better, for every free referral to the iFriends network you make you get paid up to $80, now that’s one hell of a payout for a service that is free to join.

You may think that you need an adult related site to make money with this but it’s just not the case. You can also earn money by referring people to the ClickCash program so if you’ve got a website related to how to make money online then this can be a great earner for you to. There is also a large range of banners available, many of which are perfectly family friendly and could be used on most sites, at $80 a sign-up you have little to lose.

Like all the ways of making money online here, I don’t even mention it unless I’ve made money from it myself.

If there’s one thing I hate more about a bank holiday weekend than being covered in cat crap, it’s the dip in internet traffic that always happens. The UK holds one of the largest internet user number groups and when a bank holiday comes around everybody flocks away from their computers leaving us money making machines with less traffic and less revenue. This weekend just passed was no different, I noticed a significant dip in UK visitor numbers starting on Friday and continuing all the way through to Monday.

I make just about enough money to not have to worry about looking at may day-to-day earnings, I don’t have to but I still do though and yesterday I was getting a little worried! There’s always the thought that maybe this dip is permanent and it won’t recover, to date it always has (touch wood). It was then that I decided to check another one of my sources of income, more out of desperation than anything, ClickBank. If you read my post about ClickBank you’ll know that I’m not a very good affiliate. In fact I’m rubbish. This is a valuable lesson in diversification though, because when I checked it this is what I saw:-

It’s amazing what a $133 ClickBank day will do to cheer you up! From a dismal weekend to an OK one all in one go, just because I don’t put all my eggs in one basket. Let this be a lesson to you, multiple sources of income is the key. Even better, multiple sites with multiple income streams. That’s how I conquered a bank holiday weekend disaster and you can too.

Clickbank, to affiliate marketing what the God Channel is to the Christian faith. Love it or hate it there are people out there who claim to be mega rich through nothing more than being a Clickbank affiliate, so what I’d like to know is where am I going wrong?

My main problem with Clickbank is that a lot of the products for sale seem to be about making money from the internet, 90%+ of these come down to selling the same e-product you just bought (Great, now I feel like an even bigger sucker!) Even worse the landing page for these products tend to be sick inducing insults to the actual words “web page”. BIG text, black on a yellow background and the sort of marketing blurb that could only possibly appeal to mentalists all feature heavily on most Clickbank product landing pages. The other question I’d have is that if the seller genuinely believes for 1 minute that they have a product worth $60-$100 why are they prepared to give up a 75% cut on average to an affiliate? Commission Junction this is not.

Maybe I’m not evil enough to promote Clickbank products properly, or maybe I care too much about what people think but there are people out there claiming a six figure monthly salary from Clickbank? Don’t get me wrong, when I find something that I think people will find genuinely useful I’m not shy of including a Clickbank link (like my list of Surveys for example) and I’ve even made the odd sale. If I hadn’t made money from Clickbank I wouldn’t even be mentioning it here, I just wish people wouldn’t push the sort of crap they’d never buy themselves.

So these are my top 3 tips to being an honest yet poor Clickbank affiliate:-

1. Look at what you’re promoting, would you buy it? If not then don’t push it.
2. Check out the landing page before creating an affiliate link to it, Dear “Insert Name Here” is usually a bad sign!
3. If in doubt ask a family member to read the landing page, if you’re too embarrassed to show them it then don’t promote the product.

If it’s a product for a price at which you’d buy it and you don’t feel dirty promoting it then please go ahead. I normally manage 3-4 Clickbank sales a month bringing in around $100. Far from impressive but I have no guilt about the products I’m promoting if that counts for anything?

One final thing, people buying might be turned off by seeing a Clickbank affiliate link, it is normally recommended that you disguise the link (it will also stop people from stealing your commission). If you’re not techy minded then the following tools may help (these can also be used for lots of other affiliate schemes):-

Affiliate Link Masking