How to Make Money Online

KoliTech

Posted by Felix Okoli on Thursday January 9, 2014 at 12:40:16:

There is a new way to make money and it doesn’t necessarily require that you stay fixed to a full time job or even have to maintain a customer service desk and there is a growing number of people and companies who are investing in this business.

It is called the internet business and it allows investors to make money online, even while they sleep. You no longer have to work so hard and yet earn so small or be so bothered about securing a retirement income when an online business can give you even much more.

I recall the excitement I once had when I read an advert on the pages of the newspapers that I could make money on autopilot just by setting up a system that works for me. As someone who was just used to making use of the internet, the desire to be able to earn some income also while doing that was a growing one until I hit my pot of gold.

Making money online is something that is quite possible but may not be so easy for someone just getting started. However, once you get started and earn a good reputation, you’d almost be amazed by the amount of money and opportunities you can get from it.

Is it really possible to make money from the internet? How do people do it?
Well, when you take a look at some of the big tech companies we have right now, you’d agree that they made their money from their internet presence. Yes, companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo are all wonderful examples of companies that have made a lot of money online and would probably continue to do so in the near future and you shouldn’t be left out of that opportunity.

You should be asking yourself how they really make money.
What does it mean to make money online? It refers to being able to generate some income from the internet world.
In the past, when the internet first came into being, most people just used it as a sort of information pool that worked a bit like a large database which allowed users to access and share information. However, as time went on, it soon became a means through which many companies have made money, running into billions of dollars.

How did companies like Yahoo and Google do it? Well considering these two companies I mentioned, they have something in common – Online presence, People power and a monetization system.
Yahoo started as a free web based email service that allowed everyone in the world to open a free email account. Guess what? I was one of those who benefited from Yahoo’s free email accounts and I’m sure you are too. So, Yahoo, riding on that power of popularity which they merited by providing a free email service, search engine and other attractive platforms, were able to make money by getting paid for advertising.

It’s basically the same thing with Google. They came out as a powerful search engine and I do recall that when Google first came out in those days when we’d see a monkey jumping from one end our screen to the other, they were still trying to catch up with companies like Yahoo and MSN search. However, today, Google is regarded as the number one search engine and they’ve been able to ride on that popularity to make money.
Google had about the same thing Yahoo had but however, they were more into providing search results and this attracted people to them which then provided an opportunity to make money online.

Things needed to make money online
Google and Yahoo had certain things in common which allowed them to make money online and these are:
• Online presence: A website where they offered services
• People power: Something that attracted people to them
• Monetization system: A system that allowed them to offer services and get paid
For you to be able to make money online, you’d also need to have these 3 things. You need to establish and online presence, have the power to attract people and a good monetization system.

Online Presence

One of the things that a person or company which wants to make money online needs to have is a presence on the web. He needs to have an online presence.
An online presence is something that signifies that you exist on the internet and it’s a place or sport where people can find you. It is a platform through which they can connect to you. If you really want to make money from the web, then you need to have this online presence.

A good example of an online presence is a website site. It is located at a url address and it’s a place where the person or company’s web is located and hosted. A company can promote their products and what they are about using a website.

Other examples of online presence can be an email address, online profile or even social address like a Facebook url
Let’s take an example to the case of a freelancer who wants to offer services of web site design and graphics. He would need to create an online profile at a freelancing website like freelancers or elance. He would also need to link an email address to that profile so that people can connect to him when they need his services. Imagine what it would have been like if he didn’t have any email address or a freelancer profile.

An online presence would help tell people that you exist, what you are offering and how they can connect with you. If a freelancer or service provider doesn’t have any web presence, he would not be able to connect to people and hence would not be able to make any money.
Nowadays the common way of establishing an online presence is through setting up websites and public profiles. For most cases however, you need to at least have an email address if you intend to be successful in making money online.

People Power

It is one thing to think up a business idea that you can use to generate money online and another thing to actually generate that income. One of the other things you need after establishing an online presence is people power. People power in this context refers to the ability to draw people to your online presence. It is the attractiveness your brand has towards people.

You know, the main goal of any online merchant is to attract people and in this way be able to sell stuff to them. You need to be able to draw people closer so that your online business becomes profitable.

Companies like Yahoo and Facebook were able to attract people because they offered free stuff to people such as free email accounts and the power to socially interact. Imagine what it was before services like Yahoo chat or Facebook chat. Online chatting is one of those ways through which these companies were able to attract millions of people and hence were able to better market their other stuff and make money.

You can decide to offer services to people for free with the goal of making money through another means such as subscriptions or referral links. Publishers can at times offer free e-book downloads in order to sell a second e-book for a good price. A website or blog that publishes content frequently can grow its people power by offering a subscription service which would allow him get a lot of people subscribed and hence stay with the blog.
What is that service or product you can offer to people that would in such a way attract them to your brand? You need to think in that line because with it, you would be able to get the people power that you

Monetization system

Now that you’ve established an online presence, got the power to attract people, the next thing that remain is a way of making money. You need to be able to run a business system that actually brings you money.

One system I personally use as a blogger is selling advertising space. I normally publish content and rent the advertising space to pay per click networks like Google Adsense and Chitika. Another method I use is in affiliate marketing where I offer free YouTube videos embedded with affiliate links. For me, that’s my business model.

How do you then make that money now that you have got the attention of people? Well, you can sell something. You can sell advertising space, use affiliate marketing, sell your own stuff directly, sell subscriptions and so on.
Sites like Yahoo sell domain names, premium Yahoo mail services, web hosting and so on. Google sells advertising and so does Facebook. Amazon is a large online retail store that sells both physical and digital items. Darren Rowse sells ebooks at his blog and there are also others who make money just writing and publishing with Amazon KDP just as I’m also doing. You just need to establish that business model that brings in the money for you.

It should be a system that is transparent, trusted and pays you using a method that works for you.

Some ways to make money online
- Selling online
- Affiliate marketing
- Blogging
- Article writing
- Freelancing

1. Selling Online

There are probably many other ways to make money online but none of them can be quite as effective as selling online. Yes, having an internet shopping platform is how a lot of companies have made their millions online.

It’s a smart way to make money since you’d be selling stuff that you already have in stock or have rights to and it could either be a physical or digital item. It may also simply be a product or service and both of them can be sold on the internet.

Websites like Amazon and eBay are successful examples of online merchants who sell online and have made millions. You just need to be able to set up a platform that would allow the people you attract buy stuff from you and be able to get paid from it.

Things needed to sell online
Selling online in would normally require the following things:
* A standard website
* Online Payment platform
* Product(s) or Service(s)

A Standard website
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This could just be an e-commerce website or just a brochure type website that is connected to a shopping cart that allows buyers to select items they want to buy and go on the payment process. When setting up a website in that would allow you to sell, the best thing to do is to make it look appealing as well as functional. It should be a smart website that displays your product properly while at the same time not slow down the buyer's shopping experience. Your website is that displays and markets your products to people. It would normally include details as to what’s included in that package and how much it costs.

If you are not much knowledgeable about setting up an e-commerce website, you can always sub-contract it out to third parties or simply make use of third party selling websites that would sell your stuff for a commission.

Online Payment platform
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Once you have decided to start selling your stuff online, the other thing you would need to consider is how you are going to get paid for it. This is where the payment system is required. The payment system is normally included or linked to the shopping website and that’s where people would be led after they’ve indicated interest to buy your stuff.
There are lots of payment platforms that are used nowadays and each of them uses a different technology. You should basically choose a system that works best for your customers. Payment processors include Paypal, Payza, Merchant accounts, Google checkout, gift cards and so on. You can decide to use a payment processor that works locally or internationally.

Product or Service
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To sell online and make money, you would definitely need to have your own product or service. This is something that you’ve created or have rights to distribute. Most online merchants prefer selling digital stuff since it requires less inventory. I f you are selling physical stuff, you’d also need to keep a good inventory of your store.

If you are into selling digital stuff, you’d need to sell it on a platform that allows for automatic delivery after payment while for physical stuff, you need to set up a delivery system that delivers deliver orders manually once sales have been made and verified. A lot of people who have made money online by selling digital items are mostly those who sell information products like e-books, videos, mp3s and even digital pictures.

So whatever you are selling online, you need to first create it or make it available in your online store so that people will be able to buy once it is available for purchase.
For an online merchant that is into selling physical stuff, there is a need for having a sort of warehouse whey they stock items and then keep an inventory which automatically reflects in the online store. If you are selling digital items, then you need to upload the item to your digital store and protect it so that people will be able to download it almost as soon as they’ve purchase it.

2. Affiliate Marketing

Apart from making money online by selling your own stuff, you can also make money by helping other people to sell their own stuff. You don’t need to keep an inventory or have an e-commerce website to sell your own stuff to other people but you can make some good money by referring customers to online merchants who have something to sell.

Nowadays, more and more websites mainly owned by big companies are going into the business of selling online and it can be hard to simply compete with these guys if you have just little capital. However, you can take a slice of your own cake from the money that people spend in shopping online by partnering with these online merchants. That is basically what affiliate marketing is all about.

Affiliate marketing has to do with marketing the products and services of online merchants you are affiliated to and have a formal relationship with.
Let’s take an example of an online shopping giant like Amazon. They do run an affiliate program(Amazon associates) and sell a wide range of stuff you can earn a commission on. Let’s say you sign up and become their affiliate, you can promote items that they sell like jewelries or laptops. Let’s say your affiliate commission for laptops is 4% and you were able to lure customers to buy at least one laptop worth $400, you would have succeeded in earning at least $16 from that sale. Now imagine how much you would earn if at least 100 people buy that laptop you are marketing. That would be a cool $1600 just for spreading the word about the laptop.

Another cool merchant that runs an affiliate program is Bluehost. This is a web hosting company that is into the business or hosting websites using its computers located in the USA. They are are service company and If you have a very strong niche in web hosting, you can easily make some cool money by referring webmasters to their service. I’ve earned some good money with bluehost and they pay as much as $65 per lead.

Affiliate marketing can make you some good money and the more you are known for a particular brand of product or service, the better your chances of making money from your marketing effort.

How to get started with Affiliate marketing
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Being an affiliate doesn’t come automatically but you need to do some certain things in other to get started with it. This includes the following things:
- Setting up a content website or blog that promotes online merchant products and services.
- Establishing a formal relationship with the merchant through registration
- Getting your affiliate links and banners
- Promoting the merchants stuff on your website using the links
- Choosing your payment system e.g. Check, gift card, bank wire etc.

How to promote your affiliate links
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Your affiliate links are the secret weapon that actually ensures that you get credit for every potential customer you refer. If you just refer customers using links to the merchant’s product listing page without your affiliate code, you would not get credit for sales that happen afterwards and that’s why it’s important to always use your affiliate links when making referrals.

Here are some tips you can use to promote your affiliate links:
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- Establish a strong content website related to the product or service you are promoting
- Embed the code in your website template
- Submit articles to several article directories and include your affiliate links
- Create videos and upload them to free video sites like YouTube and Vimeo, including your affiliate links in the description

Getting paid as an Affiliate
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When it comes to affiliate payments, the process is normally included in the terms of service included in the affiliate agreement. For some affiliate programs, it can be weekly or monthly. It is also based on a payout limit which means that payment may only be made after an affiliate has earned a minimum amount. In most cases, affiliate payment levels can be as low as $10.
Once you’ve earned the minimum payment level, you’d normally be paid using the method you’ve accepted in your payment settings and this can be by Paypal, Check, gift card or bank deposit.
There are lots of people who earn a full time income from just affiliate marketing alone and you can do so too if you have established a strong online presence in the niche your affiliate program is most identified with.

3. Blogging

Blogging is a growing profession and it’s one of the ways many individuals have been making money independently.
It involves writing and publishing on the web. A blog is a web-log of one’s entries on a website. Blogging mostly involves adding content which can be in the form of texts, pictures, videos and other content although text blogging is the commonest form.

Where does blogging money really come from? Well, the money really comes from other areas such as selling online advertising, donations, consulting and so on but most bloggers tend to focus on advertising. So blogging and selling advertising space makes a great combination and is a good source of income for most bloggers.

Getting Started with blogging
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So how does one get started with blogging?
Well, it requires for you have some creativity and ability to create readable content while also publishing it online. Advertising offers you a way to make money from your blog since you have created a platform that attracts people. The more traffic a blog gets, the more money it’s likely to make from advertising.

To get started, all you need are:
- A Blogging platform
- Blog Content

Blogging platform
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To set up a blog, you would need to have your own domain name, hosting and thirdly, a blogging platform. You could get a blogging software for free such as Wordpress. You can get this directly as an all inclusive package from your web hosting company and all you need to do is sign up and pay for hosting. Once you have an account, you can simply install Wordpress on your account. Blogger is also a free blogging platform and there are a couple of others like that.

Getting a Domain name
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A domain name is the unique name of a web address. It is unique in the sense that they can be no two exact domains. An example of a domain name is kolitech.com. To get a domain name, you can buy it online from a domain registrar like Godaddy, Netfirms or Bluehost. It costs and annual fee of around $12 and once you have it, all you need to do is point the name servers to a web hosting account.
Web Hosting for your blog
Getting a good and reliable web hosting is the second thing you need to do after getting a domain name. You can get a paid or free web hosting for your blog but it’s always best to go for the paid one since it allows you more control over your blog.

Companies like Bluehost, Yahoo, Hostgator and Netfirms all offer web hosting services and they come at varying costs. Just choose the one you’d prefer and set up your blog on it.
Once you have purchased a web hosting account, all you then need to do is point your domain name to your web

hosting account's nameservers such as ns1.bluehost.com and ns2.bluehost.com if bluehost is your web host. You would be able to that that from your domain account control panel.
Setting up Wordpress on your website:
When your website is live, you should also set up Wordpress or your preferred blogging software on your host and you could do this easily from within your web host org by following their installation guidelines. It is not a really hard task to achieve and your blog could be live in about 5 mins.
Content
This is where the main work lies as most people I know who set up blogs did not really have the fire or creativity to blog consistently. A scanty blog with little or no content can hardly make any money for you. Your blog has to have a lot of attractive content in order for it to yield any income. There is a common saying that content is king. The more content your blog has, the more money It would be able to make. So, focus your blog on a particular niche and write a lof of useful content on it.

You may need to constantly make blog posts on a daily, weekly or monthly basis to keep your blog up to date and get ranked high by search engines.. Most professional bloggers blog about 3 - 4 times a week but as a newbie, you should blog more often in order to create your own mark on the web and especially on search engine results. Think of it this way, for very blog post you make, your blog is worth a dollar and now think how much your blog would be worth if you have up to 10,000 blog posts.

Selling advertising
Now that you've set up Wordpress or other custom blogging software on your blog, you would need to get advertisers on it and one way you can do this is by setting up a publishers’ account with networks like Google adsense, Chitika, Clicksor, Textlinks, Infolinks and Bidvertiser. You would need to already have traffic to your blog in order to get advertisers on it.
You may also decide to sell advertising space directly to clients and for that, you may need to contact merchants directly and tell them how you can help promote their products.

Blogging can be a hard business to start but when you are an established force on the web, it becomes easier to make money from it.

4. Article Writing

You can also make money online just by writing articles. Articles are a collection of words that have been used to publish an opinion, essay or story about a particular subject. An article can be based on personal experience, opinions, ideas or investigation on a topic. An article is meant to give the writer’s view on that subject to readers.

An article can be made up of about 100 to 500 words and it is becoming an important tool for publishing information on the web. Some writers even write up to 1000 words just to capture a keyword or set of keyword phrases. The more quality an article has, the more money it is likely to make.
Now how can one make money from article writing? Well you could make money by online advertising and you don’t have to do the advertising yourself. You could sign up with any of the advertising networks that are willing to pay you to advertise besides your articles. Some of the advertisers that could pay you are into niches like online shopping, products, services, web hosting, relationship and beauty products.

Why Article Writing? Well one advantage with article writing is that you don’t really need to have your own website to start making money with it. So no domain name fees, web hosting fees, web administration but just your editor’s control panel. I personally use hubpages besides just my blog since it helps me out in 2 ways. You can try article publishing platforms like hubpages, articlebase, Helium, buzzle, ehow and so on. They allow you to sign up as a member and setup your advertising codes which will now enable you to get credit when people use your ads.
You can receive your money by means of Paypal, cheque or bank wire when you’ve reached the payment threshold.
Ways to get paid for article writing:

Writing for article publishing websites e.g. Hubpages
Writing articles on a contract e.g. Freelancing websites
Writing and publishing your own articles

Whichever way you look at it, there is a growing demand for high quality unique articles by publishing networks and if you are good at writing, you can make money doing so.

5. Freelancing

Another way to make money online is by offering computer services to clients without having to meet with them physically. Freelancing is what this method is called and it basically involves a skilled employee posting a resume and seeking job contracts from employers who require their services from time to time. For the sake of both parties protection, there is mostly a third party involved and in this case it is the freelance community.
There are lots of online freelance communities which allow people with computer skills to make money just by doing jobs offered to them. Computer skills that are required can be article writing, graphic design, website design, copyrighting, e-book writing, data entry, multimedia presentation and so on. If you are good in once computer program or another and are willing to get paid for it, you can do so by joining a freelancing community.
How it works is like this: Peter is an employer who is seeking a logo design for his company which is into solar energy installations. He gives a bit of some details of how he wants the logo to look like and allows employees to bid on the contract. He is willing to pay at least $50 to the chosen candidate. You then as a member of that freelance community can decide to bid on the job and then design a logo for Peter. After bidding and also including your resume online, Peter may decide to give the contract to you and then pays the $50 to the freelance community to keep in an escrow account. You would then be told to do the job and submit within the agreed time. If Peter is satisfied and accepts the work, your account will get credited with the amount you earned and everyone goes home happy, even without seeing each other face to face.
The benefits of making money from freelancing websites is that is saves you time, allows you to use the internet and also be able to get a lot of jobs you would ordinarily not get if you were just using a physical office. In a Freelance community, lots of jobs are posted frequently and it can be hard to execute all of them.

Tips to get jobs as a Freelancer

Upload a good resume of your previous work( Even if you did them for yourself)
Start with a reasonable rate. Don’t charge too much
Maintain a good relationship with members
Keep your former employers satisfied

You can make good money as a freelancer if you have good computer skills.

Conclusion on making money online

As you might have noticed, there are several ways to make money online but in all, you need to setup 3 basic things which are

Online presence
Attract People
Monetization system

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