How You Can Make Money
The Internet
is the information highway. Everyday millions of people go to Google, MSN and Yahoo to perform searches on anything from potting plants to investing stocks.
People want information and the way you can benefit from this is to build a website that gives people what they are looking for.
Achieve a top 5 ranking in the major search engines for popular keyword phrases and you can really rack in a ton of free traffic like I’ve been doing.
The money comes in with affiliate programs. These are programs that are offered by companies that pay website owners to refer their products.
Generally, they pay a certain percentage for every sale that comes in as a result of your site’s referral. Amazon.com has one and it’s very popular among website owners.
So let’s say you have an information website on baby toy safety. Your site is #3 in Google.com when someone types in “safe baby toys” and other related terms.
On your site, you’ve written various reviews on various toys based upon your own experiences. The more content you have, the greater the chance you’ll be found in the search engines for free.
To earn money, you could join the free eToy.com affiliate program and when you recommend various toys for parents, eToys will pay you a percentage for every sale your site refers. (Companies provide a special tracking link to use on your site so they know when your site generates a sale).
You could also join Amazon.com’s free affiliate program and recommend their books on baby safety. Amazon doesn’t pay very high commissions (3-5% on most products), but if you refer large volumes, the commissions can add up.
Google’s Free Affiliate Program
Thank goodness for programs like Google Adsense. This is a slightly different type of affiliate program because you
don’t have to get your visitors to buy anything.
You simply help Google advertise by displaying some text ads on your pages and they pay you for every click each ad receives. Thanks to Google’s technology the ads that will be displayed match your site’s content.
So if your site is about baby toys, the ads that show up will relate to that topic, thus improving the click-thru percentage. The more pages of content you have, the greater the earning potential for programs like this.
The nice thing about information websites that make money from affiliate programs (rather than selling hard goods) is that you can leave your website for days, weeks or months and still continue to make money without having to handle inventory or talk to customers.
Remember, your site serves as the middleman and refers products for other company websites. The actual company that pays you is the one that ships the products and deals with the customers.
