A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online (Part 4)

“Getting Started Series” (Part 1d) – A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online… Lessons Learned!

(…continued for Part 1c which you should read first)

I am sure that story ended a little abruptly for many of you, and I am sorry… but I know more than a few people that have had very similar stories to Johnny’s, and that’s how their making money online journey ended… they just gave up. I have spoken with lots of people that have started online businesses over the years, and many of them have had very similar experiences to Johnny’s. Some of them made it to a year or more, while others gave up in only a month, but their stories each ended the same.

Now I did not write this to discourage you from starting an online business, but I wanted to show you the fate of a large percent of the people that start out trying to make money online. Hopefully you can learn from Johnny’s mistakes (which we will go over) and that will “hopefully” help you in starting your online venture. So let’s go over some of the things that Johnny did wrong…

He jumped at the first thing that came along – Johnny did no research whatsoever when he started out. He typed in the search term, “Making Money Online” into Google and clicked on an ad saying he can earn $25,000 a month sitting on the beach… and he was sold. If Johnny were smart, he would have done a lot more investigating before jumping into any business. He could have visited blogs and forums to see what other ways people are making money online to see what the best fit for him was. There are lots of ways to make money online, and if you are looking to make a lot of money fast… it most likely will not happen as a blogger. I’m not saying you can’t make a lot of money blogging, because it is definitely possible, but it takes time and a lot of work… and it’s not for everyone.

He chose a niche he knew nothing about – Here’s a big mistake a lot of bloggers and internet marketers make, and Johnny did as well. Johnny chose a niche that he thought would make him the most money, even though he knew nothing at all about the subject. When starting an online or offline business you want to start one in a niche you really know well and hopefully love. One of my favorite quotes is, “Do what you love, and the money will follow”. Why not start your online venture in a business you are passionate about, so you can enjoy the time and effort you put into it?

He put no time or effort into choosing a domain name – Choosing a good domain name is a very important step when starting your business and Johnny put no time or effort into it at all. There are many factors to be considered when selecting a domain… which we will go over in more detail later in this Getting Started series. Let’s just say that Johnny’s way of grabbing the first domain that he found available probably wasn’t the best way to go.

He had unreal expectations – Okay… Johnny was a little mislead by the blogging course’s sales page, as he thought he would start making money online right away. He and every one of you just starting out (on your online adventure) needs to know that making money online takes time and effort on your part. There is no getting around it. There might be that one in a zillion person that stumbles across some huge money maker with not much effort, but the odds of that happening are like you winning the lottery. So before you get started you need to know that it will take a while until you start making a lot of money online and you will have to work to accomplish it… and not everyone will. As for me, I would recommend giving yourself at least a year before you see any significant amount of income coming in… especially for you bloggers out there.

He had no kind of schedule – When Johnny started out… he started with a bang. Some nights after he got home from his 9 to 5 day job he would stay up until 3am working on his online business. The next day at work he would be tired all day… which would make the job he didn’t like even less enjoyable to be at. What happened to Johnny happens to many new internet entrepreneurs. They start out working super hard, (putting in a ton of hours) and when success doesn’t come fast… they slowly start getting discouraged, and each week start putting in less and less time and effort into their business.

The smart thing to do is to create a schedule for yourself right from the beginning. Decide how many hours you want to put into your online venture each night and what days you want to take off… and try and stick to that the best you can. Maybe put 2 – 4 hours a night aside to work on your business and take the weekends off… it is totally up to you. Just don’t burn yourself out!

As a blogger you might want to put certain days aside to write posts and other days to leave comments and work on other tasks. It is a good practice to publish your posts on a consistent schedule, so your readers know what days to expect a new post from you. You can post once a week, every day of the week, or any amount in between… just try and keep it consistent each week.

For the internet marketers and the rest of you… you also want to create a schedule for your business activities. If you have a project that needs to be completed on a certain date… divide it up in manageable sections and give yourself a certain amount of time each night to complete each task. That is way easier then trying to get as much stuff as you can do… done in one night.

Throwing in the towel too soon – You hear these types of stories all the time… where someone was just about to give up on their business and it finally becomes super successful, and then others that gave up just before their businesses was about to take off. Now in Johnny’s case, could he have made his business work? Probably… but it would have taken a lot of time and a lot of effort on his part. I think it was better that Johnny stopped working on that particular project and hopefully he finds something to do that he really enjoys.

Hopefully you learned a few things from this story. I didn’t write it to discourage anyone from doing whatever they want to do to make money online. I wrote it to help you avoid some of the pitfalls that many new and old online entrepreneurs fall into when they start their online ventures.

Next in my “Getting Started” series I will go over some of the basics things you will need to know to get online business started like; how to choose your niche, registering a domain name, getting your domain hosted, what type of website you should start, some simple techniques to start making money online, etc…

A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online (Part 3)

“Getting Started Series” (Part 1c) – A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online

(…continued for Part 1b which you should read first)

So Johnny steps up his commenting. That night when he gets home from work he gets on his computer and starts searching for every making money online blog he can find. On each blog he writes well thought out and useful comments, as that is what it recommends in his blogging course. Before he knows it is 3AM and he has to get up in a few hours to go to work. So Johnny heads for bed, but this time he is so tired he has no problem falling asleep.

The next day at work he is dragging all day, but he is excited to get home to see if all his hard work from the night before has brought him in some cash, as he has still not made any money yet. When he gets home he sees over 20 new comments in moderation ready to be approved, so he approves all of them.

He then checks his Adsense account and affiliate accounts and he has still not made any money whatsoever. Now he is starting to get a little bummed, as he has been doing this for almost a couple of weeks now with nothing to show but some nice comments on his blog.

Well Johnny (though a little frustrated) continues following the same steps for the next couple of weeks, as he is at least starting to build some traffic. He has also learned from reading a lot of other blogs… that in reality it takes a while to start making money online.

During this time Johnny actually starts earning some money with Adsense. Nothing much though…. 17 cents one day, 40 cents another, even one day he made over a dollar, but most of the days nothing. By the end of his first full month Johnny made a grand total of $4.89 from Adsense and nothing from his affiliate programs. Not the kind of money Johnny was hoping for when he first started.

Johnny is really getting frustrated now, as he is putting in way more time than he thought he would when he started, and he is really having a hard time coming up with new things to write about. He thinks to himself, “This blogging thing isn’t as easy as they said it was in the blogging course, and it really isn’t that much fun either”. Also, his day job is getting even harder to go to… as he is so tired from putting in all the long hours into his new Internet business.

Now Johnny’s really thinking about throwing in the towel (only after a month), but he decides to stick it out a little while longer, as he told all his friends and family how rich he was going to become making money online. So Johnny continues running his blog, but with a lot less enthusiasm than when he started. He starts posting less often, and he pretty much gives up on commenting all together as it takes him too much time and it isn’t making him any money.

Finally after 3 months from when he started, Johnny has had enough. With a total of just over $10 in his Adsense account and no other income to speak of, Johnny says to himself… “This blogging stuff sucks” and he calls it quits.

THE END OF THE STORY, BUT THE BEGINNING OF SOME VALUABLE LESSONS…

(Click Here to read what lessons have been learned by Johnny’s first online venture. There are MANY!)

A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online (Part 2)

“Getting Started Series” (Part 1b) – A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online

(…continued for Part 1a which you should read first)

Well after a night of no sleep whatsoever Johnny heads to his 9 to 5 day job with a new bounce in his step, as he knows he will be turning in his resignation any day now.

Later that day when Johnny gets home from work… he rushes to his computer to start his journey to making money online.

He starts doing the things the course recommends… step-by-step! He chooses “Making Money Online” as his niche, as it seems like all the big successful gurus are making money blogging about it (even though he knows nothing at all about the topic). He then registers some “just okay” domain name, as he could not find any good ones available (in the 10 minutes he spent searching) for that particular niche.

After that… Johnny signs up for a hosting account, points his domain name to the webhost’s nameservers, installs WordPress (the blog platform) to his server (all things I will go over later) and he is ready to start blogging.

Johnny thinks to himself, “Wow that was a lot easier than I thought. This blogging stuff is easy!” Little does Johnny know.

So Johnny starts on his blogging venture. Since he doesn’t know much (okay… really nothing) about the topic of making money online, he starts reading all the blogs he can find on the subject and starts writing about similar topics for his blog. Once the site has a little content, he applies for a Google Adsense account as recommended in the course he purchased. A couple days later, after he has been approved, he starts adding Adsense code to his site. Again, he does exactly what the course says… he adjusts the color of his ads to blend in with his blog and he places the ads in just the right spots to get the maximum amount of clicks.

He then searches to see what affiliate products and services other bloggers in his niche are promoting on their sites, and he signs up for many of those affiliate programs as well. He then adds a bunch of the banner ads the affiliate merchants provided him to his blog. Now Johnny website is really starting to look nice, and he is getting more and more excited about all the money he knows he is about to start making.

It’s late and Johnny still has his 9 to 5 job to report to in the morning, so he heads off to bed. Again, he has a real hard time sleeping as he can’t wait to see how much money he has earned while lying in bed. He knows the cool thing about running an online business is… you can earn money 24 hours a day, even while you are sleeping!

Fortunately, he does manage to get a few hours of sleep this time. When Johnny wakes up the next morning… the first thing that he does is he hops on his computer to see how much money he has earned. He signs into his Adsense account and looks at his numbers and sees he didn’t even make one penny last night. Even worse, it looks like only one person visited his site while he slept. He quickly logs into his different affiliate accounts and he sees that none of his banner ads got any clicks either. He is a bit disappointed, but he figures most people are on the same schedule as he is and his site would probably do better during the daytime hours. So back to his 9 to 5 job he goes.

When Johnny gets home later that day from work… the first thing he does is he gets on his computer to check and see how much money he has made so far that day. Again disappointment hits Johnny, as he has still has not made any money, and it looks like he only had one visitor all day long. Johnny thinks to himself, “How can this be? I have a beautiful website, with a lot of great content… why aren’t people visiting?”

Johnny decides he probably should do some of the “Traffic Generating” techniques (which he was hoping to avoid) in his blogging course. So he visits other blogs in his “making money online” niche and starts commenting on other blogger’s posts. He also starts visiting different forums and leaves replies on different thread posts with a link back to his site in his signature file. He also wants to try guest blogging and article marketing… but he really doesn’t know that much about the subject (Making Money Online), and he barely has enough time to write 2 or 3 posts a week for his blog, so that is definitely not going to happen. He figures he will getting around to those other traffic generating techniques sometime down the road when he is not working his day job anymore.

Amazingly, right after Johnny started commenting on other blogs and replying to forum thread posts he starts to see some traffic to his site. People are actually commenting on his blog as well. Johnny is really excited now, as he thinks he has found the secret to success!

(Click Here to read what happens with the rest of Johnny’s first online venture)

A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online (Part 1)

“Getting Started Series” (Part 1a) – A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online

In part one of my “Getting Started” series I want to share with you one of the key secrets to making money online. Seriously, if more people knew this secret and followed it each day, there would be so many more people making money online. The great thing about this secret is it actually works in anything you do in life, but unfortunately (for some reason)… even if people know the secret, most don’t use it on a consistent basis.

Now many Internet Marketers (but not all) don’t want you to know about this secret, because… if everyone knew the secret, there would be a lot less people buying their “Get Rich Quick” products, and they would be making a LOT LESS MONEY.

So are you ready to know what the secret is? The secret is… “MAKING MONEY ONLINE TAKES HARD WORK AND DEDICATION, JUST LIKE ANY OTHER BUSINESS”. That’s the secret!

That is an important lesson to remember, as I have known so many people (over the last 10 years that I have been doing this)… that thought making money online was suppose to be easy. Let me give you an example of a typical unsuccessful online entrepreneur’s journey, so hopefully you can avoid a similar fate.

For this example I am going to give this “wanna get rich quick entrepreneur, without much effort” the name… Johnny.

Johnny has been reading lots articles and seeing news stories lately on how all these people (young and old) are getting rich online by starting these simple Internet businesses. Well Johnny wants to get rich too, and he hates his regular 9 to 5 job, so he decides to investigate what people are doing to make all this money online.

So Johnny jumps on Google and does a search for “Making Money Online”. Well there are just a ton of results that pop up, but one catches his eye. Over on the right side he sees an ad that says, “I make $25K a Month Blogging on the Beach with My Laptop and so can You!”. He thinks to himself… “Now that is the kind of business I want to have” and he clicks on the ad.

He is taken to this great looking website with a picture of this guy sitting on the beach, with a Mai Tai and a beautiful woman next to him, and a computer on his lap. Also on the page is a photo of his multi-million dollar mansion, with a few of his exotic 100K-plus cars parked out front.

As Johnny reads the long sale-page, he becomes almost in a trance on how easy and fast it was for this guy to start making 25K a month, and Johnny knows he is a lot smarter than that guys is, so this should be easy. On top of that, there are a dozen testimonials telling Johnny how great this course is and how they are all making a ton of money too, as a result of taking this course.

As Johnny scrolls down the page farther he comes to the “FREE Bonuses” section where they are offering over $1400 in free eBooks and videos (10 extra products total) if he purchases the course by midnight tonight. Now Johnny is really intrigued, as all the bonus products sound AWESOME and he really wants each one.

Finally Johnny makes it down to the section with the price of the course, which is only $47. “Wow”… Johnny is thinking. “The course is only $47, and it is going to teach me how to make over $25K a month online, plus I am going to get over $1400 in free bonuses, which are also going to help me make even more money online. Then on top of that, they are offering a 60-Day “No Questions Asked” Money Back Guarantee. How can Johnny say “No”?

So Johnny clicks the “Buy Now” button, pulls out his credit card and places his order. In most cases this would not be the end of the ordering process. Most of the time when buying these types of products Johnny would be introduced to several up-sell promotions before he actually ever gets to the product download page, but we will save that story for another day. For this example Johnny is just going to purchase the “How to Make Money Online Blogging” course (with the free bonuses), and that’s it.

Once the order has been completed Johnny is taken to the product download page. Since everything is in digital format… each product needs to be downloaded individually. So Johnny downloads the course and the other 10 bonus products to his computer one by one… which seems to take forever!

Finally all the products are downloaded and Johnny can open his making money online course on blogging. As Johnny reads the course from front to back he grows more and more excited on how easy it sounds to start making money. He actually reads it twice to make sure he doesn’t miss a thing. That night while he lies in bed, there is not a chance he is going to get a wink of sleep… as his mind is just racing with different thoughts of how he is going to be so rich, and he envisions all the cool things he will be buying in the next couple of months when the money starts rolling in.

(Click Here to read what happens with the rest of Johnny’s first online venture)

Making Money Online Dot Com’s “Getting Started” Series

We have been receiving a lot of emails here at Making Money Online lately asking us why we don’t explain the basics of how to get started online. For some reason when we started this site, we kinda started in the middle, instead of the beginning… as we assumed most of our visitors were somewhat experienced internet marketers and/or bloggers. From reading the emails, it appears many of our visitors are brand new to the Internet (who are known as newbies or noobs), so we are going to shift gears a little to let everyone catch up.

So for the next couple of weeks (at least), we are going to go over a lot of the basics when it comes to starting an online business. Topics like how to choose your niche, registering a domain name, getting your domain hosted, what type of website you should start with, some simple techniques to start making money online, etc… We are going to call this our “Getting Started” series!

Once the “Getting Started” series is completed… we will organize them on the site in some way so everyone will have easy access to them.

After that series is done we will start focusing on some more advanced techniques of making money online, as well as show you some other projects we are starting to work on to generate a nice monthly cash flow. Hopefully, not only will these projects help you with some ideas on how you can make some money… but we are hoping that in sharing what we are doing, you guys can help us in making these sites better and more profitable too.

Also… we eventually plan on making a video collection to go along with “Getting Started” series, but that probably won’t be happening until the end of this year or the beginning of next… so you will have to wait for those.

So stay tuned for Making Money Online Dot Com’s “Getting Started” series…

Build a Subscriber List for Free

Everyone knows that to really start making money online you are going to need to build yourself a subscriber list… right?

Well last week I wrote a post titled, “5 Best Bribes to Build Your Subscriber List”, which listed 5 different things you could use to bribe your readers into joining your subscriber list. In the comments section there were some of you that wanted to learn the basics of setting up the entire process of building a subscriber list without having to pay a 3^rd party provider like Aweber.

Well we have been using Aweber for many years now and have never tried to set-up a free service because we love Aweber and their reliability, and there is no way a free service can duplicate their delivery capabilities. But I did say that I would post a way to do it, so I spent several hours scouring the web and asking people for their solutions. I found it amazing that there weren’t more free solutions out there.

I finally did find a solution that should work. It is called, Your Mailing List Provider” and they are actually are a really cool service. They are not a full-blown autoresponder company like Aweber, but more of a mailing list manager and should work for building a simple subscriber list.

The major concern in my search was finding a solution that was FREE, and Your Mailing List Provider is free to start. They are also very reasonably priced when you move up to their Pro, and Pro-Plus version. The only major differences I see in the free version versus the paid ones is you don’t get any of the tracking features with the free version, you cannot manually add subscribers, and it is only free until you get your first 1000 subscribers. After that, you will have to move up to one of the other versions, which run only $3.75 per month for the Professional Version and $5.00 per month for the Professional Plus. Hopefully when you have 1000 subscribers you should be earning a lot more than that per month, so the upgrade cost shouldn’t be too hard on you.

So let’s walk through the steps for setting up you first mailing list. The first thing you are going to need to do is sign-up for a free account. You can signup here.

As this is a follow-up to my “5 Best Bribes” post, I am assuming you are going to want to give away some sort of BRIBE to entice your reader to subscribe. Since this is not an autoresponder service we will have to do it a little differently than we normally would. The way I would usually set it up would be that once the person signs up and confirms their subscription, they would receive an autoresponder message with a link to their ebook, or I might even send it as an attachment in that email. For this site we are actually giving away an entire free course that is delivered over a 2-week perid. Well we cannot do that here, so we are going to need to create a download page where the user will be redirected to once they subscribe. That should do the trick.

1) Create a free account – YourMailingListProvider.com

2) Create an eBook (bribe) and upload to server

3) Create a “Password Protected” Download Page

4) Create a Subscription Box

5) Upload Code to Your Blog

6) Test

To help make this easier on all of you out there, I decided to create a video walking you through the process. After I completed the video I realized that I could have done it a little differently, but I spent SO MUCH TIME creating the video that I didn’t have the energy to redo it.

The one thing that you don’t have to create is the “Password Protected” download page, but I actually like having the ebook protected myself. You can do it that way, but you could also send the link to your eBook in the “Welcome Email”… it is up to you. Other than that step, everything else is fine.

For some reason (which I know why) this video is not as clear as my last one, so I suggest you double-click on the video and watch it on YouTube in HIGH DEFINITION. Don’t forget to click the HD button. (sorry for the inconvenience)

Again, let me say that I have never used this service before, so I make no guarantees about anything. You guys asked for a “Free Solution” and this is what I was able to come up with.

If anyone has used this service and could give us some feedback in the comments section below, that would be awesome. Plus, if you have any better suggestions, we would love to hear about them as well.

Also, if any of you try this, please follow-up with us to let us know how it works

5 Best Bribes to Build Your Subscriber List

As everyone SHOULD KNOW or you probably have heard… that the MONEY is in “The List”! It is still the best and fastest way of making money online and off, and it will probably always be that way. That is why you see companies like Google and other huge corporations spend BILLIONS of dollars on companies that have HUGE subscriber bases or followings. They want access to those users!

As for us small business owners who don’t plan on selling our businesses for billions of dollars (unless someone offers it to us) building a strong list of subscribers is of utmost importance for our long-term success.

Your list can be used for keeping your readers informed of what is new on your site, let them know of new products you have coming out, promote affiliate products, recruit affiliates to promote your product(s), etc… the list could go on and on. It is not uncommon for Internet Marketers with large lists to make many thousands of dollars in one day by sending out a simple email to their subscriber list.

As for collecting names and emails there are many different options, but one of the best and most efficient ways is to use an autoresponder. Not only can you build a subscriber list with an autoresponder service, but you can also utilize their built in autoresponders which is basically a 24/7 (working while you sleep) sales machine. I am not going to go over all the reasons why autoresponders are so great in this post, as you can read that elsewhere.

I would say however that one of the best autoresponder services on the market today is Aweber. They were one of the firsts in the business and are still the cream of the crop (IMO). We have had our account with Aweber for at least 6 or 7 years now and we have over 40 different autoresponder lists for different niches setup with just that one account. It is a must-have in our marketing arsenal!

But enough about that… What this post is about is the “Best Ways to Bribe People to Subscribe to Your List”. Yes, I said “BRIBE” people to subscribe to your list. Nowadays it is harder than ever to build a list, as EVERY WEBSITE you come to is designed to try and get you to give them your name and email address. So the best way for you to succeed is to literally BRIBE them with something in exchange for their precious contact information.

You see some sort of BRIBE on most sites nowadays as well… like the site owner that is offering you a FREE eBook or eCourse for simply providing your first name and email address. We even do that on this site with our Private Label Secrets, which if you haven’t signed up for, you are missing out on a great resource (Yes, that was a plug).

So here is a list of some great bribes you can offer your readers to help build your list and start making more money online…

1) An eBook. This is probably the most used method today and still works pretty good. We use this method on several sites and it works great. The key is to offer an eBook that really relates with the niche you are in.

2) An eCourse. An eCourse is similar to an eBook, but is usually distributed to the reader over a period of time via email. The good thing about this method is you are carrying on a continuous dialogue with your reader each day (or at whatever intervals you prefer). The key is to end each email with a little taste of what is coming up next to keep your reader intrigued and excited about getting your next email. If you would like to see this in action, sign-up for our newsletter and we will send you our eCourse on making money with PLR products. You can always unsubscribe at anytime if you like, but I don’t see why you would.

3. Run a Contest. We have had some great success with this method over the years and will probably start having contests on this site soon. Basically you just say something like, “Sign-up for our newsletter and get into a drawing to win _______”. Now there are actually several tricks to this one to help you build your list faster and to keep your subscribers longer.

• Run a raffle for your subscribers once a month, or more often if you like. Give away something that your readers will want. Use your imagination on what you can do for prizes. If you have a marketing budget you can buy prizes, but if you don’t, you will have to be creative. Do you have a skill that is valuable that you could offer as a prize? I have seen designers give away complete site makeovers, banner creations, logo creations, etc…. What do you know how to do that would be valuable to your reader? There’s gotta be something!
• For one of our other blogs we are getting our prizes from local merchants for advertising on our site. They actually pay us to advertise on our site, plus they give us free stuff that we can give away to our subscribers. Not a bad deal for us at all. I have sitting in an envelope on my desk right now; eight movie tickets, four $25 gift cards for our local brewery, two gift certificates to Extreme Pita, four free 20 inch pizza coupons from our favorite pizza shop, and more things coming in the next couple of weeks. We are hoping to be able to give away one prize a day, Monday through Friday, 52 weeks a year. That should definitely help build up our subscriber base.
• (ADVANCED METHOD) Sell the eBook that you created instead of giving it away like I mentioned in #1. Create a simple sale page for it and charge $24.95 (just an example). That way you are giving the book an “actual value” instead of giving it away and saying it’s worth $24.95 (the “perceived value”). Next… you run a contest and use your eBook as the prizes. Maybe you give away 10 copies a month, or if you have lots of traffic, 10 copies a week. It really doesn’t matter to you, as you were going to be giving it away for free anyway. This can actually work better than just giving the eBook away, as many people assume if you are giving something away, it doesn’t have any value. But if they have a good chance of winning something of value, you have better odds of getting their name and email. NOTE: If you use this method, make sure that you take the extra steps to create a really good eBook, as you might actually sell some, and you want to be known as someone who over-delivers whenever possible.

4. Subscribers Only Gifts and Deals – Let your readers know that your loyal subscribers get free stuff and deals that regular visitors don’t. You can do all sorts of stuff with this technique. You can occasionally send your subscribers free gifts like ebooks, software, maybe some custom graphics… use your imagination. You could create them yourself if you have the skills, you could have someone else create them for you, or you could customize some PLR products you have. There are all sorts of ways to come up with worthwhile gifts.

You could also offer your subscribers discounts on products you sell. We plan to use this method for the new product we have coming out. We are probably going to be selling it for $7.00 (as per the $7 Dollar Secrets Method), but we are going to give all our subscribers a $5.00 OFF Coupon Code so they can get if for only $2.00. So again, if you are not subscribed to our newsletter, you should sign-up right away.

5) Access to Membership Area – Here’s a way to really build up a subscriber list, but it probably takes the most work. Again you can do this in a couple of different ways as well. You could have your main site that has lots of really good information on it, and then create a free membership section where you offer something more. Maybe something like “advanced techniques” or “how-to videos”, just something special that the regular visitors don’t have access to. To get free access, you readers will need to join by giving you their name and email address.

Another method would be to create just one great website and only allow access to subscribers. This method is a little harder to build your list, unless you already have a good reputation built up. With the first method, at least the reader has a chance to view some of your work first, so they can decide if they like you before they give up their contact information.

Ok… that’s it for this post, as it is starting to get REALLY LONG! I could probably add several more techniques, but my fingers are starting to get tired.

Why don’t you guys give us some more tips in the comments section below? What is something people could give away to bribe people to subscribe to their list?

Never Pay for Premium Web Hosting Again

When I first started thinking about writing this post I had so many titles in head that I wasn’t sure what the best thing to name it would be. I am still not sure that this is the best title, but it is the one I went with. Here are some of the other titles I was considering:

“Make Money Online Starting Your Own Hosting Company”

“Why Pay for Hosting When You Can get it for FREE”

“Starting Your Own Hosting Company Is Easier Than You Think”

“Become a Web-Hosting Reseller and Get Your Sites Hosted For FREE”

There were a bunch more, but I am sure you get the idea.

So is this about you starting your own web hosting business and getting 1000’s of clients? Absolutely not! I would not start a large hosting company myself, unless I was extremely “Server Savvy”, which I definitely am not. Starting your own full blown hosting company takes A LOT OF WORK and you have to offer some sort of 24/7 support (Yuk!). Way too much work for me… but if you have the skills and dedication, I have known people that have made a TON OF MONEY doing it. It’s just not for me.

What this post is about is something I have been doing for many years now and it has literally saved me thousands of dollars in hosting costs. What I am talking about is getting yourself a “Reseller Hosting” account and having your family, friends, and associates pay for it. Now doesn’t that sound cool? Well it is easier than you think.

For those of you that don’t know, let’s first talk about what a Hosting Reseller account is. Most hosting companies nowadays offer a few different levels of hosting services; Basic Hosting, Reseller Hosting, and Dedicated Servers. For details on Basic Hosting and Dedicated Servers (since that is not what I am discussing) you can read more about them on HostGator’s website. I am using HostGator as an example as they are one of my favorite hosting companies, but not the only one we use.

A Reseller Plan is more like having your own dedicated server, but on a smaller scale, as in reality you are just renting a section of a larger server. The cool thing about a Reseller Plan vs. a regular Hosting Plan is it comes with WHM (Web Host Manager) which is a control panel that allows you to easily create, edit, and delete individual hosting accounts with a few strokes of your keyboard. You can also set-up all sorts of customized packages for any domain you would like to host. You can even set-up “Email Only” accounts, which I have done for several friends. If you don’t already have a Reseller Account you will be amazed by all the cool things you can do with the WHM.

So you are saying to yourself, “All that’s cool, but how do I get it for FREE?”  Well it takes a little bit of work (as all good things do), but not too much at all. If you order a starter Reseller Plan (which is all you probably need) it will cost you $24.95 per month with no set-up fee if you go with a company like HostGator. You can find companies that might be a little cheaper, and many that are much more expensive, but as far as uptime and customer support, I have found HostGator to be my favorite. Once you have your reseller account setup, you will need to find someone to pay the 25 bucks each month.

There are many different ways you can do this, but here is what I do. I find 5 friends or associates that would like to start their own blog, or maybe would like to have their own personalized email account. Then I setup whatever they want up for them and charge them five to ten dollars a month. It literally only takes a few minutes to setup a blog or email account for someone, and those type of accounts take hardly any type of support whatsoever and don’t use too much of the server’s resources. If they want me to customize their blog and add a bunch of plug-ins… of course I would charge more for that. Plus, I usually charge them for the entire year in advance so I can just pay my account for the year and I don’t have to worry about billing anyone. It is very basic stuff.

We have several personal “Reseller Accounts” with a couple different hosting companies and (fortunately for us) don’t pay for any of them ourselves.

For those of you thinking, “Why would I need to host more than the one site I own”, you are probably not looking at the big picture. If you are hoping to start making a lot of money online (which I assume you are, since you are reading this blog), you will eventually need to expand your network and build other sites. I don’t want to go there with this post, as I just wanted to show you how to get your hosting paid for, but we will go over that in future posts. Let’s just say it is really convenient to be able add an account whenever you like and to have it paid for is icing on the cake!

Selling Information Products – Why People Buy Them

Selling information products is one of best ways to start making money online. It doesn’t really matter what niche you are in, as people are always looking for information about something. It doesn’t even matter if they can find the information for free by doing a little searching online. There are still people that will pay you for that same information, as long as it is all put together in a nice package for them to get fast access.

So the first question you should ask yourself is, “Why would people give you their hard-earned cash for your information product, when they can find the same information for free online?”

Well I am going to answer that question in this… “Part 1” of my series on “Selling Information Products”.

There are lots reasons why people buy information products, and knowing “Why” will hopefully motivate you to get started creating your own.

1. People are just Plain Lazy – Everyone is busier than ever nowadays and most people just don’t have the time or energy to spend hours on Google trying to find the information they need in bits and pieces.

2. Perceived Value of the Product – When people see a beautifully packaged product (which is usually just a well designed eCover) they assume that they are getting a high quality, thoroughly researched product. They figure it is better information than they can find online for free.

3. People Need Information Now – Most people that are searching for something online need the information right away. It makes sense that if they can get all the information they need from one source, and it is reasonably priced… why not buy it.

4. They Have Too Much Money – There are people out there that just have too much money and when they find something that they love or just want to know more about… they buy everything they can on the subject. I love those guys!

I could add several more reasons, but those are my top four. The point I want you to take from this is there are millions of people out there with credit cards in their pockets ready to spend money on information products on their favorite niche. Why not create one for them? It is probably a lot easier than you think.

In “Part 2” of the series I will let you know about some simple ways to create your first information product.

How to Choose a Domain Name

Are thinking about putting up your first website? Well the first thing (and one of the most important things) is getting a domain name. Not just any domain name, but a domain name that is perfect for your particular business.

A domain name is what you type-in to take you to a particular website that follows the http:// or the www in your browser address bar. The domain name for our website is “makingmoneyonline.com”. In my opinion it is perfect for this particular niche blog. As you will see it fits in all the requirements for choosing a great domain name below. The only negative thing is, it might be a little too long, but there is really no way to get around that.

One of the main things in choosing a domain name is you want register one that is memorable, as you don’t want people to have to look it up each time to find you. If they have to search through their giant list of bookmarks to find your website, it could cause you to lose a lot of repeat visitors, and it most definitely will hurt you with word-of-mouth advertising.

Below is a list of the things that I believe are important in choosing a good domain name:

Always Try and Get a .com
Domain names are available with all sorts of extensions, not just .com’s. You can register domains with; .net, org, info, .biz, etc… the list is quite large and it is much easier to find available domains in those other extensions. Some people will tell you that the extension is not that important, but I would tend to disagree. Sure there are many businesses out there that are successful using other extensions, but I am pretty sure if the dotcom version was available when they first registered their domain, they would have chosen it first. There is an exception with the extension .org, as it was created to be used for nonprofit websites, even though it is not always used in that way.

People just associate domain names with .com’s, just like they associate Google for searching the web. In the United State especially .com would be considered the Beverly Hills zip code of virtual real estate, so if you can, always try and get a domain with a .com extension.

Register a Domain that is Meaningful and Easy-to-Remember
Make sure that the domain you choose is memorable. You don’t want people to have to lookup your web address each time they want to visit your site. If you already have a business name the first thing you should check is if it is available. So if your business is named “Big Crazy Tattoos”, you should first do a search to see if “BigCrazyTattoos.com” is available. If that is taken, you might want to try something like “BigCrazyTattoosOnline.com” or something similar.

Some search engine experts say that you should register your domain with hyphens in it, for example “Big-Crazy-Tattoos.com”. They say you can get better search engine results with the hyphens. That might be true (I am not positive it is), but I don’t think the positives outweigh the negatives when it comes to hyphens. Any time you verbally tell someone the name of your site, you have to tell them to make sure that they put the hyphens between each word. Now seriously, how many times do you think someone is going to remember to do that? Plus, any time you mention the domain in audio books, commercials, teleseminars, etc… you have to tell them not to forget the hyphens. To me, it is just not worth the extra hassle.

Now, if you don’t have a business name yet, picking out a name gets much more fun, as you can name your business after your domain name if you like. I could literally write pages and pages of different ways to picking a good domain name, but I don’t have the time or space here. Probably the most important thing here is to not rush out and grab the first domain name that is available, unless it is PERFECT for your business. Play around with different keywords that relate to your business and see what you come up with. A cool website that has software for helping you come up with unique domain names is called NameBoy.com. Years ago when it first was created, I spent hours and hours searching for domains on that site. I personally would not register domains on that site, as they are a little expensive, but there is not charge to use their search functions.

Make Sure the Domain Name is Spelled Correctly
This is really important, as you can lose a ton of potential traffic if you do not spell your domain correctly. I know a couple guys who advertise on one of our other sites, and when they started their company, they went online to see if their two-word business name was available, and it wasn’t. But they REALLY liked the name, so they thought it would be cute to change the spelling of both the words, so the started their business under that name and registered the matching domain.

Now if you actually look at the two words of their business and sound them out, it sounds correct. But if they told you the name of their company, you would have NO IDEA how to spell it. I just did a search on Google for their website with the correct dictionary spelling of the words in their business and searched through the first 10 pages of results and they were nowhere to be found. I did find 2 companies with the same company name however, and they spelled their business correctly and they were both on the first page of my search. Now I am not positive, but I am sure there is a good chance that they are losing some business to their competitors just because they chose to spell their name that way. So, make sure not to get cute with your spelling.

Where Should You Register Your Domain Name?
There are lots and lots of different places to register domain names and they all have their good points and bad. We actually have our domains registered at a few different registrars and there are things that I like about each. But if I were starting out today, I would probably registrar my domains at Godaddy.com, as they are one of the least expensive places to register domains, and they offer some good free addons. But when you register a domain with them you need to make sure not to choose all the other services that they try to sell you during the registration process. All you really need is your domain registered, nothing else.

So registering a great domain name is the first thing you need to do to get your business online. In a future post I will talk about buying domains that someone already owns and some different ways to approach the owner to get a good deal.

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