MAKING MONEY ON THE INTERNET

There are two main ways to make money on the internet:

1. Sell your own product.

2. Sell someone else’s product.

The article that appears below was written by some one whose identity could not be traced.
We would like to thank him for the permission to reproduce his article for the benefits of beginners to "making money on the internet"

One of those options is very easy so long as you know what you are doing, and the other is very difficult whether you know what you are doing or not.

Selling your own product and running your own business is phenomenally difficult, and most people who try this option fail miserably before they even realise it. The problem with this option is the fact that first of all you need to design and produce your own product. This process alone can take you many months or even years, and can include huge amounts of money to develop your idea from a start point to a finished product.

You then have to create an e-commerce website, and the cost of having a website designed and hosted will invariably venture in to thousands of dollars. Even a basic website will cost in the region of RM500 – 3,000 to have designed.

Next you will have to begin an advertising campaign that will actually get your site noticed and in front of potential customers, and you will also need to build a good reputation that your prospects will know about and be happy to do business with.

Selling your own product and creating your own business from scratch is one of the hardest things you could ever do. Only a tiny fraction of the number of people who attempt to do this ever succeed in breaking even, and even less actually ever make enough money to earn a living from their business.

Sadly, starting your own business selling your own product is one of the quickest ways to lose money and end up in serious debt. There are only a very small number of people who ever succeed in this sort of venture. The vast majority will only experience failure.

The other option available to you is to sell someone else’s product by means of their affiliate program.

This is by far the easiest way to make money online, and there are many thousands of people making very substantial incomes from doing just this.

The beauty of selling other peoples products with affiliate programs is the fact that all the work associated with setting up a new business has already been done for you.

Someone else has already done all the hard work, taken all the risks and invested all the necessary time and money, so all you need to do is advertise in order to make money.

Affiliate programs are becoming more and more popular and are now the most widely used method for ordinary people to make money on the net. Just about every industry imaginable that uses the internet to generate sales, offers an affiliate program for people to use and profit from.

If you are just starting out on your journey to internet based income, affiliate programs are your easiest and greatest chance of success.

Now, having just told you that affiliate programs are the easiest way to make money, it may seem a bit confusing or contradictory when we say that unfortunately 95% of people involved with these sorts of programs never make any money whatsoever.

In fact most will actually lose money rather than make any.The reason for this is quite simple…..most people simply do not know how to advertise or promote the affiliate program they have joined, and therefore get things wrong from start to finish.

It’s almost certain that you are currently involved in one or more affiliate programs yourself, and if you want to make sure you do not fall in to the same category as 95% of other online marketers, it is essential that you learn how to correctly promote these programs for maximum profit.

The aim of this course Online Marketing for the beginner, is to teach you the very best and easiest ways to promote any affiliate program that you join, so that you can be confident that it will actually put money in your account on a regular basis.

We will show you why and how you should choose an affiliate program to join, what you should avoid and the common mistakes made by so many people when they first start out in this area of income generation.

You will basically learn the ins and outs of affiliate marketing, but most of all we will show you how to actually make money with an affiliate program.

The only reason you join any program is to make money……nothing more, nothing less!

This article will show you exactly what forms of advertising are best suited to turning a profit. We will discuss each of the different methods in turn so that you will know exactly how to utilise each one to its maximum potential, and therefore virtually guarantee that you make money.

So many people fail at affiliate marketing simply because they lack the basic knowledge of how best to promote these programs. With Affiliate Programs For the beginner, you will be armed with all the knowledge you need to quickly get ahead in the world of internet income generation.

If you are serious about making money on the internet, then effective promotion of affiliate programs is one of the most important things you should ever learn. Even the most successful entrepreneurs and marketers in the world promote affiliate programs, because they know what a huge and lucrative source of income they are.

Carefully studying this article will give you all the knowledge you need to become extremely successful with affiliate programs and affiliate marketing.

Why Choose Affiliate Programs!

The internet is an amazing place. It is a virtual world where just about anything is possible. You can virtually visit anywhere on the planet, learn information on every conceivable subject, buy & sell anything and communicate with fascinating people from all over the world.

The World Wide Web has opened up possibilities beyond our wildest dreams, and one of the greatest opportunities the web has presented us with is the ability to make money without ever having to leave our homes.

It is impossible to tell, but it is estimated that there are currently over 2 billion individual websites on the net at this time, and a significant proportion of them are related to or offer a means for ordinary people to make money from home.

It is clear from the very fact that you have downloaded this e-course that you are looking for a way to make money with your computer over the internet. You’re not the only one; there are an estimated 500,000 searches done each day on search engines for terms relating to “making money on the internet”.

Each day a staggering half a million searches are done by people wanting to make money online, so you can see that this is something that a lot of people are trying to do.

You have no doubt done numerous searches in the past whilst looking for a way to make either some extra cash or even a full time income from home, so you will have seen just how many different websites there are that offer you such an opportunity. A simple search on Google for “make money online” will return over 500,000,000 web page results. That’s an incredible amount of individual pages that have been created that have something to do with making money with the internet.

One thing is certain; there is no shortage of opportunities to choose from when it comes to wanting to find a way to make money. The question is which one do you choose?

If you are new to online money making or you are not really familiar with the different kinds of opportunities out there, it is likely that you are a little confused as to what each type of website really offers in terms of income potential. Before you can even think about making money online, you have to know how each opportunity works and what effort would be expected from you to make it happen.

Of all the income opportunity websites out there, most of them will fall into one of the following major categories:

Start your own business!

Join an affiliate business!

“Start your own business” websites!

If you’ve spent even half a day looking at income opportunities you will have seen dozens if not more of these kinds of sites – there are literally tens of thousands of them.

These websites are generally not suitable for novices, and should be avoided by internet beginners like the plague. If you are new to online marketing and the home business industry, you should be very wary of these sites because they can look very appealing to you, but are virtually guaranteed to be of no use to you whatsoever.

The basic pattern that these sites take is “see what I do and copy me”!

The kind of thing that we are talking about is sites that say things like;

“I made 1 million dollars last year and now I’m going to show you how to do the same!”

Or,

“Discover an incredible system that has made me rich and can make you rich too!”

Now don’t get us wrong. We are not trying to say that these sites are scams or dishonest because that simply isn’t true, but they are certainly not suitable for internet beginners. In fact they are generally only suitable for people with more than average ability with computers and/or reasonable experience at business.

The trouble is that these sites rarely ever say that. What tends to happen is the sales pitch is written so well, that anyone reading it will think that what is on offer is easy to do and even a novice can make money with it. This is a total misconception, and we will explain why.

First of all, when you make a payment on these sites, you are simply paying for information….nothing more and nothing less.

You will not get some ready made business that you can just plug into and start making money within hours or days; you will simply get a short PDF document that is designed to provide you with information and knowledge.

The information provided in these sorts of downloads can be very good, but it is not necessarily of any real use to you. They will basically say something along the lines of “this is what I do to make my money; if you copy me you can make money as well”.

The information may be excellent and it may go in to great detail, but it doesn’t mean you will be able to profit from it.

If you want this put in very sarcastic terms to help you see why this is no good for most people, have a think about the following;

Imagine Bill Gates creating a website that says:

“I went from $50,000 in debt to being the richest person in the world in less than 10 years, and now I’m going to show you how to do the same!”

If that website was charging $200 for that information would you think it would be of any use to you?

The answer is almost certainly NO. The book could go in to great detail about Mr Gates life and how he quickly built a huge global empire, but the general idea would be him telling you that if you want to do the same as him it’s really easy. All you need to do is find a product that every person on the planet will need to rely on, and make sure you’re the only person that can provide it….simple.

Now we know that’s quite an extreme example but it makes the point of what these sorts of sites are all about. They are not lying about what they offer, but they aren’t much use to the average person.

What they are telling you to do is start your own business selling your own product. They may tell you how they make their money and they may even show you detailed steps of how to copy them, and

where to find the resources that they use, but they still leave all the responsibility on you to make it happen.

So how is this a problem and why should it be avoided?

Well let’s have a look at a more realistic example. One of the most common things these sites do is tell you how you can make money selling informational products. They tell you that if you set up a website just like theirs, selling an informational product just like theirs, you can make money just like them.

Well this is very true, but is it as easy as that?

First of all you have to make the website, so the problem you have is; can you do it yourself or do you have to get someone else to do it? Most internet beginners don’t have a clue how to design or create a website so straight away you hit a problem.

So if you can’t do it yourself you have to pay someone else to do it, which means finding a designer that can create what you are after, and also at a price that is within your budget. If you’ve come online looking for a way to make money, it probably means you don’t have very much in the first place so your budget will be very small and you won’t be able to afford a particularly good looking site.

Next you have to find a product to sell and this can be perhaps the most difficult thing to do. If people are going to buy information from you it has to be worth their money. How many internet beginners know something that other people are going to be willing to pay for in order to find out? This is most likely the point that you would come to a complete standstill.

Assuming you do find a product worth selling, you then have to get a web hosting account to actually get your site online. This will cost you more money.

Then you will have to find a way of accepting credit card payments online, and whichever way you choose, you will have to give a percentage of your sales to the company providing the service.

You will also have to decide how you will deliver the product to customers, either in a download or delivered to their email address.

And then you have the hassle of customer service and dealing with refunds. This aspect alone is simply never mentioned anywhere on these sites or in the information they provide. You will have to spend literally hours each day answering emails, dealing with problems with product delivery and returning money to customers who are not satisfied with your product. As your business grows, so will your problems.

Selling informational products in the way we have described above is probably the easiest thing you could do if you wanted to start your own online business, but as you can see it is far from simple or straight forward.

This is why this sort of thing is best suited to people who already have quite a bit of experience, and is almost no use whatsoever to a person who is new to online marketing and income generation.

Starting your own online business from scratch is an extremely difficult thing to do at the best of times, but for a person with little or no previous experience or knowledge, it is virtually impossible.

For any newcomer to the internet, websites that offer the chance to earn money with your own online business are simply a waste of time and should not even be considered.

So that now leaves us with the other category of income opportunity site.

“Start an affiliate business” websites!

Affiliate businesses are much more complicated than the previous category of income opportunity sites. There are a wide range of different kinds of affiliate business and at first glance it will probably seem a bit confusing as to which ones will actually provide the best chance of making money.

Before we get in to the details of affiliate businesses, we should first explain what they are.

An affiliate business is when a company, manufacturer or owner runs a program whereby they give you the right to sell their product for a percentage of the profit. They ask you to send visitors to a link or a website, and if the visitor makes a purchase, you get to keep normally between 10% and 50% of the profits.

There are many variations on this system but in simple terms an affiliate program is where you are selling someone else’s product.

In a moment we will explain a little about the various sub categories of affiliate businesses, but to begin with we want to get straight to the point and tell you why these sorts of things are the very best way for you to make money on the net.

In very simple terms, affiliate programs are the best way to make money because all the hard work associated with starting your own business has already been done for you.

You really can just join up and plug in to a ready made business and start making money almost immediately.

The website has already been created at the time and expense of someone else, and you will often be given your own replicated website as soon as you join.

The product has already been developed and market tested, again at someone else’s expense, so you have instant access to a product that people are prepared to pay for without you having to do any work whatsoever.

The above two points are universal for all affiliate businesses, but there are other advantages to be gained depending on which type of affiliate business you go for.

With some businesses you will have to answer emails, with others you won’t.

With some you will have to accept payments and issue refunds yourself, with others you won’t.

With some you will have to deliver the products yourself, with others you won’t.

With some you will have to offer training and support to other people who join the program thru your site, whilst with others you won’t.

Or you may have a complete mix and match from all of the above. The real advantage with all kinds of affiliate business is the fact that all the really hard work has already been done for you. You’re only ever left with the day to day running of the marketing end of the business.

Affiliate businesses can almost be called a business in a box. You just join up with one and you are ready to go out and make money.

So that in a nut shell explains why affiliate programs are the best way for you to make money.

They provide a ready made business in which start up costs are kept to a minimum, and the time scale to actually get set up and running are also kept to a very short period.

There is no doubt that any internet beginner who is serious about making money online, should look at affiliate programs as the only real option that will give them a genuine opportunity to make the money they are hoping for.

With that said, affiliate programs are not all designed the same way, and the type you choose will have a dramatic effect on how much money you make, if indeed you make any money at all.

Now affiliate programs may take on a number of different guises and call themselves many different names, but essentially they all boil down to the same thing….you are promoting someone else’s product for a reward of some kind, (usually money).

Because there are so many different kinds of affiliate program, and they are not all suitable for beginners, we are going to discuss a few of them with you and give you the pros and cons for each one, and this will then hopefully give you a good understanding of what you should be looking for in the future.

The basic affiliate program!

Think back to what we were saying earlier about the websites that basically sell a product that tells you how they make their money and how you can copy them. These are run by individuals from their home pc and they basically make their money for each sale they make of their product. In order for these people to make money they have to keep making sales – it’s a very simple set up.

What these individuals very often do is set up a very basic affiliate program on their site to try and help them make a little extra money.

The general idea is that they run a program whereby someone else can come along and join the affiliate program and promote the product in return for a percentage of the retail value of the item. This is the most basic form of affiliate program and probably the easiest to understand, but it is definitely not the sort of thing you should be joining as a beginner to internet marketing.

You see, this is how these programs work:

You join and you agree to promote the persons product in exchange for a cash reward. These types of program normally pay out between 10% and 50% of the sale price. What that means is for every purchase that is made as a result of your promotions, the product owner will pay you up to 50% of the money they receive.

Now this may sound ok seeing as how all the hard work has already been done for you, but actually it is not going to work for you, and we’ll explain why.

What you normally get in these situations is a link to the owners website or a series of banners that you are expected to add to your own website as an advertisement for the owners product. If someone clicks on the link or banner and makes a purchase you get credited with a commission.

The trouble with this sort of program is they were never designed as a source of regular or substantial income. And they were definitely never intended to be used by internet beginners.

The whole idea behind them was that webmasters and other product owners who were already good at online marketing, could join each others affiliate programs and place each others links on their sites. Then, if a visitor to a site did not make a purchase of the main product, they may click on the affiliate link or banner, go to the other site and make a purchase there, and then the affiliate would still make some money even though they did not make a sale of their own product.

This set up means the owner of the affiliate program makes extra sales from the advertisements on other people’s websites, and the affiliates make a bit of extra cash each month, even if they fail to make sales of their own product.

Affiliates were never looking at getting rich from this arrangement.

These basic affiliate programs were only ever seen as a way to make a bit extra each month without having to do any more advertising. Webmasters do their normal advertising, and if they fail to make a sale of their product, they have a second chance of making money by selling the affiliate product.

In terms of you as an internet beginner, how are you expecting to make any money with this sort of affiliate program?

These basic affiliate programs are not supposed to be seen as a good source of money, they are purely there as a little extra. The main effort is the webmaster selling their main product; that is where they make their money and the affiliate program just provides them with a trickle of extra cash.

To join one of these programs with a view to it providing you with a regular and substantial income is a flawed idea to say the least. If you are not a webmaster with an already successful website, do not join these types of affiliate program.

Unfortunately, more and more nowadays these programs are being promoted on some unscrupulous owner’s website as a means for ordinary people to make money. This is a blatant attempt to make a few extra dollars at the expense of inexperienced people who are not knowledgeable enough to know the reality. Please do not fall for this kind of deception.

That is not to say that these programs are worthless…..far from it, they can make a great income for expert super affiliates, but these people are few and far between and it has taken them years of hard work to get to that position. Most people are a long way off being super affiliates and should therefore avoid this type of program at all costs.

Simply put, the type of affiliate program we have just described above is not at all suitable for the internet beginner if they are serious about making money.

Deliberate affiliate programs!

Now this is what you should be looking for if you want to make money. “Deliberate affiliate programs” is a term we use to describe any affiliate program that has been specifically designed to be one of the main selling points. They are being deliberately marketed as a way for people to make money. The affiliate program is just as important as the product that it’s selling.

These kinds of program are growing in number each month, and are by far the most popular means of earning money from home with your computer. There are literally tens of thousands of them in all different forms and all with a different variation on how you earn the money.

The basic idea of these programs is as follows:

A company or group will develop a product that it wishes to sell as a stand alone item. Now the company knows that it will be able to sell far more units of its product if it utilises leverage…..it will only be able to sell a certain amount on its own, so it wants to use other people to sell it for them. So it develops an affiliate program.

The company’s main effort is to sell the product because that is where their profits are generated from, but it must also concentrate on building a large sales force to do the selling for them. If they were to rely on promoting a website that dealt solely with the sale of the product, and only had a small link to the affiliate program as in the examples of the “basic affiliate programs”, they would not be very successful at building a sales force or leveraging off their efforts.

So what the company does is make an affiliate program that they promote just as vigorously as their product itself. The idea is they are trying to sell the affiliate program as well as selling the product. They are actively trying to recruit new people to join their program and go out and sell their product for them. These are deliberate affiliate programs and are excellent at helping ordinary people make substantial incomes online.

With the basic affiliate program described in the last section, a visitor to the site may or may not purchase the product, and may or may not join the affiliate program. With this arrangement, sales of the product are low, and the number of people joining the affiliate program is even lower, so the business is very slow to grow. Also the affiliates will find it hard to sell the product and will therefore make very little money.

With the deliberate affiliate program things are very different. The whole thing is geared towards getting people to come in and join the program. The websites attract people in by showing them how they can earn money by being an affiliate and selling the company’s product….the affiliate program almost becomes the main selling feature.

Once the person is on the website and interested in making money with the program, they are also shown the product, and if the product is half decent, there is a good chance that they will purchase it as well as join the affiliate program. The company now makes a sale of its product which is where its profit comes from, and it gains a new affiliate that is going to go out and sell more units of the product item.

As for the affiliate the rewards are great. Because the program is being promoted as fiercely as the product, there has to be an advantage to actually join the program. This advantage is invariably a cash incentive.

Where basic affiliate programs pay out a relatively small amount on each sale, deliberate affiliate programs have to offer a much greater financial reward, and there are a number of ways they do this.

They may offer a much higher commission percentage on each sale, (up to 70%). They may offer a tiered structure whereby affiliates can earn commissions on the sales of other affiliates who have signed up under them. Or they may offer bonuses for reaching a certain number of sales.

There are numerous ways to make the affiliate program more appealing, but the bottom line is it has to be in the interest of the affiliate to join, the company has to create the program so that it is realistic and preferably easy for people to make a substantial income with it.

They are designed to create a mutually benefiting relationship between the company and the affiliate. The company gets more people selling its products and ultimately makes more sales, and the affiliate gets a ready made business that is specifically designed to attract as many people as possible and make them a regular and substantial income.

For these sorts of programs to be of any real interest or use to an affiliate, they should be designed in a way where the affiliates make more money than the company. Any genuine program will always reward the affiliates with more money from sales than the company makes. For instance the My-Cash-Empire associate business program pays out $24 to the associates (affiliates), and only keeps $10 for the company.

At this point we must issue you a word of warning!

There are many different types of deliberate affiliate program, and all will offer you a different way of making money. Some are designed to provide money that starts small and grows over time, some are designed to offer immediate income that remains constant and some will have a combination, but not all of them are legal.

A huge percentage of affiliate programs are ILLEGAL and UN-ETHICAL!

You should be very careful when looking to join affiliate programs because they are not all what they seem. These are just a few examples of the various different types of program that would fall in the category of deliberate programs.

MLM. (multi level marketing)

•

Network marketing.

•

Matrixes.

•

Direct sales.

•

1 up programs.

2 up programs.

to be continued..........