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Saturday, November 16, 2019

Effective Strategies for Making Money Online

A prototype home with a red roof on top of a wad of dollar bills and a calculator.
Making money online started with just experimentation. Right now, more and more people are increasingly depending on the internet not only to make money but to earn a living. Just as the internet changed the way we do business, it has also changed the way we make money which enables us to live better lifestyles. For some persons, the internet now provides a means to make a little extra cash on the side whereas for others, it provides real opportunities for sustainable business and even a career. Having said all that, it is worth mentioning that internet business is not for all comers because it requires specialized skills for success.

If you are desirous to make money online, your options fall into two main categories. First is earning passive income from investing or trading assets. Second is offering services by tutoring or creating media and content for interested persons online. Whichever technical languages marketers use for these activities don’t really matter much. What matters is how best to use the strategies to make money, period!

Here are some easy-to-use strategies to make money online.

01. Start a Blog

Many expert bloggers are making a good living churning out very good content regularly in their content marketing efforts. Starting a good blog and partnering with e-commerce platforms has become a very lucrative way to make money online. First be sure you know something you can write about which other people will be interested in reading. Next is to set up a blog website to market the content you are generating. By the time your blog starts getting good online traffic, you can then take steps to monetize it with Google adsense. You can earn income by selling ad space on your blog website, sell products, a survey or a course. You may decide to market other people's products as an affiliate and earn commissions. Simple!



 

02. Affiliate Marketing

You can choose affiliate marketing which simply requires that you use your website to refer people to products/services on e-commerce platforms which if they buy as a result of your efforts, you earn a commission. That works by actively partnering with e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Clickbank to help them promote any products/services of your choice which must be related to the niche subject of your blog. You earn commissions based on the products you help sell with your blog site affiliate links.

03. Get Outsourced Job

 
Working at home somehow helps to guarantee a very convenient and flexible lifestyle. It saves costs and travel inconveniences having to travel around the world to find work. Thanks to the internet, you can now work anywhere and service any business anywhere in the world by way of outsourcing. Many companies now find it cheaper to outsource service jobs to countries with cheaper labour rates. That is the reason remote work has become a very popular option for many employers of labour. Characteristically, remote online work helps to reduce wage costs and other overhead expenses particularly on office space. You can find any full-time job related to your niche interest at FlexJobs if you are keen on such jobs.

04. Selling Photographs Online

 
If you are a photographer or you are keen on taking good photographs, you can sell such photos online to make money. Alternatively, you can have a working relationship with good photography sites to help them sell photos and earn a commission.

05. Selling Paintings and Arts Products

If you are not an artist, you can have a working relationship with websites selling arts works to help them sell their paintings/arts works and earn a commission. If you are a good artist yourself, social media sites like YouTube and Instagram are good places you can easily display and sell your works to buyers.

06. Offer Paid Services

 
For most marketers, making money online doesn’t really mean working online. You can earn extra money as a tradesman from jobs sourced online. You can also ply any trade from your website, get invitations and you get the jobs done offline. That arrangement allows you to set your own fees and work schedule as convenient for you. If you are good at skills like fitness exercises, plumbing, gardening and landscaping etc, you can advertise your trade online and make money from the offers coming through from your website. Sites like TaskRabbit are very handy for sourcing tradesmen jobs with good pay.

07. Freelance Marketing

 
You can make money online by offering freelance services on well-known sites like Fiverr and Upwork. But, you must have marketable skills and be good at them. Such services may include but not limited to freelance writing, programming, language translator services, graphic designing and many others.

08. Sell Professional/Consultancy Services

Online, it is easy to turn specialist professional knowledge which covers a wide range of niches into money by plying your trade in popular Q&A sites like JustAnswer and LivePerson. Some of the niches requiring expert knowledge include but not limited to law, accounting, book keeping, medicine, mechanics, vets/animal care etc.

09. Teach Handy Skills

It is a truism that every person knows at least one thing better than others. Online, you can turn just about any skill/expertise into money if you are good at delivering it. From social media sites or on local classifieds you can advertise skills relating to music, cooking, fitness/exercises, photography, playing musical instruments and even academic exercises preparing students for SATs. You set your fees, get your enrolments, deliver the lessons and make your money. Simple!

10. Online Proof-reader Services

 
This is one very lucrative online business on demand from writers, authors and researchers. If you have the training and keen eye for details, you can make money online by way of proofreading. Using freelance marketplace sites like UpWork, you can easily take up proof reading jobs by bidding for them.

11. Online Surveys

It is possible to make a few hundred dollars monthly if you get involved in online surveys. You can offer your own website to run surveys for researchers or you join reputable survey sites which can offer you some means of generating a bit of money by helping them to run various surveys.

12. Websites Flipping

 
Some marketing experts and webmasters make money by flipping websites. What they do is to shop for websites to buy, touch them up a bit and offer them for sale in something akin to buying a run-down home, sprucing it up and selling it at a higher rate the way real estate professionals do. For websites, what you can do is to work on some general improvements on the site after acquiring it. Such improvements will help to enhance the amount of traffic the website receives if they make the design look nicer, more attractive and more responsive. These improvements help to increase the value you can flip it. If you are looking to buy or sell websites online, the best places to look are Website Broker and Flippa.

13. Websites Testing

One very popular platform for websites testing is UserTesting. Many people earn good money per hour helping web developers to test websites for user friendliness. The exact same way aircrafts manufacturers use test pilots to test new aircrafts so also web developers use websites testers to test their websites to see how user-friendly the sites are. Many businesses are always desirous to know how user-friendly their websites are on actual people. The real reason people get paid to try out these sites for user friendliness using beta testing techniques. 



 

14. Used Goods Garage Sales

Nearly everyone has discarded used goods which are still useful stacked away in stores/car garages in their homes. You can advertise garage sales online and make some good money selling off these used goods. Most people are guilty of hoarding unnecessary but valuable junk around the house in car garages and the attic. Some of such goods are used furniture, old clothes, cutlery, books, kiddie’s toys, golf clubs, hunting/fishing equipment etc. From well-known marketplaces like eBay, Etsy, and CraigsList, you can advertise such junk goods for sale and make cool money from your efforts.

15. Selling Artisan Products

Many marketers make good money from advertising and selling handmade items online. Some of such items range from art to furniture, goods people are actively surfing online looking to buy. The commonest place these marketers advertise and sell artisan products are e-commerce platforms like Etsy and eBay. These are amazing platforms through which anyone can sell artwork or artisan handmade items. Selling artisan products online is one great way to turn your hobby into a money-making business. That is, one great way to convert your passion to money-making opportunity.


 16. Sell Guest Posting Services

For online marketers, backlinks are highly valuable commodities. If you are a high value guest blogger, the backlinks from your guest postings alone are very valuable. If you are a reputable content writer, and you’re writing content for high domain authority sites, you can sell that opportunity to generate backlinks to clients just as many SEO agencies do. You earn cool money from such efforts.

17. Teach a Foreign Language Online

These days, many marketers make decent money teaching a foreign language online.  The pay is usually on hourly basis and good online foreign language teachers can make $30-$100 per hour. That is good money. That is the reason why working as a foreign language teacher is a real favorite of “digital nomads” to make money. For instance, many online agencies will allow you to teach English online with no formal requirements other than just being a native speaker. That is one easy way for native English speakers to make money online without any additional hassles.


 

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Essential Tips to Become a Successful Affiliate Marketer

Affiliate marketing work station with working tools, mobile phone, a notepad and pens, silver coffee mug, a computer and some photographs.
These days, one of the most popular ways for marketers to earn money online is by way of affiliate marketing.  If well established, it can easily become a very reliable passive income source. If you are desirable to get involved in affiliate marketing, all you need do is to reach out and become a partner with any business of your choice whose products/services you’ll like to help market. Preferred choices for marketers are mostly ecommerce websites. When you link up with your preferred ecommerce website, you can then start referring your blog readers and visitors from your website to any of their products/services. By doing so, Product Merchants arrange to pay you a commission by way of pre-determined percentages if an individual uses your affiliate link to visit the ecommerce site to make a purchase.

It is recommended you really understand these here tips before you decide to join any affiliate program. They will help you to take the best possible decision about the most suitable affiliate program to help you succeed as an affiliate marketer. To enhance that, you’ll do best to keep a close eye on your website’s analytics and SERP’s because of regular policy changes by major Search Engines.



 

Here are some time-tested business tips to help you become a successful affiliate marketer.

#1. Select the Right Niche

A product/service niche stands distinct from others because of its unique style, profession, lifestyle, culture, behaviour or geographic need. If you get your niche selection right, it allows you to appear as an authority on products connected to that niche. That authority deeply resonates with a distinct group of customers interested in that niche. It allows you to build a strong connection with an ideal audience of potential customers.

#2. Use Only the Right Content

Blogging is all about content marketing. Good content remains key if you want your blog to be successful. Without good content, you can also not succeed in affiliate marketing. Content is considered good when it is educative and informative enough to attract readers. If it is relevant to the needs of your audience, that is when the audience will be sufficiently interested in it to want to follow your affiliate link to the product/service site. It is only when that happens a sale is likely to take place warranting the payment of commissions to the marketer.

#3. Be Authentic

Buying decisions are easily taken when buyers have cause to believe in the authenticity of their sources. That is why buyers always look out for and rely hugely on the recommendation of an authentic source before buying a product they are not too familiar with. Being authentic therefore always counts heavily in favour of influence marketers. Smart marketers build authenticity and authority by creating content around products they know and have actually used in the past. That makes it easy for them to convince others to try the product as well.

#4. Manage Timing Well

Affiliate marketing because of the diversity of the world and the uniqueness of the internet is a 24/7, 365 days a year business if you really want to succeed in it. For that reason, if you are not online, be sure some automated strategies like AI and auto-responders are helping you out to get things going. That is the only way you can hope to work all the time in reality. With good web analytics tools, you can find out what times of the day/nite and in which parts of the world your visitors and sales are coming from. For that reason, the better you manage your timing, the more sales you make. 



 

#5. Stay Up to Date

This is a given. With rapid changes in technology and the internet, if you are unable to stay up to date, you quickly get left behind. For instance, to stay on top of SERP, you must endeavour to keep a close eye on any changes in policy or in the algorithms of major Search Engines like Google. Your business can get hurt on the internet real bad and pretty quickly if you are negligent about keeping an eye on changes impacting directly on the SEO of your business website.

#6. Learn to Use Tracking

If you are in content marketing, you must learn how to track, collect, analyse and use data to your business advantage. The more and better data you can gather about your website, the better and easier for you to keep giving your audience the right content. If you have your business on social media, it is easy for you to use social media tracking and analytics to gain a very significant understanding of the behaviour and demographics of your audience. That information is very vital to determine the right content to produce for your audience.  It also allows you to know which of your marketing strategies works well and which social media channels are best suited for your type of product and promotion.

#7. Make Things Easy

Keeping it strictly simple and easy is always a good marketing advice. The reason most people like to shop online these days is because of its relative convenience. That is why you must ensure your website is well designed and user-friendly to attract more visitors, leads and sales. If for instance your audience routinely encounters avoidable difficulties in interacting with your website particularly opening your affiliate links, chances are, you’ll be losing a great deal on conversions and sales.

#8. Avoid Overpitching

Yeah, nearly everyone out there on the internet wants to sell but not everyone wants to buy. Many online surfers are at times just having fun and not interested in buying anything. As a marketer, it must be your content first before any product you are selling. When you get people to be interested in your content, it is possible to lure them to buy, but if all you are doing is just pushing affiliate links without good content, you are overpitching. That sends negative signals to potential buyers and your sales efforts may be stagnating as a result. You must endeavour to have a balance in your content which not only positively highlights the product but manages as well to keep your audience interested in what you have to say. If you habitually put all your focus in highlighting the product that you are marketing, chances are, you will frustrate your audience and they may stop following you on your affiliate marketing programs. To avoid overpitching, your focus must remain on producing useful and informative content related to the product/service you are marketing. That helps faster in arresting the attention of your audience to want to make some purchases without being necessarily “harassed” into doing so.