If you're interested in making a lot of money online, then you're at one of the best places you can possibly be to start your journey. I love helping people, and lately I find it overwhelming to have to type what I'm about to type up here, to each new person I come across that wants to learn.

I figure I'll type up everything there is to know (In a general aspect) about making money online, and people can use this as a starting point to get on the right track.

Before I go on to show you how to be a millionaire, there are a few things that need to be addressed.

1. I'm not selling you anything. I don't have a "special" course that costs $1,000 that I'm selling to the first 10 people in the next 10 minutes. Lesson #1: Most of them are scams. So, I'm only here to help people and provide the correct information that you all need. Nothing here is not proven. Everything I say/recommend, I've tried, made money with, and have proven that it works. So, you don't have to worry about anything not working for you.

2. Why should you listen to me? As said before, I've done all these things. I'm not going to brag about how much money I make, but let's just say most people wish they had my income. Listening to people that have the fruit on the tree (what you want) is one of the best things you can do. If 1,000 people said they knew how to make money online, I'd only listen to the top 10 earners. Why? The same reason if you had an option to learn how to perform surgery from the 1,000 best heart surgeons, you'd pick the top 10 rated heart surgeons! They know their stuff!

3. This is not a get rich quick scheme, and it's not an easy 1-2-3 step program. All of those, again, are scams. If it was that easy to make money online, everyone would be millionaires and you wouldn't be here reading this. However, I wouldn't be surprised if a few people that read this, started making $500 per day, a month later. It's completely possible. However, I would be very surprised if everyone made $500 a day, a month later. Why? Most people fail, quit, and then call it a scam. Most people that claim they were "scammed" by some opportunity to make money online, were probably not scammed at all. They had an opportunity, they failed, and now it's every one's fault but theirs. There's so much information I'm about to tell you that you can make A LOT of money online in a very short period of time. If you don't, yes, it's your fault. It may sound mean, but it's the dead honest truth. This is why I'm even writing this. If everyone could be as pro-active, motivated and determined as me when it comes to making money online, then writing this article would bring in a boatload of competition I wouldn't want. But the fact of the matter is only a handful of people who read this are going to take action on what they learn. So, again, if you can't make any money with these methods, don't go telling people you got scammed (you're not paying me anything anyways!) But, for those who do make a lot of money, please post a comment thanking me :)

Now that we have those things out of the way, and you know this is serious business, let's get started...


Making money online boils down to two things.

Internet Marketing

and

Affiliate Marketing



Internet marketers are "merchants". They're the "owners" of everything. Whoever owns Hubpages.com is an Internet marketer. If you were to use the "link to this page" feature to refer new writers, you'd be considered an "Affiliate" of Hubpages. The same goes for everything else. Netflix would be the Internet marketer, and becoming their affiliate would make you just that: the affiliate. Simple, right?

Being an Internet marketer is much more lucrative and in the long run, can make you more money. And, that's what it's all about. But, since you're just starting, being an affiliate is the best way to go. It's a much easier setup, and you can still make millions of dollars as an affiliate. I've met people who make over $350,000 per day just off affiliate sales. It sounds like a lot, and it is, but the more you stick around to learn, the more the value of the dollar seems to drop in your perception of it. I use to think $1,000 a month is a lot of money to make. Now, $1,000 a day to me is considered "average".

So with that being said, we're not going to go into any ways on how to be an Internet marketer. Once you've been successful as an affiliate and you'd like to be an Internet marketer, you won't need a guide on how to do it.



Next, we're going to go over all of the different merchants/products you can promote, and where to promote them. Ready? Everything...

...

...

That's right, "Everything". Virtually everything being sold online, you can sell too. Sure, there are those small companies that don't know what affiliates are, and therefor don't have an affiliate program - but everything else - they have affiliate programs.

But, if you're serious about making a lot of money online, you're going to want to join some affiliate "networks". Affiliate networks are "networks" (websites) that contain a bunch of different things for you to promote. Some of the networks you can join right here and now that don't require a phone interview are:

CJ.com
ClickBank.com
PayDotCom.com

Those are some large, CPS (Cost Per Sale) networks. I typically try to avoid them, but they're a great place to start. Even though I avoid those networks, that doesn't mean they're bad and you should avoid them to. I have many friends who make thousands each day from each one of those. So, don't look down on them.

At the end of this hub I'll list some networks I work with that require a phone interview, and a good knowledge of making money online. But before you apply to them, just make sure you're comfortable with what you know. They deny people all the time, and the main reason is because they either don't have a website, and/or they don't know anything about affiliate marketing.

I mentioned that those larger networks are CPS (Cost Per Sale) networks. That means that the majority of their products will be sale-only. ClickBank and PayDotCom I believe are 100% sales based. Meaning, in order for you to get a commission, you have to refer someone who actually buys something off on the merchants websites. That's what CPS (Cost Per Sale) is. Now, the other networks I list are going to be mainly CPA (Cost Per Action) networks. CPA (Cost Per Action) offers are very, very popular. Basically, you get paid on an "Action". This is usually a "sign-up" action. For example, you may get $7 per lead for DirectTV. If someone goes to the website (with your "affiliate link") and enters in the required information to get more info on DirectTV, you'll get $7 for it. If you wanted to promote SinglesNet.com (a dating site), and the terms were "$3 per lead - pays out on 3rd page". That would mean that each person has to fill out information, and make it to the 3rd sign up page. Then, you get your commission for it.

So now that you know what types of things you can promote, let's move on to "traffic".

The traffic sources are where all your visitors are going to come from. For example, if you're reading this right now, you most likely came from a search engine like Google, or you searched for something related to this topic here at Hubpages. Maybe a friend sent you a link to this, or maybe you came from searching Yahoo! All of these places are considered the "source" of the traffic.

I'm going to list and describe a handful of popular traffic methods. Each one, people are making money from. So, they're all great to look into.




PPC (Pay Per Click)

This traffic method is probably the most lucrative source of traffic around. There's plenty of people making millions from PPC alone. PPC is Pay Per Click - and it means exactly that. If someone "clicks" on your ad - you pay! You should see Google AdSense ads somewhere on this website. There's a title, a description, and a URL at the bottom. If you click on that ad, who ever set that ad up at Google, is going to pay for the click. If you go to Google right now and type in "Buy shoes", there's going to be a lot of ads for shoe stores on the right, and above the search results. Every time someone clicks on those ads, who ever owns the ad has to pay $x.xx for that click.

So, you might spent $5,000 a month on PPC, and make back $10,000. Some people spend $200,000 a month and make back $250,000. It varies for everyone. And yes, that does mean you can spend $100 and make $0 back. I've done it before, and probably most people who are making money with it have done so before as well.

Pay Per Click is definitely something you'll want to learn in the future, but for someone just getting started, it's probably not the best way. If you have $10,000 lying around, go ahead and have at it. If you find it hard to spend money on anything, then don't try PPC. You'll most likely fail, and then get mad, and then quit. That's what happens with most people. You'll be a blip on the radar screen. There one second, gone the next. It's extremely competitive, and if you don't know exactly what you're doing, as I said before, you're going to get burned... badly.

When/if you do decide to learn how to properly set up PPC campaigns and make money, a great place to learn from is www.PPC-Coach.com - The guy who runs it is a very successful internet/affiliate marketer who makes A LOT of money. (Learn from people who have the fruit on the tree, remember?) He has a lot of great videos, tutorials, tools, etc - and a great month-by-month program that takes you through different techniques, etc. It's really cool to search peoples usernames at his forum, and look at when they first joined and were asking questions, then looking 6 months later about how they do over $50,000 a month. So, he's a very reputable source for learning PPC.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

This is where you try to rank on the first page of search results for particular keywords. For example, if you go to Google and type in Phone Service, as of today, the #1 position is held by att.com Now, phone service is an extremely competitive term. You can't just waltz in and grab the #1 spot. They probably paid A LOT of money to have SEO experts to get them ranked #1.

Being a search engine optimizationist does require a bit of HTML knowledge (how to build websites). If you have no clue how to make a website, you can still make a decent amount of money online, but you're going to want to learn how. It's very, very easy to make websites. I know it might feel like learning a new language at first, but it's really not. A year ago, I had no clue how to make websites, and it took me about a week of learning to design a really nice site. A great place to learn how to design websites is Lynda.com tutorials. All video tutorials! If you don't want to learn from Lynda.com, feel free to just google "HTML tutorial", or something similar.

SEO is also a very "patient" method. It can take months to rank in search engines (if at all). It requires a lot of upfront work, too. In order to rank on results pages, you need to do proper word density research, keyword density research, inbound linking, etc etc. There's a lot of things you have to do. Of course, it's worth it. But, if you're not very patient and want money soon - it's not a great place to start. Big, very big learning curve! Since Google doesn't openly admit what they look for as in terms of quality, etc - there's no "main" tutorial that's set in stone for learning SEO. That means you have to be careful to who you listen to. You're going to hear many different opinions on a lot of different things. I recommend you check out Harald Anderson's eBook if you're interested in SEO. I know him personally, and he's been in the business for over a decade. He knows his stuff, and if there's one person I'd want to learn from when it comes to Search Engines, it's him. Here's a link to his free eBook.


SEC (Search Engine Cloaking)

This is where we take off our "white hats" and put on our "grey hats". Search engine cloaking is very, very lucrative way of making a lot of money with free traffic from search engines. Before, I got further, let's go over white hat/grey hat/black hat terminology. White hat means everything you're doing is legit, not shunned upon, legal, supported, etc. No one would get upset with you doing "white hat" techniques. In the old days, the good guys wore white hats, and the bad guys wore black hats. Thus, that's where you get the terms. Black hat is considered shunned upon, can be illegal, can be fraudulent, etc. Grey hat is in-between. Not really illegal, but not exactly being supported by all parties. "Illegal" is determined by a governing body, not a publicly traded company, and search engine cloaking is not illegal. A lot of fortune 500 companies use search engine cloaking, and a lot of them have been "caught" in the act. What is cloaking? Well, if you've ever searched for something, and then landed on a web page where there's nothing except flash (no text) or images, it's most likely because that person is cloaking. That website is showing search engine "bots" or "spiders" one thing, and then showing real visitors (you and me) something else. Most cloaking sites are thousands upon thousands of pages that all redirect real people to one main website. The goal is to rank for as many related keywords as possible. "Phone service" is very competitive, but "cheap phone service in birmingham alabama" isn't. Neither is "affordable phone service in mineapolis minnesota", neither is "very cheap and affordable phone service in miami florida". See where this is going? If you rank #1 for those "long tail" (long) keywords, you may only get 1 hit a week or month, but if you have a 100,000 page site that has all those long tail keywords ranking, you may get 50,000 visitors a month! And this my friend, is "awesome"! The reason it's "shunned upon" is because some people use it in a more black hat way. For example, someone may want to rank for the term "how to make money online very very fast and free". Then, instead of sending those people to a page related to making money online for free, they send them to a gambling website. That's what search engines don't like. But of course, if you're trying to rank for that keyword and you send people to a website on how to make money online, then it's perfectly ok to do so. Search engine cloaking does have a big learning curve, and like SEO, takes some patience. If you're interested in knowing more about cloaking or want to get started, send me a message and I can point you in the right direction.


Social Media Advertising

This is generally on a pay per click basis, but it's very unique in its own way so I'm giving it its own spot. Facebook, myspace, socialmedia.com, cubics.com - they all advertise on social networks. The traffic big, and it's very cheap. I'm not going to go into more detail because it's not a good starting place, and take a bit of work to set up. If you're interested in this, let me know and we'll talk more about it.


Media Buying

This again could fall under PPC, but it's so lucrative itself that it deserves its own category. But, since it's not the best place to start, and it's "paid" traffic so it's going to be easy to lose money. Again, if you want to know more about this method, just contact me. You might be wondering why I keep listing things and not giving a more in-depth analysis. This is because you're most likely brand new, and I don't want to overwhelm you with information. I also want you to know the different traffic methods, whether you use them or not. That way when you have time/are ready to move on to more methods, you know where to go.

Article Marketing

This is where most people should start off. Why?

1. You can make a lot of money
2. You don't need a website
3. You can promote products from the 3 large networks that don't require phone approval (which again means you don't need a website and can get started right away)
4. It's easy

There's "a lot" of article sites (including Hubpages). Hubpages is my favorite just because I like the layout, they rank decent, and they offer revenue share for Google AdSense. Blogspot is a great place, too - they offer revenue share for ads as well.

When you do article marketing, you can't really fail. Well, you can, but not if you do what I tell you to do. First, if you write 10 articles a day for a year, I can virtually guarantee you that you'll be making at least $100 a day profit. I wouldn't be surprised if you made $1,000 a day, though. Of course, if all you write about is one topic that no one cares about, you don't sell anything, and all your articles are "Crappy", then you won't make much money. But, if you do your research, write about many different things, and write good articles, you'll make a lot of money.

Article marketing generally can be blended with SEO. Since you submit your articles to places like HubPages, Hubpages is already a "Trusted" source in the eyes of the search engine. That means, if two people have the same exact article, one person submits to Hubpages, and one person buys a new domain (website) and posts the content there, Hubpages will rank better because it's been around, is trusted, has a lot of backlinks, etc. Additionally, article directories are great to build incoming links to your website if you have one. Which again is essential in successful SEO.

Now, what to write about? Stick to things you're comfortable with. For me, I don't touch women's products or baby stuff. That's totally foreign to me and I'd like to keep it that way. I like to write about stuff I'm more familiar with, that I can sound like I know what I'm talking about. A great place to start is just writing about everything you own. TV, laptop, baby's crib, table, refrigerator, etc. Sign up for Amazon.com's "associate" program (that's their word for affiliate). You start out at 4% of every sale, and they go up to 15% except for computers and some other stuff. It's not that much, but it's great for writing about products that aren't that competitive to rank for. For example, new models of electronics that are just coming out are great to write about. Other people haven't wrote that much about them, and it will be easier to rank for.

Alternatively, you can hire freelance writers to write for you. If you have money, it's an ok option. You might not see a return on investment for a while, though.

Now, I know I told you I wasn't going to try and sell you anything. But...

SENuke is a REALLY great article tool. I could care less whether you buy it or not, but you should totally download their free trial. You can use it forever. Well, the "research" portion of it that is. The benefit is that you can find out what keyword to rank for very quickly with SENuke. Let's take "green tea weight loss" for example. All you have to do is open up SENuke, type in "Green tea weight loss", then tell the program to use Google's Keyword tool to find all the related keywords. Google should return 100+ related keywords. Then, SENuke analyzes each keyword and tells you which ones are competitive, and which ones aren't. Obviously, you want to try to rank for the non-competitive keywords. That way, you can get traffic faster, and more of it.

In general, you're going to want to research the word and keyword density of the top 10 results for the search engine you want to rank for. So for example, if you find that the keyword phrase "Green tea weight loss online offer" is easy to rank for according to SENuke, then you would want to check out the word density and keyword density of the top 10 results for that keyword phrase on whatever search engine you want to rank for. Now, Google takes FOREVER (months) to rank high on. So, Yahoo or MSN is a great starting point.

Then, you would write an article that has the same average word density as the top 10 results for Yahoo, and use the keyword however many times the average keyword density is. So, it may be an average of 433 words, with the keyword phrase being used 3 times on average. You should see results very fast if you're writing 10 articles a day using these methods.

If you want to submit your article to multiple places, each article has to be different. SENuke has a "spinning" tool which allows you to "spin" sentences to make things unique - but that's only if you buy the program. You can also just write 10 different articles, and manually submit them to 10 different article sites. Or, you can write 10 articles on 10 different things and submit them all to the same article site.

But agian, never submit the same article to other directories. They won't rank in search engines.

I'll leave it at that. If you have questions or want some help, send me a message.


Other methods:

There's a lot of other methods you can use to make money online...

Video marketing (youtube, google video, yahoo video, revver, bliptv, etc)
Torrent marketing (Torrent sites)
Answer/community marketing (Forums, Yahoo! Answers, Google Knol...)
Promoting your website offline
etc

Each of those methods can make $100 a day easily. Do your research! I'm not the blue fairy (like in the movie AI) that has the answers to everything. Well, I do. But, I'm not going to spend 24 hours writing a hub on how exactly to do everything. At some point, you need to research things yourself and find out what works best for you.

The best places to find out information are from other people who are making money. Forums are great for this. There are paid forums, and free forums. They both have good information, but the paid forums usually offer in-depth tutorials for sure-fire methods. The free forums are cluttered with spam, and if you don't know what you're looking for, you can get some bad information and end up losing money, or failing with what you're doing.

If you want to join a free forum to just browse around, check these out:


WickedFire.com :: Affiliate Marketing Forum
forums.digitalpoint.com :: very similar to wickedfire.
BlackHatWorld.com :: This is everything blackhat. There's white hat stuff there, but a lot is blackhat. I like this forum the best because most of the information is genuine and can make you a lot of money. The other free, white hat forums tend to have spammy stuff and A LOT of new people that provide no-good info. But, join them all and decide for yourself what you like.

For paid forums, I mentioned PPC-Coach.com. But, that's really only for PPC guidance. Not a "General" paid forum for making money. But, it's $49 a month Canadian. And that's VERY cheap for the information he's providing. Some forums (which I won't even list) cost up to $500 a month for their information. Of course it's worth it, but a lot of people won't dish out that much money just for information. (These are the type of people that usually don't go very far!)

DominateIM.com is one of the most reputable paid forums out there. They cater to both black hat and white hat. If you don't want to do black hat tactics, they have some AWESOME white hat stuff. No one's allowed to talk about the tactics they use, but there's one particular white hat method they have in their "Training" section that can make you about $20,000 a month profit by itself. The people who made the forum are a team of guys who are very reputable around all the other free forums. And, they grouped together and made a whole series of tutorials/methods on making money online. Check out there "testimonials" section: I'm in there!


There are a few other paid forums, but they cost a lot of money, and usually just revolve around one particular topic (PPC, Blackhat, etc)


Now, if anyone is confused with anything, feel free to message me or comment on this hub and ask questions. I highly urge anyone that if they're confused about something I said, I can edit the hub to make accommodations.

As much as I'd love to keep going with this hub, I just don't have the time to teach everything in-depth. This post has more than enough info to point you in the right direction. I didn't receive this luxury when I first started affiliate marketing. The ONLY thing I was introduced to was a post where someone said he made his first $1,000 per day with Azoogle. I had to research everything, make mistakes, fail, make mistakes, and eventually I learned to do things the right way which of course led to making the income I was looking for.

So, this hub should be more of a "gateway" to more information. It was also meant to get you on the right track, and avoid mistakes. Where to start, how to get an income flowing in. For example, I didn't go in depth with how to set up PPC campaigns because even if I did, you'd most likely lose money. Why? Because losing money is a part of the process. But, let's say you start making $100 a day with article marketing. I'm sure it'd be ok to spend $50 of it a day on PPC to get a successful campaign up and running. That way, you're playing with the "houses" money and not your own. Which of course makes it all that much easier.

Just pick something that interests you, and roll with it! Comment with questions or concerns, or send me messages and let's get the ball rolling for you!

Hope you guys enjoyed this, and let me know if there's any particular method you'd like me to elaborate on...