Three Steps To Start Making Money Online

If you have been considering trying to make a profit online for a little while now you will probably have now been bombarded with all the many ways people tell you how easy, easy, easy it is. You will then purchase their subscription, go off on another tangent and end up at the end of another long month with as close to zilch as it is possible to get.

This was my story until I started to wake up to the reality of what it means to make money online. Possibly I was lucky because I came across a couple of people who weren't all about hype, but who pointed me in the right direction. The funny thing is that what I learnt from these people is that making money is actually quite easy. No it's not easy in the sense that many gurus tell you, but it is a simple process and once you have mastered a few skills you can start to make some money and once the first few dollars roll in there really will be no looking back for you.

The first step is to build an online presence from where you can promote either your own products, or more likely when you are first starting out, affiliate links.

The easiest and cheapest way to achieve this I believe initially, is to set up a niche website or blog. I have written a short report on this called 5 Steps To A Successful Niche Blog and this can be downloaded totally FREE here.

There are many, many ways of driving traffic to your site, including Squidoo, Hubpages, Social Sites, Bookmarking, Forums, Bum marketing, the list really does go on and on and more importantly all of these methods are free. So if you are starting out with very little budget, as most of us did, then you are in a no-risk situation.

The third step is to capture the traffic that arrives at your site and to start building a list. One of the phrases that you will hear over and over online is that the 'money is in the list' and in this case the phrase really is true.

However, it is all very well saying that you must build a list, but how do you go about that and once you have the list what the heck do you do with it to make it profitable.

All of this isn't difficult but what you probably need is someone to just explain the steps to you in a straightforward manner.

 So there you have it, three simple steps to start making money online.

1. Create a Blog
2. Drive Traffic
3. Build a List

When you are starting out, disregard all the million other things and focus on these three steps. Once you start making some cash I promise you will be bitten and then you can start to expand your skillset. But as with anything in life we need to start seeing result before we get totally hooked.

After all you aren't doing this purely for the fun of it, although believe me it is more fun than working a 9 to 5, but to see results and to start paying off some debts or to make things better for you and your family.

Follow the 3 steps and this will start to happen.

Ok, so you have your online presence and you are starting to generate some traffic. Make sure then that you start to build your list from the very beginning. You might think 'oh it's just not worth it' until I have a whole load of visitors.

Stop right there, that's not the right way to think. From the very first visitor coming to your site you can encourage them to sign up to your mailing list, believe me that sign-up to your list is just as valuable as the person that signs up when you have a thousand visitors a day.

However, once people are on your list is important that you treat then right and offer them as much value as possible. It is not a case of just putting offer after offer in front of them.

One of the best e-books I have seen on list building comes from Samantha Milner of DSM Publishing. Samantha is a highly regarded online presence who really does talk the talk and walk the walk and does not ever give you any hype. You can confidently follow her step-by-step process for list building and what you will come away with is a way to create profit virtually on autopilot. 'Oh please' you say how many times have a I heard that, but the secret to this is setting up everything right from the start. Yes there is some work involved up-front but when that is in place things will run pretty much by themselves and you will not only create profit but you will build a wonderful rapport with those on your list and new visitors to your site.

This book is newly created and has only just come live, so get in early and check out the details, it goes by the great name of List Sneakiness and I promise you, you won't be disappointed.