I know making money online is slightly off topic to sourcing wholesale and selling on TradeMe, but I figured of you were interested in making money on TradeMe, then you may like to know how to grab some extra cash online. The thing is, there really is nothing stopping anyone from getting something up and starting to earn extra cash from their website, the question is, just how much effort are you willing (or able) to put in to make it a success?

This, and only this, is going to be the difference between you earning 10 bucks, 100 bucks, 1000 bucks or indeed, a million bucks from the internet with your content or product based website.

I am not going to sugar-coat it though, creating a website (at least your first one), is no picnic. Internet marketing in general is not all rocket cars and gold houses. Most of the time those Ferraris, yachts and mansions on those advertisements are HIRED, and promises of a million bucks with one minutes work and no website or experience is just a bunch of hooey.

Contrary to popular belief there is no get rich quick scheme, an internet (just like real life) business in most cases takes persistence, time and effort. The only people making a lot of money fast are those that are able to convince others that this is true.

Like Mark Ling (one of my mentors) says – it is like a lottery (with odds of a couple of mil to one). You only hear about the ideas that have caused overnight success.

This is why it is going to need to be about something that you are really passionate about (or at least something you can be bothered researching) to keep your interest levels up. This may be Star Wars or recipes, The Simpsons, photography or spelling. Some even say to forget about this completely and simply research what you know will sell.

If you are not really into anything, what has life taught you the hard way that you wish someone had sat you down and explained to you? Your mistakes could save others a whole heap of trouble.

Once you have made your decision, you need to make it your baby, stick at it, nurture and feed it and sing it to sleep. Sometimes the sheer volume of information that you must absorb alone becomes completely overwhelming, that is why I have tried to lay it out here for you to get a base knowledge to skip merrily onwards and upwards from.

So, what are you into?

Think about it, do you spend all your spare time watching DVD’s or playing games? Start up a review based website with links to others that sell them and will pay you for every sale that comes from you.

Are you interested in establishing a community, for the elderly, young, performance car enthusiasts, anyone that you relate to? Your interests, hobbies and pursuits could not only help others achieve in the same way you have, they could be bringing in extra cash while you sleep.

Have a think about your life experiences. You may be a new mum that never had anything to go on, you may have just learnt a new skill and want to tell others all about it, you might have looked everywhere for something that you needed to get ahead in life and finally found, information that could be invaluable to others.

Search Engines Love Content

Once you have your topic, get writing about it. The thing with a website is that it is all about you, you don’t have to answer to anyone and if you are not that grammatically proficient, just get a family member or colleague to proof read your work.

People will feel more of a connection with you inject your own personality as well and if you write like you are having a conversation with them, so an English degree is not necessary.

The more original content you have at your website, the more the search engines will love you. They love content almost as much as love inbound links to your site (which you will learn more about later). Just keep writing for your site, the spiders will keep visiting (which you will soon learn about too), your Google page rank will just keep climbing and with it your bank balance.

By far the most lucrative way to make money from home is with a website selling your own (or someone elses) products or services, that way you have absolute power and control over your online destiny.

But… what do I sell?

The three most profitable ways to earn money from the internet are:

1. Sell your own product or service.
2. Sell your own information that you can make 100% profit on.
3. Earn commissions through selling someone else’s products or services.

Brainstorm what it is that you are going to sell, be it yours or someone else’s products, your own handiwork or information that you have inside of you that you can make 100% profit on, then go about sourcing, making or writing.

The more targeted your audience is, the smaller your niche market, the easier it is going to be to sell to them.

The sensible way to do it, is to research, plan, think, draw, storyboard and research all your ideas again before you fire into the creation of your masterpiece that will catapult your product or information into cyberspace.

But you need to decide what it is you are selling and whether or not there is a market for what you are selling before you start planning.

Once you start writing about something that perpetually holds your interest, the rest will follow as you become more aware of what you can do with it.

Making Money With Affiliate Programs

The quickest way to start making money from a content based website is to place Affiliate Links to products that pay you a commission for every sales lead generated.

An affiliate (or associate) is someone who promotes someone else’s products and receives a commission for each paying customer they send to the site. When your paying customer arrives at their site they pay your commission into your PayPal or bank account or send you a cheque.

They will either provide you with banners or text links to place at your site that have your unique id so they know where it’s from. While banners are quick and easy to organise, endorsements work a whole lot better as it is usually obvious that you believe what you are saying.

I ONLY promote products I know, trust and believe in. Not just because I couldn’t live with myself if I promoted rubbish for a quick buck, but if you have a natural enthusiasm for a product you really don’t have to do any sales at all. All you will need to do is simply tell all about how you feel about the product through reviews, articles or your own content based website.

For more information about Affiliate Marketing you can visit my Internet Marketing Adventures Blog.

Making money with Google

Google run the AdSense programme which is the ‘ads by gooooogle’ that you see on websites.

These boxes are customisable so that they are almost invisible on your pages. Then googlebots (you learn about these under web promotion), will crawl your site looking for keywords and target ads at your users, Google will then pay you for clicks received from your site.

You are also able to add search boxes that google pay you for searches made from your site. These are are a great way to have a search engine that people are able to search your content based website as long as it has been indexed by googlebots, but more about them later.

To promote your website when it is up, another important program run by Google is AdWords, these keywords connect you with new customers at the precise moment when they’re looking for your products or services.

You bid for keywords, then you write your ad, and if your bid is high enough when your keyword is requested, your listing will come up in the top of the sponsored links that you find on the right hand side of a google search. The less you bid, the lower down the search your listing will be.

The AdWords system is a little hard to grasp but it is essential if your are going to succeed in your internet venture.

Spending Money to Make Money

You will soon learn that if you have succeeded in making extra cash in any way imaginable, the easiest way to make money from the internet is by selling that information.

You may or may not know this is true through experience, I absolutely know it’s true because I am well aware that you do have to spend a certain amount of money in order to make money online, and I have.

Don’t let that fool you though, it takes a great deal of coaxing to get me to part with my money, as much as 6 years on a mailing list for one product.

Make it your golden rule to never ever spend money on any information without first researching the product as completely as you can (what do I get for my money, will this work in NZ etc) and find out exactly what it is you are purchasing. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, if they don

Never buy anything that simply claims you will make outrageous cash. If they don’t tell you what it is you are buying they are not going to see your money on promises alone.

Some designers will require you to link back to their website, promoting their other templates or design work so be sure to read each individual sites terms and conditions of use before starting work.

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I know, you hear the ‘Too Hard’ basket calling already.

It certainly will, and it probably won’t stop, but you must resist with every fibre of your being if you are to advance to level uno, commonly known as your first 10 bucks.

Your first introduction to coding in html will almost definitely bring the same word to your lips as did mine, and that is… what?

The thing is, it is becoming more and more common that you are going to need html in many different professional positions. I have a friend who has just got a job selling real estate, but they expected her to know how to upload new images to their website, resize them and add content.

If you have never even heard of html, let alone tried to code in it, check out www.arachnoid.com, this page will teach you the basics as fast as humanly possible.

OK, that still didn’t really make any sense.

Try this, go up to ‘view’ in the toolbar of your browser, scroll down to where it says ‘source’ or ‘page source’ and up will come the code for this page that you are viewing.

That code you see, which is the language your browser speaks, displays all the information that you see on the page. In time, with the help of a html editor, you will come to understand this crazy language that only your browser understands.

I do advise doing a part time introductory course, but if you don’t have the time or the money there are plenty of online tutorials – try Dave’s Site for a start.

My first book on HTML was The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Creating a Web Page’ by Paul McFedries, now that and Web Design in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference’ never leaves my desk.

It really doesn’t take that much to master the basics, which is all you will need if you find a template that you like, but if you want it to be your own, there’s a learnin’ to be done.

If you are having a go at straight HTML and you are stuck with something let me know in the comments, I’ll do my best to help.

If all of this has just made you decide to throw the whole silly idea in the ‘Too Hard’ basket, then maybe you could think about getting someone to design an affiliate site for you. Put up an ad in the second semester first or second year web design class at your local university advertising ‘Beer in exchange for Website Design,’ you’ll find guys who will do it for a couple of dozen.

There are designers who are just starting out who will do it cheaply, or if you have some cash to invest, SiteBuildIt is a complete solution from concept to promotion, they are the only web design company in the world that not only promises attractive and functional sites, they deliver success.

Out of 56.1 million websites, 35% made the top 1%, 53% made the top 2% and 62% made the top 3%, quite incredible figures.

Well I’m feeling a bit broke, what can I do myself?

Getting someone else to do it all for you is by far the easiest method is you don’t have the time (or cash) on your hands, but for those of us who prefer a more hands on approach, the long and winding path starts here.

Now I have my topic, start creating, right?

If there is one piece of advice that I can give you about creating your own website, this is by far the most important. Before you launch into your masterpiece, you need a clear and detailed plan of what your site is going to look like and how each page is going to lead into each other, believe me, this is going to save you hours of work once you start.

Imagine writing all your content, then getting started, only to find that the format that you imagined completely doesn’t fit in with the information you want to convey – it will be absolutely agonising to have to start all over again.

Grab yourself a bunch of A4 sheets and get drawing, planning each page and how they are going to lead into each other, including spaces for adding site searches, adsense, affiliate banners, headers etc, etc, etc.

Section off each part of the page so you end up with a table, this is how web pages are formatted, something you will learn about as you head into your exploration of html. Anyone who has created a table in word will have a head start, the idea is basically the same.

Plan, replan and plan again to give you a clear idea of how you will format these tables and save yourself literally hundreds of wasted hours later.OK, now I’ve got the basics, what next?

Once you have your beautiful, professional looking template safe and sound on your hard drive, you are going to need software to edit it. Even though all of the design work is done for you, you are still going to need to have a firm grasp of the basics of html to get the editor to do what you want it to.

You can download trial versions of Fireworks and Flash MX – these are remarkable web design programs but, they aren’t cheap.

I recommend opening the document into 1stPage – it’s freeware so you never have to pay to use it. This is how you will replace the information with your own.

First of all, Install 1stPage. Now a word of warning here, upon installation your virus software may alert you to a TrojanBomb attached to one of the files. It is a false virus alert that is well known to Evrsoft. It is NOT a virus. It is simply a JavaScript file that one of the makers must have thought would be funny to include, it causes windows to open continuously until older browsers crash, nothing more. Annoying if invoked, but harmless if not.

If you don’t have virus software, you should. Download AVG antivirus – this is the best antivirus package available for free.

Now that 1stPage is safely installed, file > open the index.html of your template and have a look around, first of all in easy mode, in time you can switch to advanced or hardcore. At the top of the page you will find tabs to switch the template from edit to preview, this way you can find the text you want to replace then preview what it will look like in a browser.

There is lots of advice under the help menu of 1stPage or you can check out this ‘How To Edit Web Page Templates’ tutorial for more info.

Once you have mastered the use of templates in 1stPage you can start to think about creating your own pages with your own graphics. Have a look this Web Style Guide for a complete guide to creating your own web page, do some planning first as believe me, if you have a clear plan it will end up saving you so much time later.

It helps to draw pictures of what it is you want, if you don’t have Photoshop you can go to gimp.org or irfanview.com and download one of the free Graphics Editors there to create all your beautiful headings and buttons.

Webmasters also need to know what their site is going to look like in all browsers so make sure you have the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox and Opera so you can view your site across them.

Domain Name Registration

Once you have created your masterpiece it is time to register your domain name and upload it to a host. The cheapest .co.nz registration I have found has been at Expired Domains, they also allow you bid for expired domain names starting at NZ$25.

If it is a .com domain you are after, these are considerably cheaper. I personally register my domains with GoDaddy.com. I did used to register all my domains with another registrar until I realised that – you really do get what you pay for. I’m not going to start a hate campaign (even though I want to) but when it comes to support, GoDaddy.com are by far the best.

Website Hosting

I did used to host all my sites with GoDaddy.com as well, for the simple fact that when you register your domain and pay for a years hosting at US$3.95 per month (extremely reasonable), you get the domain for US$1.99. It is also very easy when you are just starting out to have all your domains with the same host. GoDaddy.com has a very easy to use interface and loads of great support, so is perfect for the beginner.

I now host all my sites with HostGator because they offer unlimited domains on their US$9.95 plan. As soon as you go over 3 sites this is by far your best bet. Their support is brilliant and I am finally happy after a few years of trial and error with domain registration and hosting.

You can find sites who will host your website completely free. Free hosts haven’t really had a good reputation as they usually plaster ads all over your site and uptime is severely compromised – something very important to an affiliate, especially if this is how you feed your family. I signed up to a bunch of them to check them out (for your benefit, basically =)

The best free host I have found is 110mb.com. I had heard good things about them (including 99.5% uptime) so I signed up. You can host your very own domain with absolutely no advertising except to you and on you error404 page. Testimonials there say they feel guilty using them because they should be paying for this service, but they’re not. I found their interface uncomplicated and their support fast and efficient. The only thing wrong with their service was the only allow you to host 3 domains free.

I found them to be the best free host no money could buy.

KiwiWebHost has budget hosting, they want you to pay for the year up front which is NZ$58.50, but that works out to $4.80 per month with phone and email support.

If you do wish to park your domain with a different host, you will need to go in to your account where your domain is registered and change the Domain Name Servers, or DNS to those of your host. First, ask your host what their DNS is, then you need to either enter it yourself at your domain or ring them and get their advice, don’t worry about asking your domain or your host to help you, that’s what support is there for.

Uploading your website

Now that you have your domain and host sorted, you are going to have to work out the easiest way to get your masterpiece online. Many hosts offer web based ftp (file transfer protocol) to upload your website to the internet so ask your host if this is available. I use SmartFTP, because it is really easy to use, and best of all it is free.

When you have it safely installed and open, call, email or live text chat your host and ask them what you need to enter into your ftp client to get yourself online. Once you have your connection info, drag your website into the htdocs folder and you’re away.

OK, website’s up, that’s it, right?

That would be very nice, but just like real life businesses you need to get the word out so that people know you have arrived, and for that you need a healthy dose of promotion.

How to get your website to rank in the search engines.

Right now, all over the internet are little scripts written by the clever people who created search engines, commonly known as ‘spiders,’ or ‘googlebots’ or ‘robots’ or ‘crawlers,’ depending on which language you speak. They are industriously crawling the web and indexing information, searching your code for content and other keywords.

On your expedition into html, you should have come across these bits of code, so I shouldn’t be speaking martian any more.

The head of your page, that which lies between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags, should be <TITLE>a descriptive title for your page</TITLE>, this is what the robots are most likely to look at first. The description metatag <meta name=”description” content=”should provide a 2-3 line (250 character) description of your page”>. Lastly is the <meta name=”keywords” content=”separated, by, commas”> which should be the words most likely searched by your potential customers.

The body, which is the html page that lies between the <BODY> and </BODY> tags, is the most important part of the page to the humble robot, as it knows that this is what you are going to be reading.

So off he goes reading, reading, paying special attention to any formatted text like your headings, lists, bold and I have found especially from my AdSense ads, the links that you have on the page. I’ve found that on my pages with template links I get mostly ads for web design based businesses, on the auction tips pages for auction sites and so on, even when there was no metatags on those pages.

Pay close attention to how each page leads into another, so it is easy for your pet googlebot to find his way right through your site following all the links easily and quickly.

Make sure you make it easy for every part of your site to be accessed easily from another not just for your robot, but for your customers as well. To make sure they read through all of your expertly crafted copy, taking in all your ads, they need to be led through or else they will skip merrily off to the next site in their search for the information they need.

This is also an important factor in taking them through your copy, so that each paragraph flows into another, keeping up as much interest as possible to let people know you are here.

Letting everyone know you have arrived.

Once you have all these key robot friendly factors down, you will need to submit your website to the search engines to be indexed, this make take a up to a month with some of them. They need to be able to find you, that way when you type in your business name at least, you can see that you are actually part of the world wide web. There is a list of the major search engines in the sidebar that still accept free submissions.

What about that automated site submission thingy?

By now you have probably seen at least a million ads that claim to submit to 4 billion search engines every day for you, for a set fee of course. The truth is there are probably only around 15 – 20 search engines that bring in 99.9% of traffic for all of the searches made on the internet, so submitting to them all is simply not necessary. Lycos and Excite for example are powered by Yahoo!, and AOL is powered by Google.

Even if you don’t submit to these two major search engines that power the 10,000 sites they claim to submit to, the crawlers are going to find you anyway, submitting to them will just speed up the process.

But I’m still 458th in a google search, how do I get to the top?

The quickest and easiest way to promote your website is through reciprocal linking, that’s where you agree with another webmaster of the same sort of genre as you to exchange links, so that people visiting your site will visit their site and vice versa.

Get your thinking cap on.

One of the ways Google rates your importance is by how many sites link to you. There are over 100 Google Ranking Factors to consider, an important one being your base of ‘good’ links as this is important for your ‘Google Page Rank’. The more quality sites that link to you, the higher your page rank. The higher the page rank of the person who links to you, the more important google thinks you are, clear as mud?

Google considers some sites very important, say, government or academic sites, if they link to you then you must be very important as well. Each link to you counts as one ‘vote,’ the more important your ‘votes’ are, the higher Google will rank you in a search.

One vote from a page with a pathetic page rank is worth almost zero to nil, so when searching for applicable sites to ask nicely to link to you, you are going to need to know their page rank. The Google ToolBar which is free to download with the new version of FireFox tells you high how Google ranks them and has a host of other features as well.

The list of free business directories not only helps with your google page rank, but gets your name out to other New Zealanders for free. For a huge list of international directories listed by popularity, check this site out. Remember the higher the directories page rank, the more important they are.

The ones to go for are those that let you choose a description of your site in the name enabling you to use your keywords. If you sell personalised pet mats, you want those keywords to be the link. This is very important for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Having ‘www.personlisedpetmats.com’ is ok, but it is far better to have ‘Sue’s Personalised Pet Mats – For All Your Pet Mat Needs’ linking to you.

This tells search engines that your site is linked to these keywords and when a search is made, with enough of these keywords in your linking to you, your site will start to come up in the search engines.

When looking for sites to link to yours, try to make sure that the content coincides with yours, as a link from a cats website to your pet mats is going to count for more than a site about bedspreads.

There are many different directories that are created for specific types of website, so if your website is about music, type in “music directory” or if you are searching for a community directory type in “palmerston north directory,” if you live in Palmerston North that is. =)

Website marketing is a huge topic, so I will just introduce you to a few ideas here to get you on the internet map.

If you are not really a writer, then hopefully writing copy for your website has given you a bit of a base to start building your copywriting techniques.

The easiest way to start building your profile as a authority on your subject is to write articles and submit them to places like EZine Articles or GoArticles. Submitting here automatically gives people permission to publish them at their websites, always including the all important link back to your site.

Free article sites are an excellent resource for researching content for your own website as well.

You are probably already the member of one messageboard or another, you may as well make use of that publicity as well. Don’t forget to add your link in your signature.

Every single internet marketing guru will tell you, the money my friends, is in the list. To get the word out, you will need to put together a very informative, witty and utterly hilarious newsletter that solidifies yourself as a trustworthy guru on the subject and send it weekly to your customers that are waiting with baited breath to rip into it. Failing that, it has to at least entertaining so they don’t run screaming for the ‘take me off this mailing list NOW’ button.

If you sell cameras or have a hobby based website, write about how to take the money shot, or tips to creating the perfect portrait.

Put together 7 day e-courses that you send out every other day or an e-zine where you promise to send valuable information on a regular basis. Make it good, so people know if what you are giving away is this good then what you have for sale must be too meke. Every now and again throw in a promotion or two, but not EVERY email.

Nothing will make people leave your list in droves faster than that.

Subtly present the customer with a problem they may be having, give a little information on how to fix that problem, then give them the even easier option of buying this great lens off you to solve the problem. It is the information age and people will feel extremely gratified to a person who gives them anything that makes them go aaAAHHhh…

The idea is to let people know what they need to do, but they need to buy the information to find out how to do it.

You can set up a mailing list with someone like Aweber.

Once you have it set up these guys will supply you with a visitor sign-up form for your website, you load it up with the messages, then they automatically send out the personalised emails for you. Nothing makes me hit the ‘delete’ button faster than an email titled ‘Dear Internet Friend’ or ‘Hello There.’ If starts with ‘Hello Lesley,’ then I am far more inclined to read it.

Turn your articles into free reports, (“Click here to receive your FREE report on making money with your digital camera!) give them away through email or through your website.

Information is something you have inside of you that you can make 100% profit on. Psychotactics.com has excellent articles on writing persuasive copy, his expressive writing style is fit to be emulated as well. Just keep practising, remembering that you are talking to another human being just like you or I, and you can’t help but get good at it.

Do a search for ‘traffic secrets’ or ‘how to get traffic to your website’ for more ideas.

So There You Have It!

Let me know of any sites you get up, I would love to check them out. If you need to ask anything email me and I will endeavour to be as much help as I can. If I’m not available, there are so many forums you can sign up to. Just do a search for ‘webmaster forum’ and you will find immediate help.

Good luck!

I have been meaning to start this blog for literally years now, but… better late than never!

This blog will be used for random thoughts and those off topic issues that have nothing to do with TradeMe or sourcing wholesale, but everything to do with making money online.

So, lets’ get started!