My neighbour, Simon, hit me up the other day. He asks me, “Hey Craig, this internet stuff you do. Can you really make lots of money online?” I laughed. Simon is not the sharpest tool in the shed but he is a lovely fellow. His family is what you would call ideal and I have a lot of time for them.
Being a Saturday morning I dragged him inside to my computer to simply show him quickly what it is I do and what the rewards are. In typical Simon fashion he gasped when he saw my online accounts for last financial year. After 15 minutes I asked if he would like to make that sort of money. He told me he already does as an accountant for a leading Melbourne business.
What he did say was that if I had an extra money making idea I could give him he would appreciate it. He did not want to be 100% reliant on an online income but if I could show him how to add to his income he would be happy with that. So I told him, “Sure thing Simon, that will be easy”.
So the next 3.5 hours went something like this.
“Simon, making money online is relatively simple as long as you have a plan in place. It is when you go at it like a bull at a gate with no rhyme or reason that the majority of people fail to make a buck. Planning is the key.” He understood this being a hot shot accountant and told me to continue.
Your first decision, I told him, should be whether you want to make lots of money or would prefer a smaller amount or extra income. In Simon’s case he said he only wanted to add to his current income. I asked him what amount he would call “extra” and he told me “a couple of grand a month” (real specific huh?)
Ok, I said, $2000 per month is our goal. Now let’s break it down. Two thousand divided by 30 days is $67 per day. We now have a daily figure to shoot for. Now we have to work out a strategy to do this. Now keep in mind we are not going to do this from day one. It is a process that we gradually build up to.
The following is a list of ways we could acheive this. Keep in mind that we can use one of the methods or a mixture of these. I will go over each method seprately though for the sake of the exercise. All of these methods you have no doubt heard of, unlike Simon.
1. Sell your own product.
I will not go into the specifics here but selling your own product gives you 100% of the purchase price. Doing this requires only 1 or 2 sales a day depending on your price point but then you have the added responsibility og custmer care, refunds etc.
2. Be an affiliate
This method is hugely popular and eliminates a lot of headaches but does require more sales per day to reach our target, depending on the price point. This one extra money making idea alone can add enormously to your bottom line.
3. Adsense and CPA offers
Using adsense on your websites has been around since Adam was a boy but can still provide you with an income. I know of many people that make lots of money online using this method. To reach our $67 you are going to have to get a lot of visitors to your website/s to get the necassary clicks to reach the goal.
There are just three ways of making money online. After going through this with Simon he said that it sounded hard to do. I told him that it is not hard, it is quite simple. Not easy, but simple. I told him that the kicker is getting eyeballs on what it is you are offering. Without people seeing your offer, no-one will buy and the easiest method of getting traffic to your money making website is to use article marketing.
By writing cleverly crafted articles that contain links to your offer you can get high rankings in the search engines thus providing you with a stream of potential customers. Depending on what niche you are aiming for and the selling term you want to rank for, this could take a handful of articles or it could take quite a few. This is where the planning comes to the fore.
I will tell you what I told Simon. Get a plan of action, write down the steps needed to achieve the plan and do it. Do not over analyze this though. Keep it real simple so it does not do your head in. It is when we make it difficult that we throw the towel in.
I spent 2 hours with Simon yesterday doing lots of niche research and keyword research. He looked at me sheepishly and asked if this is going to work. I gave him a slap on the shoulder and told him that he will make lots of money online with this extra money making idea. He simply shot me that goofy Simon smile.
