Author Archives: Jennifer K

Niche Tutorials – What the Heck is a Niche? And How to Effectively Choose One

October 31 4:48 pm ⋅

What is a Niche?

Niche. What a word. But what does the word mean? Offline, the word means something that you are good at or something that you have a specialty with. Online, it’s a little different. An online niche is something that you have chosen to build an idea (such as a website) around. It’s still considered a specialty of yours.

For example, a niche would be a website about “golfing during the summer”, and you could have a website with information about golf courses, why golfing in the summer is good…etc. So the niche in this example in general is the golfing niche, but the actual laser targeted niche is golfing during the summer . (BTW- I don’t golf, so I do apologize to any golfers who are offended my by blatant lack of knowledge on the subject.)What is a Niche

Choosing a Niche

One of the most important parts about choosing a niche is making sure you are interested in it. This does not mean you have to necessarily know about it, but you do need to have some kind of interest in the subject. This will ensure you enjoy the time you spend on your website.

Another thing to consider when choosing a niche is the amount of popularity the subject has. You want to make sure that the topic is something people are searching for information on. If other people are searching for information on the subject of your niche, this will help in the success of visitors to your site. How can you tell if a niche gets searched? Do some keyword research. There are many keyword tools out there that will tell you how many times a word (or idea) gets searched on the internet, and they also tell you how many competing websites there are. Aside from search popularity, the next thing you need to take into consideration is website competition.

You don’t want to target a niche that have millions of competing websites. This is not to say you won’t win over the competition, but it makes your job that much more difficult to gain ranking from the search engines. Let’s take the above golf example. Instead of just having a website about golf, dig a little deeper and find out what other people are searching for in regards to golf. Such as (remember, I do not golf) the difference between the clubs. This is known as a targeted niche, or a micro niche.

The best way to find a niche would be first to start off with something you are interested, then go a little deeper, and think of “subcategories” (such as in the golfing during the summer sub catagory – it’s even more laser targeted and narrowed down than just “golfing”. Once you have some subcategories in mind, use a keyword research tool to find your keywords, and voila! You have your niche. (An excellent keyword tool I really like is Wordtracker. Check it out.)

I will say this again, and I want you to heed my advice – only choose a niche in a subject you are interested in! If you do not, you will fail.  Internet marketing takes a lot of dedication, time and commitment. If you have to work daily on something that doesn’t hold your interest, you will find it very hard to work on it. No work = no success. Period.

Now What?

After you have your niche, the next step is to build your website. Make sure you understand the importance of SEO, back linking, and how to get traffic to your site. This will also make or break your success.

By selecting the right niche, you’ve already greatly increased your chances of being successful. Work on your website everyday, and take care of it just as though it were a business – because that’s what it is.

You do not need to know everything about internet marketing to be successful, just as long as you understand that you will be learning something new everyday, and it is a learning curve. Some things will work for you, and some things won’t. Learn from your mistakes, and keep moving forward.

 

Posted in: Keyword Research Tips ⋅ Tagged: ,

What the Heck is Internet Marketing and How Can I Effectively Market Myself Online?

October 27 8:26 pm ⋅

It’s the ultimate question if you have ever even minutely searched for ways to make money online. Internet marketing, online marketing, affiliate marketing…they’re all pretty much the same thing and they’ll be lumped in together quite a bit, but the one key ingredient to understanding exactly what makes it work IS internet marketing.

So What the Heck is Internet Marketing?

In it’s simplest form and explanation, internet marketing is just a way to market or promote anything online.  The reasons you choose to market online will vary from person to person. For example, marketing your own business to build a name for yourself or selling something online whether it be for an affiliate program or a product you have created yourself.

There are literally thousands of reasons someone would market themselves online, but it all boils down to one thing – to make money. Some way or another online marketing relates to making money. In today’s everyday life, the internet takes a high priority over, well… everything. Think about it. When is the last time you bought something online or not without first doing a quick Google search on it? Whether it be to read reviews on the product, or to find out what the average price something is, or to find the lowest price.

Ways to Market Yourself (or Your Website)

Gone are the days when you could just put up a website and stuff some keywords in the article and title, buy yourself some crappy back links and boom, the search engines would reward you with high rankings. Believe it or not, that used to work! You could easily manipulate the search engines to get your site or article ranked. If you recall back in the day, when searching for anything the chances were extremely high that you would  land on a webpage that was entirely irrelevant to your actual search. Guess what? The search engines have become smart now. Google’s entire algorithm is now based on user experience. That means it is now smart enough to know the difference between a good website and a bad one.

One of the most effective ways to start marketing your website is by using social media sites. One of the ways the search engines can determine if your site is worth it or not is if other people are liking and sharing your information. If normal people are sharing it, then clearly it’s a good user experience. So like it or not, if you’re not marketing your website on the social sites, you’re doing yourself a huge injustice. Make it easy for your visitors to share your content by adding social share buttons to all of your posts. Also, bookmark your posts to your favorite bookmarking sites. This will drive traffic back to your site, but also get you some quick backlinks.

Another way to market yourself online is article marketing. I know, it sucks. You spend all day writing quality content just to spend even more time writing quality articles for article directories. No one likes to do it (well maybe they do, but to be completely honest, I’d rather put my best content on my website rather than waste it and submit it to article directories.) The cold hard truth here though, is you have to submit quality content to the article directories as well. The key to doing this well is by changing your mindset. Article marketing is NOT just for getting backlinks to your site. It actually does generate traffic. People may find your article on a directory site for a keyword that your website is not ranked for. If the article is of quality content, they will be more likely to trust you. If they trust your writing, they will be compelled to click through to your website at the end of the article. Building trust is really what article marketing is about. Think about it this way. If you write a crappy article for the sole purpose of getting a back link and it ends up getting a lot of traffic, you will most likely not see any of the benefits of that traffic. The traffic will not transfer to your website because your article was trash.

How to Be Successful with Online Marketing and Promotion

The key to being successful with marketing online is by being consistent. It’s a never ending part of the job. Partially marketing and promoting yourself or your website will not get the job done. It’s something that must be done for the entire time you own that website. It’s just like an offline business. You can’t advertise for your business just once and expect to have a forever flow of customers. Sure, the initial advertising you do will bring in more customers, but eventually it will die off and you’ll need to do some more advertising…it’s the same way with online. You have to continually market (advertise) your website. If you don’t, you’ll be dead in the water because your competition will outdo you and your previous efforts will be a waste of time.

Moral of this article? Never stop promoting your website. Ever. :)

If you’re just getting started online, you may want to read this. Beginners Mini Course for Making Money Online Without Investment

Posted in: Marketing Tips ⋅ Tagged: ,

How to Do Keyword Research Using Free Tools – Step by Step for Beginners

June 21 4:41 pm ⋅

keywordsI’ve been talking about keyword research and how important it is for quite a while now in some of my previous posts. Keyword research goes hand in hand with SEO, and without proper preparation of your site, your efforts could (and will) be wasted.  If you make a website blindly with no knowledge of what keywords you want to target, you WILL NOT succeed. I know that seems harsh, but it’s the cold hard truth.

I want you to know exactly how important it is, and why you shouldn’t skimp on the very tedious but most important task : keyword research. I’m going to start from the beginning and take you all the way to the end…and I’ll actually show you how to do keyword research. I’ll show you the exact method I use (and I do all of my keyword research for free), and hopefully by the end of this post you’ll have a better understanding of the how’s and why’s.

Why is Keyword Research Important?

Researching your keywords before you start building a website or writing any content for it is crucial because it’s foundation of your business. A traditional business owner wouldn’t open a store without first doing market research, and knowing what the competition is in the area, or having a concrete plan of forward action…so neither should an online business owner. You must first start with an idea, and from there branch out and research that idea to make sure it’s profitable and doable. It’s the first step in any type of business plan.

Let me put it in simple terms. Every website is built around an idea.  It will start off as a general idea (we’ll use the idea of popsicles for the rest of this post for explanation purposes) and then as you dig deeper into it, the idea evolves more and more in depth.

  • You decide you want a website about popsicles
  • You will add pages to your website about specific types of popsicles

Your niche is the “food” niche, but your micro-niche is popsicles. We’re not going to get any more specific on the niche selection process, since this is about keyword research, but it is important to understand that picking the right niche for your website is just as important as keyword research. The two kind of go hand in hand. You want to make sure your website topic is something that people are looking for and will find interesting.  There must be a demand for what you’re website is about, other wise all the keyword research in the world will mean nothing, because there will be no keywords because nobody is searching for them.

Example 1 without doing keyword research:

So you have a website about popsicles and you’re ready to start populating the site with content. You begin writing without doing any keyword research. You write great articles, and you update your website daily. And you keep waiting for search engines to see your site and start sending you traffic. And you wait. And wait. You have no idea how many people are actually looking for the term you’re writing about, and no idea how much competition you have. You really don’t know what to expect, and you really have no plan. You may never receive traffic to your website because you have not chosen specific keywords you want to target for each page. It’s like playing the lottery. You may get lucky, but chances are…you won’t.

Example 2 WITH doing keyword research:

The same website, getting ready to start populating your site with content. You know that the term “popsicle recipes” gets searched 2900 in a month and that the competition for that term is not very high. You can easily rank for it, and there is traffic to support the work of writing the article. So you write the article. You do the same thing the next day before you write your next article. You find a keyword that will generate you traffic, and you target it. You do this daily, populating your website with high quality keyword targeted articles. And then you wait. And then you get traffic. But you already knew you were going to because you did your research on the market.

Keyword research is important because it sets you up for success.

How to Do Keyword Research

Alright, so now you know why you have to do the research, the next step is know how. There are a lot of different ways you can do it. There is no right or wrong way. You can choose to use paid tools, or free tools. Which ever way you choose is completely up to you. Once you’ve been doing it for a while, it’s going to seem like second nature to you and you’ll most likely find different ways that work to get your information. This specific method I’m going to talk about is exactly what I do. I don’t use paid tools (you may want to as you start making money – they are helpful in a lot of ways), and I’ve found that doing it this way is all I need. I do all my keyword research using Google and the free keyword tool they offer.

The first step is to go to the Google free keyword tool. The URL of this is always changing, so it won’t help to bookmark it. Just go to Google and type in “keyword Tool”. It will pop up in the search results. Click it and then you will be taken directly to it.

How to do Keyword Research

If you have an Adwords account, it’s helpful to sign in. You get to see more information. If you don’t, not a big deal. The next step is to type in the keyword phrase or idea you have in the “Word or Phrase” box. You can enter more than one, but make sure you only put one phrase per line. In this case, we’ll type in “popsicle”. Don’t worry about anything else, (except the captcha of course) and just click search.

How to do Keyword Research for Free

Once you click search, it will then populate the bottom of the screen with a bunch of related keywords. You notice exact phrases you typed in will be on the top. There will be 4 different columns – keyword, competition, global searches and local searches.

Keyword – The actual keyword you’re researching.

Competition – The number of people competing for that keyword in Adwords. It is very important to understand that this is NOT YOUR competition. It’s the number of people paying for advertising for that keyword. You can just ignore it.

Global Searches – The number of times the keyword gets searched globally – worldwide.

Local Searches – The number of times the keyword gets searched within the location that is specified. It’s generally your location. My location is the United States. You can change this in the options before searching.

Understanding the Results

The next thing we want to do after performing the search, is narrow it down and find keywords that we can target. To do this, we want to know the exact number of exact searches that phrase gets. So we click the [Exact] box over to the left. We leave broad checked also, just so we can compare the two.

How to do Keyword Research

Once you check the [Exact] box, that will put [..] around all the keyword phrases. This will now give us an exact number of how many times that exact phrase is searched. Broad gives us a number of how many times the general phrase gets searched…there could be additional keywords in there or not in there. We want the exact phrase.

The next step is to scroll down the list of keywords and see if any of them look good to you. A good keyword is going to have at least 10 local searches a day (about 300 monthly). Obviously it’s up to you and what you think will be worth it. You may find keywords that get thousands of searches a month, and you may find keywords that don’t get even 300 searches but they work well for your site and are exactly what you want. Generally though, to make an article worth it you’re going to want at least 300 searches a month. Take a look at [popsicle recipes]:

How to do Keyword Research for Free

We have 4400 global searches and 2900 local searches. This looks like it could be a good keyword. In order to know for sure though, we now need to check the competition. To do that, we go directly to the Google search engine. I open another browser window so I can switch back and forth between the two.

I first type in the phrase popsicle recipes and see what comes up. There are about 4,590,000 website that are competing for this broad phrase. You can see that number right under the search bar.

How to do Keyword Research for Free

The next step I want to see is how many websites are competing for this phrase exactly (remember, that phrase exactly must be somewhere within the webpage.) I search for exact by putting the phrase in quotes like this “popsicle recipes”. The result I get for exact is 148,000 websites competing. This is a much better number, but still not good. But also…still not what we’re after. Now you’ll notice that the results all have the exact phrase “popsicle recipes” in bold.

How to do Keyword Research

The last step is checking the allintitle number of results. Type this into the search bar : allintitle:”popsicle recipes”. Google will now return the results that have the exact phrase in the exact order in the title of the page. This is the number we care about for competition. The result is 3,170 websites competing for that phrase. Someone with good SEO knowledge and good content can easily rank for this term. A general rule of thumb when looking for how much competition there is, try to keep it below 40-50,000 results. Obviously the less competition there is, the easier to rank for. 50,000 competing is certainly doable if you are diligent with your backlinking and website promotion.

Another step you may want to take in keyword research is checking out the actual competition. Go to there webpages, see what they’re doing to rank well, and also make sure it’s a site that you can out rank. For example…it’s going to be kind of hard to outrank high authority sites like CNN News or others.

Keyword research is the bread and butter of your online business. Now you know how to do it, and you can do it for free. Do not make light of this step of the process. The more research you do, the more chances of success you will have. Don’t waste your time without it. A man without a plan…plans to fail. Remember that, it’ll be worth it in the end.

Make sure to check out my post about using blogging and content sites to make money.

Did you find this post useful or informative? Can I add to it or change it in anyway to make it better? Or how ’bout better yet…do you have any keyword research tips to add?  Let me know – leave a comment! Also, if you liked this post, please share it with the buttons so others can enjoy it as well!

Posted in: Keyword Research Tips ⋅ Tagged: , ,

Search Engine Optimization Tips for the Average Joe

June 18 9:56 pm ⋅

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most effective ways to market online, but most people either don’t know how to do it (properly) or they just flat out do it wrong. Which, in retrospect, is essentially the same thing.

Why is Search Engine Optimization Important?

For starters, you have to first understand why search engine optimization is important. Whether you’re a blogger, or you have an online e-commerce store, or a traditional brick and mortar store, there are 2 main components that are required in order to build a successful online business:

  • Having a website of your own that will be able to generate money
  • Getting traffic to that website.

Obviously it’s a lot more complex than just that, but for simplicity sake that’s really what it boils down to. Let’s break it down a little further to give you a better example of what I mean. If you’re a blogger, the website of your own is made up of content and articles that you have written and you have most likely placed advertising or other income generating revenue on your site. If you have an e-commerce store (a strictly online only store), obviously you make money with your website when people come to your site and purchase an item. If you have an offline store (traditional brick and mortar) you probably (and really should) have a website that you can either refer people to, or gain more customers who have just found you online by searching for either your brand or a product that you offer. No matter what business model you’re going after, you have to have traffic (visitors) to your website in order to make any money.

The most amazing website that does not get seen will not make money. Period.

The more traffic a website has, the more money it makes. Period.

In order for any of the above examples to happen, the key ingredient to all of them is one thing : search engine optimization.  Search engine optimization is important because it allows your website to be found by people searching for what your website has to offer. And then traffic is generated for your website.

There are two different types of search engine optimization. There is onsite optimization and offsite optimization. In order to have a successful and effective SEO campaign you must do both.

Onsite Search Engine Optimization Tips

Getting ranked with the search engines means your website (or a page of your website) will show up in the search results when someone searches for particular keywords. Your website must be optimized for the search engines in order for them to know exactly what your site is about and what keywords (more about keywords in a later post) to rank you for.

I’ll use this particular post to give you an example of this. The keyword phrase I am trying to rank for is “search engine optimization tips”.  I want people who type those exact keywords into the search bar to find my site, because that’s what my post is about.  So if you are one of those people who typed those keywords in and you found my site using a search engine, then my goal has been accomplished. I targeted the exact phrase “search engine optimization tips” and the search engines took notice. Note : search engines will also rank you for keywords that you haven’t optimized for (or that you don’t realize you are optimized for). So if you happened to have found this page through a different keyword, then yay!

Below are some very general but very effective tips you should be using when doing onsite optimization for your website.

  • Make sure that the title of your post or page has the main keyword(s) that you want to be ranked for. BUT…make sure that your title is enticing and written for humans. Not only does nobody wants to read an article that has a boring title, but the search engines will see right through that and end up ranking another site that has been optimized for a real person, not just for ranking purposes. I added “for the average Joe” to my title, because my article is written for beginners who don’t have much experience in the SEO world. It’s enticing to readers, my keyword is there, and it actually reads like a real title.
  • Make sure that the article or post has the actual keywords you want to be ranked for in it, somewhere in the beginning of the article and near the end. But again…write only for real people. The keywords should appear naturally in your article, and the article should flow when read. If you can’t put it in naturally, don’t.
  • You may have heard the phrase keyword stuffing. This is old school, and is NOT the way to do proper SEO. I’m here to tell you, if you stuff your keywords in your article, your site will not get ranked. (Keyword stuffing is what marketers used to do in the beginning of the internet – it means just what it sounds like – it meant that they would “stuff” their page with an over abundant amount of their intended keywords, and then the search engines would rank them. It doesn’t work like that anymore. If you do it, your site will actually suffer penalties from the search engines, rather than any kind of benefit.
  • Don’t put too much thought into keyword density. Keyword density is also old school, and it was once thought that there was a percentage of how many times a keyword was mentioned had something to do with getting ranked. Back then, it did. In this day in age, the search  engines are smarter and geared more toward unique, engaging and great content. The moral is – write for real people and you will be rewarded. (Are you seeing a trend yet?)
  • Put your keywords in H1 and H2 tags. If you use WordPress, you can install a plug in for this, and/or you should enter your keywords into the “tags” section on the right when you’re writing a new post.
  • If you use WordPress, install All in One SEO pack. It’s a great plug in, and I personally use it on all of my sites. You can choose the title, description and keywords for each individual post.
  • If you have images in your post, make sure you use the alt tag to put your keywords in. This really helps when it’s a keyword that is clearly not “reader friendly”. Example: your targeted keyword is “make money how to now” (if you’ve done keyword research and you find that this keyword phrase actually gets searched a lot, then you’ll naturally want to get ranked for it.) But it obviously doesn’t make sense to use in article, or as a title…so using the alt tags can help with this. FYI – that was just an example. That phrase doesn’t get searched at the time of this post. If you use WordPress, adding the alt tag is easy. You just click on the image and add the tag right there.
  • Rather than linking the image to the location of the image, link the image to the actual post or page it’s on.
  • If you have links in the post, use the title tag. WordPress automatically gives you the option when you add the link, there is also the option to add the title tag. Put your keyword there.
  • Add social media icons to your post so that your readers can share your posts. This is a new SEO technique that is becoming more and more important. With social networking becoming bigger and bigger, the search engines are looking more and more for content that is being shared. It tells them your content is important and popular, and people want to read it. So make it easy for your readers to share your content.
  • Make sure you have enough content on your page. Search engines don’t like thin or flimsy content. Ever hear the phrase “content is King?” Make your articles or posts unique and informative, and give them some backbone! Give your readers what they want…good information on whatever topic they’ve searched for.
  • Don’t use “scraped” or copied articles. Search engines want unique and original articles. Gone are the days when you could use an article that had already been published multiple times and just throw some backlinks at it and “out link” the original article.  Unique and original content will always win the race in this day in age of SEO.
  • Do some internal linking within your site to other pages or posts of your site. Link to other relevant posts internally so that your readers can easily find other articles that relate to the one they just read. It’s good SEO practice too.
  • Continually add new content to your website. Search engines love new and fresh content, so if you are updating your site frequently, they’ll thank you for it. A good rule of thumb is if the site is new, try to post something new at least once a day. Once it’s more of an established site, you can slow it down. At least add one new article a week.

One of the most important tips for onsite optimization is something I’ve covered many times so far, but must not be ignored : No matter what, write for people. If you write for people and do SEO as the secondary priority, your efforts will pay off. If you can’t figure out how to make a keyword work, then don’t worry too much about it. Write quality articles, make sure the title makes sense, and that your article is about your keyword in general, your article will find it’s way. There is such a thing as over optimization. Don’t fall victim to it.

Offsite Search Engine Optimization Tips

Now you’ve optimized your website for SEO, the next step is to optimize outside of your website. This in and of itself is pretty straight forward. To optimize offsite, you need to get backlinks to your site. The theory behind backlinks is that they show the search engines how much “authority” your site has. If a website is linking to your site, then you must have a pretty good site. Unfortunately though, backlinking has become tainted and tarnished, due to the overwhelming amount of link spamming that has occurred over the years. Buying links or participating in link farms or other non-legit ways of getting links back to your site is not going to cut it. In fact…you guessed it…it will get you penalized.

Building links back to your site doesn’t happen overnight. It’s an ongoing process, and eventually, it will catch up to you. Continue building good links back to your site and you’ll see the benefits, and eventually, others will link back to your site (providing you have valuable and good content). Some quick ways to get links back to your site and to get your website indexed are:

  • Post your page on social media sites, like Stumbleupon, Facebook, Digg and Twitter. These will give you quick backlinks, but also give you some quick traffic. They’re not necessarily the highest or strongest since they’re so easy to get, but they definitely help with the getting started process.
  • Post articles to different article directories. Make sure the articles are unique and original and contain the link back to your site. (You can read a previous post I wrote about effective article marketing here.) <—-See? Internal linking :).
  • Leave comments on other peoples blogs. DO NOT LEAVE GENERIC COMMENTS,  AND DO NOT USE A COMMENT SOFTWARE. Read the article, and post a genuine comment that tells the author you actually READ their article. I can tell when it’s a robot leaving a comment, and I do not approve those comments.
  • Guest post on other blogs.

There literally thousands of different ways you can get backlinks to your site. It’s just a matter of doing it. Here you can read a previous post I wrote about backlinking and SEO, which may also give you a better understanding of backlinks. For now, hopefully these search engine optimization tips (<—— see what I did there? Used my keyword phrase at the end of my article…) have given you an idea on where to start and what to do to effectively start your SEO campaign.

If you’re just starting out and this whole making money online thing still seems kinda fuzzy to you, check out my mini course: Lesson #1 – How do People Really Make an Income Online?

Did you find this post useful or informative? Can I add to it or change it in anyway to make it better? Or how ’bout better yet…do you have any SEO tips to add?  Let me know – leave a comment! Also, if you liked this post, please share it with the buttons so others can enjoy it as well!

You may also enjoy this post: How to Make Money By Blogging

Posted in: Search Engine Optimization Tips ⋅ Tagged:

How to Make Extra Money From Home – A Very Simple Method You Can Do Now to Bring In Some Extra Cash

June 14 5:20 pm ⋅

If you’re like most of the world, making extra money is always on your mind. Today’s cost of living has gone up exponentially and you need to somehow increase the cash flow, so you go in search of ways to bring in that extra income. While it’s a simple solution, executing it isn’t always easy. Below are some ideas you can do to make a little extra money from home.

How to Make Extra Money From Home Using Article Marketing

Article Marketing – This is a very good way to make money online, and some people have found so much success with this it has replaced their full time income. It’s easy and free, and it only takes  couple of hours a day to do. Article marketing is one of the most effective ways to making money online because it has so many different ways you can use it. You can use article marketing to promote any product or website.

Here’s an example of how you can do it:

You don’t have a website, or anything to sell, but you want to make money. All you have to do is harness the power of free article directories and a website called Clickbank. Clickbank is a large affiliate network (that means they have digital products you can promote and if someone buys it, you make a commission from the sale). Below I have outlined the steps of getting started.

  • Sign up for Clickbank and get an affiliate account. The signup process is easy and quick. Within minutes you’ll have an account set up and you can get your affiliate link. (An affiliate link is the link that tracks any sales made by you.) There are thousands of products to choose from, from weight loss, self help, games, software, making money online…just browse through some of the categories and you’ll find one that you like. You can make anywhere from $10-$200 per sale with Clickbank’s products.
  • Choose a product from the Clickbank Marketplace that you want to promote. There are a few things you want to make sure you look for. You want to make sure that the product you choose has a big enough payout (at least 50% commission) and that the Gravity is higher than 20. A high gravity means the product is selling well. If a product is selling well, then you know there is a demand for it.
  • Sign up for different article directories. GoArticles, Ezinearticles, Squidoo, and Hubpages are some of my favorites. (Do a search for “article directories” and you’ll be amazed at how many different directories there are!) The more directories you sign up with, the better. Make sure you read the terms for each directory though…there a different rules you need to make sure you follow for each directory.
  • Write one article as a review of the product. Keep it honest, don’t make it too salesy, and make sure it’s at least 500 words. Put your affiliate link at the end of the review. This first article will be your “money” page. (Tip: In some cases, you can contact the product creator and ask for a review copy. It’s easier to sell a product and write a review on something if you actually have used the product and know 100% what it’s about.)
  • Plan on writing 3-5 articles a day. With each article directory, you are allowed to either have a resource box at the end of the article, or you can actually have links inside your article. (This is where you need to know the rules of each article directory. Make sure you know which directories allow links in the article, or if they are only allowed in the resource box. Also, know which directories allow affiliate links. Some do not.) In each additional article, you want to have a link back to your “money page” article, and also it’s a good idea to have your affiliate link somewhere in the article or resource box. This increases the chances of people clicking on your affiliate link in the article, and it also gives more power to your “money page”.
  • Do not expect to make a sale for every visitor you have to your article. The general closing ratio is about 1% of sales – if your article is targeted to the right audience. That means for every 100 people who click on your affiliate link, you will make 1 sale. This is of course a general rule of thumb. In reality, it could be more or less.
  • Promote your articles. (Read my tips on 8 places you can market online.)

Writing Articles that Make Money

There are 2 imperative parts to making money with article marketing.

  1. Getting Your Articles READ
  2. Converting Readers Into SALES

Getting your articles read seems easy enough, but in reality it can really be a little tricky. Use the tricks below to ensure your articles aren’t going to waste.

  • Make sure you have enticing titles. You want the title of your article to stand out to people who come across it, and you want it to say “read me!” The more people who read your article, the more chances you have at making a sale.
  • Write for people. While this may seem like a no-brainer, you’d be surprised at how many people throw up some terrible articles written for search engines rather than real humans. You will gain more respect from your readers this way, and in the end, the search engines will rank your article higher because it’s quality. If your article(s) gets ranked with the search engines, you will have a lot of free traffic…and more traffic means more sales. (In internet marketing, people who visit a webpage are called traffic.)
  • Don’t be salesy. Be honest. Be a real person. Think about all the products you’ve bought online…did you buy them because the review of the product was yelling at you “this is the best, buy it, buy it buy it!!” or did you buy it because you felt the article really gave you some insight on what you could expect from the product? Again, think of your reader when writing. This will increase sales tremendously.

Making money with article marketing is truly a great way to make money online and you can do it for free. It’s important to remember though…this is not some fly by the night way to make money.  This method takes dedication and consistency, and it doesn’t happen over night. It’s easy to do, but you have to do it. Continue to write 3-5 articles a day. Soon you will see increases in your traffic and you’ll be making sales very shortly. As your extra money begins to grow larger, then you can invest a little more time and money and really turn it into a business if you want. Setting up your own website would be the next step in making a long term income. (You can read a previous post I wrote about how to build a website – it’s for complete beginners.) I have also created a mini course that you may find very helpful as you get started. You can start reading it here: Make Money Online Without Investment.

Now that you’ve learned how to make extra money from home, get to it! If you want more information on article marketing, sign up for my free 56 page report on How to Start an Internet Business on only $5…it has some great info in it!

Did you find this post useful or informative? Can I add to it or change it in anyway to make it better? Let me know – leave a comment! Also, if you liked this post, please share it with the buttons so others can enjoy it as well!

 

Posted in: Tips For Making Money Online ⋅ Tagged: , ,

How to Build a Website – Simple and Easy Step by Step for Beginners

June 12 4:22 pm ⋅

When you think of building a website, most people’s first reaction is “oh, I don’t know how to do that!” or “oh man, that’s too hard!” But it doesn’t have to be. You can build a website relatively easy these days, but there are a lot of step and things involved that may scare beginners away. When I first started online, I had no idea WHERE to start, and every tutorial or article I read gave me just a little more understanding and information, but it also gave me a lot more information that I had to research, which null and voided my understanding. My head felt like it was in a spiraling down slope avalanche…every time I’d think I had a grasp on something, another article would bring to my attention 2 or 3 more things I that I had absolutely no idea about. For me, learning how to build a website was one of the most frustrating things I had to learn.

There is good news though. Once I finally found all the pieces of the puzzle (a.k.a information) that I had to put together to build a website, it became very simple and clear to me. To this day, my favorite part about internet marketing is building the website. So don’t fret. If making a website seems out of reach for you, I’m here to tell you it’s not.

How to Build a Website – Simple and Easy Step by Step for Beginners

The method we’re going to talk about is one of the easiest and most effective ways to build a website. It’s called WordPress, and by using WordPress you’ll be able to easily create, edit, update and pretty much do anything you want with your website. By following the steps outlined below, you’ll soon have your website up and running, and you’ll look back and think “that was it?”

1.  The first thing you need to do to build a website is you must buy a domain name. A domain name is your website name with a .com (or .net or .org etc) at the end. An example of a domain name is momsbringhomethebacon.com. Every website and webpage have an “address” on the internet (called URL), and the domain name is the primary address for your website.  Domain names can be purchased from many different places called Registrars, like Bluehost, Go Daddy, Hostgator etc. I personally use Bluehost and I highly recommend them. Domain name’s generally cost anywhere between $10-$15 to register for one year.  Click here to register a new domain name with Bluehost.

2. The second step to building a website is you need to purchase hosting. Hosting is what makes your website actually show up on the internet. Without hosting, you can’t have a website. Think of it this way – websites have a lot of content, images, videos…we make a website and want to put all of that stuff in one place, right (on our website)? Well, all of that stuff has to be uploaded to the internet so that other people can see it. Hosting takes all of the files for your website and “hosts” them so that they’re visible on the internet.  It’s really not as difficult as it sounds, I promise you.

How to Build a WebsiteYou can get hosting from many hosting providers, such as Bluehost, and Hostgator as examples. I also use Bluehost for my hosting. I find it easier to keep my domain registrations and hosting in the same account. It’s important to note – not all registrars can provide hosting. So if you buy a domain name from a different registrar that doesn’t sell hosting, you’ll still need to purchase it, and then point your name servers to the hosting account.  So to keep it simple for the purpose of this tutorial, I recommend using Bluehost to buy your domain name and hosting. Hosting generally costs between $4-$20 a month depending on the plan you choose, and the hosting provider. For beginners, you probably don’t need all the bells and whistles of some (like resellers accounts or dedicated servers), so about $5-$7 a month should be about right. You just need a basic hosting account for now. Click here to register a new domain name and purchase hosting with Bluehost.

3.  After you’ve gotten your domain name and hosting set up with Bluehost, the next step is to log in to your CPanel (you’ll get the welcome email from Bluehost once you have set up your account. (CPanel means control panel – it’s where you manage all of your domain names and hosting account stuff). It will look like this:

How to Build a Website

Once you log in, you will be taken to your main CPanel home screen which will have a lot of icons and things that may seem overwhelming at first. Don’t worry. You won’t need to mess with a lot of it. It will look like this:

How to Build a Website for Beginners

4.  The next step is to install WordPress on your domain name. (Another reason I like Bluehost is they have a one click option to install it…meaning we don’t have to do it manually. And of course, the theme of this tutorial is simple and easy.)

To install WordPress, look to the middle of the page, and under Site Builders (it should be the second row) and you’ll find a WordPress icon that looks like this:

build a website

Click on the WordPress icon. That will then bring you to another screen. Scroll all the way down to the bottom and find the Script list. Find the WordPress icon again and click it. Once that screen loads, click on the Install button on the bottom left. That will bring up a the install page. Select your installation preference (this should be your domain name), and then finish checking your options with steps 1-4. Agree to the terms and click “Complete”. Your install will now start and only takes a few minutes.

Once the install is complete, it will give you your log in details. Make sure you write them down, or save them to your computer.

5.  Your WordPress website has now officially been installed and you can see your website by going to your domain name!

Okay, WordPress is Installed, Now What?

Now, the fun begins! Your website is now built – but as you know you’re not done yet. It’s not entirely built. By using WordPress, you have just essentially built a website shell. You now have a platform to easily create and edit and/or update a website and make it your own. Traditional HTML websites take a lot longer to build, and you have to make sure you make the pages uniform by using the same webpage templates…Wordpress has already done that for you.

How to Build a Website for Beginners step by stepLog in to your WordPress admin panel with the log in information you got when you installed it. It will look like the image just to your left. Once you log in, poke around there for a little bit. You’ll see a lot of things you can do in there, and it keeps things organized. You can add new pages, or posts, you can chose a different Theme (which is basically the template layout for your website), you can create a whole website with the WordPress platform.

You don’t have to worry about knowing HTML or coding, because there is a WYSIWYG editor (What You See is What You Get – a very nice and easy way to create pages.)

When you first log in, you’ll be taken to your dashboard. This is where you will do everything you need or want to finish creating your website. To the left of the screen you’ll see a menu. Start there. Click on each menu item one by one and familiarize yourself with each of them. The 2 you’ll be using most is the Post and the Page. You’ll notice you already have 1 post, 1 page and 1 comment published. You can either delete them or edit them, whichever you choose. WordPress automatically creates them when installed for example purposes.

How to Build a Website for Complete Beginners

 

Hopefully I was able to provide you simple and easy step by step for beginners on how to build a website….now it’s up to you! Get started and have fun with it. Making a website is all about trial and error, and planning and creativity. You’ll find with the WordPress platform you have a lot of options and a lot of cool things you can do with your website.

I will dedicate another post specifically to using WordPress and how to customize it. I will add the link to that post back here when it’s ready.  It’ll be a How to Build a Website Part 2, if you will. Subscribe to my feed so you don’t miss it!

Did you find this post useful or informative? Can I add to it or change it in anyway to make it better? Let me know – leave a comment! Also, if you liked this post, please share it with the buttons so others can enjoy it as well!

Are you building a website to make money online? Then you may like this post : How to Make Money By Blogging

Posted in: Project Development ⋅ Tagged: , ,

Lesson #4 – SEO and Backlinking

June 7 4:56 pm ⋅

Make Money Online Without Investment Mini Course – Lesson #4

If you missed any of the previous lessons, catch yourself up here:

SEO. Backlink. If you’ve been working online for any amount of time, you’ve heard those terms. So what exactly do they mean? In lesson 4, I will give you some basic understanding of each, and how you can implement them.

SEO

It’s a very simple concept. SEO means Search Engine Optimization. Basically, you are making it easy (optimizing) for the search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc) to know what your site is about, so when people search for things, the search engines will list your site.

The goal is to be #1 or #2 for the keywords you’ve chosen. For example, if I have a website about dog grooming, and the keywords I wanted to be ranked for was “how to groom a german shepard”, when someone typed that into the search box on Google, I would want my website to show up as #1 or #2. The higher up in rank you are, the more traffic you get.

Backlinking

Backlinks are just what they sound like…links pointing back to your site. This can be a text link (a link in the form of words), or a URL (the actual website address). The more quality backlinks you have pointing to your site, the better off you are. The search engines use this as a way of measuring the “authority” of your site. The key point here though is quality. You want to make sure you’re not getting spammy back links. Stay away from buying “thousands of backlinks!” You’ll see it all over the internet…but it will usually only harm your hard work.

So How Do You Go About Getting Both?

SEO and Backlinking are basically one in the same. Backlinking is a method of SEO, but without backlinks, you stand no chance in ranking for your keywords.

It’s like this: You need backlinks to optimize your site for the search engines.

So how do you get backlinks?

There are actually many ways, and we covered them in the previous lesson about getting traffic.

  • Sign up to forums and participate in the discussions. You can create a signature with a link back to your website. Every time you post something new, you’re signature with the link back to your site will be posted. (This also serves as 2 purposes – you’ll get free traffic to your website, but also you’ll get backlinks to your site. Backlinks are extremely important for SEO.)
  • Post on other people’s blogs, with your website link. People WILL visit your website this way. Just make sure you’re not spamming the other blog. Post something valuable, and include your website link.
  • Yahoo Answers. Very effective way to get traffic to your website. Again, just make sure that you are not spamming.
  • Sign up for various Article directories, such as Go Articles, or EZine Articles. Every time you submit an article, make sure you have the link back to your website. When someone reads your article, if they are looking for more information, they will click on your link. Another reason this will get you traffic is because if someone else uses your article, they will publish your link on their site as well…giving you traffic, and also backlinks.
  • Post your site/post on social bookmarking websites, such as Stumbleupon, Digg, or others.

Just remember, building links to your website can be tedious and can (and SHOULD take some time). It’s not an instant payoff. Continue to build as many links back to your site as you can, and in time, your hard work will pay off. Keep in mind, while you’re building back links to your website, you’re also getting traffic.

SEO is a very complex thing, and there is much more to it. In the interest of not overloading you with too much information at a time, I’ll leave it at that. You can Google SEO and backlinks and get a ton of information for free – and make sure you do. It’s an animal all of it’s own and it’s constantly changing as the internet changes. I will also post more complex and in depth articles about each in the future, so make sure you bookmark this website and subscribe to my feed.

Just remember, it’s not an instant result! SEO and backlinking are a constant effort that can take days to even months before you see results from it. Don’t give up. When you start seeing floods of traffic from being ranked #1 for your keyword, you’ll be glad you did! (You can read more on search engine optimization tips for the average Joe here.)

Whelp, you’ve finished the mini course! Hopefully you have a bunch of information that can get you started. Don’t wait – good things happen to those who don’t wait around for them to happen. Experience is something we needed one second before we got it, and success only comes with many failures before. Enjoy the ride!

If you’re looking for more ideas on how to get traffic to your website, here is a previous post I wrote that you will enjoy : How to Market Online – 8 Marketing Tips You Can Use Now

Posted in: Make Money Online Without Investment ⋅ Tagged: ,

Lesson # 3 – Getting Traffic To Your Website

June 7 4:33 pm ⋅

Make Money Online Without Investment Mini Course – Lesson #3

By now, hopefully you’ve had to time digest the last 2 lessons. If you missed any of the previous lessons, you can read them here:

The goal is to get a website up, add unique and relevant content (about things you know and like to write about), add products to promote or other advertising reviews onto the site, and viola! You’ve got a money making website. Or do you?

The biggest disappointment is when you put so much work into your website, you’ve spent hours making it look perfect, adding the perfect articles and content, and then…nothing.

I have news for you and it may come as a surprise, or it might not. Getting the website up and running is only HALF the battle. The next step is promoting your OWN website, and getting visitors (traffic) to it.

So How Do You Promote Your Website?

There are many ways you can do it. There are paid ways, or free ways. Keep in mind though, unless you pay for traffic, it’s not going to be instant. The best way to get free traffic is by doing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and letting the search engines send you traffic. That’s an entire process, and requires a lesson of it’s own (it’s gonna be in the next one, so be ready!)

To start though, there are many different ways you can get traffic to your website. Below are the most popular (and effective):

  • Sign up to forums and participate in the discussions. You can create a signature with a link back to your website. Every time you post something new, you’re signature with the link back to your site will be posted. (This also serves as 2 purposes – you’ll get free traffic to your website, but also you’ll get backlinks to your site. Backlinks are extremely important for SEO.)
  • Post on other people’s blogs, with your website link. People WILL visit your website this way. Just make sure you’re not spamming the other blog. Post something valuable, and include your website link.
  • Yahoo Answers. Very effective way to get traffic to your website. Again, just make sure that you are not spamming.
  • Sign up for various Article directories, such as Go Articles, or EZine Articles. Every time you submit an article, make sure you have the link back to your website. When someone reads your article, if they are looking for more information, they will click on your link. Another reason this will get you traffic is because if someone else uses your article, they will publish your link on their site as well…giving you traffic, and also backlinks. :)
  • Post your site/post on social bookmarking websites, such as Stumbleupon, Digg, or others.

All of these traffic generation techniques are free, and will definitely bring in some traffic to your site.

The next lesson will cover SEO, and how to optimize your site to bring in even more traffic. Lesson 4

Posted in: Make Money Online Without Investment ⋅ Tagged: , ,

Lesson #2 – Why Should You Build Your Own Website to Promote Affiliate Products?

June 7 4:03 pm ⋅

Make Money Online Without Investment Mini Course – Lesson #2

In the last lesson, we discussed how it is that people make a living online – with Internet Marketing. I told you about a specific way to market online, called affiliate marketing. (Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money, because you don’t have to do all the hard work on making the product, or market research, or any of that…all you have to do is send visitors through your affiliate link.) If you missed the first lesson, you can read it here.

In the second lesson, we’ll talk a little more about how to start a website from the ground up, and what you should be aware of, and WHY you should get your own website.

Why should you build your own website to promote affiliate products?

Having your own website gives you much more flexibility and freedom in a lot of ways. You can put whatever you want on your own website, you can add or remove things at will, and you have an endless supply of space for content. (In case you haven’t heard it yet, according to Google, content is King.)
With your own website, you can continually add more content (articles, posts, etc), which will ultimately bring you more traffic (traffic is visitors to your site, in IM verbage).

Let’s simplify things a bit.

  • You build a website around your niche (let’s stick with the “how to lose weight” niche). – You monetize your website, and put affiliate links throughout your site.
  • The more traffic you have, the more sales you will make.

So, the more content you have, the more traffic you will get…which means more sales for you. It’s a domino effect.

So How Do You Get Your Own Website?

You can go about this a couple different ways. You can buy your own domain name (this usually costs about $10-$15), and then purchase your own hosting (this will run you between $6-10 a month). Once you have your domain name and hosting, you can start the fun part – making your website! (I recommend installing WordPress and using that as your website platform. It’s easy to use and edit, and search engines love them – you can read step by step tutorial on how to build a website using WordPress). I recommend using Blue Host as your hosting service. You can buy a domain and get hosting all in one place. I’ve been with Blue Host for years and love them. (Click here to sign up for Bluehost.)

Or….

You can start out the free way. When you’re just starting out, there is going to be a learning curve, and there is no reason why you SHOULDN’T do it the free way. I highly recommend that as you get deeper into it, eventually you get your own domain and hosting, in the future. This gives you a thousand times more freedom and flexibility than free website platforms. Trust me. :)

A good free platform is Blogger. If you go there, you can sign up and have your very own website/blog in a matter of minutes. Then, all you have to do is customize and edit the theme of your blog, and start writing. And of course, monetize your site. ;)

Keyword Research

When thinking about what type of website you want, it’s extremely important to make sure you use keywords that are going to get searched. Keyword research is a huge huge part of the success or failure of your website, and I can barely touch the basics of it. Google “keyword research” and learn as much about it as you can. I can not stress this to you enough. I will eventually post a keyword research post dedicated entirely to how to do it, but for now it’s out of the scope of this lesson.

A keyword is how the search engines know what your site is about. It’s also how people search for things they are interesting in. Think about this…when you go to Google, and you want to find out a new way to train your dog, you’ll probably type in the search box “new ways to train dog”, or “a new way to train my dog”, or something similar. Those are all keywords. Google then goes through all the websites, and the ones they believe to be the most relevant around those keywords will be shown first.

Because there is so much involved in keyword research, as I said, I will dedicate another post specifically on the subject, but for now, I will leave it at that.

Ready for Lesson 3?

Posted in: Make Money Online Without Investment ⋅ Tagged: ,

Lesson #1 – How Do People Really Make an Income Online?

June 7 3:36 pm ⋅

Make Money Online Without Investment Mini Course Lesson #1

(If you missed the introduction to the mini course, you can read it here. The link will open in a new window so you don’t lose your place on this page.)

How Do People Really Make an Income Online?

It’s called Internet Marketing. Internet Marketing is just what it sounds like – it’s marketing on the internet.

One way to do this is:

  • Build a website
  • Monetize it (affiliate products and Adsense are big ones)
  • Send traffic to your website
  • Make money

An even more specific way people make money online is by AFFILIATE marketing. This is marketing someone else’s product, and making a commission for every sale you make. The basic steps to this are as follows:

  • Find a product you want to promote (there are so many options it’s ridiculous. We’ll cover that more in detail.)
  • Build a website or page around the product you’ve chosen.
  • Send traffic to your website.
  • Make sales.

There are so many products you can choose to promote. Clickbank is one of the biggest marketplaces you can go to to find products to promote. Just go to Clickbank.com, and you can browse all the products they have, you can see how much you’ll make per sale, how popular the product is, etc. There are many other affiliate programs you can join, but for beginners, Clickbank is probably the best one to start with. Once you sign up with Clickbank, you’ll be able to get your affiliate links from any product you want. (Your affiliate link is what tracks your sales – it’s how Clickbank knows what affiliate gets the sales.)

Once you’ve chosen a product you want to promote, the next step is to build a website around this product. An example of this would be: You choose a product about how to lose to weight (there are plenty of them). Your website might include a review of the product, some articles about how to lose weight, different ideas on how to keep the weight off… You want your website to be relative to the product you’re promoting. Make sure you put your affiliate link in various places throughout your website. If someone buys the product through your link, you make money.

There are so many different ways to get traffic to your website. We’ll cover that in another lesson.

For now, think about everything we’ve covered today.

Visit Clickbank, browse their products, and the website. Familiarize yourself with it. Also, I suggest Googling different ideas and look at the first 5 websites in the search results. Get ideas on how you want your website to look, feel like, or portray. Also, think about ideas you want to write about. That will help you when looking for a product to promote. Only promote products with topics that you feel you can write about. Otherwise, it won’t be worth your time. :)

In the next lesson, we’ll cover How to Start a Website, more details on picking a product to promote, and keyword research. Ready for the next lesson? —–> Lesson 2

Posted in: Make Money Online Without Investment ⋅ Tagged: ,