Ways To Make Money

There are many ways to make money online but many people don't know what they are. This page is a bit of an "aside" from my step-by-step plan to show you how people are making money on the Internet because it is more of a straight information page. It covers many of the several ways that people use the Internet to make money. Some of them may work for you.

I talked on the Making Money Ideas page about finding something to write about that you are passionate about so that it will be fun and interesting for you as well as your website visitors. However, if you want a profitable site, then you also have to write about something that other people are also interested in! You need visitors to your site if you want to earn money. Once they are there however, how do you earn money?

ADS

Probably one of the most obvious ways to make money on the Internet is through ads and Google Adsense is the one most of us see most often. Essentially how it works is that you give Google permission to place ads on some of your website's pages and every time someone clicks on the ad, you earn a small commission!

Google meanwhile tries to place "appropriate" ads on your page (meaning ads that relate to the topic of your page). They are improving the placement of these ads all the time and have recently announced that they will soon be placing ads based on the searcher's interests as well as your page topic. In other words, if a visitor goes to your site looking for a funny email to send, but Google knows that same person likes NFL football, then it may place an ad for autographed footballs on your site, just for this visitor! (Big Brother is watching you!)

There are other companies doing the same or similar advertising such as Kontera, Adbrite and Bidvertiser and they all work pretty much the same. If a visitor to your site clicks on their ads, you get paid.

SELLING AD SPACE

Of course, you could also sell your own ad space on your website as one of the ways to make money on your site. Anyone who thought their products or services would sell well on your site would be a candidate. In that case, you would arrange to get paid either for the number of people who clicked on your client's site from yours (yes this is easy to keep track of) or you may get paid a commission for the number of people who buy their product or service directly from the ad on your site.

So, you can see there are some "ad type" variations and they all can add to your website profitability.

AFFILLIATE PROGRAMS

The best affiliate programs on the Internet will pay you a commission to "refer" people to their site. You sort of act as a newspaper and place their ads on your site. If these referrals actually pay a fee to join or buy whatever the site is offering, then you receive a commission. You also, (very often) get a commission for any people that the new people refer. (This is sometimes referred to as the Second Level income.)

Site Build It is an affiliate marketing company besides being a company that helps people like me build websites and it has the best affiliate marketing "plan" on the Internet according to many independent studies that have been done. That was just a bonus reason to me for joining them. Their website building tools and support are wayyyy beyond anything else that is on the market and that's why I joined, but it is nice to know that I can also make money by telling others about how good it is. Kaching! (That's my cash register sound and my Site Build It plug for this page.)

So essentially, you can earn money by becoming an affiliate of another company and sending people to them from your website. This may be one of the best ways to make money online.

MULTI LEVEL MARKETING

Somewhat related to Affiliate Marketing is Multi Level Marketing (or MLM). It mostly involves recruiting people to sell a product or service and then having them recruit others and so on. As a result, your income comes from many "levels" of associates.

If you are into MLM or are thinking of going that route, then an Internet site lends itself very well to that type of recruitment. I see from the Site Build It forums that there are a lot of people running their MLM business through SBI.

HARD GOODS

Are you into selling things? Do you make or import things? An Internet website increases your marketing reach phenomenally. Lots of people make money selling something directly from their website.

One of the other ways to make money on your website is by "dropshipping". (That means they advertise the items on their site and have them shipped directly from their source to their clients - all the while earning a commission, of course.)

Do you have something or know of something that will sell well on the World Wide Web but isn't on there yet?

Of course many people sell things through sites like Ebay and Craigslist but they may be somewhat restrictive. Site Build It has some ideas on that. Click here to see their take on this type of goods selling.

EBOOKS, AUDIO AND VIDEO PRESENTATIONS

I've made up an Ebook on my other website (Funny Email For Everyone Dot Com) and I give it away for free (or a donation). It is merely a collection of many of the pages from my website. I could sell it at some point perhaps simply because it is easier than trying to download the pages independently. For now, I'll just give it away but it could become a source of income.

If you produce an ebook or an ezine (electronic magazine) or an audio or a video that directs or instructs people (or amuses them) then a website is a great way to promote it. In fact, instead of being an "add-on" they could be the whole focus of your site!

Carrying that a step further, you could also sell DVD's from your site.

LOCAL BUSINESSES

Some of the ways to make money online may not appeal to you but one of the most overlooked aspects of earning money online is what you can earn by helping local, small business with their websites. I believe that the last statistics about small business and Internet use I've seen is that 50% of them don't have a website yet and most of the ones that do have one are not using it to effectively earn money! Click here to see Site Build It's take on this area of income. (Of course you have to want to help others build a website before you try and do this and you probably should be successful with your own first.)

WEBMASTER

This is a continuation of the idea from above that people will want you to build their successful website for them. It means that you could become a local Webmaster once you've built your own site. (Of course, that should be your passion; otherwise it just becomes another job!) But once people see the site you have built, you may get asked to do one for them.

DONATIONS

I recently added donations to my first website to see if it could become a revenue source. I did that after reading Steve Pavlina's explanation on his website about how it became the second highest income source on his (very successful) site, so I thought it was worth a shot.

So far, it hasn't been worth the effort, but it may work for you.

OTHERS

There are other ways of making money through a website such as starting a rental agency or selling memberships to your site - but you get the idea. Build your site through passion and interest and then figure out how to monetize it!

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Have I said ways of making money enough yet? (Oh well, the search engines demand it!)

Apparently not! They say I need to say ways to make money 4 more times! So, do you now know the various ways to make money from a website? I've tried to give you a good overview, but of course there are always other ways to make money that I haven't mentioned here. You may have your own ways to make money that I haven't mentioned here but the bottom line is that there are lots of ways to make money.

There, that should do it! (Sorry about that.)

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