There are many techniques to making money on the internet, but all of those techniques boil down into two things: advertising products and services so you get visitors to a website and converting those visitors into buying customers. Pretty simple, huh? Kind of. There are literally thousands of courses online telling you different ways to accomplish those two steps. A lot of them overlap each other. Very rarely does a new method to do so get publicized.
Advertising Products and Services
Before you advertise your products and services you need to decide who your target market is. You also need to figure out what they want and why they want it. You need to know the “what”, so you know what to talk about. You need to know the “why” because deep down there is an emotional reason for wanting something. A lot of people say that they want to earn money on the internet. The “what” is How to earn money on the internet. The why might be “they lost a job and need to find a way to pay rent”, they are tired of their job and need to find something new(my personal why). However, that is more for converting them into customers.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
With that being said two of the most common ways to advertise online are PPC(pay per click) and article marketing. If you have ever searched Google and seen the “Sonsored Links” those are business that are paying for their add to be there. However, they only get charged if someone clicks on their ad. Yahoo and MSN(now known as Bing) are the two other major search engines and have a similar set of features, although Yahoo and MSN combined their search advertising platforms.
Article Marketing
2017 Update: Over the years article marketing and directories have kind of declined. I would recommend that you place any content that you write on your websites these days.
What used to be a common way to advertise was through article marketing. Basically, you wrote articles on subjects that concern your audience. Then you post that article on article directories and link back to your website from your author’s bio.
If your audience was interested in what you have to say they will click through to your website to find out more information. From there you can provide them more value and if you have what they are looking for and need then they might possibly buy from you.
How did you come to read this blog post? Most likely you were browsing an article I wrote or you did a search and found either an article I wrote or my website in the search engine. Are the pieces starting to come together?
To generalize everything basically where people go on the internet is where you can get traffic from. Other ways to get traffic:
- Banner Ads
- Email marketing
- Forums(answering questions and having your website in your signature) or buying banner ad space
- Answering questions on question sites
- Social media: Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.. Basically, you can provide content and link to your website. Or tell them you have content.
Converting Visitors To Buying Customers
Now just because someone comes to your website doesn’t mean they aren’t going to buy anything from you or anything that you recommend them. You can get tons of traffic and still have no sales. The trick is to have targeted buyers. In other words people who are actively search something to buy to fulfill a need they have, whether it’s potty training their dog so it doesn’t go to the bathroom inside their house or getting an ex boyfriend or girlfriend back. If they are just looking for free information then they are not going to buy anything from you. They have to be searching for the product that you are promoting. If someones searching for a cure to athletes foot you don’t want to be sending them to a page for cough medicine.
This is another place you can consider their “why”. I can’t remember where I heard it, but I heard a saying once “humans either move towards pleasure or away from pain”. Pain can be a very big motivator. Once you show people how your product or service will take away their pain, they will be very motivated to buy what you are selling.
I hope you like this article and I hoped I gave you pretty good overview of the basics on how to earn money on the internet. One thing that took me a long time to learn is that without action you don’t have anything. It took me a long time put the things I learned about into action. I bought course after course and I was so distracted on the latest course that came out that I never applied anything or did any of the work. I hope to hear about your success!
For tons of great information on earning money on the internet I highly recommend taking a look into Wealthy Affiliate. They have a great “Online Entrepreneur Certification Course” that will show you step by step how to make money on the internet.
If you have any questions or comments be sure to leave them below. 🙂