How to Make Money Online for Beginners – Overview

I stated in my last post that I intend to provide a blueprint of how I specifically make money online.  This is the first chapter of that blueprint, or Beginner Series as I am calling it.  Today I am going to give you an overview of the process.  A part of this process involves building websites.  I understand that the prospect of building a website yourself may intimidate some of you.  I want to assure you that it is a very easy thing to do nowadays.  The creation of a website, the way I do it, involves little more than pushing a button.   Adding new pages or content to it is no more difficult than sending an email.  I will explain how to do both, in detail, in a future post, but for the time being, as you read through this, don’t let the thought of building a website be a sticking point for you. 

Now on to how I make money blogging.

I make money online by matching people who are searching for a solution to a problem, with a company or merchant who provides a solution to that problem.  Examples of these types of problems could be: “How do you get rid of warts?”, “How do you calm anxiety?”, “How do you build a dog house?” or “How do you make money online?”  If the person with the problem makes a purchase from the merchant I match them up with, I am paid a commission or referral fee.  So for the above examples, I could direct those people to someone selling a wart cream, an anxiety remedy, dog house plans or a course on how to make money online.

The method by which I match up these purchasers and sellers is to build “niche” websites around that subject or theme.  In our example above of someone wanting to get rid of a wart, I would make a whole website, just dedicated to warts and their removal.  Each page on this website would target a specific phrase that someone with a wart may type into a search engine when looking for an answer on how to get rid of them.  I would also create pages covering different types of wart remedies and discuss their pros and cons.  The more I could think to write about and the more pages I could add the better.  Every page on this site would provide a link to where the visitor could purchase a remedy if they wish to do so.  Not everyone will click that link and not everyone who clicks that link will make a purchase from the company selling the remedy.  But a certain percentage of people will do both, and as a result, I will make recurring, passive income from this website as long as it continues to get visitors.  Then rinse and repeat.

I solely concentrate on getting visitors from search engines, specifically Google.  Google gets over 70% of all search traffic, so as far as I am concerned, making them happy and ranking highly in their search results is all that matters.  I get traffic to my websites from people using Bing and Yahoo as well, but I don’t exert any effort in optimizing my sites for them.

I get my websites ranked highly in Google by employing the best practices of something known as Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short.  SEO involves doing things to your site and for your site that maximize its chances of being listed in the top positions in search engines (again Google is all I care about).  I won’t go into the specifics of what those are in this post, just suffice it to say that our getting traffic from Google is not just luck, but instead it is a part of something we are working towards and taking deliberate action to obtain.

I pursue search traffic, because those are the people who are on the internet looking to satisfy an immediate need.  Someone who types “How do you get red wine out of a carpet”, is someone who has red wine spilled on their carpet and wants it out!  They are not just browsing cleaning sites for the fun of it.  This is in contrast to what is referred to as “social traffic”.  Social traffic comes from sites like Digg, or Twitter or Facebook.  This traffic is comprised of people who are on the web for fun and not necessarily ready with money in hand to alleviate something that is paining them.

You may have found this site from my Twitter page, Facebook or from another blog.  If that is the case you are probably just in a “browsing” sort of mood.  You are interested in the subject, but you didn’t arrive here with a burning desire to solve a problem as efficiently as possible even if it meant spending a few dollars to do so.  But in the future this site may show up in Google for phrases like “how to make money blogging” and may be found by someone who is really anxious to learn how to do that.  They may have lost their job, or be looking for some additional stay at home income.  They may not want to read through all the posts I will have written about how to do it.  In their case, they may be perfectly willing to pay for a course that includes some one on one coaching or video tutorials.  To satisfy the immediate need of that visitor, I would have a link on this page to someone who is selling that service.  If the person then signs up for that course, I will be paid a percentage of their sign up fee.  And if it is a recurring monthly membership fee, I may even continue to be paid a portion for as long as they are signed up.

That is just an example to illustrate how matching buyers and sellers works.  I have no desire to record video or start a coaching program and there are others who do.  I also don’t manufacture and sell wart cream, but there are others who do.  I am helping my visitors by connecting them with someone who provides something I don’t.  That visitor gets what they want, the product or service provider gains a new customer and I am paid for the service I provided.  Everybody wins.

How do I find merchants to partner with?  There are websites and companies known as affiliate networks.  These are essentially marketplaces where website owners like us can find product and service providers to feature on our websites.  I will go into those in detail in a future post, so for now just understand there is a simple process for it.

To summarize: I build a website focused around a specific problem or problems that people will use Google to find a solution for.  I have taken measures to have my site included in the search results that are returned when the person with the problem uses Google.  A certain percentage of those searchers will click on the link to my site.  The higher my site ranks in Google, the more of that traffic I will get.  Of those who visit my site a percentage will click on a link that takes them to a merchant who is selling a solution to their problem.  Of those who visit the merchant, a percentage will make a purchase and I will be paid a commission or referral fee from the merchant. 

The rest of this Beginner Series will involve breaking each of the steps down in detail.  If you have any questions so far, be sure to ask in the comments.