Getting Started

Want to learn how to make money online?   As Confucius said,
“A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”
– so let’s get started.

Well back up just a tic while we take a moment for a reality check.   If you’re here for the plans to that ‘work one to two hours a day while the postman stuffs your mailbox with huge checks’ business – you won’t find anything like that here.   (Actually, you won’t find anything like that anywhere.)

There may be some lucky ‘schmuck’ somewhere who lucked into something that made him a bunch of money . . . but he nor you will ever be able to duplicate it, he’s just lucky.   And I don’t know anyone who sells a ‘get lucky’ formula.

No, this is a business plan.   It  works . . . but only when you  work.   There are no get rich quick plans. And those people who are showing you all those checks with huge monthly amounts may not be truthfully telling you how long they actually worked for that money or how much they spent on advertising.

Yes, you can make a living working from your computer – in fact you can make VERY good money working from your computer – but you’ll be WORKING.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s move forward . . . To make the most of this guide, read it through once, without follow the links. Then as you reread it, then follow the links.   You will retain the information better.

Step 2.    In order to make money online you have to be either selling something or marketing something someone else is selling.  If you have your own product – then you’ll want to market it, so essentially everything in this step is about marketing.

Now if you don’t already have a product, there are several ways you can market products someone else is selling.   There is Affiliate Marketing, Drop Shipping Wholesale Products or allowing others to advertise their products on your informational website (AdSense).

If you have your own product, you can either market the product yourself, or allow others to market the product with an affiliate link.   Click Here if you have your own product and want to sell it online through an affiliate network.

Now’s the time to put that Niche Research you did into action.  Pick up some of those magazines you found and visit the forums online.  What products are the folks in your niche hungry to have?  What problems do your people have?   What do they want to learn, avoid, have, or get rid of?

Get to know your potential customers.   Are they young or old, male or female?   Do they have an education or are they high school drop outs?   You need to know these things in order to communicate with them on their level.

To some degree your product research may help you decide what type of selling you’ll be doing.   Are you going to go the Affiliate Marketing route or will you sell wholesale merchandise and Drop Ship to your customer?

Step 3.     If you’re going to Drop Ship, you have three basic options.   You can either sell on eBay®, have a Yahoo Store, or build your own store from scratch.   (I truly do not recommend doing the later – you’ll spend way too much time on your website and not nearly enough time making money.)

If you’re going to use Affiliate Marketing, your options are Article Marketing, Pay-Per-Click, Squidoo, Blogs, Build-a-Niche and Datafeed Stores.   A good place to start is a Squidoo lens.  This would be an easy site to build, free and would let you get your feet wet.

So now you’re in business.   You can build from here and as your business grows, so will your income.   I know it seems like a lot to do, but if you’ll follow the steps, and work hard you’ll soon see it’s not that difficult after all.