By Rob Rawson
There are several strategies for making money on the net. Here are some possible options:
Strategy 1: Affiliate marketing
This is probably the quickest and easiest. You don't need to get your own products - you simply sell other people's products and services. You don't even need a merchant account, and it's possible to start out without even having your own website (but if you are serious about affiliate marketing you will have to build websites). For a list of top affiliate programs go to: http://www.profitpuppy.com/top-affiliates.htm. If you don't know what affiliate programs are try reading the http://www.superaffiliatehandbook.com
Strategy 2: Writing an ebook or other type of information product, recording an information CD set or shooting a DVD/video series.
This is a great strategy because there are infinite possibilities for the type of product that you can create. There are so many niche markets that you can write about: It could be a course on Japanese gardens, How to start your own babysitting business, How to sell your paintings or artwork … there are thousands of possibilities and many that have not yet been touched by online marketers. Of course you don't have to write the information yourself, you can get a ghost writer or hire someone to produce the DVD. It is easy to find these people, for example you can go to http://www.rentacoder.com/.
By the way if you are intending to go down this track then you should definitely check out the Bill Myers membership site which has the best information on this area.
Strategy 3: Search Engine Optimization.
Learn how to get a site to the top of the search engines and make money on the site by promoting affiliate programs or by Google Adsense. I have included this as a business method because there are some people who focus just on Search Engine Optimization and do nothing else.
Strategy 4: Drop-shipping.
You can develop a relationship with a manufacturer so that you can get orders for their product on the Internet; you process their credit card and then just send their details to the manufacturer who sends the product directly to the customer's door.
Strategy 5: Joint Ventures.
Similar to affiliate marketing, but with this strategy you set up relationships with people who have products that they sell online.
Strategy 6: Lead Generation.
You create sites that generate leads for companies online. For example, you create leads for mortgage brokers; you give them the details of the people who are interested in getting a new mortgage and you get paid for each person. The mortgage broker will then call the lead and try to sell them on their particular mortgage offer.
Strategy 7: Email marketing.
Of course you need to stay away from spam, and new legislation makes it more difficult for legitimate opt in email marketers, but this is still a highly effective way to make money on the Internet. Don't try email marketing if you don't know what you are doing - don't even think about buying a list of emails and sending out a promotional message unless you know exactly what you are doing. You have to know that any emails you have are legit and ‘opt in'.
Strategy 8: Selling software or software services.
…Another great way to make money online.
Strategy 9: Selling services online.
For example you could start a site providing niche legal services or doing web design. This is ok, but it is not as highly leveraged and automated as other Internet businesses.
Strategy 10: Selling your own products online.
This is the option that 90% of businesses pursue online. It also has less leverage and is more difficult to automate than other Internet businesses.
Strategy 11: Domain name strategies.
You can make money buying and selling domain names (although this strategy is quite difficult nowadays). You can also buy expired domains with existing traffic, you can buy domains with misspellings in order to get free drive-by traffic.
Strategy 12: Buying websites.
You can buy websites that have good positions in the search engines but are not utilizing their positions very effectively, and you can improve the marketing and utilization of their site and make money. This is a very powerful strategy if you do it correctly.
Other strategies:
There are many other possibilities that you might not have thought of such starting an affiliate network. There are several other possibilities but most of them are a bit more towards the more difficult end of the spectrum.
Have a think about which strategy you want to look at. Each strategy has advantages and disadvantages and each strategy has a lot of stuff that you need to learn to be able to apply it effectively.
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