Different ways to earn money online
I want to start laying the groundwork for future topics. So far, I feel like I've given a scattered look at different things I'm involved in, and have had trouble focusing on a central theme. There's a reason for that, which I'll probably get more into in a later post.
For now, I don't think I've established the purpose for this blog, and now is a good time to do that, better late than never. The purpose of these "every so often" postings is to give you a feel for the different ways to make money online through your computer. Personally, I have always had a passion for sitting at a keyboard and using a computer to help me do business. I've been doing this for a long time (late 1960's). Of course back then there was no Internet, no personal computer, not even a Microsoft. I wrote computer programs for a living back then. Things sure have changed.
Today, I'd like to list off the top of my head the various ways I feel someone can earn money online. Most of them I've tried, some extensively, some successfully, some not so well. Yet.
OK, here's the list:
1. sell things at auction, such as on eBay. Personally I've been selling on eBay for about 6.5 years, and do it every day. I probably spend a couple hours a day with auction-related tasks, such as new listings, sending emails to auction winners, processing orders, etc. If you want to check us out, our eBay user id is mdmsports, we do well at auctions, I'm pleased to say.
Auctions can be tough work, though. For the most part you're selling merchandise, which has to be procured (how long can you keep on selling stuff out of your attic), photographed, described, packed, and shipped. Many people (over 100,000 I've heard) make a full time living with their eBay business. Not bad, but if you look into the biographies of those people, you'll find many of them work 14 hour days 7 days a week. Not good.
2. sell information products through a web site. Thousands of marketers make a very good living selling downloadable eBooks or downloadable software. The Internet has spawned a very profitable industry. In days of old if you were selling information, you had to print it (in the case of books) or transfer it to a physical medium (for example a software program on a CD), and ship it to the customer. Now you can put a copy of your product on your web site, and direct purchasers to the download URL after they've paid. You don't have to worry about running out of inventory, or having too much.
For example, long ago I wrote a technical book about a software program I used to specialize in. In order to get a good price at the printer, I had to place a minimum order of 1000 copies. It was about a 200 page book, so the price of the printing project, the loose leaf binders into which they were inserted, and the space required to house all those boxes of paper was overwhelming, not to mention expensive. Fortunately over the course of a couple years, almost all of them were sold, but it was quite risky and initially a very expensive investment.
Today, an author can use his or her computer to type up the book, convert it perhaps to PDF, upload it, and sell as many copies as they can. No muss. No fuss. No expense. For the few occasions where a hard copy would be necessary, there are "print on demand" services available that can print as few or as many hard copy volumes as you wish. This technology has enabled anyone to self publish.
3. sell merchandise through a web site. Many businesses have been able to take advantage of the Internet to start a business or expand into new territories, by setting up shop on the world wide web. Opening a traditional store in the past always meant landlords to negotiate with, rent to pay, people to hire, fixtures and furniture to buy, and much more. I know, I had a retail store from 1989 until April 2004. If I had it to do over again, I never would have opened a brick and mortar store, but back in 1989 there was no WWW, not even an eBay.
4. use a web site to market a traditional business of yours (different from selling merchandise on line, in some cases face to face selling is necessary, but the customer can be lured into your store by finding you online). For example, the last time I went looking to purchase an automobile, I took advantage of the web. I looked in the newspaper classified ads, but didn't want to go driving door to door. So I picked out dealers with web sites, gave them a look, got a feel for their service department and inventories, found a local dealer I felt comfortable with, sent them an email, and only after I heard back did I decide to visit the showroom. I let my fingers do the walking, but not through the Yellow Pages, through the Internet. I can guarantee you that the dealer that got my business wouldn't have gotten it if he didn't have a web presence.
5. use a web site to market a traditional business of someone else. Here's where the real Internet opportunity starts to come forth. Untold thousands of people are functioning as outside commissioned sales people for companies of all types and sizes. This is called affiliate marketing, and this is probably the biggest subject area that this blog will cover in the coming weeks and months. Virtually anyone with a computer (though you might need to be of legal age in your state or country), can earn money by helping direct internet traffic to a company that sells a physical product. You don't need to make any investment in inventory, touch the "widget" your customer is buying, or worry about a single thing except cashing the commission check after a sale is made. Almost all affiliate marketers start in their spare time, and those that do what it takes to become successful can often turn a small part time trickle of extra cash into a full time income.
6. use someone else's web site to market a traditional business of someone else. Again an affiliate marketing relationship. But this time, rather than construct a web site of your own and hope that traffic comes to you so that you can redirect it to someone else, you simply place a small and usually inexpensive classified ad on someone else's site. Typically the spot you'll place your ad is on a "pay per click" search engine. For example, Google has a service called AdWords. Advertisers bid anywhere from a nickel up to several dollars for the privilege of having their little 3 line ad shown on the search results page whenever an Internet searcher types in a specific search query. If the searcher is interested enough in the ad to click on it, Google charges the advertiser the nickel (or more), and sends the searcher to the web site that the ad specifies. Using this technique, you can spend a nickel to send someone you know is interested in your, or your affiliate partner's, web site. If a purchase is made you earn a commission, without ever knowing who the customer was. All you know is it was someone looking for the "widget" you advertised.
Of course there are other ways to earn income online, in conjunction with the things we've already mentioned. For example you can set up a web site for a popular subject that you're familiar with, over time build up a loyal following, and when you have a good amount of visitors every day you can sell advertising on your pages. The possibilities are astronomical and almost endless.
Anyway, that's the groundwork I wanted to lay here today. We'll get into a couple of these topics very deeply in the weeks and months ahead of us. I hope you stay tuned.
Until next time, I wish you nothing but the best.
For now, I don't think I've established the purpose for this blog, and now is a good time to do that, better late than never. The purpose of these "every so often" postings is to give you a feel for the different ways to make money online through your computer. Personally, I have always had a passion for sitting at a keyboard and using a computer to help me do business. I've been doing this for a long time (late 1960's). Of course back then there was no Internet, no personal computer, not even a Microsoft. I wrote computer programs for a living back then. Things sure have changed.
Today, I'd like to list off the top of my head the various ways I feel someone can earn money online. Most of them I've tried, some extensively, some successfully, some not so well. Yet.
OK, here's the list:
1. sell things at auction, such as on eBay. Personally I've been selling on eBay for about 6.5 years, and do it every day. I probably spend a couple hours a day with auction-related tasks, such as new listings, sending emails to auction winners, processing orders, etc. If you want to check us out, our eBay user id is mdmsports, we do well at auctions, I'm pleased to say.
Auctions can be tough work, though. For the most part you're selling merchandise, which has to be procured (how long can you keep on selling stuff out of your attic), photographed, described, packed, and shipped. Many people (over 100,000 I've heard) make a full time living with their eBay business. Not bad, but if you look into the biographies of those people, you'll find many of them work 14 hour days 7 days a week. Not good.
2. sell information products through a web site. Thousands of marketers make a very good living selling downloadable eBooks or downloadable software. The Internet has spawned a very profitable industry. In days of old if you were selling information, you had to print it (in the case of books) or transfer it to a physical medium (for example a software program on a CD), and ship it to the customer. Now you can put a copy of your product on your web site, and direct purchasers to the download URL after they've paid. You don't have to worry about running out of inventory, or having too much.
For example, long ago I wrote a technical book about a software program I used to specialize in. In order to get a good price at the printer, I had to place a minimum order of 1000 copies. It was about a 200 page book, so the price of the printing project, the loose leaf binders into which they were inserted, and the space required to house all those boxes of paper was overwhelming, not to mention expensive. Fortunately over the course of a couple years, almost all of them were sold, but it was quite risky and initially a very expensive investment.
Today, an author can use his or her computer to type up the book, convert it perhaps to PDF, upload it, and sell as many copies as they can. No muss. No fuss. No expense. For the few occasions where a hard copy would be necessary, there are "print on demand" services available that can print as few or as many hard copy volumes as you wish. This technology has enabled anyone to self publish.
3. sell merchandise through a web site. Many businesses have been able to take advantage of the Internet to start a business or expand into new territories, by setting up shop on the world wide web. Opening a traditional store in the past always meant landlords to negotiate with, rent to pay, people to hire, fixtures and furniture to buy, and much more. I know, I had a retail store from 1989 until April 2004. If I had it to do over again, I never would have opened a brick and mortar store, but back in 1989 there was no WWW, not even an eBay.
4. use a web site to market a traditional business of yours (different from selling merchandise on line, in some cases face to face selling is necessary, but the customer can be lured into your store by finding you online). For example, the last time I went looking to purchase an automobile, I took advantage of the web. I looked in the newspaper classified ads, but didn't want to go driving door to door. So I picked out dealers with web sites, gave them a look, got a feel for their service department and inventories, found a local dealer I felt comfortable with, sent them an email, and only after I heard back did I decide to visit the showroom. I let my fingers do the walking, but not through the Yellow Pages, through the Internet. I can guarantee you that the dealer that got my business wouldn't have gotten it if he didn't have a web presence.
5. use a web site to market a traditional business of someone else. Here's where the real Internet opportunity starts to come forth. Untold thousands of people are functioning as outside commissioned sales people for companies of all types and sizes. This is called affiliate marketing, and this is probably the biggest subject area that this blog will cover in the coming weeks and months. Virtually anyone with a computer (though you might need to be of legal age in your state or country), can earn money by helping direct internet traffic to a company that sells a physical product. You don't need to make any investment in inventory, touch the "widget" your customer is buying, or worry about a single thing except cashing the commission check after a sale is made. Almost all affiliate marketers start in their spare time, and those that do what it takes to become successful can often turn a small part time trickle of extra cash into a full time income.
6. use someone else's web site to market a traditional business of someone else. Again an affiliate marketing relationship. But this time, rather than construct a web site of your own and hope that traffic comes to you so that you can redirect it to someone else, you simply place a small and usually inexpensive classified ad on someone else's site. Typically the spot you'll place your ad is on a "pay per click" search engine. For example, Google has a service called AdWords. Advertisers bid anywhere from a nickel up to several dollars for the privilege of having their little 3 line ad shown on the search results page whenever an Internet searcher types in a specific search query. If the searcher is interested enough in the ad to click on it, Google charges the advertiser the nickel (or more), and sends the searcher to the web site that the ad specifies. Using this technique, you can spend a nickel to send someone you know is interested in your, or your affiliate partner's, web site. If a purchase is made you earn a commission, without ever knowing who the customer was. All you know is it was someone looking for the "widget" you advertised.
Of course there are other ways to earn income online, in conjunction with the things we've already mentioned. For example you can set up a web site for a popular subject that you're familiar with, over time build up a loyal following, and when you have a good amount of visitors every day you can sell advertising on your pages. The possibilities are astronomical and almost endless.
Anyway, that's the groundwork I wanted to lay here today. We'll get into a couple of these topics very deeply in the weeks and months ahead of us. I hope you stay tuned.
Until next time, I wish you nothing but the best.
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