If you are new to the net and interested in making money ethically then this article will educate you in the various methods of making money online.
It uses a blog as an example of various types money making paths. Blogs cost nothing and are provided free to build a community on the internet.
First of all you can sell a product directly. Have a website and sell as you would have in a mail order catalogue, except thanks to the internet you can automate most of the process, other than shipping and handling. You also still have to stock a product. However this becomes limited when compared to your traditional shoppping mall because while Wal-mart, K-mart, Big-W or whatever can have thousands of products on display, attempting the same on one website becomes very difficult. This is why most people to sell products direct online have a limited number of products for sale. I do participate in a variation of this same theme and you probably have as well, selling on auction on ebay is a type of direct product selling, courteousy of a third party provider.
Next go to the resource box and you will see examples of all the rest of the things I am going to be talking about. (just copy and paste the address to your URL - thats the address bar)
Firstly, you will note that there are no direct products for sale. I don't want to ship hundreds of items, I want to leverage my time, so the first thing for sale is a product available through an affliliate. At this stage it doesn't matter who it is for, its the concept that is important here. You don't have to sell a product directly to make money on the internet. You can become an affliliate member which gives you the right to advertise a product and if a sale is made you get a commission - kind of like your old door to door salesperson, but this time the door is via the customers internet. In order to succeed here you need traffic to your website, the more targeted traffic the better. (by targeted I mean something that the customer is looking for, you don't want someone who wants to buy a dog to come to your cat website, as its unlikely to result in a sale). Eventually given enough traffic the sales will come. Remember the higher the cost of the product the less sales are likely, most people are on a restricted budget, but the higher the cost or the product normally the large commission payout. This is a balancing act, if one thing pays out $500 dollars you would only have to sell one a week, if another paids you a $5 commission then you would have to sell hundred to make the same money.
It is important to understand that as an affliliate you are provided with a code embedded into your links which tracks you are being responsible for bringing the company the sale. Hence in any banner, links, code to put in, make sure its your own.
The second item for sale is a viral type of product or similiar to the old MLM's.
In this case GDI - Global domains International, which has the rights over the .ws web address ending (in this case .ws is advertised as standing for website). What they are selling is a hosting service provider as well as a domain name and a variety of other internet services, quite cheaply really considering what your getting. But the real money making deal here is that by signing up others you make a $1 per person per month, and you make another $1 for each person they sign up and so on to five levels deep. Why would a company do this. Because its cheap advertising for them and explodes their growth. In the case of GDI they have made it very clear that they want be the dominant website address .ws, in order to accomplish this they are willing to share money with anyone who helps them grow. By clicking this link the company knows you brought them another customer and your share in the profits. I call it viral because like a virus it catching from one person to a few more to many more, to hundreds, well you get the idea. $1 dollars is not alot, but $1 times 5000 is. Once again you are not selling a product, you are as an agent, and you are not selling a tradtitional goods but in this case a service. This is a viral type or MLM type of system. Often MLM gets a bad rap, but I believe it is because people buy the SYSTEM, instead of buying the PRODUCT, whatever you buy make sure you are happy with the PRODUCT.
The third one is an ebay link. Once again this earns money through affliliate program. It is easy to sign as an affliliate, just look on any web home page and your will normally find a link to "affiliates" In this case the affliliate it run through a third party - commission junction, who acts as an independant company to make sure affliliates are not ripped off, paid on time, etc. This isn't even directly selling a service - its straight out promoting another website.
The four one is EPI - Emerald passport Inc. which is a total online product, namely financial education materials, self improvement, hours of video and audio, information store on line. Its an example of selling INFORMATION online.
Don't think information is valuable consider this short piece of information
for anyone who has sold on ebay.
Do you list a product at $20 or $19.99. Which will make you the most money?
The $19.99! how you ask, because the listing fee difference between $20 and $19.99 is 25 cents (don't tell ebay I told you this, that might lose some of your money). Hence if you list and sell at $20 you earn 24 cents less than the person who listed and sold at $19.99.
How much is this information worth - well at least 24 cents, but to those who sell hundreds of items, much more if they are making this basic mistake and costing themselves money.
Obviously quality information that saves money, creates money or increases your knowledge is important.
Finally you see an short article on clickbank. Like comission junction they act as an afflitate provider and users. This link sells NOTHING yet still makes money. HOW? because anyone who travels down your link to clickbank and joins in makes you a small commission. Once again its a company paying you to advertise, in this case to help them advertise.
A similar thing is google adwords where you are paid to advertise and then pay a small amount per ad click through.
Some other links are included as examples, but you get the picture. Some links make NO money but are their to try and generate traffic, see instantBuzz.com, traffic swarm, etc. Not everyone can be listed in the first pages of a search engine, so you can either accept that fact, be in constant competition to optimise and re-optimise your web page to stay near the top.
There are people willing to do this. Why you may ask? Because the free advertising generated by being in the number one spot is a virtual goldmine and drives huge quantity of traffic to your site, especially if you are listed with a big search engine like google or yahoo. However if you aren't going to be listed high on one of these search engines (in fact sometimes its even hard to be found and cache by these engines) then you are going to need alternative ways to bring traffic to your website. Another option to marketing is to pay for it, like with google ads word. Another is to advertise offline in a variety of traditional media, magazines, newspaper, radio and TV.
I hope this article and the website at have helped you increase your knowledge of how business takes place on the internet. There may be other ways I haven't yet covered, but this is a good base for you to start.
(This article is written by Alastair HARRIS and is the property of the HARRIS family, you have permission to copy the article and share it as much as you want, but do not modify the article in any way. I will respond to criticism, but remember I'm new to writing articles so don't be too harsh)
The author may be contacted at anhharrisandsons@primusonline.com.au
Happy netting.