3 Fast And Easy Ways To Make Money
Seems like everyone is looking for the fastest and easiest way to make money on the internet.
Over the last 5 years or so, I’ve tried literally every technique there is. Here are 3 quick and easy ways to make *some* money online.
Side note – because these are fast and easy methods, it means the amount of money to be made is somewhat limited. The most money you can make online will be from long term efforts requiring hard work (but who wants to do that?)
The following list is in no particular order as far as ease or money making potential
1) Write Website Articles & Content.
I don’t mean just start a blog and write content that floats around the net like the billions of other websites. By writing content, I mean to get paid for writing content for others.
One thing website owners lack is time. Time to write good, entertaining, educational, and grammatically correct content for their websites. If you have decent writing skills, you can write for many different types of companies and individual website owners (ie – your clients).
A mistake I see a lot of writers make is choosing the WRONG clients. When you decide to become a paid content writer, pick your customers, don’t have them pick you. Don’t go to those freelance sites and beg for work bid for work. You’ll end up getting paid much less than you are worth and have annoying clients that expect you to work for peanuts from that point on.
Instead, contact existing websites that you want to write for. There is a trick to this however, if you want to be successful. Don’t have your first contact be an email asking if they will buy your articles or asking how much they will pay for your content. Those kinds of emails are viewed as spam and will get you nowhere.
Instead, take the higher road and sacrifice your early profits. First, read what their website or blog is about. Try to get a feel for their style of communication. Then, write the most amazing article you could possibly imagine that would blow away their readers. Finally, GIVE THE ARTICLE TO THE WEBSITE OWNER FOR FREE.
What? You mean go above and beyond what the other 75,000 freelance writers will do to get work?
Absolutely! Let the website use your article or blog post on their website WITHOUT giving you credit for it. When you submit the article to them, be sure you tell them it’s a completely original article that is exclusive for their website. Tell them you are a freelance writer looking for a couple extra clients, and this article was to demonstrate your skills which will hopefully lead to more articles for them. They will be amazed by your generosity, and that’s when reciprocity comes in. They’ll WANT TO HELP YOU because you helped them first.
Once they post your content to their website, you can follow up with them to see what they thought about your work. That’s when you can pitch your services to them. Do you see how this technique will get you much better results that shooting an email saying “I write website content, $25 per 800 words. Would you like to buy some articles?” (You laugh but I get emails like this everyday!)
Be sure to pick websites that a) have money to spend on content, and b) will need lots of fresh content to stay competitive in their market. If you do this simple technique, you can easily make $1,000 per month writing for one single website. (based on 40 articles per month at $25/article)
2) Be An Offline Affiliate Partner.
Affiliate marketing is a great way to earn a part time income. The problem is, internet marketing as an affiliate is pretty competitive since there are so many people doing it.
Instead, try promoting affiliate programs offline. Here’s how you do it…
Search online for an affiliate program you want to be promoting. You’ll want to pick something that your local city/town would be interested in. For example, you can go to clickbank.com and search all the various products your can promote from their Marketplace.
Let’s pick weight loss for this example. In clickbank, you can open up their “Health & Fitness” category and see all the programs you can promote. They are sorted by popularity, so typically the first 10 products listed in each category are the best sellers.
This makes your job easy as an affiliate, because you won’t have to guess which products are best and easiest to sell.
Let’s say we decide to promote the first one, Fat Loss For Idiots. Clickbank says we will earn about $30 for each sale of this product as an affiliate. Not bad.
To promote this product offline, it’s pretty simple. All you do is go to godaddy.com and purchase a domain name. Preferably something short and easy to remember since we will be promoting this link offline and people will have to type it in.
Once you purchase the $8 domain name, you need to get your affiliate link. If you are using clickbank, you’ll need to sign up for an account with them and then click the “create hoplink” link to get your affiliate referral link.
Now that you have your affiliate link, you take that affiliate URL and go back into your godaddy account to find the domain name you bought. There will be an option there to do a “redirect”. Choose that option, and it will ask you which URL you would like people to be redirected to when they type in your domain name. Here, you simply enter your affiliate link.
That’s all there is to it. Now that you are officially an affiliate partner, you can begin promoting “your” new website.
You can print up a flier or business cards with your URL on them, and post them on those corkboard message boards in your local gyms or grocery stores, stick them in fitness magazines in your local bookstore, anywhere you think people who are interested in weight loss will find them.
You can place classified ads in you local paper or pay a flier distribution service to put fliers on people’s mailboxes.
Your income will depend on how many people find your marketing materials and how many of those people actually go to the website to learn more. There’s no reason why you couldn’t get 2-3 sales per week from this technique. So, 10 sales per month @ $30 each would put $300/month in your pocket and you can be up and running in about 3 hours from now.
3) Implement The Latest Internet Marketing Tricks For Others.
If you are like most people in the internet marketing niche, you have a hard drive full of ebooks teaching all the latest “tricks” to make money online. Many of these tricks actually do work, even if it’s for a short period of time. The problem is, a lot of these techniques require you to already have an existing website setup or have an existing email subscriber list, etc.
If you don’t have these previous requirements, it can be frustrating for you because you know you can use these tricks if you just had the existing website or just had a subscriber list to start with.
Well, I’ll be the first to tell you that I hardly ever get caught up in the latest tricks and fads of internet marketing. Not because I don’t think they work, but instead because I don’t have time to learn them and put them into use. I’m too busy running my businesses (like most website owners) to get sidetracked by these new ideas.
That’s where you step in. Let’s say you just bought an ebook teaching you how to use Youtube to generate lots of traffic to a website. You’ve read this ebook 2 or 3 times and know this stuff inside out. Guess what? Now, YOU’RE CONSIDERED AN EXPERT.
Becoming an expert is pretty easy. In fact, if you know more than someone else about a certain topic, you are an expert compared to that other person. So, you being the expert on a specialized topic such as generating traffic from Youtube, can come to me as a website owner and propose an offer.
You can word is something like this…
Hi website owner,
My name is Tom and I specialize in generating traffic to websites from Youtube. I think I can generate a substantial amount of traffic to your website from Youtube if you are interested in letting me try.
I don’t charge any upfront fees or anything like that. If I’m not able to send you traffic, you don’t pay me a dime. If I do send new traffic to your site from Youtube, then I’d only charge $0.05 per visitor (about 1/4 what you would pay for pay per click traffic).
Let me know if you are interested in trying this cutting edge marketing strategy for your business.
– Tom
In this case, everyone wins. You get to earn money by implementing your new skills, and the website owner gets cheap traffic without doing any work.
If you can get just 10 clients to agree to your terms, and you send each client 500 visitors per month from Youtube, you’ll make $250/month.
So there you have it. Three simple ways of making some money from the net…
Interesting re – offline marketing affiliate products. I will be looking to go offline in the next few weeks and will try that too
I can truly identify with #3. I learned early that Internet marketers, domainers, and affiliate marketers account for an unusually large percentage of active bloggers.
There are a lot of cliques (blogging networks) but very few innovative thought leaders. This field is too young and the Internet is too vast for marketers to box themselves into systems.
Hi Max,
Writing for others sounds to much of an effort. And, there’s the equation: You write=you get paid / You don’t write=you don’t.
I don’t like the sound of it.
What I do like however, is offline affiliate promotion and being an “Expert” for others. Actually, I’ve participated in several offline networking meetings where SEO Experts were offering their services.
That’s a combination of both! 😈
Cheers,
Alex
I’m going to give the offline affiliate marketing a go.Would like to write for others but I need money now,so I’ll start writing while I affiliate.Will let you know how it goes.
God dang Max, your posts are just amazing!
As much as I hate reading tips on “making money”, the ones you provide are different. I just hate seeing the same tips on and on. Thanks for this post!
-Mike
Thanks Max, the offline affiliate top sounds like a good idea. Does not seem to be a lot of work.
I think it would be a good thing to add to an already strong mix of sites and blogs for a little extra cash.
I am also doing the writing content one and I will say from first hand experience, it is more important to wow someone than tell them what you charge.
Once you are in, you are in.
Hi Max,
One question about the YouTube thing…How do you track the traffic coming from YouTube? I know the website owner will have the ability to track where the traffic comes from, but how would the person generating the traffic know how much they are sending via YouTube?
Thanks!
~Terry
Max;
I am loving all your advice. You come at things with a slightly fresh approach (which as you know, in the make money online niche, finding anything slightly fresh is near impossible)
Keep up the good work!!
scott
@Terry Tay
Why not send them to your page before you send them to the affiliate site. You could then catch the details on the user from your site before sending them off to the affiliate. Easy.
@Max
I still haven’t received my password for the free report you offer! I think it was broken when I signed up!
Thanks again for more sane advice from your experience!
@ Alex – Yes, you’re right. The writing “job” isn’t my favorite because anytime you trade hours or dollars, you put a cap on your earnings. But, some people just want to be able to earn an extra few hundred bucks per month and this is a perfect opportunity for them.
@ Terry – Alan’s idea is pretty good. Otherwise you would have to get the website owner to put google analytics on their site and give you a “view only” access login to view the traffic sources.
@ Alan – Sorry about the password, I emailed it to you, but it must not have made it, I’ll re-email it now…
I love the writing web content tip – and I know it works, because I’ve used this technique, and so have other writers.
Here’s what I’ve noticed: people feel obligated when you do this, and they’ll insist on paying you if they’re using the content.
Try it and see.
I like the idea of writing posts for other people but how do you send them if not by email?
I like your first tip about freelance writing and giving away the (first) article for free. sounds like a really good way to grab their attention
I too like the first tip for making money and its really the best tip to write article or content for your website but they should be unique and rich for getting good amount of visitors and catch them to read your content.
God dang Max, your posts are just amazing!
Don’t forget to use social networking, facebook, twitter, and others.
That’s great.
I like the first one as i m applying that one. Making articles and contents for the site is very good way as many visitors come in a sequence and stand there if they find something interesting and useful for them.
Hi Max. You come at things with a slightly fresh approach which as you know, in the make money online niche, finding anything slightly fresh is near impossible. There are a lot of blogging networks but very few innovative thought leaders. This field is too young and the Internet is too vast for marketers to box themselves into systems.
There are no easy way to make money. All way need lots of effort and hard work.