How to make money online - FREE (Part 3) the exciting bit! If you have not read Part 2, or Part 1 you can find them here)
How do we actually make the MONEY!
Well, before we get too carried away, let's have a quick re-cap:- So far we haven't spent a single penny! but we have set up a free blog site and hopefully we have started to add articles about our favorite subject. Now we need to generate interest in our articles and turn our readers into cash!
There are a number of ways that you can generate money from your blog. Firstly is Google Adsense - now don't let any names or phrases put you off at this stage. Adsense is simply a name for those little adverts that appear on your Google search at the top and right hand side of your search results. If you would like to make money out of your blog, probably the easiest way is to add these adverts to your site. Each click from any of your blog readers will generate you commission! These adverts will be what is known as 'Contextual' adverts i.e. they will be relevant to your blog article. So in our Golf example, we may see adverts appearing advertising the latest Golf equipment, or Special Offer Gold Vouchers for a certain Golf Club etc, etc. The beauty of these adverts is that it is a 'set and forget' system. Once set up on your blog, each new article you write and publish will generate a new set of 'relevant' adverts. So how much can you make? Well it really depends on the number of advertisers wishing to advertise any relevant products or services in your selected niche. It could be a few cents/pennies or a few Dollars/Pounds per click!
A word of WARNING here - Under no circumstances click on ANY advert yourself or try to trick the system by getting others to click on your adverts for you! Not only is this dishonest, but Google has many years of running Adsense and it's complex I.T. systems will detect any fraudulent activity and you will be suspended from the Adsense system. You have been warned!
There are other contextual advertising solutions for you to consider, but Google is the number one.
Ok, so that is one way to make money, but I would always recommend each page to have at least 3 different money generating systems on them.
So, money making system number two is Affiliate Links. There are many Affiliate 'Networks' available today (there are a few listed at the bottom of this page). Most are free to join. Once joined, you simply need to find relevant affiliate partners listed within these networks. These partners will be looking for you to help them promote their products and services. You will be amazed at how many National Brands are available to promote within these networks.
So, back to our example. We now have our blog with our Adsense adverts displayed and our relevant articles appearing. It is now time to find and add some affiliate links to our site. So let's assume that we have written an article about the latest Long Range Driver (which is a Golf Club for those who don't play golf). We can now find a Gold Club supplier within our affiliate network who is selling this club on their website and seek out the sales page for the particular piece of equipment we have written about. We then add our affiliate tracking link (within the affiliate network site) and paste this link into our blog. Each time a visitor reads your article and clicks the link, they will be re-directed to your affiliate partners site but they are tracked as YOUR customer. So if your reader ends up buying the piece of equipment that you have promoted from your affiliate partner site, you will get paid commission on that and every sale!
With me so far? Good, read on to find out more about How to make money online - FREE in Part 4
