How to Make Money Online - The Basics

I didn't need any kind of statistics to tell me that owning a home, having children and day-to-day expenses leaves very little if any money to spare for enjoyment. Being a home owner and a proud father of two, soon to be three beautiful children I had first hand knowledge of how difficult it can be to make ends meet. My wife and I struggled to make mortgage payments, feed the family and still keep a roof over our heads. Through these day-to-day struggles, my desire to earn income  was born.

Having some computer knowledge and knowing how to surf the internet, I began my journey nearly 2 years ago. Not knowing what to do or where to start, I randomly searched and pursued any online money making opportunities that seemed promising. After struggling for few months and having wasted several hundred dollars of my hard earned green, I quickly discovered that there are no shortcuts to earning income. In fact I learned that to make money online is just as hard work as it is to make cash offline. And if you come across a website offering to make you a "quick buck" or "get rich quick" scheme, please think three or four times before spending your hard earned cash.

Now, two years later, I earn a decent amount of income from internet marketing online (roughly $2000/Month). Of course it's not enough to make me rich, but it sure helps with the bills and taking a nice relaxing vacation trip.

The best part is that with the initial hard work out of the way, the money making process is on autopilot. And believe me when say that it's a beautiful feeling waking up in the morning and seeing that you've already make $60 or $80 dollars and your day is just starting.

The purpose of this lens is to share my experience and what I have learned about online internet marketing with you so that you too can generate some extra income to afford the little things in life you want but always fall short on cash to afford. Please note that if you are under the impression that I am offering you some kind of a "get rich quick" scheme you can stop reading now, because I am NOT. In fact, I'm not offering any kind of schemes I'm just telling you what I did to make money online and how you can do it.

So, What Do You Need To Make Money Online

In short, there are three things you need to start your generating income online these include; Desire, Dedication and hard work ethic. By Desire I mean you have to want to do it and you have to be willing to learn new ideas and concepts. If internet and computers is a completely foreign concept than you have to willing to invest time to learn and educate yourself. Trust me though, it's not that difficult. If you know how to use Microsoft word and surf the web, you are already more than half the way there. If not then you need to get cracking.

By dedication and hard work ethic, I'm implying that you need to be able to set aside a minimum 5-6 hours a week to do research and write valuable content (I'll explain later why). The more you put into it, the more you will get out of it.

The above mentioned 3 qualities are absolutely critical and if you posses those qualities, the rest is pretty simple. Let's look at how to take your dreams and aspirations and turn them into reality and learn to generate income online.

You need one of the following three things to earn extra income on the internet; an "IDEA", a "PRODUCT", or a "TOPIC", something you know about and have personal experience with and that others would be interested in learning about. However the challenge is that most of us are not investors and therefore do not have products to market nor are we so creative that ideas come to us from thin air; however each and everyone of us knows something about a favorite topic better than anyone else that we could write about and others would be interested in reading about.

To illustrate what I am talking about, for example, when I started I had no original "idea" of my own or a "product" to market. However the one thing that I did have was personal experience with was Acne; I had suffered from minor to moderate acne most of my life and had tried various products on the market. As a result, I created my very first website, the site that now makes me money, on the topic of acne. Ironically enough, it took me several months to come up with the idea of "writing about acne", go figure. So I'm sure each and every one of you could come up with something to write about, whether it's Cooking, Computers, Mechanics, Flowers, Baking, Clothes, etc, etc., the list is endless.

Once you have discovered your niche or idea, the next thing you need to do is find out whether the idea has a potential to make money. How you do that is by finding affiliate programs, meaning you look for a company that sells products about what you are going to write and determine if they have an affiliate program and market their product. You can do this a number of different ways, for example, with my site since I had already used several acne products and knew they worked I simply went to the company's website and looked for a hyperlink to their affiliate program and signed up.

If on the other hand you have not used any products or the company making the product does not offer an affiliate program you can go to your favorite search engine like "Google" or "msn" or "yahoo" and type "Affiliate + Keyword"; the keyword refers to what you are looking for, for example in my case I searched for "Acne Treatment". Please visit my lens on Affiliate Marketing to learn more about affiliate programs.

Here are a couple of affiliate programs paying 40%-50% commission

Now that you have an idea about your topic and its  money making potential, the next thing you need to do is introduce it to the world. How? Simple, this is where your website comes in. This was the part I found most challenging. I had absolutely zero knowledge of websites, HTML code (language of the web) or how to market a website for that matter. I mulled over this for several days looking for an easy way to create my website and establish an internet presence. After several days of researching I came across Site Build IT (SBI), a web hosting company claiming that anyone can build a website using their proven system and without having any HTML or Web knowledge.

Reluctantly, I signed up and decided to give it a try and I'm glad I did. The system is designed for "Web Dummies", everything is modular and so simple to use that I was able to figure it out after reading their quick guide and started building my website with a few days. Of course if you are an expert and creating web pages, then there is a number of other web hosting companies which you could use, but if you are new, SBI is my first and last recommendation.

The best part about Site Build It (SBI) is that they automatically incorporate new technologies into the site as they become available without me ever worrying about them. The slickest thing I remember is when they added RSS technology to my site which doubled my site traffic and all I had to do was login and click on one button to say "yes I want to enable RSS". Here is a Video Tour of what SBI is all about.
 
Once you have all the elements (topic, affiliate program, and website) in place, you are ready to market your site and earn extra income. There are a number of things required to market your website effectively and I will be writing a detailed article on the topic shortly, so stay tuned.

As Promised Here is my Lens on How to Make Money  with Affiliate Programs with step by step instructions on exactly what you need to do.