What is the advice you would give to a friend that wants to make money online?

For me, the advice would be simple, and non-expensive. Advice that anyone could use to make money online. It would be make money online advice that would not cause them to lose money online.

For starters, I would recommend they start with a blog or two.

There are many advantages to blogging to make money online. It is cheap, so there is little money to lose and anyone can afford it. No expensive software, and very short learning curve. The only real cost is time.

I would recommend starting with two blogs. Start with a personal blog and a niche blog. The personal blog you can talk about anything, even your success at making money online. You can talk about your car or what you had for dinner. Whatever.

The niche blog should be based on a subject that you are nearly an expert on. A sport, hobby, or some aspect of business may be what you niche is. It could be about some disease you are especially familiar with (although something like this could also be the basis of your personal blog). I truly believe everyone is an expert at something. The niche blog will need to be focused on that subject and that alone.

The first investment should be the domian name.

This is the most important part of your blog. Your domain name makes you independent. It gives you something to own and sell at a later time. With your own domain name, you can move your blog to another host if there is a problem with your current one.

After you have a domain name, you need a host for your blog.

I would recommend HostGator. This blog is currently on XXXXX and I have not had too much trouble, nor do I plan to move it off, but I have a HostGator account for other sites and that is what I would recommend. Other than a domain name or two, hosting is the only thing you should spend money on till you see real regular income. ***This site was moved to HostGator and the name of the above host is now removed for various reasons.

This is where every Internet marketer eventually falls into the trap.

There is no ebook or magic program that is going to make you instant money online. We all claim to not believe in the get rich quick scheme, but we all try to cheat. You spend money on some ebook, or program that is going to make it easier or faster or more profitable. It will never happen. Not that they do not work, some do. Prove you can get the blog to work first before you even think about anything else. If you cannot stick with the blog long enough, you will not stick to the other methods long enough either. You will just waste your money. That is what I am trying to save you.

Use WordPress for your blogging platform.

WordPress is easy to use. Easy to set up. Easy to modify. There is a plugin to do almost anything in WordPress. There are lots of free themes. You can use it for nearly any make money online purpose. It is also free to use.

Use free social networking to build your traffic.

Not just Digg. Use MyBlogLog and Blogcatalog. Blogging Zoom has the potential to be a major factor in helping your blog get good traffic and ranking. Use it. Use StumbleUpon on other Blogging Zoomed posts. You’ll find someone will eventually start to Stumble your sites too. With social bookmarking sites, it is better to give than to receive. That means you’ll find they work better when someone else bookmarks your site than when you do it yourself. Also, commenting on other blogs is an effective way to gain links and traffic. *Update-Blogging Zoom is dead while the domain is still in use.*

Plan for the long term.

Try to stay on the good side of the search engines. Avoid the paid links situation and penalties. Don’t trade the future of your site for quick income with TLA, ReviewMe, and Paid Posts. You can make an income without damaging the potential PR of your site. It may not be as fast or easy, but in the long term, your site will be stronger and more profitable.

Also, don’t expect real results until you have given serious effort for several months. Dedicated Effort+Persistence=Eventual profit. Lackluster effort+Inconsistency=Nothing and you will be wasting your time. Yes, it is possible to still not be successful after working hard, but that is a rare problem. Usually, the problem is dedication in some form.

Read good resources on making money online.

I recommend Vic at Blogger Unleashed and Courtney Tuttle’s blog. These two are behind Blogging Zoom and they have excellent information for making money with your blog. Read about using keywords in your posts. Learn about niche blogs and sites. They have good advice.

Above all, post!

Don’t spend more time reading on how to post than posting.

John Chow has always posted 3-4 times or more a day. So does Problogger. Now they can hire someone else to make posts, but they did it to start with. A lot of people (me included) want to blog but do not post enough. Even one post a day is really not enough. How did these guys start making money with a blog? They actually blogged! While your niche blog may not need that many posts (depends on the type of niche) your personal blog can use it. Once a day is the minimum. Why Twitter when you can post? There’s a thought.

OK, now I am going to spend some time this week posting.

Maybe not everyday, but I am going to post! Expect to see some posts with more details about hosting, domain names, and WordPress. I have some other posts that I have been too lazy to make that I need to work on.

Now, what advice would you give to a friend who wanted to make money online?

There are many ways to make a living online.

Some ways to make money online are very obvious.

Some are not what you initially think of as the way to make money online, but are extensions of a normal business taken online. Some methods of making money online are easier than others. Other methods may seem more difficult, but in the long run are more successful.

Making a living online has a lot of potential.

While many people initially have the idea that it is an easy way to get rich fast, in truth, it can be far from that for most people. This has a lot to do with unrealistic expectations. Some of this is due to the numerous Internet marketing related products that are sold. While many are good, none of them will make you rich fast unless you put a lot of work into it. For most people who really stick to it, it seems a decent income can be made after putting a lot of work and effort into it. Along with good training.

Another reason people think about getting rich fast on the Internet are some of the true success stories out there.

Many see what seems like an instant, easy success like John Chow or Darrren Rowse. Yet, both of these individuals either had some experience online already or have taken a few years of diligent work to get their blogs to the level they are at now. In other words, success did not necessarily come overnight while they were sleeping.

For me, there are several things I really want from an online income (or any form of income).

I want time flexibility, to be able to to decide when I will work. I also want the freedom to work my business from other locations (Wisconsin winters are really starting to get me down). Of course, I do want to make a decent living to provide for my wife. The ideal business also allows for a residual income that will not disappear if I cannot work it for a period of time due to illness or extended vacation or even retirement eventually.

What I have done is made a list of what I think are the Top 5 ways to make money online.

I’ll let you know why I think they are so great. I am also going to list some advantages and disadvantages of some of them. I realize that some of them may seem very similar, so I’ll try to define what I think makes the difference as well as I can. There is a difference in my mind, so I’ll try to express it.

The Top 5 ways to make money online:

#5 eBay

When I say eBay, I mean purchasing products or drop shipping products for sale on eBay auctions. While this can be very honest form of income, it can become a real grind if you need to handle shipping. Also, if you do not have a unique product, you are also in one of the most competitive markets you will find.

In nearly any case, you will need to constantly pay attention to this business. When you do not have an auction running, you will not be making money.

#4 AdWords Type Affiliate Marketing

Also called search marketing or PPC (pay-per-click). One form of this type of Internet marketing is the Google Cash system but that is just one twist of it. This most likely involves running AdWords ads with Google although MSN and Yahoo also provide similar services. You run an ad to get readers to click though to your page where you sell the product or service of another company as an affiliate. Many make thousands of dollars a month doing this type of business.

The disadvantage of this type of Internet marketing is the need to constantly keep watch on the campaign. You must first create ads and landing pages that convert at a profit for the amount you pay for each click on your ads. This can be washed away in the next "Google slap." Still, a very effective way to make money if you can handle the risk.

#3 Websites or Blogs

Probably the most popular method of online income. This method of making money online consists of developing Websites and blogs that are monetized. In this case, traffic comes from natural methods instead of PPC. Income may come from Adsense or affiliate ads on the Websites. Most likely, this is what most people think of when they think of making money the Internet.

Contrary to rumors, Adsense is not dead. It has made Google an empire and will be here for a long time. It is one of the easiest ways to make money. It may not be the best though. Many find selling affiliate products much more effective although it can be a little bit more involved.

While a blog will take daily posting and promotion, Websites will also take a lot of link promotion in order to generate income. A good website may provide some form of residual income once fully developed with a little bit of occasional maintenance. A blog is easier to promote and network though. Residual income from a blog could eventually come in the form of hiring paid writers for the blog and running it like a business.

#2 Developing Your Own Product

There are many options besides building the proverbial better mousetrap. There is a saying that everyone is an expert on something. You could put your expertise into an e-book. Perhaps you have an idea for useful software. Of course, you could also develop a non-digital product.

You may use some of the other methods to market your product. You may use PPC or just sell off a website. You may even pay other affiliates to sell your product. This does not have to be online only. You could sell your product with links to your Website in newspapers and other advertising media. Perhaps you will one day be running one of those infomercials on TV.

In the case of digital products, this can be a very residual income as long as your product is useful.

You will need to make sure your product stays up to date and competitive. If you develop hard goods, you will need to figure out production and delivery just like a regular business. Residual income in hard goods may come in the form of selling the business to retire.

No matter if you have a digital product or real world product or service, you will also need to think about customer service. No matter how good your product is, there will be those that complain. There are also going to customers with questions that will need to be answered. You will need some form of customer support.

While developing your own product may seem a lot more difficult than just putting up a website, it is a much more dependable business. You do not need to worry about Google or another company you are an affiliate for dropping you. Done right, you may even have a business that can be sold or inherited by your children.

#1 The Perfect Partnership

In my mind the perfect online business would be a partnership with a company that took care of all the problems of developing your own product. They would take care of updating products and keeping them competitive. They would take care of customer support. They company would took care of distributing it and taking the orders.

Of course the there are specific requirements for the product or products. It is going to need to be unique so people need to get it though you. It must be affordable for broad appeal. Ideally, the product is consumable so people order it regularly and there is a residual income from the customer reordering consistently.

A multi-tiered payout so you could get income from other affiliates under you would be nice. While this idea was once considered only in multi-level marketing, today even companies like Google are using it to promote with its Adsense affiliate program. I have not heard much good about the payout from Google with this though, and you are going to have to compete against Google itself for traffic for this.

This all adds up to a business you can build and not worry about constantly.

 Something you can rely on. Something you could retire on. Something you can will to your children.

It is not easy to find such a business to work with. Few companies have the integrity and ethics to make it work. Few companies have a high reorder rate and the customer loyalty that would make it work.

Multi-level companies seem to want to front load potential partners with more product than they could personally use meaning you need to invest a lot of money before you can represent them.

Low reorder rates and poor customer loyalty are typical. Not too mention crazy business plans that tend to make it very difficult for the average person to make money. The tendency for only a few people to make money is why they are so often compared to outright illegal pyramids.

Many multi-level companies even shorted their own business partners online. A number of affiliate products for sale are multi-level marketing company products without. The affiliate does not even get the chance for repeat sales.

There are few companies that work with affiliates that have any type of residual payment for reorders.

While some affiliate products have what seems like a great payout for the initial sale, if the product is good, it is nothing to what the company will make on additional sales. Of course, many affiliate products are terrible anyways even if the customer never realizes it.

Basically, a company that would be a partner with you like this is few and far between.

A truly rare gem. Find one, and you be thinking like Rick from the movie Casablanca:

This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

-Rick Casablanca

This post was done for a group writing project from Darren at Problogger.net. This was the Top 5 list I came up with. I suggest you take a look at the other entries at his blog. You can find the link to the project and some of the other entries below this quote:

Be as creative as you can and take this in any direction you like. You’ll have a much better chance of getting your post noticed if it’s useful and/or interesting to readers and write something relevant to the topic of your blog.

Source: Top 5 – Group Writing Project

Is how to make money on the Internet a bad subject?

Is it a good idea to start a blog with your main subject making money online? After all, it seems like everyone has a blog about making money online.  John Chow has a blog about making money online.  Kumiko has a blog about making money online.  Even blogs that are not about making money online, often end up having several posts about making money online.  It does sound kind of saturated.

I started thinking about this from one of the comments on this blog.  Thanks Jeremy!  I finally have comments again!  He has a good point, you would think that with everyone using the words "make money online" we all obviously can’t make the first page of Google.  At least, not for that keyword phrase.  I used it enough in the first paragraph to probably get this post banned for keyword spamming.

Perhaps the keyword phrase how to make money online is probably oversaturated.

At this point, John Chow is approaching nearly 500 blogs pointing to his site with the keyword phrase and he hasn’t quite taken first place yet.  He has a high-ranking blog to begin with, and he has had it for several years.  It would take an amazing amount of effort to equal his ranking for the keyword phrase.

Kumiko commented recently:

For some strange reason there seems to be an absolute plethora of blogs trying to start and record their own cash quest this month. I can judge this by the amount of link exchange requests that I’ve received recently – LOTS! I visit every blog that asks for a link exchange and it seems that most of them have been started in the month of March. Is there a reason for this?

Source:http://kumikosuzuki.blogspot.com/2007/03/5-tips-for-new-money-makers.html

 Actually, the reason is very simple.

I admire Kumiko’s success, but she is actually fairly new to niche.  The reason it seems there are so many new blogs talking about making money online, is that this is the way it has been for some time.  It’s not new.  I started this blog with pretty much the same subject in mine nearly a year ago, and the idea wasn’t new then.  Perhaps you just don’t realize how many people are in the niche until you are in it.

Please don’t take this as any criticism of Kumiko or that I think that she is a knave newcomer.  She is very modest about her relatively quick success.  She is very talented and I think that if she keeps at it she will be one of those A-list bloggers very soon.

So the niche is saturated and we should give up?

It seems like every Internet marketer tells you that the niche is saturated and if you want to make money online you should work in another niche.  It’s a good point.  There are a lot of other extremely well-paying niches to work in.  In fact, there is so much available to us, it would be easy to find a niche, even now, that has relatively little competition.  The idea of running a business on the Internet is still in its infancy.  As technology improves and changes, we have yet to see some of most innovative uses for Internet marketing.

Go find a niche with less competition?

One of the perks at the Keyword Avalanche forum are some of the guest moderators.  They’ve brought in some true industry experts that give some amazing advice.  I’m not talking about experts like Shoemoney or the Rich Jerk.  People that are just silently making a lot of money on the Internet that nobody knows about.

On these experts answered almost the same exact question.  His response was the opposite of what one would expect.  His suggestion was, competition is a good indication of a healthy market.  If there is no competition in the niche, there is a possibility it is that way because it is not a profitable niche.  If you find a niche with a lot of competition, such as Internet marketing, it’s probably worth the effort of going after it.

It was what he said next that really cleared my mind.

He pointed out that there are large numbers of people just getting on the Internet now with the idea of generating an income.  How to make money online is not only a competitive match but it is a growing niche.  Many of these people are coming with the idea that there’s a way to make quick easy money on the Internet, but have no idea how to make money online.

In other words, we have a wide open market that need needs our services.

Why do they need our services?  Because we already have the experience and knowledge on how to make money online.  We (anyone who’s already here) have the chance to help others reach their dreams.

While the keyword phrase make money online may be saturated, the niche and market are wide open to those who make the effort.

In fact, we have the opportunity as those that are interested in making an income online, to be every bit as successful as we would wish.  We hold the digital keys to information.  We have the opportunity to create nearly any kind of lifestyle you can imagine!

If you find this article helpful or useful, please vote for it at Technorati WTF

John Chow of John Chow dot Com is giving link to blogs that review him.

He is asking for a link to his home page and the review rules page with the keywords "make money online" in the anchor text for both links. 

This post is also a lesson on the importance of linking with keywords or phases. In the Evil Nintendo Wii Blog Contest, I asked people to link to me using “root of all evil.” If you do a Google search for that phrase, you’ll see I am now ranked number three, just behind Wikipedia and RootOfAllEvil.com.

While it’s fun to rank for root of all evil, not many people search for that phase. However, according to the Overture keyword selector tool, there are over 44,000 searches every month for make money online. If I can get on page one of Google for that phrase, it would mean a flood of new traffic.

Source: Make Money Online « John Chow dot Com

Here is my review of his blog:

I have no idea how I found it. In fact, I still do not have it bookmarked, even though I subscribed to the feed. Perhaps it was from Problogger.net.

I like the style of his posts.

I enjoy reading it. I think it has gotten me to post a bit more often just by reading it.

Even though I have had this blog for what is approaching a year now, I am learning a few things from him and his blog.

I like the sense of community his blog has.

I think the Weblog images have helped develop that sense of community. It was interesting to see who else was at the same page recently (I saw Yaro’s Weblog picture near mine). I have since added Weblog to my blog here and will be adding it to other WordPress sites I have.

While I have heard the word Algloco around, I had never stopped to look at it. I do not think it is for me, but I learned something about it at John Chow dot Com. It was even interesting to read.

John posts quite often.

Most of the posts are completely original. He does not just give a link to another site, say it has an interesting post, and leave it at that. While I have only been reading his blog seriously for a few days and off and on for a few weeks, nearly every post he has made had been of reasonable length, and still interesting.

Right now, I am going to be following John’s blog and sooner or later I will remember to bookmark it. I would recommend anyone trying to make money online to read his blog and learn what he is doing right, and follow it.

Part 1 – Introduction

This is the start of a series on building websites for beginners.

It does not matter if you just want to share knowledge of your favorite subject with the world for fun or if you want to make an income of building websites for money.

There are many things that you need to consider before you start. You can get a website or blog started for absolutely no cost. You can even start a website you can sell advertising on, for no cost. Yet, this may not be the best way to go, even if you do not want to make money from your website or blog.

This guide is not going to be about learning html or css or PHP. It is more about the business side of building websites or the stuff you need to think about besides the color of background you want on your web page.

 There are more than enough excellent sources on the internet and I am not an expert on the subject anyways. Honestly, building the actual web page is very easy. The real trick will be making it a successful website, no matter what the purpose.
I have now built several websites and can see what is working and what does not. It does not matter if you There are several places selling ready made websites and all sorts of ideas on how to make money with them. If you have lots of money to start with, it may seem like a good idea. If you do not have lots of money to start with, you may feel you cannot be successful without the latest "Make millions with a website"  ebook and schemes. You can do better in either case.

Hard work will not be enough.

 You do need a little bit of an idea on how to build a successful website business online. Once you have the little bit of knowledge, the harder you work and the smarter you work, the more successful your website or online business will be.
Over the next few weeks I will be adding to this guide and sharing what I have learned over the last few months (an eternity online). If you are starting to follow this guide as I write it, I will warn that there will occasionally be some time gaps between posts in this series. I have a full time job, a wife, and I am also building several websites and trying to make them all profitable at the same time (I am not trying to make my wife profitable, she is a priority over the websites and job though). I will also be making other posts here not related specifically to this guide. You can always check the How To Build A Website category to see what has been posted on this guide so far.

I am going to end this introduction with the most important question you need to consider before you start a website.

What will your website be about? What is the subject of your website? Before you think that is an easy answer, consider that there may be thousands of sites about your subject already. If you decide you make a website about cars, what is going to make your site the one people find among the 855,000,000 that show up on Google if you type cars? Chances are, no one will ever see your website, except by accident. So, when you are trying to decide on the subject for your webpage or website, try to come up with as narrow a subject as possible while still allowing yourself room to expand a bit. Pick a subject that you are familiar with, or already are an expert in. Try to narrow the focus a bit then. It is easier to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond. The pond for cars is very big, and it is easy for the big fish already there to eat anything that may endanger their dominance long before it could happen. It is like this in most topics for the internet. It would be a lot easier if you pick a particular make and model and year of car to start with. Once you are established there, you can move too a bit larger pond.
If you are going to build a website on a particular subject for a reason, it can be a bit tricky. Still, narrowing the topic when you start will help you get the webpage or website off to a good start, instead of something no one will ever find.
If you are thinking of building websites for profit, there are several ways to find a good topic or niche. One way is to check eBay categories for ideas. One expert that gives out some great niches is at the Super Affiliate Blog that I have a link to. The same person also has given out several niches on his forum wickedfire.com. Just a warning, both the blog and forum are uncensored, so don’t go there if you are sensitive to language.

In the next part of this guide, we will cover choosing the keywords that will get your site the attention it deserves.

 So don’t go buy that domain name yet 

Book Review:

Authors:

Peter Kent
Jill K Finlayson

 How to Make Money Online with eBay, Yahoo!, and Google decribes a 3 way approach to running an online buisness.

 It is divided into 3 parts also:

1. Selling on eBay and running and eBay store
2. Using Yahoo! Merchandiser Services and using a Yahoo! Online Store and yahoo! Shopping
3. Marketing your business primarily with Google Adwords but also other ways.

One of How to Make Money Online with eBay, Yahoo! & Google’s strong points is that Jill Finlayson worked as a category manager at eBay.

 I think this gives extra authority on the forst part of the book dealing with eBay. The authors point out many of the fine points that someone not 100% familiar with selling larger quanties of merchandise on eBay may have thought about. There is a good discussion of scaling our business for larger quantites. How to Make Money Online with eBay, Yahoo! & Google also point out some services that are provided by eBay and 3rd parties to help you out.

The second part of How to Make Money Online with eBay, Yahoo! & Google discusses using Yahoo! Merchandiser Services for an internet store.

 They run through some of the many advantages of using Yahoo! if you want to sell things on the Web. How to Make Money Online with eBay, Yahoo! & Google  also goes through the process of actually setting up your on line store Web page with Yahoo!.

The last section of How to Make Money Online with eBay, Yahoo! & Google  goes throught the ins an outs of using Google Adwords and other pay-per-click advertising to get the word out about your business.

 A good portion of this part of the book is about Google Adwords in particular. This section also talks about search engine optimisaton for your web site. I espescially found this part very helpful.

How to Make Money Online with eBay, Yahoo! & Google is a book probably best for the owner of a brick-and-mortar business wanting to move it onto the internet. While How to Make Money Online with eBay, Yahoo! & Google does talk about finding a product to sell on eBay with Yahoo!, they also point out that many areas of the Web are very price sensitive. This means you will need a very inexpensive source of supply if you want to sell the same thing everyone else is, be competitive, and make a profit. The authors do a good job of bring this up and working with it.

If you make your own product and it is somewhat unique, you will find it a lot easier to make a profit selling on the internet. This book would be an excellent starting place for planning a move to selling a product or group of products online.

Even though I do not have plans to open an online store or sell on eBay, I found it vey useful.

It has some very good short summaries on running Adword campains and on search engine optimization. It is not a guide to Google Cash. It is not a guide to complete Web site design for SEO. But if you are looking to move your business to the internet, it would definately make you much more successful than if you try to do it without a plan.