Need Money: One Way To Make Money Online Cheap

Read the comments to several of the posts here on Need Money Blog and the same subject comes up; "How can I make some money online?"

First, you do not have to spend money to make money online (except for your computer and internet access that technically, you could get for free for the price of a library card - but only for an hour or so at a time).
The only thing needed is some time and the willingness to work. Rather than reinventing the wheel, I have done much of the dirty work myself for you.

Use free websites and blogs. I use Blogger because it allows me to include AdSense ads on my site which allows me to make some money. There are other free sites which allow publisher's AdSense ads but read the fine print first before setting up your site.

Create a website about something which meets there three criteria..

1) Is something you are genuinely interested in. Big dollar keywords like mesothelioma won't do you any good unless you are really interested in writing about asbestos cancer.

2) Pick a topic you will write about with authority. I make money online and have spent hours and lots of money learning how (Urggh). So when I write an article believe me it has some history behind it.

3) Pick a subject which has the potential to make money. "Musings from Bob about life" might be a great time killer, but it won't make the author much money. A well researched blog about losing weight after the New Year or getting out of debt by a cash strapped college kid DOES have the potential to make some serious coin though.

Take your topic and create a well named blog on Blogger. Again, "Musings about weight loss" is a dog of a name. Instead try "Does the Medifast Diet Work? How I lost weight with Medi Fast". Your title is one way the search engines and visitors will find you.

Write some blog posts, about 4 or 5 to get started but don't publish them yet.

Instead, join Adsense and put some ads on your blogger layout. Use this blog as a template for ad placement and styles.

Research affilate programs. I use Clickbank, Commission Junction and others. Join some related programs and place some link ads on your blogger layout.

Add a statcounter to your blog. Look at the bottom right for the one I use and keep track of who visits and how they found your site.

Add some social network widgets to your site. These are key.

Go to Squidoo and create a short lens about your blog. Link to the blog from Squidoo. This will give your site a backlink and some organic traffic. Again, name the Squidoo lens correctly for search engines (you can also make some extra money from Squidoo as well. That's a neat little trick).

Go to MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog, join and add your blogs. Make friends.

Now publish your articles.

Now go to the social bookmarking sites using AddThis and OnlyWire and start bookmarking each article. This will build some backlinks and get some traffic to the site. Google Bookmarks and Yahoo are critical as bookmarking on those sites will get your site visited by the search engines within a few hours.

Write more articles and publish often. Find some like minded sites and swap backlinks. This is relatively easy with a blog because readers will visit often.

Check your stats, find out how visitors found you and keep pushing that lever to get more traffic. Run the keywords tool from Google AdWords on your site and find related keyword terms which may bring more traffic.

If you can do one of these sites and make a few dollars a month, you can do 10 or 20 sites and make more money. All it takes is T-I-M-E. If you are out of work, then you have plenty of that and this is a job. If you are smart and start making money, consider incorporating yourself to take full advantage of the tax benefits of working online.

Up front honesty - the above plan took me one year to figure out which resulted in me making some money online. With this kickstart, you can avoid that time investment and start making money in about 1-3 months. No. You will not make $5000.00 a month, but you can realistically make $100.00 a month and more from there. A little over a year ago I received my first affiliate check of $120.00 or so. That was a big thrill. Since then, it has only grown into the thousands (no lie) monthly. But it takes work and time (that word again).

So, there it is in a nutshell. Give it a try and drop me an email or comment if you have questions.