Even with no product and no Web site, you can get paid for what and who you know

Making money online used to pretty much require you to have your own Web site, products to sell and some marketing savvy. But a new generation of dot-coms have arisen that will pay you for what you know and who you know without you having to be a web designer or a marketing genius.

But it’s hard to tell hype from the real deal. I did a search on “make money online” and “making money online”, and much of the information out there is just promoting various infoproducts, mostly about Internet marketing. I see why people sometimes ask, “Is anyone making money online besides Internet marketing experts?”

So I put together a list of business opportunities with legitimate companies that:

Pay cash, not just points towards rewards or a chance to win money
Don’t require you to have your own Web domain or your own products
Don’t involve any hard-selling
Aren’t just promoting more Internet marketing
Give a good return on your time investment

In the interest of objectivity, none of the links below are affiliate links, and none of them have paid or provided any other consideration for their presence here. These are legitimate companies with business models that allow you to get paid for a wide range of activities.
Help friends find better jobs.

Sites like ReferEarns, Zyoin, Who Do You Know For Dough?, Bohire and WiseStepp connect employers with prospective employees, many of whom are already employed and not actively job-hunting, via networking – the people who know these qualified candidates. Rewards for referring a candidate who gets hired range from $50 on up to several thousand dollars – not chump change. If you know a lot of job-seekers (and who doesn’t these days?), this is a great way to break into the recruiting business with no overhead.

Connect suppliers with buyers.

Referral fees are a common practice in business, but they haven’t been used much in online networking sites because there was no way to track them. Sites like Salesconx, InnerSell and uRefer now provide that. Vendors set the referral fees they’re willing to pay (and for what), and when the transaction happens, you get paid. uRefer also allows merchants to set up referral programs for introductions and meetings, as well as transactions.

Write.

A growing number of sites will pay for your articles or blog posts. Associated Content and Helium will “pay for performance” based on page views for just about anything you want to write about. Articles on specific topics they’re looking for can earn direct payments up to about $200. The rates are probably low for established writers, but if you’re trying to break into the field and have time on your hands, they’re a great way to start. Also, a lot of companies are looking for part-time bloggers. They may pay per post or on a steady contract. Our Weblogs Guide posts blogging jobs weekly in the forum.

Start your own blog.

You don’t have to have your own Web site, or install blogging software, or even figure out how to set up the advertising. At Blogger you can set up a blog for free in less than five minutes without knowing a thing about web design, and Blogger even automates setting up Google AdSense so you can make money off your blog by displaying ads and getting paid when people click on the ads. To make even more money from it, set up an affiliate program (see below) for books, music, etc., and insert your affiliate links whenever you refer to those items. You’ll have to get a lot of traffic to become a six-figure blogger, but pick an interesting topic, write well, tell all your friends, and you’re off to a good start.

Related: Monetizing Your Blog

Create topical resource hubs.

Are you an expert on a particular niche topic? Can you put together an overview of the topic and assemble some of the best resources on the topic from around the web? Then you can create topical hubs and get paid through sites like Squidoo, HugPages and Google Knol. Payments are based on a combination of ad revenue and affiliate fees. You’ll get higher rates doing it on your own, but these sites have a built-in supply of traffic and tools to make content creation easier.

Advertise other people’s products.

If you already have a Web site or a blog, look for vendors that offer related but non-competing products and see if they have an affiliate program. Stick to familiar products and brands – they’re easier to sell. To promote those products:

Place simple text or graphical ads in appropriate places on your site

Include links to purchase products you review or recommend in a blog, discussion forum or mailing list you control

Create a dedicated sales page or Web site to promote a particular product

They all work – it just depends on how much time you have to spend on it and your level of expertise with Web design and marketing.

Related: How to Really Make Money on the Internet With an Amazon.com Affiliate Site

Microstock photography.

You don’t have to be a professional photographer to sell your photos for money. People are constantly in need of stock photography for websites, presentations, brochures and so on, and are willing to pay for the right image. People generally search for images on stock photography sites by keywords, not by photographer, so you have the same chance as anyone else of having your image picked. Just be careful that you don’t have images of trademarked brands, copyrighted art or people’s faces that are readily identifiable (unless you have a model release), but just about anything else is fair game, and I promise – you’d be amazed what people need pictures of, so don’t make any assumptions. If it’s a decent photo, upload it. Some sites to get you started include Fotolia, ShutterStock, Dreamstime and iStockphoto. The great thing about this is that it’s truly “set it and forget it”.

The above list is by no means comprehensive, but it highlights some of the new and interesting ways to make money online without investing any money, without having a product of your own, and without having expert sales and marketing skills. Most of all, unlike taking surveys or getting paid to read e-mail, the potential return on your time investment is substantial.

Author Bio: Click the link, to learn how to make money online by some of the most successful people to date http://TopSecretOnlineProfits.com

Making money through selling other people’s products is one of the most rewarding and fun ways to make money one could ever have.

What’s great about affiliate marketing is that average folks can get involved with very little effort by using some smart shortcuts for success.

Affiliate marketing is the only easily mastered method of achieving steady part time or full time income. In fact, you can start with just your computer and an Internet connection. And, with affiliate marketing, you can have the added advantage of making extra money from home with the freedom and control of being your own boss.

Be advised that there are also many people who fail at work from home businesses  because they did not take the time to gain knowledge of how it works and the proper tactics to use. Like any business, affiliate marketing requires to learn the ropes before you try to climb the mountain. However, If you are a looking for an easy make-money-from-home business, affiliate marketing is an excellent way to go.

What will you sell?

First, let’s define selling in terms of affiliate marketing.

With affiliate marketing:

…. You will NOT be selling face-to-face.

…. You will NOT be writing sales copy.

…. You will NOT provide any customer service. The product owner does that.

…. You will NOT guarantee the products. The owner does that too.

…. The buyer does NOT even have to know who you are.

To find the hot selling products for you to market, Clickbank is an ideal place to start. You can find one of the largest affiliate marketing programs in the industry. You just need to visit their site, www.clickbank.com and get your personal clickbank ID. This is the easiest part.

Now, go from Clickbank’s home page to their “Marketplace” and browse the listings for products and services that are top sellers. These products are always ranked according to their popularity but your can search using other parameters.

Avoid choosing products that you personally think would be good sellers and go only with proven top sellers regardless of your personal likes or dislikes. After all, the idea is to make money. Clickbank provides the data to determine the popularity and commision for each product in each catagory so you have many to choose from.

Clickbank is the web’s leading affiliate network because it serves as a 3rd party between the web merchants, that is the product owners, and the associated affiliates, which would be you. Clickbank is responsible for providing the technology to deliver the merchant’s offers and campaigns to you and to your customers. Clickbank also does the job of collecting fees from the merchant and giving commissions to the affiliates who are involved in the program, folks just like you. It’s all automated. You don’t have to know anything technical.

Clickbank provides a huge and updated database of publishers and products to tap into. To be more specific, their database features more than 27,000 products. The reason why more and more affiliates are joining Clickbank is obvious – the process of making sales and earning commissions is handled professionally. In fact, Clickbank is the strongest when it comes to protecting customers by insisting that product owners give at least a 56 day money back guarantee. This protects you too. Any product you sell will be backed by Clickbank.

What if you have a product of your own to sell?

Joining Clickbank as a merchant is also easy. You just need to sign up and get set up for them to handle sales your products and payments of commissions to your affiliates. They provide tutorials to do this for free.

You will need a promotional web site, that could be a simple sales page, that gives your potential customers detailed information about your product or services and your guarantee terms. This will be the site your affiliates will send prospects to. When they buy, you make money and your affiliate gets paid out of your cut.

Clickbank requires that you provide comprehensive technical support for your product as well. In return, Clickbank will promote and sell your product, give customer service for your product, allow their affiliates to pass on traffic to your web site, enable you to assist your affiliates in advertsing your product or service, furnish real-time sales data for you and your affiliates, and send you and all affiliates a paycheck twice a month based upon sales volume.

If you’re a work-from-home mom or dad, college student, or just someone who needs extra money, you will find it easy to be a highly paid Clickbank affiliate.

To get paid you will need an affiliate link for the product you want to sell and a way to promote your affiliate link. You will have to place your affiliate link where potential buyers will see it. There are many free and paid ways to do this that are beyond the scope of this article but let me mention a few free ways.

You can create free pages on Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, Squidoo, FaceBook, MySpace, and Twitter. These are all free and allow you to promote anything you like.

You need to complete the Clickbank affiliate form and create your own account to get a username. The username is inserted in your affiliate link to the product. When people click it and buy, you earn your commission. With your Clickbank username, you are free to choose whatever marketing tools you want to use to attract more clicks and generate more sales.

What if you want to earn serious full time income?

Being a Clickbank super affiliate takes some serious effort on your part. The reward could be thousands of dollars in monthly commissions. It means you need to learn search engine optimization, email marketing, newsletter marketing, reciprocal linkage, link exchanges and other methods of promoting your merchant’s goods and services. Now, don’t feel overwhelmed. There are products that will teach you the skills.

Among the best ways to become successful in affiliate marketing is to come up with good content filled website and put your affiliate links in all your content. Your main purpose here is to give your visitors good quality information about the things they are interested in for free. Set aside the job of selling. It must be done by the product sales letter or product web site you are sending them to when they click your link.

It’s not a good idea to promote multiple affiliate programs unless your website is focused on one niche you are targeting. At the same time, don’t promote every product Clickbank has to offer for your niche. Just choose a few high paying affiliate products or services that fit your site and focus on those. The last thing you want is too many choices for visitors. It is confusing and will cause them to click away without buying anything.

You will stay ahead of the game and make more money by devoting time to reading, learning and keeping up with the changes in marketplace. This way, you’ll remain on top of the newest, hot selling, products and can act quickly to make money from them before the crowd jumps in. If you are knowledgeable with online marketing, I know you understand how important it is to stay on top of the marketing trends.  What worked and what was accepted few months ago in affiliate marketing tactics may not work as well today. You need to stay current to be a super affiliate.

Remember: Minimum knowledge can get you a nice second income from Clickbank but maximum knowledge can help you become a Clickbank super affiliate!

Author, Jim DeSantis, provides a Free tutorial that covers the in’s and out’s of making money with Clickbank. Visit Jim’s blog: “Gifts from Jim DeSantis” for your free copy. No Email Required.

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Many Internet marketers struggle with the daily task of finding leads (having a potential customer fill in an email form requesting their email address, or their zip code, or address for additional promotional offers to be sent to them), or a sale(having a customer complete an offer, by giving their credit card details or some other means of purchasing a product or an item).

As an affiliate the sole task is to bring traffic to publishers, and you get certain percentage of the proceeds, either on a per lead, per sale or revenue share basis.

Now imagine the scenario, you have created a website specifically for this purpose, you designed it, did all the SEO (search engine optimisation) so it is ready for the search engines, and has all your keywords evenly distributed, and your niche is targeted.

You run an adwords campaign, aimed at targeting that niche.  Potential leads or customers see your ad with your ad copy and landing page, on Google, or the Yahoo Publishing Network, or MSN Adcenter, they land on your page, are impressed with the product, and proceed to complete a sale or give their details for a lead.

This is the normal scenario for many affiliate marketers.

However there is a big snag in the pipeline, almost all affiliates when using banners also place a copy of their url in the banner, so any potential customer, can if they want to simply just type the direct address of the product and get on the home page of the publisher, regardless of the work that you as the affiliate put in to bring that product to their attention, if that happens you have in effect lost time and money.

A second way many affiliates loose commissions is by simply having the direct url complete with their affiliate id appended somewhere in the url (usually at the end), all a buyer has to do is type in the url omitting your affiliate id, and they can still get to the landing page, order the product, or complete a lead and you as the affiliate would receive no compensation for the work you have put in bringing that potential customer to the publisher.

This is where url shorteners, or url redirection comes in as the potential customer never sees the direct landing page, or your affiliate id in order to go directly to the affiliate, and hence denying you of your commissions.

There are several types of url redirections, some may require registration, some may not and you can easily test out the different types to see which one would suit your traffic, some may have a delay of a few seconds in other to show some ads before going direct to the page of the url redirection, others simply go direct to the shortened url.

Once a shortened url, or url redirection is created, this unfortunately is not the end, as often webmasters redirect shortened url continually so constant checks must be made to see if the shortened url is still active, and your shortened or redirect url has not been sent elsewhere.

The author Mr D Stevens is a reviewer at Url redirection

Article Source: http://bb-articles.com