Online Business Underground

Inside Secrets to Online Business Success

Traffic Methods – Free vs. Paid

Posted by Ryan on April 9th, 2010

When you’re just starting out as an affiliate marketer, I always say to go the free method. Of course, for obvious reasons, it’s free! When you’re just starting out, you do not want to invest much money in this business because you really do not know how it’s going to turn out for you. And you don’t want to be kicking yourself when you’ve paid hundreds of dollars on traffic that never converted into sales, therefore you don’t even earn any of the money back.

First off, let’s break down the two traffic methods, shall we:

The Free Method – This involves organic traffic like from search engines, article marketing, forum marketing, using social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc.

The pros of the Free method – Don’t cost you a single penny to drive targeted traffic to your webpage. Even though it’s free, it’s still VERY effective way to bring traffic to your web page.

The cons of the Free method – Takes time and work. Learn the right way to do it, so you don’t waste the time you spend on the Free methods.

Free Method Suggested reading: Who Loves Money <– Get it free when you sign up for WA.

The Paid Method – This involves using PPC ads. I’m sure you’ve noticed Google ads on websites and even on the side of the page when using the Google search engine. Those are advertisements when are paid for by the click. Each time someone clicks on the ad, they person whose ad it is pays for that click. The is a fast way to bring targeted traffic to your webpage, although it can be pretty expensive. Sometimes, it can cost someone dollars a click. Therefore, you need to make sure your landing page and the product page converts well, so you don’t waste money on clicks that are not converting into sales.

The pros of the Paid Method – Targeted Traffic, Fast, Set up in a matter of minutes.

The cons – It’s extremely difficult and can get you into serious trouble if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Paid Method Suggested Reading: Beating Adwords <– Get it free when you sign up for WA through this link only.

This is just a simple breakdown of the different methods of driving traffic to your web pages, be sure to sign up to my 5-Day Make Money Online Mini Course to learn more about them and keep following my this blog for more posts about the traffic methods.

Affiliate Marketing – How Does This Whole Thing Work?

Posted by Ryan on April 8th, 2010

Share

As mentioned in previous posts, Affiliate Marketing is the easiest online business opportunity. Well that’s all great and everything, but how does it work? It’s fairly simple to understand, as an affiliate, your job is to drive traffic, which is just another word for people, to products on the Internet. When you send them to the product, you use a special link, known as an affiliate link. When the visitor makes a purchase after clicking on your affiliate link, you earn a commission.

Raise your hand if I lost you already?

Let’s start from the beginning, shall we because at first this can be confusing, but it’s actually quite simple.

As an affiliate, your job is direct those on the Internet looking t purchase products, services or anything else that can be paid for. There are many popular companies that use affiliates, that’s you, to bring them customers. In exchange, an affiliate, that’s you again, earns a percentage of the sale, that’s the commission. Check out the companies like Verizon, Netflix, Amazon, etc. Many big companies have affiliate programs, but affiliate networks exist too. These places are great because they offer a wide variety of products to promote, even digital products.

Digital products are great to promote because the customers gets the product right away and plus the affiliate earns big commission, up to 75% of the sale!

When you sign up to become an affiliate to a product or service, this is completely free, you’ll be given a special URL to the products’ page. This is your “affiliate link”. Your special URL, the web address, or whatever you want to call it is unique. It is an address that when the visitor clicks on it to go to the products’ page, you’re identified as the affiliate by a special cookie that is placed on the computer.

Now, don’t worry. Cookies are completely normal. Ever website you visits puts cookies on your computer. So you don’t need to worry about trashing someones computer just to make a buck.

Back the affiliate links. With the affiliate link, you send a potential customer to the product. Since they used YOUR link, you’re identified as the affiliate and when they make a purchase, you earn commission.

Was that explained better? I sure hope so. I’m not the best at explaining things, so please feel free to ask questions if you don’t full understand.

So that’s pretty much how affiliate marketing works. Send potential customers to products through your unique (affiliate) link and your earn commission when they purchase the product.

Commission rates vary with ever company, network, and even products. One the highest paying affiliate networks is ClickBank. They offer thousands of digital products for you to promote and it’s completely free to sign up.

Check this out:

You can start affiliate marketings in the next 10 minutes. Here is what you can do.

Sign up to ClickBank.com.

Browse through the products in the marketplace, click on promote, enter in your clickbank nickname and you’ll be given an affiliate link!

Now, create a blog using blogger or wordpress. Write about the product and place your affiliate link at the end of the post and there you have it. You’ve started your affiliate marketing business in less than 10 minutes! Pretty neat, eh?

To be honest, I wish it was that simple, but it’s not. Actually, I take that back. It is that simple, however there is more you need to do. Now you have a post and your affiliate link within the post, now you need visitors to your blog, so they can click on your link and purchase the product.

But, I’ll keep that for another post.

The absolute best affiliate marketing training is at Wealthy Affiliate. If you’re new and you want to be trained how to do affiliate marketing the right way, so you can become successful, then you should join WA. To learn more, read my Wealthy Affiliate University review.

Can You Really Get Paid for Taking Surveys? – The Truth about Paid Surveys

Posted by Ryan on April 3rd, 2010

Share

One of the most well-known money making opportunities online is taking surveys and getting paid for them. Although this blog is specifically about online business opportunities, and lets be honest here, Paid Surveys is not a business. Well maybe if you get an army of people to take them for you, but then the profits would be significantly low. So lets forget that idea all together.

So, why am I writing about paid surveys, when this is an online business opportunity blog. Well it’s quite simple, sure this may seem like just online business opportunities, but it’s also just about making money on the Internet in general too.

Anyway, back to answering the question “Can you really get paid for taking surveys?”

In a one work answer, yes. You can really get paid for taking online surveys, but don’t think about quitting your day job. Taking surveys is not all it’s cracked up to be. They are for one, extremely boring. I’ve taking surveys before to earn a little bit of extra cash and I got bored after the first survey. Actually to be even more accurate, I got bored while taking the first survey! So I knew that getting paid to take surveys is certainly not a job replacer.

Sure, if you’ve got nothing better to do with your time or you’re just looking for a way to pay the gas you put into your car, taking surveys may just be what you’re looking for.

But, if you are looking to possible replace your job completely through Internet income, step away from paid surveys. I actually don’t think it’s possible to earn a decent income on paid surveys even if you did them non-stop.

I know, you’ve probably heard that you can make $15-20 a survey. Well to tell you the truth, it’s not going to happen. Unless you get lucky enough o be selected or something like that, it’s going to be quite difficult to find a $15-20 paid survey.

Realistically, you can really only earn a couple dollars for taking a survey or you may just get some pocket change. It’s really just what’s available to you at the time.

If you’re interested in earning a couple bucks extra here and there, I’d recommend CashCrate for taking surveys. They offer anywhere form $0.50 to a couple bucks a survey, maybe even $5. It’s free to join, so it’s pretty nice. However, if you’re looking for a real business opportunity on the Internet that could actually replace your day job, be sure to sign up to my 5-Day Make Money Online Mini Course to learn more and be sure to come back to this blog for new posts (Subscribe to my RSS feed!).

Affiliate Marketing Can Make Money While You Sleep

Posted by Ryan on April 2nd, 2010

Share

One of the main reasons I decided to give affiliate marketing a go was because it was a online business opportunity that had the potential to earn me money around the clock. It wasn’t a business that required me to be sitting at the computer in order for me to make money.

Take getting paid for online surveys as an example. One must sit there on their bum taking survey after survey to make only a little bit of extra money for themselves. However, with Affiliate Marketing, I’m able to do the work I need or want to do for the day, then I can be off doing something else. The cool thing about affiliate marketing is that I’m still able to make money when I’m off doing something else because of the work I did before whether it was a couple hours ago or couple months ago.

Work you do today can earn you money for years to come. That’s pretty sweet, isn’t it?

That’s what really got me to give this whole Affiliate Marketing thing a go and ever since I’ve never looked back.

One of the coolest things about affiliate marketing is the fact that I can go to sleep one night, wake up the next, to find that I made money while I was sleeping! Sleeping! I mean seriously, how can it get any better than that? Other times, it’s been while I was on vacation at the beach for a whole week, not touch the Internet, yet I’m still making money or while I’m in class (I’m a college student).

Affiliate Marketing allows you to create an income stream on autopilot.

If you want to learn more about how to get started with affiliate marketing and change your life today, sign up for my free 5-Day Make Money Online Mini Course. Sign up is on the right hand side.

The Easiest and Most Profitable Business Oppurtunity Online

Posted by Ryan on April 1st, 2010

Share

I get asked the same question over and over again about what is the easiest, yet most profitable business opportunity online and I always have to same answer. To be honest, “easiest” really all depends on the individual. Seriously, there are some people who find Calculus extremely easy and then there are people like me, who struggle with it. You know what I mean? So it’s pretty difficult to really say what the easiest business opportunity online really is because it depends on the individual.

With that being said, let’s get down to what the easiest and most profitable business opportunity online is, ignoring the individual. Hands down, Affiliate Marketing is the easiest and most profitable business opportunity online.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a learning curve to every Internet Business, even Affiliate Marketing, but as long as you have the proper learning tools and support, that learning curve won’t seem like a big deal.

Out of all the Internet business oppurtunities online, affiliate marketing is by far the easiest and most profitable and the reasons for that are quite simple.

It’s a business you can start literally today.
You don’t need your own product to sell
You don’t need to store products
You can start without spending a single penny
Allows you to make money on autopilot
Anyone is capable of earning a full time income
Make money around the clock, even when you’re sleeping (autopilot)
You don’t need you’re own website or how to make one

Alright, so that list could go on and on, but I’m not going to waste your time. Affiliate Marketing is the main business you’ll learn about in my 5-Day Make Money Online Mini Course (located on the right). It’s a mini course introducing you to affiliate marketing and how you can get started right away!