How to Make Money

How to Make Money from your Website

No matter what your website is about you can potentially make money from it.  How?  There are a couple of ways.

• Ways to Make Money
• How to Find Merchants to Pay You
• Aren't Sure What to Sell?

Ways to Make Money

You can sell a product directly from your website.   If you do this, you will need to accept credit cards.  If you have people mail you a check, you are going to lose a lot of business because people like the ability to pay right away.

You can accept credit cards through PayPal or through a 3rd party gateway such as 2checkout.  It is free to set up an account with Pay Pal, they charge very reasonable rates if you make a sale and they have really improved their service.  I recommend them.

2checkout charges $49 to sign up with them and they take a percentage of the sale.  It isn't hard to set up an account with them but it's harder than Pay Pal.  Since Pay Pal is free and very reputable I recommend it for most beginners but 2checkout is my second favorite alternative. 

If you sell a product do not get suckered in by companies that tell you that you need this or that to accept credit cards or it will cost you a monthly fee or anything like that.  You don't need anything extra to accept credit cards on your website if you use either Pay Pal (my favorite) or 2checkout.  They come with everything you need.    

Side note:  So many people wrote to me from this site telling me I should write a book about this stuff that I did.  If you want to start your own internet business you may be interested in checking it out.  It's an easy read, 162 pages long, and guides you step by step through the whole process of starting and running your own internet business.

It's got the nitty-gritty stuff that you need to know, not "fluff."   If you're interested in finding out more about it, click here.  I think it can really help a lot of people.   Okay, enough with the shameless plug back to the site ....

Oops!  Not so fast.  Side note #2:   After I wrote the Starting and Internet Business ebook mentioned above a lot of people wrote in and asked me for help with their own ebook. 

The result - a new ebook I wrote called How to Write and Sell Your Own Ebook.  Like the ebook above it's all real stuff you need to know to write and sell your ebook the easy, cheap way.  It walks you through writing your ebook, setting up your website, etc. in a series of short exercises.  When you finish the exercises you will have a completed ebook, website, and will be ready to take orders.  If you want to write and sell your own ebooks, click here. 

Okay, that's it for good.  I swear.  No more shameless plugs on this site.

You can also make money by referring people to another merchant's services.  This is called affiliate marketing.  The merchant selling a product wants people to come to his site.  For every person that comes from your site to his that buys a product he will pay you a certain amount of money.

You can put up banners on your site or recommend the places in text.  It's best to put advertising up that relates to the content of your website. 

For example, let's say that you are crazy about English Castles and your website is about Castles in England and the history associated with each one.  You know if someone visits your website they are interested in English Castles or they wouldn't be there so what would people that are interested in English Castles be interested in buying? 

Well, they would probably be interested in a tour to England to visit the castles so you could sign up with a merchant's affiliate program that provides these tour packages.  Your visitors might also be interested in reading books about English Castles or English history so you could recommend a few that they might find interesting from Amazon.  You may also sign up with an affiliate program that sells posters of English Castles.  The list is truly endless. 

The best part is it doesn't matter what your website is about you can offer your visitors advertising that reflects your website content and your visitor's interest. 

How to Find Merchants that will Pay You  

I usually just go to Google and type in the type of merchant I'm looking for.  For example, let's say that I want to offer posters on my site.  I would type in Poster Affiliates in the search box and then check out the merchants that come up in the search. 

Click here for a list of some merchants that have affiliate programs. 

Aren't Sure What to Sell?

I've gotten a ton of mail from people who want to make money online but don't know what to sell.  Most of the places that I've seen that tell you that you can make money through them don't work or are just plain scams; however there are some places out there that are decent.  The trick of course is figuring out which places are decent and which just take your money.

If you aren't sure what to sell, here are some tips:

1.  Go with something that interests you.  Don't just pick something that you think will make you a bunch of money.  If you aren't interested in what you are selling you won't do everything you need to do to make your business successful.

2.  Be wary of companies that have ready made businesses for you with merchandise that they will ship for you.  A lot of times the prices that you need to sell the products at are too high for you to sell the products much less make a good profit on or it's too hard to get customers.

3. If the business you are considering requires you to get your own merchant account or credit card processor that charges a monthly fee, don't do it,

4.  If you have to pay an extra 'monthly fee' for your business website, don't do it.

Regardless of what business you decide to do, it will require time, effort and hard work to make successful.  The people who succeed put the time and effort into really learning their business and how to market it and get visitors to it.  The ones who don't, give up when things get hard so they fail.  It really is as simple as that.  The great news is that if you are willing to put the time and effort into it, it IS possible for you to do really well. 

You don't have to be smarter, richer or anything else that you think of that might hold you back, you just have to be willing to work hard.  You really do have everything you need to succeed.  

Step 5:  How to Get Visitors -->  

 

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