Free Guide: How to Make Money Online for Beginners

Internet Marketing Terminology

2009-07-19T11:58:00.000-07:00

I have found that when I'm explaining to people the process of making money online through search engine optimization they don't have the faintest idea of what I'm talking about because of the jargon. So here's a list that will hopefully help the people who are just getting into this market.

Backlinks

A backlink is when another site links to your blog. When people talk about backlinks they often mention the keyword anchor. This is the text used for the link. For example, for this blog I want to rank for well terms like 'make money online, how to make money online, or how to make money online for beginners. So my ideal backlink would use a similar anchor for like link: make money online using adsense.

Search Engine Optimization

Also referred to as SEO for short, this is when you optimize your blog's content and your backlinks to rank high in the search engines.

Search Engines Results Page

Also referred to as the SERPs, these are the pages that come up when you type a keyword into a search engine.

Keyword

This is the word you use to type into the search engine text box.

PR

This is a designation that G gives pages to rank the amount of trust. The system goes from PR0 - PR10

G

Google

Google bots

Also called Google spiders, these are the programs that scan a blog to find out what the keywords are.

Adsense

This is Google's advertising program. The way it works is a company bids on keywords they want to target for their ads. They can choose to put their ads on the SERPs or into other webpages with relevant content.

Blackhat

This is the method of promoting your site with spam, splogs, and other less than savory techniques. Not many people use these methods anymore because Google has caught on and changed their algorithms to avoid ranking these sites well.

Whitehat

This is the methods of promoting your site organically with good content.

Review of Grizzly's How to Make Money Online for Beginners Blog

2009-07-18T12:26:00.000-07:00

This post is going to be a review of Grizzly's How to Make Money Online for Beginners blog. I've got to start out by saying that if you really want to learn the ins and outs of the online money game then put on a pot of coffee, sit down, and read through his blog starting at the beginning. Every post, though most of them are very long (for a reason), has gold nuggets. This is not to say that the whole post isn't good because they are but there are some real gems in the middle of his gold mine. And his style of writing is easy to read.

Grizz is an inspiration for anyone trying to make money online because he actually makes money doing the things he tells other people to do which is a huge contrast from the A-list that make money by selling ebooks to their readers which won't make any money from the advice. And the best thing about Grizz's blog is that he is putting out all this real information for free. Of course he is making money from selling affiliate products and leads to people that don't take the time to read his stuff mostly because his blog is so ugly.

If you're tired of paying money to learn useless information, if you're tired of being a sucker, then do yourself a favor and read through How to Make Money Online for Beginners. It will change your life. You will see results if you put his advice into action on your own blogs.

On top of giving away all the closely guarded secrets of internet marketers Grizz is a genuine person that takes time to personally help people that are just starting out. Best part about his blog is that he cuts through all the misconception, hype, and outright lies, and gives you the straight truth...

...for free. What more could you ask for?

Well, he gives you more. He has created a network of like minded people who all help each other out by exchanging back links through his niche support page on his other blog: Make Money Online with Grizzly which I also recommend you read through.

I really can't say enough good things about Grizzly. No, I'm not being paid in any way for this review or the links. I just want to help other people find out real information through real blogs like Grizzly's.

You can even verify that he knows what he is talking about because he ranks in the G top ten for the highly competitive key word 'make money online' and a whole list of long tails.

So what are you waiting for? Go check out Grizzly's How to Make Money Online for Beginners, Make Money Online with Grizzly, and his new site How to Make Money with Adsense. You will be glad you did.

You'll learn the basics and the more advanced stuff about search engine optimization, back links, and adsense and when you're done reading through Grizz's library you'll be on the right path for making money online.

How to Make Money Online with Adsense

2009-07-17T13:57:00.001-07:00

In my last post we discussed how to make money online with an ugly blog. In the post I talked a little about search engine optimization and why internet marketers make money online and bloggers don't. The gist of it is that internet marketers know how to write relevant content that the G bots rank well in their search engine. Bloggers know how to write for other people to read. I made that point that, if you are reading this, you are trying to make money online not make friends.

One of the main ways people make money online is through Google's adsense program. Basically, you sign up and then put an adsense block somewhere on your page. Then G puts ads on your page that are relevant to your keywords. People then click on the ads and you get a cut of the money people bid for on the ad. Sounds simple enough. The tricky part is getting people to click on your ads.

One of the major keys to making money with adsense is that you have to be getting targeted traffic to your site that will be likely to click on your ads (hint: you cannot do this chasing social traffic). It is so important to optimize you pages to get the best possible ads for the keywords you are targeting. This is why I recommend only having one post per page unless the posts are very similar and target the same keywords or long tails. This is so that the bots can generate very relevant ads for your page.

A good way to not make money with adsense is to not have any key word focused posts. If the G bots do not know what your page is about because you haven't done your on page SEO then Google will put PSA (public service ads) or blogging ads on your page for which, if you can even get anyone to click them, you will be paid anywhere from 1 to 3 cents.

One huge reason that you don't want this to happen to any of the pages you have adsense on is that it will affect the earnings of every page you have adsense on. That's right, if one of your pages is getting PSA ads it will severely hurt your entire adsense earnings. That is a very compelling reason to always keep in mind your targeted key word and any long tail you can think of when you are writing any of your posts for any of your adsense blogs. It will mean the difference between you struggling and you earning money without having to work very hard.

So for adsense to be profitable for you, it is very important that you have your on page search engine optimization as well done as you can. This will not only help you get high paying ads it will also get you a good rank in the SERPs and get you targeted traffic that will be more likely to give you a good CTR (click through rate).

If you are getting a lot of visitors to your site and they are clicking on the adsense but not buying anything from the copy page the ad takes them to then you will be penalized. Google will not make the advertiser pay as much as they bid and you will get a smaller percentage.

This is the reason that chasing social traffic is not only useless but could end up hurting your earning potential which is why 99% of people don't make money online. The real money is a high ranking in Google. The top ten of Google is where is money is because when people that aren't bloggers or webmasters or whatever web savvy people are being called now, they go to google and type in their search key word. Then they click on the first couple of links. They might click the links down on the bottom of the page and they might go to page 2 if they are really searching hard for some information but most people stick to page 1. They don't go to Digg, Facebook, StumbleUpon, or any of the other hundreds of web 2.0 social bookmarking sites out there. This traffic could care less about your '50 ways to do this and that' lists.

We talked in the last post of the ways to make money online with an ugly blog using adsense. The way you make this kind of money is ranking in the top ten on G and giving just enough information on your keyword to where people will click on an ad to find out what they are looking for. This is your target traffic. These are the people that you want to come to your adsense site.

You can get this kind of money traffic by ranking high in Google. You can rank high in Google by having good search engine optimization. So SEO really benefits you page rank and your earnings.

The way you make money with adsense is to get good at SEO. The only way you'll get better at optimizing your blogs is to take action. Create a blog for a targeted niche.

One mistake that a lot of people make that don't know about SEO make is monetizing their blog too soon. If two sites are equal for everything that G looks for including backlinks, on site optimization, and age, but one site is monetized and the other is not, the one that is not monetized will always rank higher in the search ladder. This is because G sees a non monetized site as wanting to put out quality information making them an authority for that niche.

It is a mistake to monetize your blog right away. And it is not going to help you out anyway. You are not getting targeted traffic because you are not on page one of Google. Hell, you might not even be indexed yet. Are you worried about not getting a couple of clicks from people who randomly find your blog? You might even get smart priced (PSA ads for 1 - 3 cent click). And then your earnings are down the drain before you even get going. You want to wait at least until you are indexed but really until you get a high page ranking to monetize you site. Just be patient and it will work out better for you in the end. Keep your cool, maintain composer, keep posting, and keep getting better quality backlinks.

I'm not selling you a dream here folks. This is the real way that internet marketers make money online. It takes time, lots of energy and focus. But if you really have a strong will to survive and have an ability to smell a gimmick you have a better chance than most to make money online using adsense.

How to Make Money Online with an Ugly Blog

2009-07-17T12:51:00.000-07:00

Most people that want to make money online fail. The reason they fail is because they want to be an A-lister. The figure that because the A-list has thousands of subscribers that they make boat loads of money. This is a misconception. Most of the social traffic does not click on adsense and do not buy any of your products and if they do then the put in their own clickbank ID and you don't get the commission. So why do people chase social traffic? I think it is because people want to be famous blogger like Darren Rowse. Why? I have no idea.

But if you have started out in the make money online world and are currently chasing social traffic save yourself a lot of time, money, and grief. The real way to make money on the internet is to get ranked high in G. You can't achieve this by getting people to read your blog.

The reason 99% percent of people fail in the online marketing game is they want to write quality content for people to read. Well, when people are reading they aren't clicking on ads and you aren't getting paid. If you want people to read your stuff then be a blogger but don't have any misconceptions that you are going to get rich or even make enough to survive of your blogging. The people writing blogs for people to read will realize one day, hopefully soon, that they are not being compensated in any meaningful way for all their hard work and they will stop. Then they will have the misconception and tell other people that it is impossible to make money online. Well, this is true in a sense. You can't make money social blogging.

Another reason most people fail to make any money online is because they buy into the gimmicks. These gimmick sites are designed to sell you on a dream. What I am trying to do is make these slick salesman's life a little harder by providing people with real information for free. People hunger for real information but are easily suckered into the 'make $10,000 a day in a week without doing anything' sales pitches that play into people's laziness and hope that they will hit the jackpot. Well, I'm sorry to tell you folks, but this isn't going to happen. You could write cheesy ebook or membership site and sucker a bunch of newbies in and probably make lots of money off of people's ignorance but do you really want to live your life like that? Plus, you will have people like me calling you out and discrediting you and then your name will be mud.

If you want to get into the 'make money online' game, and you do or else you wouldn't be reading this, then do yourself a favor and plan for the long term. This is key, there are no easy or quick millions online like these other programs will tell you. Go ahead, go buy into their cheap gimmicks. You will just have to come back here and read through the rest of my posts later. So sift through my epic posts and get the knowledge you need for free without spending time and energy on the fakers.

And that's one reason that I wanted to create this blog. To actually help people get the information they need to make money online and to link them to other genuine people in the community. Because the make money online community is so full of scam artists, wannabes, fakers, snake oil salesman, A-lists, useless advice, and newbies acting like they are gurus. You really have to search far, wide, and for a long time to find real information.

So why an ugly blog? Because you don't actually want anyone to read anything you write. You are not a blogger, you are an internet marketer. And internet marketers don't write things for people to read (unless they are selling a product). They write for the bots. Bots aren't smart, they can't tell if you write well. They search for keywords and their long tails to be able to give people relevant information when they type a keyword into the search field.

The reason you want an ugly blog with no real information is because you are going to place ads in the money spot (top left) and all over the rest of the blog. You make money with an ugly blog because people will see the ugliness and automatically think that nothing this ugly has any relevant content then they will leave. You want to encourage them to leave by clicking out through something that gives you money either through adsense, an affiliate product, or to another one of your blogs that is monetized in someway. If you are real good at this technique you will have your own blogs linked a dozen deep all of which are ugly and provide no real information but make you money. This is how internet marketing is done. Ethical? It's somewhat of a grey area. But do you want to make money online or do you want to keep chasing a specter?

The tricky part of this technique is that you aren't supposed to make a blog just for the purpose of making money with adsense. And you actually need to drive traffic to it. You are going to have to use all the search engine optimization techniques we've discussed in earlier posts. And you are going to have to use your other sites that have aged, have page rank, and have relevancy to back link to your adsense blog. You are also going to have to write some content that makes some sense in case someone from G happens upon it. You don't want your adsense account banned.

So the basic technique here is to create an optimized blog that is ugly (but not too ugly), set it up so that the only thing that pops out is your adsense or affiliate ads, and then drive traffic to it using backlinks.

If that sounds simple that's because it is. It's simple but it is going to take some planning, some effort, and some time to build it and get traffic. But once you set everything up you will be making money as long as people are searching for the terms you targeted.

The best thing about this technique is that you can use a free blogger or wordpress blog to do it because they are already very ugly. Or, at least with wordpress, you can make it ugly.

The hard parts of making money with an ugly blog is finding the right level of ugly. You don't want to make the blog so ugly that people will immediately back click.

If you've read this far then you are a trooper and in need of some serious online money making advice. Check out how to earn online money with boring memo for a more detailed post about making money online with an ugly blog.

Search Engine Optimization Basics

2009-07-17T10:54:00.000-07:00

In my last post when I was talking about how to make money online I discussed the importance of Search Engine Optimization. I was saying that if you want to make money with your blog then you are going to have to optimize it for search engine traffic because social traffic does not click your adds or buy your products. If you are trying to get people to read your blog then you are not going to make very much money unless you are an A-lister and that list is pretty short. Even if you do just want to get people to read your blog it would help you out to learn about search engine optimization.

As I've said before and I'll say it many more times throughout this blog if you are writing for people to read then you are a blogger. Bloggers don't make money, internet marketers make money. Internet marketers know about SEO and how to make money with a webpage and it has nothing to do with writing quality content. Internet marketers actually don't want you to read anything they write. If you are reading what they wrote then you aren't clicking on their adsense.

There are two ways to optimize your blog. On and off page site optimization. We'll start by talking about on page SEO. The first thing you do when you create a blog is decide on the layout. This will dramatically affect your on site SEO. When the Google spiders crawl your page they start at the top left of your header, then down the tool bars, then your content, then your footer. You want to make it as easy as possible for the bots to figure out what keywords you are targeting. So put your main keyword in your title. Then in your subtitle put your long tail keywords. This will tell the G bots exactly what keywords you are targeting.

The beauty of using a blogger blog, besides it being free, is that layouts like I use are perfectly optimized for Google right out of the box. That is one of the reasons I am using a free blogger. So when the bots are done reading the header they go down the side bar so it will be beneficial to your page ranking to use your keywords and longtails there along with pictures. The key to putting pictures in your blog is to use the alt tags. All you have to do to put alt tags is go into the html of your picture and put your keywords as an alt tag.

Then the bots come to your content. The first thing they read is the title of your post. So put your keyword and a longtail in the title of your post, that pertains to your content of course. Then the bot reads your post so use your keyword and long tails as many times as you can without setting off a red flag a G. The norm is about 3 to 6 times per one hundred words. Anything above a 7% keyword density is going to make Google suspicious of you keyword loading your blog so don't do it.

SEO Tip: Write long posts. A long post gives you the chance to have more keywords. If someone else writes a 500 word post about SEO optimization they can have around 25 of their main keyword in their. But if I write a 1000 word post then I can have twice as much. Writing a long post also gives you the chance to accidentally put in a keyword that could rank high in G and give you traffic you weren't even consciously targeting.

If you are trying to make money with adsense it is smart to only have one post per page or only posts that are targeting the same keywords. The reason for this is that having multiple posts on one page about different subjects will confuse the google bots and they will not know which ads to put on your site. This will prompt G to give you Public Service Announcement ads or blogger ads that will give you anywhere between 1 to 3 cents each and you can't live on that. Having unrelated posts will also give you untargeted traffic which will not click your ads and they will not buy your products.

On page optimization is important. It will get you higher in the rankings even you don't do any off page optimization but it will take a lot longer. So let's get into the real important aspects of how to rank high in Google, which is the easiest way to make money online for free. The main idea that you should take away from this post is get backlinks. Backlinks. Backlinks. Backlinks. This is the key to making money online. This is what everyone is after.

There is a difference in the quality of backlinks though. The best backlink you can get would be from an relevant anchored keyword link inside an article relevant to your site from a PR10 that has a similar subject to you. This is pretty much impossible, but it is the highest quality link you can get. The quality of the backlink is degrade as it gets farther away from this. Blogroll links are not as good quality as an relevant anchored keyword link from inside a relevant article. If you get a link from inside an article from an unrelated site with a high PR then it is not as good as the same link in a relevant article from a related site with slightly lower PR. In any case even a bad backlink is better than no links at all.

So the problem that people have is how to get backlinks? What do you do to get good keyword anchored backlinks? Well, the easiest way to do this is to write a quality article with your link already embedded in in the first paragraph. It's important that the link be in the first paragraph because some sites post article snippets where they take just the first or first couple of paragraphs and post that as a preview with a read more link. If your link is in the last paragraph then you are missing out on that backlink. This is called link baiting and you can do it with quality articles. This is the easiest way to get backlinks but it there is no guarantee and it is slow to work.

After you have created your blog, optimized it, and written a couple posts the next thing to do is to post a Hubpage and a Squidoo Lense about your subject with keyword anchored backlinks to your site. An important part of this strategy that many people mess up on is to send all your links to your homepage. This is a mistake. Would this happen if you were getting organic links? The point to creating your own backlinks is to make it look as normal as possible. So point some of your links to your deep articles. And don't put too many links on one lens or hub. This won't help you. It bleeds the link juice that these pages have in too many places to have a good effect.

You can also create an account on the biggest online article publishers. Publishers like eZineArticles and GoArticles both have high page ranks so they are crawled multiple times a day by the G bots which means that when your article is published with a backlink to your page the bot with crawl through your link to your money blog. This is also a strategy to get indexed quickly.

Another way to get backlinks is to buy them. This is less than ethical and there's a possible of Google finding out and punishing you. But still, some people who have the money will contact other sites in the same niche that aren't a direct competition and purchasing a keyword anchored backlink.

A less expensive way to get links that you don't directly pay for but still costs money is joining a community that have blogs you can post to with high PR.

Some people will join forums with do follow links in their signatures or post on blogs like wordpress that allow do follow links. The problem with this is that it is very time consuming and most of the time the keywords on the page are not very relevant to your blog.

These are the basic search engine optimization techniques that people use to make money online.

Search Engine Optimization and Making Money Online

2009-07-17T08:42:00.000-07:00

The key to making money online is to build a website with relevant key words for the niche you are targeting and then drive traffic. There are two distinct types of traffic: social and search engine. One of them will not make you any money and the other one will.

The main reason that people do not make money online is because they see bloggers like Problogger with thousands of subscribers and assume that he is making lots of money from them. But social bloggers don't make money and here's why: the people who read their sites are other social bloggers. People who have their own blogs don't usually buy stuff from other people's blogs, they know what an affiliate link is and if they do buy something they will put in their own affiliate link to get the comission. People who have been online already know the game that people like Darren Rowse are playing. They chase social traffic by writing posts that will get people to read, tell their readers how much money they make by blogging, and then sell advertising.

Besides being hard work, social traffic does not convert nor do they click on your adsense links. They make money by selling advertising space to companies that still think that because a blog has a couple thousand subscribers they will convert lots of the traffic. But these companies fail to realize that social traffic does not convert.

Normal people that don't know what an affiliate link is are not going to go to Problogger to find out how make money online. They are going to use a search engine, probably Google, and they are going to type in something like 'how to make money online.' They are then going to click on the sites that come up on the first page, probably only the couple at the top. Those are the people that are actually going to buy something from your affiliate link or when they see how ugly your blog is they will immediately click out, hopefully through one of your adsense links. This is where the money is, at the top of the Google search engine for your niche.

How do you get to the top? This is the hard part and this is where most people that try to make money online fail. They use up all their time and energy chasing social traffic and they don't pay any attention to search engine optimization. These bloggers usually figure out that they need backlinks from other relevant sites to get traffic. This is true but the purpose of getting backlinks is not to direct traffic from the link. The link is there to give you authority for your targeted keywords. Most social traffic doesn't understand the importance of the keyword anchored backlinks. Let's use Problogger as an example. I'm not bashing Darren Rowse here, I like the guy and he is good at what he does but for most people being on the A-list is not a possibility and even if you come close it will not make you very much money for the amount of time and effort you put into your blog. Since social bloggers don't understand the important of keyword anchored backlinks they will link to your article by saying something like, "This blog called Problogger is really great. Check it out here."

A backlink like that is useless. Google will see that and rank Darren's blog for the word here. Other people will use the word Problogger or Daren Rowse as a link anchor. This is equally useless. A backlink with those anchors will tell the Google bots to rank that site for the keywords Problogger and Daren Rowse. Nobody who is interested in wanting to make money online will search in Google for either of those terms. So the only way Darren is going to get traffic is to chase it with Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and all those other social blogs that nobody not already online knows anything about. The problem with this kind of traffic is that they will not click on adsense and if they do they will not convert.

This is the reason that 95% of people that are trying to make money online will give up in six months. They will realize that they are not getting any return for the massive amount of time and effort they are putting into their blogs and into digging, commenting, and stumbling. That's not even to mention the heavy toll that spending all their time online had on their relationships with their family and friends. And then they will be bitter and write posts about how it is impossible to make money online and how adsense is dead. Well, they are right, it is impossible to make money from blogging.

If you want to be a blogger, if you want friends, if you having something important to impart on the rest of humanity, then by all means keep blogging. But if you want to make money then start optimizing your sites for Google.

All right, let's talk about how to optimize for search engine traffic. Keep in mind when you read the rest of this post that when I talk about search engines I am really referring to Google. This is for a couple reasons. Most people that go online to find out something use Google to search. Also, other search engines like Yahoo use meta tags to rank pages. Google does not use meta tags because people use to load them down with everything they could think of to rank for.

So how does Google figure out the websites to pull up for people that type in the search term "how to make money online?" Google ranks sites first for relevant content. This is on-page optimization. Write content that has the keywords you want to rank for in the title, subtitle, headers, and throughout the post. This will let Google know without a doubt what your site and post are about. The Google bots are not smart. They bots cannot tell what content is quality for readers. They cannot tell how good of a write you are. What they search for is relevant keywords and then they rank your site accordingly.

So to rank well for your site with on-page optimization you have to have your keywords in your title, subtitle, post titles, and in your content. This is key. Without this you don't stand a chance ranking on the top of G where all the money is. A strategy that people who actually make money online is to target a post for a certain key word and then try to add as many long tail keywords to the post as possible. An easy way to achieve this is to write epic posts. Think about it. You can only put in your main keyword a couple times per one hundred words. Most people will write 500 to 1000 word posts. So what if I write a 2000 word post. I get to put in my main keyword twice as much as other people. I also get to put in way more long tail keywords.

Another advantage that the epic post strategy is ranking well for long tail keywords that you are not even trying to target. Try to write a long post and let G tell you what long tails that people are finding your site with.

If you get your site optimized you might rank well and other people might link to you if your content is good. But on page SEO is only about 10 to 20 percent of the battle to rank well with Google. Most of the ability to rank well happens with off page optimization and this comes in the form of keyword anchored backlinks. We all ready went over the importance of getting people to link to your site with relevant keywords. But if I get 2000 relevant keyword anchored backlinks all from PR0 webpages that might or might not be relevant to the content on my page and you get 2 or 3 keyword anchored links from PR3 and PR4 sites that are relevant to your site, then you will rank better than me.

This is the hard part. How do you get a relevant site to give you a link? People are stingy with their link juice and it's understandable. The more links you give out on your site the less juice that each link will give out. Also there are different ways for other sites to link to you. A link to your site from a relevant blog with a site wide link in their side bar will help you. But a keyword anchored backlink from a relevant blog from inside a post that also deals with your blog will help you more. So their are different quality backlinks.

What are the different ways to get backlinks? The cheapest way to get relevant links is to do article marketing. You can sign up for free with eZineArticles or GoArticles, write your own relevant articles, and use keyword anchored backlinks to give some juice to your site. Another way is to make your own Hubpage or Squidoo Lens that has a link to your site. The easiest way to get links is to write quality material that will be link bait for other blogs. It is important to get them to use keyword relevant links though otherwise it will not be of any help. One way you can help them use the keywords you want to link to you is to put a link in the first paragraph yourself so that when they copy your article your link will automatically be there. There are other ways to get links, some of which G does not like. Paying for links is one way to fast track your page rank but if G finds out they might de index you. Black hatting and spamming are pretty much out. I'm not going to go into those methods because they are short sighted and will get your adsense account banned if Google finds out.

If you really want to make money online then you are going to have to bunker down for the long term. You are not going to get rich overnight so don't believe any of those bloggers trying to sell you their membership site or ebook that will tell you how to get rich overnight.

I'll talk more specifically about search engine optimization techniques in my next post about how to make money online.