Make
money from the internet
Making money from the internet is no longer reserved for IT whizzkids. Now anyone with a good idea or a hobby can create an online money-spinner that works round the clock. Read on to find out how.
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MAKE MONEY FROM THE NET
It''s the new internet boom and this
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Developments in the way online businesses make money mean that you don''t have to spend all your time selling junk on eBay. Even amateurs such as bloggers or those running special-interest
websites can make money.
The secret is what is known as ''affiliate marketing''. It sounds complicated, but the premise is simple. You have a website, you put on it links to other websites that offer goods or services for sale. If someone clicks from you website to one of these, and then goes on to make a purchase, you receive money from the other website.
It may have once been the case that this type of commercial relationship would need face-to-face negotiations and complex contracts. But not any more.
> Make money from the net (part2)
Websites can now register with
affiliate marketing networks that match up affiliates – that''s you and your website – with advertisers – that''s the online sellers of goods and services that will pay to get people onto their sites.
Your website can sign up to be an affiliate for free. You will receive a list of advertising
sites willing to pay for customers put their way. If you link to one of these sites, you stand to make money for every sale that is subsequently made by people who have clicked through from your site. The network handles the collection of fees from advertiser, and the payment of commission to the affiliate.
The process means anyone with an interest they are passionate about - or even an entertaining blog - has the chance to create an income from a website. Experts say incomes of £1,000 a month should be possible, even for sites run on small scale. Here''s how it''s done.
What''s your passion? Be clear about what you want to achieve with your website. Successful examples of amateur sites are those that are genuinely interesting or useful to other people.
You might have a particular interest in, say, travel, but would you really be able to add anything useful to the thousands of other
travel resources on the internet? Better to concentrate a specialist area – for example, travel around a particular foreign city, or eco-friendly travel.
Setting up a website The thought of setting up a website might be daunting but the process is relatively simple nowadays. Use a guide like the one here.
If you optimise it, they will come People make whole careers out of advising on how to get websites to feature prominently on search engines such as Google. The process is called search engine optimisation, but it doesn''t need to be complicated.
Duncan Jennings started his first website when he was 17 and he has launched a number of successful sites using affiliate marketing. At the age of 24, he is now managing director of www.econversions.com.
''All websites want to appear at the top of the list when someone searches on Google. In response to a search, Google will take all the websites that are relevant and rank them according to the number and quality of other sites that have linke.
''If you can get links to your site on lots of others, you will be ranked higher and you will get more traffic. It builds from there.''
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