YOPINTER-IT

Here is something I learnt about making some cash online

Aah, is this the Holy Grail? And just how do you make money online?

It is not as easy as people make out. Most experts only reveal so much of the plan because they have something else to sell you to keep you going.

Have you ever attended a seminar or a workshop to do with internet marketing and making money with the internet? If you have then this article might not be of any interest to you, so I do apologise in advance, but if you have never been to one before, let me try and explain from my experience.

I did have some contact with an internet marketer some years ago, about nine I think, although I did not have a clue what one was. He told me he was in publishing and did I have an area of expertise that I thought I could write a monthly article about.

I thought I did as I was involved in MOT testing vehicles and I thought drivers would want to know about what was involved as the majority of vehicle owners did not have a clue about what was involved, then again why would they?

I reckoned my experience as a mechanic would be useful. I did not have a product that the market wanted. His explanation was simply that people buy what they want and not what they need, even if it was a good product. I did not understand the difference at the time.

One day some years later I received an invitation from him about making money from information products. I now realise I was just a name on a list he was building.

He had been building a list of potential customers and I was on it. Did it work? Yes, I was hooked in by the letter and the offer. I know now it to be called a sales page and the art is known as copywriting.

I had just bough my first product that would show me how to make money from the internet and also with mail shots. Was I now ready for earning some money from the internet?

Well not quite because like a lot of things out there showing how profitable the internet can be, there was not enough step by step guidance. We are all at different levels.

People sometimes overestimate what we do know.

I think it boils down to three things we need to understand firstly about the way money is made online and to a large extent offline.

Theses three things are:

1. Get a website and let people advertise on your site. For example if you have a site on sports equipment, then you could let manufacturers advertise in much the same way as you see in a paper or magazine ie a small box or a picture ad. You decide how much to charge.

Alternatively you could let one of the internet search engine companies just place adverts on your site. You do not get to set your rates.........mmmmmm! Oh, and you only get paid if someone actually clicks on an advert.

2. Earn some money online by selling a product or service that belongs to someone else. This method of selling is refered to as affiliate marketing. You advertise for them to get a customer, and you put the buyer in contact with the seller and earn a fee or commission when they buy. You pay your own advertising costs and as long as the commission is greater than the advertising costs, then you make some money online.

You do not need to speak to anyone or meet them. So if you are shy you can sell without risking that shyness.

3. You can make money on the internet also by selling something you own. Now this can be a service you offer as part of your job. It could be by selling goods you have bought to sell on eg an antiques dealer.

Better still, you could create a product or have someone do it for you to sell online yourself and you get to keep all the money you make online. Even better, you could now have other people sell your product and not pay them unless they make a sale. That sounds cool.

I believe that is the starting point we need to understand about making an income online, especially if you are a newbie.

I hope this is a help to what might be the three options open to us.