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Have I convinced you yet that you can make money online? Great! So now you just need to know where to begin. There are literally thousands of opportunities available to you, from affiliate programs, membership sites, selling products, e-books or advertising. I couldn’t begin to list them all, but I can highlight a few of the most common.

1. Advertising – Almost everyone who has a site online, whether it’s a commercial site or family blog displays ads. Adsense is Google’s version and they dominate the PPC (pay per click) market. So if you’re a merchant interested in placing ads on other’s websites or a website owner interested in displaying ads, chances are you’ll use Adsense. To earn money from ads, your visitors must click on a link to be directed to the merchant’s site. You want your visitors to find relevant ads when they visit your site, so they’re more likely to click on a link. If you select a niche market with sufficient traffic you can make a tidy sum from Adsense. Most of my ads pay pennies per click so it takes a ton of traffic to pay for a cup of Starbucks.

2. Affiliates – Amazon is built on the backs of its affiliates and no one does it better. That’s not to say they’re perfect, but they have tons of options and support for their associates. You can set up an entire bookstore on your site with a few lines of code or you can link from individual products. Linkshare and ClickBank offer a wide range of affiliate programs. You sign up at either one (or both) and then pick merchants with your audience in mind. Signing up is free: don’t ever pay to sell someone’s product. Remember: just because you have a link or banner on your site does not mean anyone will click on it or buy anything. You may link to Amazon from your site, but most people will just type in Amazon and fill their cart. The only way to make money from affiliates is to promote the products as though they are your own. It’s not a work-free zone so make sure the commission you get paid is worth the effort you put in.

3. Selling Products, Services or Memberships – You can design a new product, retool an existing one or market your services and make money. The key is to know your Unique Selling Perspective. Why is your product better than your competitor’s? A perfect example of USP is Netflix. I remember when it was just a start up company and I wondered how it would work to rent a movie online and receive DVDs in the mail. Come to find out, it works quite well and Blockbuster never even saw it coming. Netflix didn’t invent movie rentals, but they did market a unique service which carved a nice little niche ($7.03M 3Q07) for them.

No matter what option you select to make money online, you have to generate traffic to your site. Article marketing is the most effective and affordable option to increase your credibility and relevancy with search engines. Your site should be content rich, with plenty of inbound high quality links. You can write supplemental articles with links to your site and place them on sites such as Peoplefuel.com or Wordpress. Either of these sites will host your article or blog for free. The more articles you write, the more traffic you can generate. Sounds like a topic for another article.

“How would I be doing this differently if I were willing to let it be easy?”–Alan Cohen

This is a great reminder because too often I make things much more difficult than they need to be. I don’t think I’m alone. In fact I think many businesses could benefit by getting back to basics,

If you are operating an online business always keep your customer in mind. The best way to keep your customer in mind is to go through the motions. Begin by searching for your product using the key words that come to mind. Did your site come up on the first page of Google, Yahoo or MSN? If not, how do your customers find you? Do they type in your company name? Unless you’re “AMAZON”, that’s highly unlikely. Most online shoppers will search using phrases rather than just key words, such as:

“Women’s Clothing”

“Ideas for decorating kid’s room”

“Crafts for Christmas”

It takes a lot of work to ensure your site is relevant and search engines will direct traffic your way.

When visitors arrive are they greeted with a pleasant, profession site? Shoppers will appreciate a clear and simple design, with easy navigation and access to help.

What is your first impression of your site? Is it cluttered? Too much clutter on the front the page will appear to be spam. Is it easy to read? Black letters on a white background is still the best option for legibility.

Some shoppers still have dial up access and if your site is budging with images it’ll take a considerable amount of time to load.

Can you quickly find what you came for? If not, is there an option to search your site, or a site map to assist visitors?

Once you find the product on your site BUY IT! Does your shopping cart operate correctly? Is all of the required information requested? Collect only the information you need to speed up the process. I have encountered sites where I wanted to buy something and couldn’t. Statistics indicate ~50% of customers abandon their shopping cart before making a purchase. A major factor in this is a poorly designed checkout.

There are also annoying forms that don’t save the information so if one required field is overlooked, you’re back to square one. When the purchase is complete, do you receive feedback that it was successful, such as a receipt or email confirmation? If you are using PayPal, you want to verify the funds were correctly deposited, confirm the transaction numbers, customer information and amount are all correct.

When the shopping experience is complete, what follow up do you offer your customers: a thank you message or a coupon for future purchases? If a customer is unhappy can they reach you and what remedies can you offer?

Walk in your customer’s footsteps through the entire buying process and eliminate any unnecessary delays. It’s just good business to get your site back to basics.

I think I am addicted to starting new websites. I have enough websites now to keep 30 people busy but I continually start new ones. I love to buy new domain names and if I have a great domain name I just can’t let it be I have to start a website on it. I guess there are worse things to be addicted to, but this really is a problem. It keeps me from dedicating the time that is necessary to maintain each one and they become neglected.

So what am I going to do about this addiction? I have no idea, but if you are looking to start your own website and don’t have the money to put everything together then contact me and I will gladly let you use one of mine. I have a few people who are running websites that I own the domain and provide the hosting. They get to monetize the site any way they see fit and add whatever content they want.

As long as they keep up with the site they can run them forever as far as I am concerned. I really have no use for this many websites, so take one of them over today and you can have a fresh startup without any of the costs involved. Meanwhile I will probably find another domain name that I just can’t live without and have a fresh idea that just can’t wait. I had better get some help for this condition.

In the Internet marketing game there are a few realities that are too hard for some people to face. The first is that an Internet business takes every bit as much work to build as any regular brick and mortar business you can think of. The second is that Internet businesses fail at an even higher rate than offline businesses. Internet businesses fail at such a high rate because of the lack of commitment from their owners. There are some other factors involved also but we will get into those in a few minutes. My belief is that because the entry cost is so low that there is either a lack of commitment or a lack of belief that the business is real for the new owners.

When you don’t spend very much money to start a business it is easy to walk away and say to yourself that you gave it a shot, but it just didn’t work out. Regardless of the reasons why, you are still giving up on your dreams. Why would anyone give up on their dreams of owning their own business? I believe it is because they don’t take the time to really learn how to make their business work. They can’t figure out how to actually capitalize on the work they are doing for their business. Even worse is that they don’t bother to ask the right questions and really try to make it work at all. When all they are looking at losing is a few bucks and a little time it makes it far too easy to just walk away. Don’t be one of the millions of people who walk away from their Internet businesses every year, take the time to learn how to run your business right and then use that knowledge to build your dream.

Other factors that play into Internet businesses failing are scams and schemes. There are so many scams on the Internet that directly play on people’s desires to run their own businesses it can be very discouraging when you are trapped by one of them. Then from fear of being trapped by another people avoid or are leery of real opportunities. If you have ever been trapped by a scam and lost some of your hard earned money, the only way not to lose your dreams to it is to get right back up and keep going. Losing money sucks, but we all do it every day, we throw good money after bad and sometimes lose too much. It happens, so what, don’t let it deter you from achieving success. Find the right opportunity and grab hold of it. After you have been burned once it will be a lot easier to tell what is or isn’t a scam in the future.

Nobody knows everything there is to know about Internet marketing, Technology and people change so fast it would be impossible. But it does help to be a part of a team or organization that is willing to help. That is why we are here to help people succeed who aren’t willing to give up on their dreams. Join us at the forum and be a part of a team that is willing to help you succeed and learn how to market your business. Just don’t give up.

I am going to follow up this article with a few about scams on the internet, just to point out a few obvious things to avoid. But remember that not everything is a scam and any golden nuggets of information you can pick up along the way will help you down the road.