Starting out trying to make money online can almost make your head EXPLODE…
Automated webinars, mobile marketing, auto-blogging, local business marketing, iPhone apps and now Google+!
The list goes on, and guess what? Next month you can bet there will be something else to add to the list!
Don’t get me wrong all of these ideas have potential but the sheer volume can literally be overwhelming and we can easily end up with “Information Overload”.
I’d like to propose a solution.
It’s a 5-step blueprint that’s already worked for me.
It’s also something used by at least 95% of all successful businesses making money online today.
Interested?
Let’s get started…
5 Simple Steps to Making Money Online
Step 1: Pick A Profitable Niche
There are 3 broad markets filled with hungry buyers that have a desperate or urgent need to solve their problems. These are:
– Health (e.g., build a six-pack, lower back pain, pregnancy, raw food)
– Money (e.g., stock day-trading, how to start a cleaning business, identity theft, interview skills)
– Lifestyle (e.g., success with women/men, dating for divorcees, golf, bee keeping)
As I’ve indicated with the examples in brackets, the first job is to select a very specific niche within one of these broad markets. If possible, choose an area that you feel passionate about. Personally speaking, I went into the stock day-trading niche because I have a finance background and am passionate about the stock market.
The next job is to ensure that other marketers are already making money in the niche that you have selected. Here are some ways to do this:
– Look for ads when you search for terms related to your niche in Google (look across the top and down the right hand side of the results page).
– Check to see how many related magazines there are at Magazines.com. It costs a lot to produce a magazine so this is a great profitability indicator.
– Is there a Dummies.com book dedicated to the topic you have selected? If so, your niche has great money making potential as the Dummies team do a LOT of research before releasing a book.
Step 2: Set Up A Website
After selecting your profitable niche, buy a domain and install a (free) WordPress blog on it. This blog will give you a great platform from which you can develop a great level of trust and rapport with your prospects.
If you’ve no idea how to set up a website then I have recorded a free video in which I show you live and in step-by-step fashion everything you need to get this done. It’s simple really.
Please click HERE to watch it.
Step 3: Add An Email “Opt-In” Form
You might have heard the phrase “the money is in the list”.
Guess what? It’s true!
But more accurately we could say “the money is in the relationship with the list.”
This is why it’s crucial to capture as many email addresses from visitors to your blog as possible.
This way you can build a relationship with them through the power of email marketing. It’s where the real money is made online as it is so much easier to sell to people after you have developed a good level of trust with them.
Sounds like a lot of work? Well, yes work is involved but it’s one off as once you have the basic set up the whole thing can run on autopilot courtesy of a fabulous tool called an autoresponder…
An autoresponder is just a simple online tool that allows you to send pre-written emails out on a scheduled basis. Hence my use of the word “autopilot”!
So signup with a company like Aweber and add an opt-in web form to the side bar of your blog. If you find Aweber too expensive then you might consider a service such as MailChimp which is free for the first 2,000 subscribers.
Both services give you the autoresponder you need.
You’ll need to offer a free gift such as an eBook, video or audio to entice more people to sign up for your list. As an alternative to creating the free gift yourself, a great option is to customize a Private Label Rights (PLR) product. You can find lots of free and low cost PLR products that you can modify (and even claim authorship of) by searching in Google for “PLR” plus the name of the niche that you have chosen.
Step 4: Drive Traffic To Your Site To Build Your List Of Subscribers
This is where most people fail!
Getting high quality, targeted traffic is a skill that just escapes many people.
But it needn’t. It’s just a skill you need to learn that’s all. And it’s a great deal of fun once you get it working – trust me!
There are tons of very effective traffic methods – far too many to cover now – but here are my top 3 recommendations for when you are starting out. As you can see, they are all “free” traffic strategies (that is, they’ll only take your time and won’t cost you any money):
- Guest Posting – Search in Google for some keywords related to you niche together with the phrase “write for us”. You’ll find many websites this way that allow you to submit articles that will be exposed to huge audiences. On one occasion I generated in excess of 600 visitors doing this in a few days. All for 60 minutes writing a 500-word article!
- Interviews – This traffic strategy leverages the “power-of-association”. By interviewing an established expert in your niche you automatically elevate yourself to a higher level of authority in the eyes of your audience. I’ve used this strategy several times myself to great effect. Interviews can be in video, audio or written format but I’d recommend starting out with audio. For this you’ll need to contact an expert by looking on sites such as Guru.com or contacting bloggers in your niche directly via the contact page on their sites. Then arrange a Skype call and use Pamela (for the PC) or Call Recorder (for the Mac) to record it.
- Forum And Blog Commenting – Blogs and forums both allow you to link back to your own website when you make comments on them. However, the real key to success with this strategy is to focus on high traffic blogs and forums. So be sure to check the number of comments, Facebook Like’s, Tweets etc before you spend time commenting.
5. Make Money $$$!
Okay, now it’s time to start making some money!
By now you should be posting on your blog at least once per week. When you add a new blog post email your growing list of subscribers to let them know (you can do this easily using your Aweber or MailChimp service).
This process is key as it helps to develop the relationship between you and them which makes selling so much easier later on.
After you have been doing this a couple of weeks you are in a great position to send an email to your subscribers with an affiliate link to a product that you think will help them out. It is vital to ensure that the product you are promoting is appropriate and truly value added for them. This way you can build even more trust and they will love you even more!
To find appropriate products to promote check out ClickBank, oDigger.com and Amazon.com.
So there you go, a simple 5-step blueprint to making money online that works.
Remember that this all revolves around building an email list and, as I mentioned last time, it’s no surprise that at least 95% of the marketers and online businesses in all kinds of niches do exactly this.
Rob Cornish offers FREE step-by-step video training in his Kick-Start Profits programme. To sign up and receive a complimentary copy of Rob’s book “101 Profitable Niches Analyzed – And How To Profit From Them”, please visit: http://www.KickStartProfits.Com