Shake My Money Maker

Most often, the first question someone asks when they want to start making money online is where to start?

Companies have products or services that they will pay you a fee for promoting on your/a website. These are called “affiliate programs”. Several different concepts based upon affiliate programs will make you money.

These are the basics of what you need to get started:

1. Some form of web hosting:
   1. You can use something free:
      1. Squidoo.com
      2. Blogger.com
      3. Wordpress.com
   2. You can get an inexpensive hosting account
      1. IX Web Hosting has decent plans and service
2. A content publishing system
   1. Many people use the free WordPress blogging platform (like this site)
   2. Joomla is also free
   3. Drupal, also free
3. Source(s) of traffic to your website
   1. The free way is via SEO or “Search Engine Optimization”. This takes time and effort, but any traffic is free.
      1. Learning about SEO is a whole subject in itself. Visit seomoz.org for good info.
   2. The paid way is called PPC or “Pay Per Click”. This is very fast to setup. You will pay on the competitive market for each unique click your ads receives.
      1. Google Adwords
      2. Yahoo Search Marketing
      3. Microsoft Adcenter
      4. Miva
      5. Trafficvance
4. A way to track your progress
   1. Google Analytics offers free statistics for your website
   2. Reinvigorate is also free
5. An Affiliate Program to Promote
   1. NeverBlue – Good network, primarily has CPA (Cost-Per-Action) offers, where someone signs up or buys a single product, or fills out a survey then you get paid.
   2. COPEAC – also CPA
   3. Commission Junction – Mostly promoting catalogs of or individual products.
   4. Ebay Partner Network – Promoting auctions and items being sold on eBay.
   5. Amazon Associates – Products
   6. Clickbank – CPA
   7. Max Bounty – CPA
6. Some knowledge of web design
   1. If you don’t have a clue about web designing or developing, your options are more limited. But it does not exclude you from making a living online.

Stay tuned for Part 2 where we get to put all of our resources together and make some money.