What Is Online Marketing?

No Pension? Need Extra Cash?  Start your own online business. I can show you how to for pennies compared to a stick and motar fixed location business.

How would you like to earn money while you sleep? Me too. And I do. Let me tell you a little story…

Before moving to Hawaii I used to work in a large auto repair shop in Garden Grove CA. The place was so well run, that I figured someday I would have a shop that, hopefully I could leave the employees to run for me while I was off doing something else if I wanted to.

I figured if you can do it there you can do it here in Kona right? I gave up on that thought in 2005 after 8 years of trying to make it work. I was just tired of the whole nightmare of trying to hire, train and keep good mechanics. Good techs are hard to find on the mainland, much less out in the middle of the Pacific ocean.

I need to make more money than one guy alone can produce. Now what? In the fall of 2005 I read an e-book that a woman wrote, a former air traffic controller who had built an online affiliate business in her spare time while still working. She said after about 2 years her online income had surpassed her air traffic control job income. That got my attention.

But what I didn’t know was that when she started out there was hardly any competition and I think it was a lot easier to make money online back then than it is today. But, it still is possible to make a nice side income today with very little up front cost if you’re willing to put in some sweat equity. I was hoping after reading her book that I too would have success to the point I could quit my auto shop business and just do web work. No such luck. It’s always harder than it sounds.

If I had figured out how to make a lot of money online in the first couple of years and quit my job than who would I have to talk to during the day? Who would fix Mr. Soto’s car? He’s been coming to me for long time and he’s in his 80’s and I’d hate for him to have to go find another mechanic if I closed down. So I’ve decided to keep fixing his car until he doesn’t need me anymore. And if I’m fixing his, I guess I might as well keep fixing everyone elses.

I have learned enough that I make $400 to $500 $800 or more every month on auto pilot. In January 2006 I started building a website called Konafriends.com. Through various advertising programs that are all automated, the site produces a nice monthly income whether I work on it or not. But it wasn’t until after I had about 3.5 years of experience that it started to show decent results. That’s OK, you don’t start out in any business making big bucks right from the start. If you do, let me know about it would you?

But it doesn’t have to be that way for you. I can share with you the mistakes I made so you don’t have to make them yourself and you can start making money in a lot less time. Would an extra few hundred dollars per month help you out? Who knows, pick the right niche and you could quit your job and just work online from home. Or Starbucks. Or Lava Java. Or the beach. Nice huh? Are you starting to see why I’ve put the time into learning this?

Recently I found a niche that I’m building a website around which just happens to be an area that I’m an expert in.  It’s related to auto repair and there is a merchant that pays me 6% every time a visitor from my site, that I refer to her site, buys something. So far this site is making me $150 per month after just 2 months of working on it. UPDATE: 11-12-10 site is now making over $500 per month.  This site has so much potential that it may grow my income to the point I could let my wife quit her job. So far it’s looking good. For example: One commission I earned on the sale of one product the other day paid me over $80!

What Is Affiliate Marketing? And How I Make Money At It

Let’s start with affiliate marketing:
It’s simply referring a visitor from your website to a merchant’s website and earning a commission when the visitor you sent either buys something or fills out a form on the merchant’s website.

Here’s a real world example: On my Konafriends.com site there is a page about vacation rentals. If the visitor clicks my merchant’s link and goes to the merchant’s site, and fills out a form for more information, I earn $2. If they’re a property owner and join the merchant’s rental agency pool, I earn a $90 commission. The swim suit page, same thing. On the getting to Kona page, Hawaiian airlines gives me a percentage of every ticket sold through my affiliate link.

How You Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

Let’s say you build a website about antique dolls and let’s say there are 20 different styles of dolls. You write one article describing everything you know, or can find out about each doll, and make each doll the topic of one page.

Now you have a niche theme “doll website” with 20 pages of good solid content when you are finished. Next, you find a merchant who sells dolls, and related items, and you sign up for their free affiliate program. You place links on your website, going to the merchant’s website, and every time someone clicks through from your link, and buys something, you earn a commission. The commission rates all differ from one merchant to the next. But you’ll know up front, before agreeing to promote their products, what their rate or fee is that they will pay you.

In a nutshell:

1. You build a website centered around a niche topic that lots of folks are interested in.
2. The topic must have a related product(s) people will buy. If they are emotionally attached to the product that’s even better.

How Do You Get Started?

What If You Don’t Know Anything Website Building?

You can enroll in my 6 week online affiliate marketing business course. Here is what you will learn:

* How to find profitable markets you can make money from
* How to pick the right product and merchant to represent
* How to build a website to promote these products
* You will learn about how you can use a robust FREE content management system to create a highly professional and scalable website.
* What Is A Host?
* What is A Domain Name And How To Pick The Right One
* How to determine the keywords your potential customers use to find your products and services
* How to include these in your website content so you can make sure your site (and not your competition’s) is the site they find when ready to buy
* How to work with a software program called Market Samurai to create your own keyword list and find profitable markets
* About backlinks and how these links that point back to your website can help catapult your site higher in search engine returns
* Outsourcing – Where & How
* What tasks can you outsource to a professional?
* How and where to hire cheap copy writers
* Newsletters and how they can drive sales and what software to use
* Using Video On Your Site – What camera to use
* Social Media – Facebook Marketing – What you need to know
* Google Adsense – What it is and how to make money with it on auto pilot. I’ll show how to set it and forget it
* Google Adwords – What it is and how to get your clock cleaned with it. It’s not for beginners

At the end of this course you will have:

* Learned Enough Information To Pick A Niche Market To Promote
* Learned The Basics To Keyword Research
* Set-Up A Website That You Can Add As Many Pages To As You Want