Get Paid BIG MONEY in 2011

I don’t know what made me feel like writing this article at midnight, but here goes. What I want to do is teach you how to make money this year, no matter what your skills are. The fact is that anyone can make money online easily. I am getting daily slack from a blogger friend of mine because I seem to be able to make easy money online, while they continue to struggle. It isn’t like I haven’t tried to help them with advice. It’s just they haven’t followed my advice yet.

The truth is that it is easier to make money online this year than it is to find a job in most states because of the current climate for businesses. Take for example the massive tax increase that just happened in Illinois bringing personal income taxes from 3% to 5%, and a corporate tax that will undoubtably make companies not want to hire anyone new (if they don’t downsize instead).

Now is the time to start a business of your own. Whether it is a service based business, ecommerce website, or a local brick and mortar company, now is the time. The trick is finding the right business that fits your personality and ambitions while choosing something that has a serious demand. Back when Bush took office, my web design business started to go south. It isn’t completely crash, but it dropped significantly by $20,000 a year. That’s when I realized that blogging and affiliate marketing was something I needed to take seriously, and it has paid off very well.

The different types of business

My favority type of business is affiliate marketing and blogging by far. It allows me to use leverage to generate an easy income. When I say easy, I don’t mean that it was easy to build. As a matter of fact, it was hard establishing my first serious blog. It took months of writing unique content, networking, and testing monetization methods. I still play with my money methods today in order to optimize them for maximum income.

Affiliate marketing can be entered into in a couple of different ways. One of the easiest ways happens when you have a marketing budget to begin with. If you do, then you can generate profits almost immediately. If not, then look forward to months if not years of free marketing methods before you see an income that you can be proud of.

The easy way of affiliate marketing is to setup a WordPress blog with a solid Clickbank product, then promote your blog using CPM marketing through Google Adwords to point directly to your product review post on the blog. The CPM (cost per thousand) model will get you maximum exposure for minimal dollars, unlike the CPC (cost per click) model which can have you broke in a matter of days. CPM also allows you to display your ads on relevant websites with an audience that is most likely going to be interested in your product.

The hard route is to establish yourself in the blogosphere like I did, and use your influence to draw attention to affiliate products that you recommend. These days, I use a combination of the two methods. But for lots of you, that will simply not be an option because of a lack of funds.

Budgeting for recoup

I would be wise to advise you to establish enough income to at least take care of your expenses. For example, your expenses with a blog would be a $14.95 per month hostgator account (one of the more expensive ones) which equals approximately $180 a year. It would be less for the same package if you were to pay for the entire year up-front as they give you a discount. Your other expense would be a $10 a year domain name from Godaddy. So you are looking at a $190 a year expense in the worst case scenario. Now if you were to sign up with the hostgator affiliate program, they pay $50 per sign-up to start. That means that if you were to refer only 4 hostgator signups, you would recoup your expenses for the year and walk away with a $10 profit. In the real estate business, this is the exact same thing you want to do. If you buy an income property that is not providing enough income to cover your mortgage and insurance, then you have what’s known as an alligator. It eats up your money.

Always think about recouping your expenses, and you will break even at the bare minimum. Once you get past “the hump”, then you end up making profits. That’s when you can party!

Find the right products

If you have been blog hopping for awhile, you will notice that everyone promotes the same products. One might think that this is a bad thing, because everyone must have already bought these products by now if they are all over the internet. But the fact is that many newbies come onto the scene every single day, and that amounts to new commissions for affiliate marketers.

When you really think about it in a responsible way, you will realize that the products must be popular for a reason. That reason is that the products are often high converting products. If they weren’t, then nobody would promote them. You can locate popular products to promote by searching Clickbank, and filing by popularity. You will notice that they all line up in a numbered order, and you can choose the products that fit your niche.

Pushing your products

You may have your product ready, and now it’s time to promote it. But how? There is actually no right way to about it. Every way possible is how you want to promote this product. You can promote it with banners on your sites, links within your articles, through your newsletter, and through social networks. There are limitless ways to go about promoting a product, but when you are promoting it, don’t hesitate to go all in and post it everywhere possible.

Pushing a product is all about the numbers game. The more the product is linked to with your unique affiliate id, the likelier you are to get sales commissions for the product.

The key to pushing products is traffic. There are tons of ways to generate that traffic, and those ways must be used on a very regular basis. You can just guest post once and hope that you generate enough traffic to make sales. You want to go out there and guest post until your name is well known in the blogosphere. You want to write so many EzineArticles that your fingers hurt, and the stats tell you that you did a good job.

Learn the many traffic generation methods by searching this blog, and checking out others. I have many guest posts on the subject which you can see linked from my blog here.

I covered affiliate marketing here, so let’s move on. There are many great ways to make money on your own, so let’s take a look at all of them.

Service based business

The service based business is what I initially got into many years ago. I started a seo company, and I slowly collected many monthly clients. Later on, I added web design and graphic design services amongst other things. Even now, I offer consulting services right here on this blog. All of these things are service based, and they have a demand. You may want to have a personal coach to teach you how to make money blogging, so you would sign up with me. You may want a WordPress blog installed with the greatest plugins, so you buy the service for $24.95 from me and have a blog up pretty quick.

Your service business doesn’t have to be computer related. Perhaps you want to consult on interior design, so you charge an hourly over-the-phone and email fee. Of course, you would want to promote your business online. But that’s easy.

Choose a service that you can see yourself providing for years to come. You don’t want to build a profitable business only to get bored with it later on. If you did get bored with it though, you may be able to sell the entire business online too. But that’s a different story.

Your service can also be local based. You can offer a car detailing service, and not even have a local office. You can work out of your home, and travel to the client to detail their vehicle. You can accept payments via cash, paypal, check, etc. Just make sure you account for your transactions so you are prepared during tax time.

Brick and mortar

The oldest business model has got to be brick and mortar. You may want to open up a restaurant, or a hardware store. If you have the funds to make this happen, then more power to you. What you have to keep in mind with brick and mortar is that you don’t have the entire planet as your customer. Make sure you find out what the locals have a demand for. If you were to open up a white castle where I live, then you would be loved by many. For some reason, the closest white castle is an hour drive away. It’s probably the only town that doesn’t have a burger king either, but two macdonald’s. The nearest king is 45 minutes away! God I crave a chicken whopper right now!

It shouldn’t be too hard to open up a brick and mortar business, as long as you plan ahead. Avoid specialty shops in a bad economy. A business that would do very bad here is probably an appliance repair shop. That’s because it would be cheaper to just grab a new appliance at our local menards, and know that it won’t have any more money eating problems for years to come. Food does generally well though because it is a consumable item. You only have to choose something that isn’t saturated in the market. The last thing you would do is open up another macdonalds here because there are two of them already.

How all business types relate

Every single one of these business have something in common. They would be operating in the current century, and a business without a website would be an outdated business.

The reason why you need a website regardless of what type of business you have is because everyone in 2011 and beyond expects it. People in our current time want instant information. It is annoying to look for information about a service, or business hours, and not be able to find anything. A website is your way of communicating with your customers. Your customers will appreciate it more than you can ever know.

Your Turn

Are you ready to make money in 2011 and beyond? If so, how? What is your motivator, and how did it become your motivator?

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