Here’s how to make money online without a website, product or vast technical know how. Yes it’s possible to do it for free.

by: OnlineMoneyMakingOptions.com Copyright 2009, all rights reserved.

There are countless ways to make money online and most of them surround selling other peoples products. Why? Well it’s very simple. It can be very profitable.  Finding a product or service to sell is not the hard part.  There are literally millions of vendors on the Internet and even more products to peddle. Affiliate programs, or affiliate marketing is the most common term for this type of online activity. How does it work? It’s easy. Sell something and get a commission.

Don’t like sales? That’s fine. The good thing about affiliate marketing is that you never have to see, talk to or deal with customers. Once someone buys something, the vendor takes over. I’ll tell you. It’s a wonderful feeling when money appears out of thin air. It’s downright addictive.

Here’s how to Start…

The first step is to find a product. Trust me, its just fun to look at what’s out there. It will help the creative juices flow and if this is for you, you will know right away if it’s something you want to try.

Now Find A Product…

Go to Clickbank and sign up for a free account. I have to say again, your Clickbank sign up will not cost you a dime.  I mean there is no need for credit card or payment information of any kind.  This is where you will pick your product.

Once you have an account, it’s time to browse the marketplace. I would suggest grabbing a pen and paper.  Find a product you like and write down any thing that catches your attention. Like a catch phrase, informative statement, funny word, slogan or anything else. You will find this information helpful when you start marketing the product. Yes it’s true you actually have to work to make money.

Now that you’ve found something to sell and your mind has spun a bit, it’s time to get a link for you to promote.  When users click this link they are brought to the sales landing page of the vendor whose product it is you’re promoting. If the person viewing this site buys something you earn a commission. You can track sales, commissions and other activity relevant to your account in the clickbank member’s area.  Your commission checks will also come from the clickbank folks.

How to create a hoplink…

First, this link is very important. It is also very easy to create. A monkey could do it! Once you are in the marketplace and located your product you will see an option to “create hoplink”. Click it. A small window will pop up that asks you to add your clickbank username. (This is the name that you used to sign up for your free account.) Once you input your username, click “create”. The link that it will generate will look something like the one below. Go ahead and click it. You will then be taken to a sales landing page of an available clickbank product. There are many products, but If you like this one you can also sell it. (FYI, you will see options for both username and an optional tracking ID when creating your hoplink. Don’t worry about the tracking ID, it’s basically for large scale marketers to track campaigns.)

http://8f13a7jes9iaco3mo6rmz3-b3v.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=ADAPRIL

Ok so let’s review,

At this point you should have a free clickbank account. You should have also selected the product you’re going to market and created a hoplink to this product. (Remember this hoplink, copy and paste it into notepad or something)

Congratulations. You now you have the basic tools to start making money online. If you just sent this link to friends and family via email, they clicked thru and bought something you will earn commission. An important note, Clickbank has a zero tolerance anti-spam policy so please don’t send unsolicited emails.

Although spam is not tolerated, a good free way to market this product is still via email. Simply include your hoplink at the bottom of every email you legitimately send. You can also create email signatures that automatically place this link when you send a new message. If you need help creating email signatures I would suggest looking at the help section provided by your email client (outlook, gmail, hotmail, yahoo etc) the instructions are fairly straight forward. You can also get creative with Craigslist, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Kiiji, Twitter and other sites online to advertise your hoplink for free.

Now down to serious business…

The best way to break it to the spouse is to tell them that you’re going to give up take-out food or lottery tickets for a week. If you’re Canadian, giving up Tim Horton’s coffee is not an option. Truth is PPC (pay per click) advertising is going to cost you a few bucks to explore. Somewhere between $25 and $50.00 would be a fair guess. If you make money great, keep it up. If you don’t you can toss in your cards, or learn from it and try again.

The best way to sell something is to present the information to people who are actually looking for what you are selling. Targeting your advertising is the only way you will make any kind of real money. Think about your own surfing habits. If you are using a search engine (Google, Yahoo, Msn etc) and type in golf balls, you will not likely click on a link or buy something about watermelons. Neither will anyone else.

By leaps and bounds, PPC (pay per click) advertising is the best way to get targeted traffic to your hoplink. The more targeted visitors you get to view your product, the more products you will sell and the more money you will make from thin air. Did I mention making money from thin air is sweet?

Now before we get into more on setting up Ad Campaigns lets look at a couple of ads that I created using hoplinks advertised on Google, Yahoo or MSN. .
 

Remember that pen and paper I mentioned earlier? You may find it helpful when it comes to putting an ad together. This is the basic format that all 3 big search engines use. We’re not going to use these ads yet but it’s time to stop and have a little fun.  Let you’re your creativity shine and the brain work. Bear in mind, the text length of the ads will vary slightly depending on where you want to start your advertising.

Have a concept yet?

Now folks, there is a reason why Google is an absolute juggernaut when it comes to making money online. More people use Google than any other search engine on the planet. Google is very effective, they are also the most expensive to advertise on (not that it has to be expensive). Yahoo is a close 2nd, and MSN is the cheapest. That being said, I’ve used Google, Yahoo and MSN in my own PPC efforts and they all have advantages. As far as promoting a product direct to a hoplink, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN AdCenter are the friendliest.

To help you get started I’m going to focus on Yahoo Search Marketing. One, because they are the middle of the road and 2) they accept pay pal. So sell Grandmas clock on Ebay and get a few bucks to start! (please ask Grandma first).  You can actually start with $5.00 (MSN only), but I suggest spending $25 to $50 to give it a fair shake. Before I take you through the process of promoting your hoplink on Yahoo, let me toss something by you.

If you’ve come this far and are still interested in pursuing Online Money Making Options I would suggest thinking about getting your own website/domain name. Creating a simple web page can be as simple is clicking “save as html” in Microsoft Word or other word processor.  Why not send the internet users to your own website?  That way you can put 2, 3, 4 or more hoplinks on it. Why not better your odds at earning commission by offering your users a choice? Here are some examples. You could write a story and post a video about mountain biking and select all clickbank vendors that sell mountain bikes. You could steal grandmas secret recipes put them online and sell 10 different cookbooks. You could go fishing, take the camera, takes some videos and pictures, put them online and sell camping gear. As I had mentioned, finding products to sell on the internet is not hard. No matter what your interests are, related products are available to sell and earn commission.

There are a lot of places that will actually give you “coupons or promo codes” for Ad credits for signing up. As an example JustHost will give you $25 of free advertising on both Google and Yahoo just to sign up.  That’s $50 in free advertising, just from these folks. You can get a hosting package for as low as $3.95 per month.  So if you go this route you are actually getting much more bang for your buck. What would your own www name be? 

www.GrandmasStolenRecipes.com?

www.MadMountainBikeFreak.org.?

Even if you don’t host your website you can still have an email address like HurtWendy@MadMountainBikeFreak.org or Guilty@GrandmasStolenRecipes.com.

So let’s recap, with JustHost you get a total of $50.00 in free targeted advertising in Google and Yahoo. You get your own www name, email and web hosting all for less than the cost of signing up. Having your own www address will also give you access to a wider variety of products to sell online.

How to advertise your hoplink on Yahoo Search Marketing (Yahoo Small Business)…

First, sign up HERE. Guess what? Just for signing up you get another $25 in Yahoo advertising .So now you have $50.00 to spend to advertise on Yahoo, and $25.00 in Google (assuming you took my advise on signing up with JustHost above.)

Importance of Keywords…

Keywords are the bread and butter of PPC (pay per click advertising). In fact there are the foundation blocks of making money online. What you are trying to do is get targeted visitors to your website or hoplink after they search for something that you’re selling. As an example, if you go to Yahoo or Google and type in “make money online” you get results tailored to that keyword. Every time someone clicks on one of your ads you get charged for it. Keyword bidding can be anywhere from 5 cents to several dollars per click, depending on the keywords you choose. High competition keywords cost more. Obviously I am not recommending that you bid on high cost keywords.

See search example below

So in the example above, the keyword is “make money online”. You can use as many keywords and key phrases as you want. We will further explore keywords as we work through the set up process.

Are you still with me?

Here is a screenshot of the Yahoo sign up page (you will be directed to this page right after you click “sign up”). Now let’s walk through the initial setup.

There are 5 steps to the sign up, which includes all aspects of setting up your 1st advertising campaign. You can target you audience by country and time zone. (Further targeting is possible but will not be discussed in this article). Next click “Get Started” (this button is not shown in the image above).  You will now see options to further target specific regions in the various countries you select, likes states or provinces. Choose if you wish.

After you click “Next Keywords” you’re going to be asked to input keywords that “trigger” your ad. As I had mentioned earlier you can have as many keywords or key phrases as you want. I would try to stick to 5-15 to start. Remember, that common keywords are likely to have more competition, and therefore they will likely cost a little more per click. You will have a chance to refine or edit these keyword settings later. One piece of advice… imagine yourself sitting at the computer and searching for something, whatever you type in to find what you’re looking for is a potential keyword.

Related Keywords…

Here is the next screen that you will see.

Your almost there!  I would suggest a daily budget of $5.00. After you get your feet wet and get a general understanding of how it works you may wish to increase this daily budget. After you click “Estimate” Yahoo will provide you with an estimated snapshot of your daily traffic and also recommend a price for you to bid on keywords. Take this advice, but keep in mind your budget. Don’t bid on high cost keywords, at least not at this stage.

See below

Ok have a look at the next screen.

So this next part is important. Remember that “Hoplink” you created earlier? Click it, (or copy and past in into a browser from wherever you stored it) once the page loads, copy everything before the dot com. As an example, check out the hoplink I created for you for the purpose of this article.

http://8f13a7jes9iaco3mo6rmz3-b3v.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=ADAPRIL

Once you click it your browser will bring you to the following page. (Remember, your hoplink will be different from mine, depending on the clickbank product you chose and your clickbank username)
http://stream-onlinemovies.com/?hop=(whateveryourclickbankusernameis)

Copy http://stream-onlinemovies.com” or whatever the .com (org,ca,net etc) name is. (Don’t copy the “/?hop=whateveryourclickbankusernameis”)

See the URL location directly above my “happy face” in the image above? Paste this URL there.  This is the Display URL. After your Yahoo sign up is complete we will be able to modify this ad. (Specifically, add you hoplink to the “destination URL” (not shown in the image above) We want to keep the “Display URL as the vendors .com,ca,org,net,ws or whatever it is”

So to Recap…

So for the purpose of this article “http://stream-onlinemovies.com” is the URL you will use when you create your initial ad. Important, paste this URL in the section noted in the image above (above my happy face picture). This is the URL that internet users will see when your ad is displayed.

Here is an example of what I mean. Check out this ad:

Watch TV on Your PC
Cancel Your Cable $99.95 one time Fee. Get 4000 channels.
www.Sattube.com <-------- (This is the vendors www address. You will ad your hoplink in the destination URL a little later. FYI the Destination URL is hidden from web surfers)

Still with me?

Ok, wonderful, after you’ve created your draft ad, Yahoo will ask you for your contact info. You will also be required to break out the credit card or PayPal at this point. You have to pay a minimum of $30 to get started. (Surely you can get $30 for Grandmas clock on ebay) Remember, you also have a $25.00 credit with your sign up. So your $30 gets you $55 worth of advertising. If you signed up with JustHost above, you will actually have $80.00 worth of advertising.

 (if you’ve signed up for JustHost above I would be happy to answer your questions  if you want to chat, please email me date of sign up and approximate time of sign up and we can hook up to further discuss)

Anyhoo…

After you’ve logged in to your Yahoo account your screen will look like this. Click the “campaigns tab” this will bring you to your ad group. You will be able to create more ads or modify existing ones. You can have many ad groups, so for example you can create an ad group with multiple ads to promote product 1 (hoplink1), then create a 2nd ad group for a completely different product (product2 using hoplink2).

This is the next screen you’ll see. Notice the “Adgoup001” at the bottom, click it and you will then be able to modify or create new ads.

Below is where you modify your ad to include your hoplink.  You will see in my example below that I have created 3 different ads. At least 2 are recommended. Click the Ad name or as in the example “AdGroup001_002” you will now be able to modify the ad details.

And here is the final stage before you are ready to advertise live. Add your hoplink to the “Destination URL area”, when users click this ad they will be brought directly to the clickbank vendor via your hoplink.

 
By this point you should have a general understanding of how to advertise your hoplink in Yahoo. Once you understand Yahoo Search Marketing, you will also be well prepared to run similar ads on MSN Adcenter and Google Adwords. All of the Big 3 search engines use similar ways to set up Ad campaigns.

More on Keywords,

While you get comfortable setting up an ad campaign in any of the Big 3 search engines you will notice that you are constantly being provided with helpful hints, video tutorials and recommended adjustments to keywords. Use these recommendations. All of these search engines know how to make money online.

Remember, common keywords are more expensive. You will likely use some of them, but try to think of unique, targeted keywords or key phrases to use. Don’t go to crazy adding keywords to your list; remember the point of advertising is to target the traffic to buy what you are selling. As an example, the keywords “buy food” will give the internet user a lot of choices when it comes to buying food. If you’re selling pizza and the surfer is looking for grapes, you will not likely make a sale. But you will pay for them to click your ad. Be specific, most of all be creative. If you find a unique “niche” keyword that produces results you may very well get rich.

At first, monitor your campaign often and set a modest daily budget. Along the way you will likely tweak your keywords and your keyword bids. The search engines will provide advice along the way about on how to optimize your ad campaigns.  If you want to make serious money online for serious work this is an excellent way to start.

The wrap up…

Ok, if your still reading you’ve been with me a while. Since we’ve known each other for sometime I want to give some advice.

1. Learn more about keywords

2. Take your time; making money from thin air can get addictive. Watch your campaigns, watch your budget and modify as you think necessary.

3. Experiment with different Clickbank vendors, you can advertise multiple hoplinks by creating specific ads and linking to unique hoplinks

4. Get your own www name. Domain names and web hosting can open up many doors for you.

Remember, if you purchase hosting from JustHost from my links, I would be happy to help you set up your first ad campaign. Just email me your date/time of sign up and we can take it from there. I will also post your hoplink on Online Money Making Options.com for 60 days for free.

I would appreciate your comments on this article.  Good luck in your quest to make money online. Did I mention that making money from thin air is sweet?

Warren
OnlineMoneyMakingOptions.com

Signed up for JustHost, want some advice? Email me