Welcome

Welcome to My Online Dollars! There is a lot to be said about making money online, never before has there been such an opportunity for people of all different breeds, backgrounds, education level, financial standing etc to work part-time at home and make a few dollars for themselves.

But of course along with this great opportunity comes people that are promoting the ideal lifestyle but in actual fact they are usually only out to line their own pockets. You have probably some of the promo’s that say “using my system you can literally make as much money as you like while only working two hours a day!” or “invest in this super-secret, underground, ninja, never before seen on earth, I’ll be in trouble for releasing this” system and turn your pc into an atm machine!

Seriously folks, it’s like the old adage – if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and sounds like a duck then there is a good chance that it is indeed a duck! In other words if it sounds too good to be true it more than likely will be.

I believe that to succeed at any level in making money online you need to find a system or ‘business model’ if you like that fits in with the income goals you have and one that you are comfortable putting a great deal of effort into. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of different ways that you can go with this, some good and some not so good.

The first system or model that caught my attention a few years back was The Bum Marketing Method written by a guy by the name of Travis Sago. Yeah I know it sounds a bit suss but the ‘Bum Marketing’ name came about because with his method Travis was confident that he could take a bum off the street and into a public library (internet access) and have him earn money without having to spend any money that he didn’t have. Does that make sense?!

The whole idea of Bum Marketing is to utilize free resources around the net to get your traffic and drive this traffic to an affiliate offer and get paid a commission for each sale you get. It is a great system for beginners as you are not going to spend a lot of money and it teaches you a lot of the basics of how to sell products online. It also teaches you that you won’t achieve results without working hard which I think is a very important lesson to learn in this game. Too many people hear or read that the ‘internet lifestyle’ is all fun and not a lot of work and then wonder why the cheques aren’t coming in each month!

You can learn what Bum Marketing is all about for free HERE.

Once you have the basics sorted and some sales under your belt you might want to (as I did) start exploring what other options you have. For a while I had been visiting the Warrior Forum where a lot of internet marketing experts and beginners hang out. There was a very interesting post on there from a guy called Chris Rempel.

This post was the basic outline of how he earned $100,000 per year from affiliate programs. Unlike the Bum Marketing method Chris was talking about an almost passive income stream which once you had your websites set up and your promotion taken care of it was simply a matter of keeping the sites on track traffic wise and building more and more of these sites.

One reason that I like (and listen to) Chris Rempel is his no-bull approach and he is obviously someone that has been there and done the hard yards. His first line of Internet Marketing products was the VIP Essentials series which I myself had a lot of success with. What I did was set up a website using the templates and techniques that he talks about in the course and to this day that site still earns a consistent almost passive $1,000 a month. I’d love to show you the site but I don’t like competition! Look for a very basic site about back pain relief products and chances are that’s it.

Although I believe that the website template you use can increase your sales, I also believe that the most important factor in deciding where to focus your energies is market research. In the VIP Essentials package is a great guide on doing your market research effectively. Target a subject where there is plenty of willing buyers and in no time you will have a successful site, target one where there may be plenty of traffic but very little ‘buying’ traffic and your work will be cut out for you if you want to see healthy sales figures.

Chris Rempel has just released another product that once again focuses on affiliate selling only this time you get a stand-alone website building application perfect for churning out quality affiliate sites, a market research report and a traffic generation report. While I’m still happy using the VIP Essentials templates and methodology I couldn’t resist taking this new Affiliate Genie product for a run.

I am in the process of setting up a site using this new application in the Plus Size Clothing market. I really have no idea of the profitability of this market although my research tells me there is plenty of traffic to be had (market research is not my strong point and I’m sure I would have a handful of $1000.00 a month sites by now if I could master this!). If you would like to check out the Affiliate Genie product head on over to the Plus Size Clothing Directory.

As you can see there is a lot of user interaction built into the site and in line with the new FTC guidelines there are the appropriate disclaimers and the like prominently displayed. I would also like to add that the application used to build that site is the most user friendly site builder I have ever used. I like and use Wordpress a lot but for simplicity the Affiliate Genie script is miles ahead.

So there you have it, the steps that I have taken over the last couple of years that have enabled us to build an income source that while not in the six figure range yet is showing every sign of being there before 2010 is out. Just remember that it does take focus and hard work, but then is anything worth doing easy?