How To Make Money With The Internet | Earn Income In These Uncertain Times ***Updated***

Now, more than ever, working from home is becoming the new norm. This time the push has come from the current pandemic sweeping the globe, but the infrastructure and ability to do so has been around for quite some time.

Those of us who have been working on our affiliate marketing businesses have seen that they can continue to generate income streams even in unanticipated times of hardship. That can’t be said for many brick and mortar jobs (restaurants, bars, retail stores, and so on), as layoffs and discussions of bailouts are in the news.

If you’re interested in learning How To Make Money With The Internet, there’s no better way than through affiliate marketing.

This current pandemic will pass, but I can tell you that the world will have a different sense of normal after it has. Many people will choose to remain in a work-from-home scenario. Some businesses will crumble while others will spring up from this new way of life. Now is the time to jump into the fray.

Let’s start with How To Make Money With The Internet…

THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. PLEASE SEE MY AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE FOR MORE INFORMATION.

How To Make Money With The Internet

There are many ways to make money with the internet…

• You can create your own service or product and market it.
• Earn a little extra income by joining survey companies and filling out surveys all day long.
• Join someone else’s online business or MLM company and try to earn commissions through recruiting and sales of their products.
• Review products and services and refer people to companies offering them (aka affiliate marketing).

There are more options, but I think you get the idea.

Let’s dig a little deeper into each option…

Creating Your Own Product Or Service

Many times, when people think of going into business for themselves, they think of coming up with their own product or service and building a business around that. That’s great if you have the time, inclination, and resources to do so.

There are several things to consider however:

• Is there a market for your product or service?
• Do you have the resources (financial, business, ability, etc.) to bring this idea to life?
• Will it be a painkiller (i.e., a must-have) or a vitamin (i.e., nice to have but first to go in a pinch)?

The bullets above are just the tip of the iceberg. As you can imagine, starting from scratch is going to take a lot of time and effort. Still, if the idea is solid, and there’s a significant potential for success, it may be the way to go.

Taking Surveys

I’ll admit, I jumped on this bandwagon for a time. The idea of only having to answer a few questions and getting paid for my opinion seemed like a no-brainer to me. Sadly, the reality is a bit less black and white.

There are a ton of survey companies out there, and a lot more people wanting to make money by taking those surveys. Sadly, there are many downsides to trying to earn a living through surveys:

• In many cases, you have to take a pre-survey to see if you qualify for the paying survey. Sometimes the pre-survey takes more time than the actual survey, and you’re not paid for taking it.
• Although I can’t say this for sure, I believe the pre-surveys get a lot of the information they’re looking for, and then you end up getting rejected for the paid version, and they still get the information they really want.
• Most surveys pay very little and take a long time to complete making your hourly rate way less than minimum wage.
• Good paying surveys are few and far between.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are good-paying surveys out there. I’ve landed a couple of multi-hundred dollar ones myself. It’s just that they are scarce and aren’t plentiful enough to earn a living from.

Working For Someone Else

Established online businesses might be a good fit if you’re looking to simply start earning quickly. Still, you need to be aware of the business structure and how you earn your pay.

Many online businesses don’t pay for your time, only for the results you generate. You can earn by recruiting others into the ranks, selling their products, and so on. There may even be different payouts based on your position within the company commission structure. This is common and motivates you to meet whatever the requirements are to obtain that rank and higher pay.

Still, in the end, you’re working for some other company and not even seeing the benefits offered to actual employees. To top it off, you’re limited in what you can sell (the company’s products and services).

Affiliate Marketing

If you’ve read any of my other posts, you probably know that affiliate marketing is my personal favorite out of all the possibilities for making money online. I’ve been in affiliate marketing for about three years now, and it’s done quite well for me.

In some ways, affiliate marketing is a hybrid of providing your own service and joining someone else’s online business. That’s not a great description, but it fits. The basic idea is as follows:

You build a niche website. You then start offering your help to others in that niche. This help comes in the form of reviews, tips, opinions, discussions, etc.

As you gain a following, you end up building a rapport with your visitors. They begin to trust your opinion and see you as an authority in your niche. As such, they are likely to start following your links and making purchase decisions based on your content. That’s where the affiliate part comes in.

As you create your content, you might refer to a product or service. When doing so, you can provide a custom link that, when followed, tells the seller that you referred this potential customer. When the customer makes a purchase, you’ll end up getting a commission for referring them to the seller. The best part is, this doesn’t cost the buyer anything extra, so you’re not competing based on price. Another bonus is, you don’t have to have a warehouse, keep inventory, or process sales and deal with returns.

What I like about affiliate marketing is that it works 24/7/365, and you can build affiliate relationships with multiple companies (no being locked to a single provider and their offerings).

I can tell you that I have two affiliate marketing websites right now (this one and my drone-based one, Mavic Maniacs), and they are both earning me income every month.

The rest of this article is going to focus on affiliate marketing specifically. If that interests you, please keep reading. If not, I thank you for reading this far and hope that you find what you’re looking for.

Now, let’s talk about where to learn about affiliate marketing and how to get started…

Where To Learn The Ropes And Get Started

Again, if you’ve read my other articles here, you already know what I’m going to say… The best place to learn about affiliate marketing is through Wealthy Affiliate (WA). It is, by far, the best resource on the internet for learning and building your affiliate marketing business. What’s even better is that they have only two membership levels; a free one that gives you access to the first part of the training and hosting for one website and the Premium one that gives you so much more.

I’m only going to cover the very basics in this article as I already have much more detailed posts on Wealthy Affiliate, which you can find here:

The Wealthy Affiliate Review

Is Wealthy Affiliate Legitimate?

Wealthy Affiliate Added An Awesome New Tool!

There’s more, but I think these three cover it pretty well.

So what does Wealthy Affiliate offer? Let’s take a look:

• Affiliate Marketing Training
• Website Hosting
• Marketing Tools
• An Amazing Community
• So Much More!

As I said, the links above will take you to my more in-depth review of WA. This post is really about How To Make Money With The Internet. To that end, I’ve provided some options, have shared that I believe affiliate marketing is the way to go and provided my recommended affiliate marketing platform, Wealthy Affiliate. Again, you can check it out for free with no obligation to upgrade to Premium!

Now, let’s talk about areas to focus on when it comes to affiliate marketing…

Areas To Focus On

Affiliate marketing starts with selecting your niche or area of focus. There are many opinions on this topic, and each has its merits. That said, I think you should consider the following when selecting your niche:

Knowledge vs. Effort

If you’re new to affiliate marketing, I recommend you pick a niche that you’re familiar with. A passion, hobby, professional vocation, or trial/tribulation you’ve endured would be best. The reason for this is that you’re theoretically well versed in this niche and can speak with some authority off the bat.

Now, if you’d rather start in a niche that you’re not already familiar with, that’s OK. You just have to do a little extra leg work and research your topics a bit more in-depth. It all boils down to your personal preference.

Even if you are well-versed in your niche, you’re still going to do some research at times.

Niche Focus

This is a typical “what should I do” question that pops up all the time. There are a couple of things to consider here:

Should I Go Wide Or Narrow My Focus?

Should you have a broad focus? Should you go narrow? That’s a tough call. On the one hand, going broad (such as clothing) leaves you open to a wider market, but it also leaves you open to a lot more competition. Going narrow (such as casual work attire for men), gives you a lot more focus with less competition. It also helps you capture potentially higher “ready to buy” clientele as they have already narrowed down their selection(s) and are looking for something in particular.

What Should I Focus On?

Small items that sell a lot? Large ticket items that sell less frequently but provide substantially larger commissions? Necessities vs. nice-to-haves? These are all things to consider when selecting your niche.

Sadly, I can’t tell you to go one way or another. If you’re charismatic, knowledgeable, and able to make friends and influence others with ease, larger ticket items might be a way to go. On the other hand, necessities can keep you going when the nice-to-haves are being put off during tougher times.

Those larger ticket, usually nice-to-haves, are great and can make quite an impact on your income. It’s possible to sell, let’s say, a $10,000 luxury home theater system to a single person and earn $1000 in that one sale. How many smaller sales would it take to make that same commission? That said, when the economy is down, fewer people are likely to spend such a large sum on a nice-to-have item. The smaller pieces, especially ones that meet an actual need, will prevail in such times.

My recommendation is to find a balance that works for you and your personality/work type.

With the above three considerations hammered out, you’ll be well on your way to building your affiliate marketing empire and earning streams of income for both the good and bad times ahead.

Next up, Does It Really Work? Spoiler alert! It does…

***Update

Don’t Forget Security!!!

In all my rush to get this information out to you, I never stopped to think about how to do this all safely, especially now that many of us are working on our own, outside of a company with an IT department.

Check out this article about how to keep your home office safe and secure when working from home…

***

Does It Really Work?

Yes! I wouldn’t be writing this article if it didn’t. As I’ve said, I’ve been in affiliate marketing for about three years now. Everything I’ve learned has been through Wealthy Affiliate. I have two affiliate marketing websites and one membership website. They make me money every month, and I have no problem paying my WA annual membership fee to keep going.

That said, as with any business, it will take time, effort, and dedication on your part to realize the potential affiliate marketing has to offer. This isn’t a get-rich-quick or quit your job today type of program. If you’re serious about changing your current situation, affiliate marketing is a fantastic opportunity.

The funny thing is, I make decent money through affiliate marketing, but I’m only making peanuts compared to some others I’ve met on the WA platform. That’s the real beauty of WA. The community is simply amazing, and the people there are all about helping one another. There’s nothing like getting help from another member that’s kicking butt in the affiliate marketing scene. Check it out and decide for yourself.

Conclusion

So, there you have it. I’ve listed a few ways on How To Make Money With The Internet and gave you my thoughts on each. I even went further and listed my recommendation, things to consider and let you know that it really does work. Now it’s up to you.

Will you give affiliate marketing a try? Do you have a question I didn’t address in this article? Are you already an affiliate marketer or a member of WA and have something to add? Please, let me know by commenting below.

Get started today by clicking on the banner below:

Thank you,

Scott Hinkle

SmallOnlineBiz.com