Making Money Online from the Square One – If I had to Start Again…This is What I’d Do

It’s been about a year now since I started looking into this whole “make money online” thing and in that time I’ve done nothing but learn new things.  Everywhere you turn in this game there are new skills to learn, bits of information to disect, tricks to implement and tests to carry out.

I wanted to quickly put a post together to give “newbies” to this business a shortcut by giving them an action plan…If I lost everything tomorrow and had to start from scratch then this is what I would do…And it involves making money by selling other people’s products online (affiliate marketing).

Firstly, I’d find a Proven, Profitable Niche

Firstly, I’d generate a whole load of niche ideas by going to places like http://www.dummies.com and taking a look at all the niche books that are on sale. The great thing about using this site to generate niche ideas is that the book firm has already carried out extensive market research – they don’t spend money to publish books unless they know that people will pay for that information. That’s great news for us as marketers.

I would then take these niche ideas and run through my niche checklist, here is the checklist for you:-

In other words, I want to find a niche that conforms to points 1 to 5 on the checklist and then I want to make a list of all points in step 6.

I’ll score each and every niche and choose the best performing. I actually have a niche hunting chart that you can use for this exact purpose (click here to open the chart in PDF format).

Once I’ve chosen my niche, I’m ready to move on.

I would then BUILD A LIST

I wasted a couple of months at the start of my internet marketing “career” not building a list – this is a really bad move!  Every internet marketer who knows what they’re talking about will tell you the importance of building a list.

So, I’d create a one page web site (otherwise known as a squeeze page) and I’d encourage people to enter their names and email addresses into the form in exchange for a free gift.

My free gift would be a report, a video series, an interview with an expert – anything of real value that people in the niche would want to get their hands on.  You don’t actually have to create this free gift, you can use what’s called PLR (private label resale) or Public Domain (books that were published before 1923 have had their copyright license expired which means you are legally able to do whatever you like with them).

Then I’d Provide Real Value

There’s something in the internet marketing world called “pushing the free line” and the basic premise is this: give value first.

If you pitch to your subscribers immediately then your conversion rate will drop.  If, however, you provide something of extreme value first and then offer a genuinely useful product that compliments your free information (for example) you’ll get much higher conversion rates.

Remember – give first.

Create a Fully Fledged Profit Funnel

I’d then go onto create a fully fledged profit funnel in my niche.  So, for instance, if somebody purchases a $27 e-book, I’d move them onto a new list where I’d then provide more free valuable information with the view to selling them a $97 mid-range product.  It is far easier, less expensive and more effective to nurture buyers and convert them into repeat buyers than generate thousands of new leads.

Here’s a tip: If you can find a genuinely useful product that offers recurring commission (i.e. a membership product that people pay for on a monthly basis) then you’ll find it easier to scale up your income.

Lastly, It’s All About Generating the Traffic

Having done all of the above, I’d then simply find an effective traffic generation mechanism.

If I had chosen a niche that wasn’t very competitive then I’d set up a blog and write somewhere in the region of 60 posts in the first month.  They key to this is to find long tail key phrases that aren’t very competitive so that you get decent rankings in Google to bring the traffic in.

If, however, I was in a very competitive niche such as make money online, FOREX trading or fat loss then I’d concentrate on collaborating with influential bloggers and site owners to get myself known in the community and generate traffic.

Of course, the most effective and reliable form of traffic happens when you pay for it.  It really helps to know your numbers before you start delving into pay-per-click or banner advertising.  You need to make sure that you pay less per visitor than you’ll make in return.  That’s why a fully fledged profit funnel (that increases your value per visitor) is so important.

Above all else…I’d Get My Mind Sorted!

Before I started work on any of these projects, I’d make absolutely certain that I was in the correct frame of mind.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned on my journey over the last year it’s that your mind is the most powerful wealth creation weapon of all. You need to visualize success every day, convince your mind that you’re going to be successful without a shadow of uncertainty and as a result you’ll take consistent intelligent action that you’ll reap the rewards from for years to come.

If you provide value and help others then the world is your oyster.

If you’d like to learn everything in this article step by step then go here http://www.fromzerotowebsite.com and I’ll teach you everything for free.

Paul McCarthy is a full time internet marketer and is passionate about teaching others to make money online by going back to marketing basics. He is also very keen on studying the effects of human psychology and wealth creation with techniques such as creative visualisation and NLP.