Perhaps the 3 biggest things keeping most people from making money online is they:

1. Lack a moneymaking plan and are clueless on how to put one together.
2. Lack a product to sell and simply can’t think of one
3. Lack knowledge on how to incorporate an e-commerce module into their website.

Most people wanting to make money online are looking for a way to make money fast.  Most moneymaking plans are truly not get-rich-quick schemes, as they get touted to be.  Most take months to pull you into the black or they have too much competition for the same product or market.  But making fast cash online is possible. 

How?  Simply, follow the 10 easy steps below:

1. Visit Clickbank.com and become a Clickbank affiliate. 
2. Search the Clickbank marketplace.  Search numerous subjects and categories, looking for a product you could be passionate about or promote with ease.  Be sure and pick one that has a very high commission payout.
3. Now, register a domain name that includes the word of the niche you’ve chosen.
4. Visit Bluehost.com and sign up for a free hosting account.  You’ll automatically get a $50 free coupon or voucher for a new Google Adwords account.
5. After purchasing hosting for your domain from Bluehost, login to the Bluehost control panel and use Fantastico to install Wordpress (the blogging software) on your domain name.
6. Once Wordpress is installed, login to Wordpress and write a sales letter to promote the product you’ve chosen to market in the Clickbank marketplace.
7. Your new website will be nothing more than a sales page that pushes and tries to close the site visitor on buying the product you’re promoting.
8. Login to the Bluehost control panel and exercise your option to setup a free $50 ad account with Google Adwords.
9. Purchase keyword searches through Adwords that will send traffic to your new website. 
10. When people search for the keywords you purchased, Google Adwords will display ads about the subject.  Each time your ad is displayed and someone clicks on your ad they will be taken to your website.  The job of your website educate the visitor about the product your promoting and convince them to buy it.  Each time they buy it you’ll earn a huge Clickbank commission.

That in a nutshell is how to make money quickly online.  Obviously, I haven’t gone into a lot of detail.  But the plan is now in place and the general layout of the business model is there for you to employ on your own.

The first real money of any significant size or consequence that I made online was with a 2-tier affiliate program for a private membership site called Desktop Money Machine back in 2000.  Prior to 2000 I had been making affiliate income from online marketing since 1997, but nothing had compared to what I experienced after the startup of Desktop Money Machine. 

The site was created by my good friend Bill Burdin from Australia.  Payment was through Paypal and you got a $15 commission for every sale you made, plus $15 from any sale made by someone who became an affilate under you (i.e., your second tier). 

I joined the program, then turned around and spent $150 to run an advertisement for the program in two popular ezines or electronic newsletters geared to the business opportunities and work-at-home markets.  The ads were to begin on the following Saturday — about a week away from the time I purchased them.  My wife and I had already made plans to drive to my parents home for a weekend visit on the same weekend the ads were supposed to run. 

We arrived at their house late Friday night, close to midnight.  When I awoke the next morning I was eager to see if the ads had run and if I had any email.  For I knew if I had made any sales that Paypal would be sending me notices of receiving $15 for each sale.  My parents live in a rural area and access via modem was quite slow in those days.  I was so anxious to see if I had earned anything and was walking in circles waiting for the computer to boot up, and then later waiting for the modem connection and download of my emails.  And then suddenly, much to my amazing surprise, my PC literally turned into a Desktop Money Machine.  My inbox was immediately flooded with 17 emails from Paypal, all saying that $15 had been deposited into my Paypal account.

By the end of the first full day I had made 166 sales totaling $2,490 in commissions.  Needless to say, I was hooked on Internet marketing and I’ve been hooked ever since. 

Within a few short months Desktop Money Machine had become “old hat” to the professional Internet marketing boys and they were off and running on the next latest and greatest money plan to hit the Internet.  After chasing that crowd for a while I realized I needed to have more control over my future earnings online.  I begin writing and marketing my own e-books and this worked out quite well.  But I’ve always enjoyed writing and when Adsence was introduced by Google I knew that all of my prior writing efforts and love for writing would pay off.  I begin creating rich content sites and continued to research and work in other areas of online marketing — but concentrating my efforts into three areas:

1. Adsense
2. eBooks
3. Affiliate Marketing (mainly Clickbank and Commission Junction)

My income from these efforts is now in the six-figure range.  But its been a real roller coaster getting there.  I’m had some great moments along the way, but I’ve also made a lot of mistakes and wrong turns as well.  With this site I hope to steer you in the right direction, avoiding some of the wrong turns and pitfalls I fell victim to along the way.

Until next time,

Steve

Forums that cater to people interested in Google Adwords and Adsense are buzzing.  Many web publishers have been devastated by a huge plummet in search engine traffic and Adsense earnings, while a few are reporting increases in traffic and Adsense revenue.

I’m not sure yet what this particular update has been labled, as previous updates have been coined with a one-word code name.  But whatever its called, its definite that it has made a serious dent in some web publishers earnings and web business careers.  The question now is, “Is the change temporary or permanent?”  Since it was first reported by some publishers on June 27 and has now existed for almost 3 days, I’m beginning to think that the outcome will not be temporary — which will send all the major SEO experts back into their corners scratching their heads and trying to figure out what to do now in order to get sites high search engine ranks in the SERP’s.

The answer to improving SERP rankings really hasn’t changed in the eyes of Google.  They’ve been giving webmasters guidelines for several years on what it takes to achieve success in the SERP’s.  The simple answer is — “Just write good content and dont’ try any tricks or gimmicks to fool the search engines.”  Follow that simple rule, writing good content often and your site will become popular over time regardless of where you stand in the search engine rankings.  The more popular it becomes, the more people visit, the more people link to you, the higher your search engine rankings will rise. 

But most people hate to write and want to see success now rather than later, and it is for these two reasons that they end up shooting themselves in the foot by implementing a method or scheme that is clearly in conflict with what the search engine companies want to see in the management of a website.  Thus, its only a matter of time before an algorithm change takes placed that is clearly designed to remove sites that have offensive material or use pratices not condoned by the search engines. 

The old “Kiss” principle comes to mind (i.e., keep it simple, stupid).  And by simple, I mean just stick to a good game plan of adding fresh content on a regular basis that has interest to your site visitors and over time you will realize great success online.  Obviously, there are more rules than this one, but its a good place to start.  Details about other rules to follow will be published from time to time.