Easy ways to make money for kids

Making money online, even in today’s economy isn’t difficult. But like anything else, it requires hard work. Here are just a few simple ways you can start making money online:

Start a blog

Contrary to what many say, blogs to make money. If you obtain decent search engine traffic and establish a good reader base, they can actually earn a full-time revenue. The trick to having a successful blog is finding a niche that you’re interested (and knowledgeable) on AND that people are interested in reading about. A great way to find what people are interested in is by using Google Trends. The other important part of building an online community and blog is to be authoritative but be personal.

If a blog is something you’re interested in, do your research and set one up from the beginning the right way. If you aren’t sure how to get started, engage a professional blog consultant to help you. The initial cost will payoff in the long run.

Start an online affiliate store

An affiliate store is different than a typical online store. With an affiliate store, you don’t actual sell the merchandise or ship it, you just market it. An affiliate store is a front-end to other online stores and when you refer your visitors to those stores and the visitors buy, you get paid for it. Generally the amount is a % of the overall sale. For example, one of my online stores sells MPG meters. I discuss the products, write reviews, and offer links visitors can use to actually buy the products. The actual sellers are Amazon.com and EBay, both of which have affiliate programs that pay a percentage of sale. Now that gas prices are back down, my income is very small but last year when gas prices were high, I made a decent amount of money from the site. This is just one of about 10 different affiliate marketing sites (online stores) I have, and between them they provide a decent passive income.

You can read all about how to start an online store by reading my article: Starting an online store.

Pay per click advertising

I’ll warn you, this is easy to set-up and start but in order to be successful and actually make money, it requires a great deal of time and knowledge.  It also requires a decent amount of up front money. BUT with all this said, if you’re successful, it can be very lucrative and their are many people making a great deal of money doing this.

The best example of pay per click advertising is Google Adsense. Advertisers pay Google to place these ads. 90% of the time these ads (when clicked) direct you an affiliate marketing site (or store) where the advertiser hopes you’ll make a purchase and they’ll get paid. If done correctly and the ads convert well, the payback on the cost of these ads can be significant.

I tried PPC (Pay per click) advertising for a while, but didn’t care for it much. I preferred blogging and setting up online stores. If you are considering PPC advertising, I’ll highly recommend a training program called PPC Coach. The program is run by a highly successful PPC marketer, and will teach you everything you need to know about how to be successful doing PPC marketing.

Build it and they will come

While that as a great line from a baseball movie, it does not apply to the world of internet sites. Many people have the false idea that you can just build a website and people will automagically find it. NOT TRUE. Getting people to your site involves a great deal of marketing, social network involvement, and hard work. Don’t underestimate the amount of work required, and don’t think that building a site is easy money. For two years, I worked on average 10-12 hours a week here on Gather Little by Little alone. That time included: writing articles, researching article topics, keeping the site updated, marketing, social media participation, participation in forums and about a million other little things.

The good news is that the fruits of your labor can be well worth it financially and emotionally. Not sure how to start? Don’t over think it, just do some research, read a few articles and start. The worst thing you can do is hesitate. Sure, you may fail but better to have tried and failed than to never have tried at all. When you do fail, use what you’ve learned to make your next effort even better.