Are you looking for ways to make money online part time? If so, you’ve come to the right place! In this post, we’ll discuss how you can do this, which opportunities are available to you, and what you need to do to get started.
The Most Popular Way to Make Money Online
If you’ve been searching for ways to make money online, you’ll undoubtedly have come across the following two opportunities:
- Affiliate marketing
- CPA marketing (Cost Per Action marketing)
Both options are pretty popular and have become quite lucrative. Affiliate marketing is when you earn money from advertisers who purchase ads on websites that you’ve partnered with (typically affiliate marketing platforms like Amazon affiliate program or Digital Creek). CPA marketing is when you earn money for displaying advertisements on your site (cost per action marketing platforms like Google Adsense or Chitika).
These two options have been around for a while and have proven quite successful. Why?
- Affiliate marketing has a huge audience. In 2017, the CPA market reached $50 billion and is predicted to hit $70 billion by 2021.
- The amount of money that people are making through affiliate marketing and CPA marketing is increasing.
- The platforms where you can participate in affiliate marketing and CPA marketing are also the most popular online for marketers (both conventional and digital).
Why You Should Avoid These Two Options
If you’re looking for ways to make money online, you don’t necessarily need to join a marketplace or sign up with a CPA network. In fact, you can achieve the same results by taking an alternative route.
The key to making money online is to find untapped niches where you can perform a service or sell a product. In other words, it’s all about finding your “sweet spot.” Once you’ve located it, all you need to do is build a platform that supplements your income.
For example, if you’ve found that you’re quite good at creating infographics and want to make money from this skill set, you could start an infographic generator website that charges advertisers for the right to their images. Or, if you’re a talented writer with a large audience, you could start an online magazine similar to Forbes or The New Yorker and make money from your publications. Or, if you’ve got a knack for generating unique content and can pitch investors on a content strategy, you could create a digital content marketing firm and start pitching brands to work with you.
Finding Your Niche
The first step towards making money online is to determine your niche. This is your ‘skill set’ that you will use to generate income. Once you’ve found it, all you need to do is start a blog or website around it. If you already have a blog, you can use the following steps to find the right niche.
Step one: Review your blog’s performance.
Did you know that having a clear and concise SEO (search engine optimization) strategy can help you make money online? It’s true. A lot of people don’t know that there’s money to be made from SEO, especially when done correctly. Did you know that Google Adsense offers publishers money for each ad they display? It’s true. Did you know that you can make significant amounts of money from affiliate marketing if you join a reputable affiliate network? It’s true. These are all true, but did you know that you can make money online even if you have a completely free blog?
If you’re concerned that your blog isn’t bringing in the revenue you’re hoping for, you can use the following steps to find the right niche and kick-start your blog’s revenue stream:
Step two: Find your niche’s most profitable keywords.
This step is quite similar to the first one and is very important for SEO. When you do it, you are looking for the keywords that best represent how individuals are searching for your chosen niche.
Step three: Create content that ranks for those keywords.
In this step, you’ll create content that can be used to populate online articles with backlinks (inbound links). Once you’ve gathered a decent amount of content, you can use the following tools to find the most profitable keywords and begin creating content that ranks for them:
- Keyword planner
- Google Adwords Keyword tool
- HubSpot Keyword Explorer
- WordStream
When you create content for SEO, you’ll want to make sure that you incorporate these profitable keywords into the text as much as possible. This will improve your content’s readability and search engine optimization.
Step four: Use social media to promote your blog.
If you’re reading this, I assume you’re already aware of the power of social media. If not, here’s a short summary. Social media is a place where people can share content that is interesting to them. If you want to make money online, you can take advantage of this by creating and sharing content that your audience will find valuable.
Step five: Attracting an audience.
This is the easy part! Once you’ve created a small community of interested readers on social media, you’ll want to use various methods to attract more people.
You can use free tools like Hootsuite to create and schedule Facebook and Instagram content marketing campaigns. Or, you can use paid tools like Constant Contact or MailChimp to attract and convert potential customers into paying subscribers.
Finding Free Money To Work With
If you want to make money online, you don’t necessarily need to find paying customers. In fact, it’s possible to build a profitable business even if you have a completely free blog. However, if you do decide to go this route, you’ll want to make sure that you’re not wasting your time pitching products that don’t fit your niche. Especially if you’re looking for a steady income, it’s best to limit your efforts to finding free money makers.
Final Takeaway
In case you were wondering, finding a profitable niche and starting a blog around it is a viable strategy for making money online. It really is that simple! To succeed, you’ll need to take the time to find your niche and then create valuable content that will allow you to rank for profitable keywords. If you can do all of this while having fun, why not? You can find a profitable niche and make money online without all the fuss.