The Different Ways To Make Money Online

There are various ways to make money online. I'd like people that read this to participate in this discussion by adding a commment. This isn't exact science but it's what I've learned over the years of online business.
I'll just briefly enumerate the various ways in this post and go over each one and how you can get started in other posts... sort of a mini-online selling crash course.

Content Websites-
Content websites are, like the name implies, websites with useful content to offer to their visitors. They are generaly targeted to a specific market or niche if you will. for example. An example would be a website pertaining to Nascar fans. These websites make money from selling advertising as a general rule. This a fun way to make money online as you don't have any selling and thus any real customer service. It's probably the easiest way to make money online... more detail later.

Product / Service Selling Websites-
This is probably the most basic way of making money online. Any business-minded person will think of this first when they originaly dream up the idea of getting in business online. These business make money form selling products or services online for a profit. These businesses require more ressources, have more risk and generally require a big customer service effort. They can get extremely profitable however, especially if you are innovative and can offer something unique (a way of doing business, a unique product or any combination of innovations).

Auction / Classified ad - type selling:
This method of selling is similar than the one above with the difference of not using your own website. You are using the popularity of another website to list them and sell them, eBay for example. These business can have high selling costs, for example with PayPal transaction fees, ebay listing fees and end of auction fees, it costs about $14 to sell a $200 item. Also, this type of business requires constant re-listing to keep the business coming. eBay estimates it has around 100,000 sellers doing that as living so there is money to be made here and it shouldn't be overlooked!

Affiliate Programs-
This type of program allows you to escape any interactions with the customers (generally) and promote another company's product or services in exchange for a commission on sales. Making money online this way can be a very fun experience because it requires usualy little interaction, customer service or risk associated with doing business.

Here it is, these are the ways I am aware of doing business online. There may be a combination of these ways of making money online into one venture. For example a content website might also use affiliate program and sell products of their own.

Godaddy

Just thought I'd post this here, it's a ressource I love very much because that dude, Bob Parsons is a very successful web entrepreneur like many of us want to be.
He has some good insights on business. The comments get insteresting.
Check out that guy's Blog, I'm sure you'll like it there too:
http://www.bobparsons.com/

How to sell online? A little quicky tip.

How to successfully sell online? There is alot of money to be made... but you need to be able to make people WANT to buy from you.

How can you make thousands of people buy from you and become a millionaire? All you need to do is to be able make ONE person want to buy from you and many others will want too... put yourself in your customers shoes, what would it take you to buy? Be honest however, separate yourself from your "entrepreneur-mind" and ask yourself what it would take to really want to purchase something from your site? Where have you purchased online recently? What are some of the things you looked for before choosing where to purchase?
After you've done that, ask a few of your contacts to review your offer and ask if they'd be inclined to purchase from you instead of your competitor. What would it take for them to want to purchase from you?

Thinking in term of selling to 1 person is alot less overwhelming than trying to please thousands.

The Importance of Email Lists

Having a mailing list is important for every online business. There are various marketing gurus that have written texts on how to create these lists. Often however, the simple act of offering it to your visitors will generate subscribers. Offering incentives is a good way to get people to give your their email address. People visiting your website are the best prospects you can get, it doesn't get any more targeted than this!
Let's face it, unless you're lucky enough to have an amazing network effect promoting your business from word of mouth like for example Google, eBay and Paypal have enjoyed, you most likely have to spend money on advertising. It costs alot to bring prospects to your website and often, they don't buy right away. A good chunk of these will forget your website, never to return. That is unless you captured their email address!
So if you don't already have an email list in place, create one! There are alot of free softwares out there that will do the trick. Two I like particularly are PHPlist (if you have your own hosting account) and NotifyList (if you don't have a hosting account).
All this talk about having an email list make me realize I should perhaps create one for my blog :/ Hey, do what I preach, not what I do (or don't do) :)

Need to make money? Sell yourself!

Everyone has something to share and there are people out there that want it. I'm not sure what you were thinking, but I'm talking about selling your knowledge, in writting.
Most people find this hard to believe but making money online (I'm using "online" because that's what I'm best at) can start with the thing you would think of last.
When people first think about making money online, whether it be for extra income or something more, they rack their brains for answers on what to sell when the best place to start is to ask yourself "what do I enjoy doing?" "what am I good at?" "what do I believe in?". Selling something that you know about, are good about and/or truly believe in is the easiest selling you'll ever have to do. In fact, it won't feel like selling at all, it'll come naturally.
The web is a wonderful place that lets crappy writers like me make money with their ideas! Publishing on the web compared to printed format it much easier.
I'll take me as an example. What do I like and are good at? Online business, drop shipping, the wholesale industry, web technologies, web hosting, domain names, chess, keeping in shape. This is just a quick list of things I could write for hours on end without having to do any research or thinking.
EVERYONE has things they can write about and EVERYONE has things to contribute to others who have the same interest. What you take for granted, as what every knows isn't so! Just because you know of something, doesn't mean the rest of the world does. Everyone has a unique perspective on things and each perspective is interesting and worth reading.
Start by making a simple list like I did. Cooking, raising your kids, housekeeping, cricketing, metal detecting, bowling... Whatever! This is list of things you can write on, turn into an ebook and even a printed format (see post below about LULU.com allowing you to publish a printed book super-easily) and make money with!
I often buy ebooks, reports, lists and other digital media from authors in my line of work... alot of the time, I know 95% of the things their writing about, but I always find a unique angle, trick and a different perspective which makes it worth buying.
You have something to sell. Write about something that comes naturally to you, add a bit of researched data if you want, proof-read it a few times and turn it into a digital ebook.
The biggest mistake you can do is to think that nobody will want to read what you have to say and avoid doing this.
I promise you. Someone WANTS to hear what you have to say about ant farms or raising turkeys :)

Writting

Someone pointed me to this website recently and I thought I should post it in my blog, even though most writters probably already know about this company, if I didn't know about it yet, I'm sure there are some people who don't either.
I think this site, Lulu.com offers a great service. You can get get them print a professionaly looking book or booklet in a couple easy steps and best of all, it's not that expensive and you can sell it one at a time, no need to buy large quantities! This company had a great idea if you ask me.
It's worth checking out. This post gave me an idea for another post I'll do later or tomorow on "the writter withing you" :P... yes everyone has one believe it or not.

Floating floors are good to catch squirrels

I got awaken today by some rufflling noise, almost like someone snooping around the house... so I follow the noise to a small storage space we have where there are venting holes that connect outside ( I should really put a screen or something to block those holes from unwanted things ). Anyways... I figured it might be a baby cat as there are some running around the house lately. So I grab a bucket and open the door but don't find anything in the storage room, as I go to exit, something catches my eye on the top of the door, frozen as a statue, certainly hopping I wouldn't notice him... a squirrel! So I try to push him in the buket to bring him outside but of course it wouldn't be that easy; turns out he didn't want to go in the bucket... so he jumps on my head instead, then on a shelf then on the ground. Oh man! I think to myself... that's it, he's gonna run around the house and I'm gonna waste my day running after him... but luckily we have floating floors and their little claws don't grips well at all on them :). I had fun seeing him try to run away but only advancing at like 0.5 miles per hour :). It was easy enough then to catch him and bring him outside. Floating floors... great for catching wandering squirrels.

Google Adwords $50 Credits

Anyone use adwords to advertise? Get a $50.00 credit for opening a new account. Along with this, you'll also get a $50.00 credit for a Yahoo account and over $300 in other PPC search engines!
Check out my auctions for this and more deals.

You and Wholesale Drop Shipping

Another article I wrote.

You and Wholesale Drop Shipping
A Comprehensive Guide
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Hello Entrepreneur!

Wholesale Drop Shipping; what kind of an animal is it and what does it eat during the winter, right?
Hang on, we're about to shed some light on what exactly wholesale drop shipping is, its benefits and how you can get started for pennies on the dollar!
Hopefully in the end you'll have learned something and you can decide if the Wholesale Drop-shipping way of doing business is for you.
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Drop Shipping:

Alright, so Wholesale Drop Shipping is not an animal, and it doesn't eat anything in the winter, except maybe your money if you're not careful and you don't read this article ;).

So what exactly is Drop Shipping?
Drop-shipping is when another company sells you merchandise at discounted prices for you to turn around and re-sell to your own customers. As soon as you receive an order from one of your customers, the distributor then ships the ordered item(s) directly to your customers so that you never have to come in contact with the merchandise.

Why waste your time with money making ideas that have not been time tested?
Let's face it, proper "tweaking" comes not from being lucky. Rather, it comes from hard-tested knowledge and experience -- two qualities that are in short supply these days when just about anyone can hang up their shingle and claim to be an "Internet business Expert." Drop Shipping has proven itself as a method that works.
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Is there money to be made and is it for you?

Yes, you've heard a lot of things that sound good on paper (or in this case on screen ;) ) before, but by now you're probably saying "Wow, that's all fine and dandy, but now show me the money!"
So... Is there really money to be made? Well, does Winnie the Pooh like honey? Alright, enough with the corny remarks, let’s look at it together.

Let’s summarize the benefits.
-No need for warehousing, so you have no investment or capital tied-in huge stock of merchandise and the risks and costs associated with it.
-No need for order processing and shipping, potentially saving you a lot of time and money.
-Ability to obtain wholesale pricing without having to buy thousand of dollars worth of products.
-No need to worry about returns as returned merchandise are returned to the shipper of the merchandise, not you.
-Ability to offer more products to your customers without having to invest more capital. Since you have no inventory to hold, the cost to offer 10 products or 10,000 is virtually the same.
-More time to focus on growing your business. Since you save so much time and money on the other aspects of your business, you can take that money and time and invest it in growing your business!

Now, let’s take a look at the inconveniences:
-Because shipping is not taken care of by you or your company, you might feel a bit useless in the process and may not feel comfortable having another company shipping to your customers that are so precious to you. You might feel that they can't possibly put the care and attention in it that you would.
-If you were handling the warehousing/shipping aspect of your business you might be able to sell package deals for certain items.
-You don't have control over the shipping and handling costs.

With thousands of products available for drop shipping, there is certainly money to be made. How much depends, like anything else, on the time and effort the individual or business is ready to put in.
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SCAM Watch !

If you've already been checking around for various drop shipping resources and contacts on the web, you have certainly been impressed by the number of various "Lists" or "Opportunities".
We've bought all of the lists we've come across and tested every opportunity just the same. Here are some things we noticed along the way that could help you decide who to do business with.
-There are a lot of lists out there; you can find some for $10.00, some for $60.00 or more. Most of these lists contain alot of the same companies. What you want to look for is a list that is being updated regularly and some kind of rating system in place for the companies, so you can judge the company somewhat by the rating given by others.
-Some companies will try to "label" ALL the other companies as "Scams" except for theirs as the ultimate list or program. Be careful of such companies, they are most likely trying to sell you a list that is as good as anyone else’s but have to put others down to make theirs look better.
-Some companies will offer you e-commerce system along with their program, but their e-commerce systems are un-flexible and you are limited to selling only their products and/or you can't change the appearance of the site. You want to look for a solid company that can provide you with a flexible solution with no hidden costs.

So there you have it, Wholesale Drop Shipping: something to look into if you're one of the thousands of individuals looking for a business opportunity that doesn't require you to mortgage your house to get started.