Free Bull Shit Detector #1:Make Money on the Web without a webpage

They say you can make money online today without a webpage.

What are these methods?

There are a lot of eBooks that you can download around these days that promise to teach you how to make money on the Internett without having your own web site.

Could these methods work?

Well, sure they could. And some of them probably do, for some people. I will even admit that some of these books probably have some good info. The bullshit part is where you pay just to get to know what these methods are.

So I'll just tell you here, and if you're serious about making money online, you can try them out and test them for yourself. And then, maybe, you discover you need more information and would like to buy one of those books. By then, you can make an informed decision, which is the kind of decision I like the best.You'll never get rich if you don't understand your money-making methods.

There are basically two ways of creating income streams online without having your own web site. The oldest one is by creating your own email newsletter. You could register your newsletter on any one of a number of ezine portals, and have surfers subscribe by email. Every now and then (once or twice a week) you'll send your list some good information on your topic of choice. You build trust by giving away good information for free. As your list comes to trust you, you can sprinkle your writings with well-chosen affiliate links, recommending those products (if you don't know what affiliate links are, don't worry, I'll get to that). If you want to keep your list loyal, you should only promote products or services you have tried yourself and really like. So sure, given enough time, and that you actually have a lot of relevant info to give away, you could make some serious money this way.

To some part, this strategy could be automatized, sending your new subscribers old, but golden, newsletters. But other than that, the bad thing about this method is that you have to forever keep on working for your income to continue. Still, it is a very low-cost, low-entry threshold way to making money on the web.

Another one that has sprung up more recently, is by combining the power of pay-per click (PPC) engines like Google's AdWords program with affiliate programs.When you sign up to an affiliate program, you get a link that is personalized to you. You then buy traffic to that link through the PPC engine. This makes it easy to calculate what conversion rate you need for you to make money. If 1% of the traffic converts to a sale, a keyword costs $0.50, then you need 100 clicks to get one sale. That sale will cost you 100*0.50 = $50, so you should make more than that for one sale for this program to be profitable. Some affiliate programs actually do pay amounts like these, others convert much better. You have to be willing to experiment to make this method work, and you may loose all your money to Google. There are many people using this method these days, so you may find that the best converting, highest paying affiliate programs' relevant keywords cost a lot in Google.

What shall I say... at least this method is relatively automatic once you've set it up. Still, you would need to monitor your ads and constantly tweak your keywords. And there is the possibility that your competitors are even more eager than you -- and sits in front of his computer all day, clicking your link, so that you just end up loosing your money...

So those are the two main methods of making money online with no web site. If you can feel the adventure tingling in your blood, go for it. Write emails and spill your guts on your favourite topic, or go to Google and Overture and the rest of them to tweak keywords and experiment with the numbers. Key here is finding the right affiliate products, and then creating the right copy for your ads and test, test, and test again. Test with many programs, ads, and keywords, keep the ones that work, and test new ones.

I'll go make myself a cup of coffee.


Peace and good taste,
Sten, Oslo, Dec. 15th 2004