Real Work Real Money?

You get bombarded with messages from Internet Marketers every day about easy money - make money in just two hours a day and things like that but if you take a look at behind the scenes you will realise that the people who do make a lot of money on the net (and they are there) that they actually put a lot of work into what they do.

This lens is a brief overview of lessons I have learned while trying to make money on the internet as an internet marketer.

 In its most basic form the most common way of making money online is by selling something that someone else wants. Now the "someone else wants" is an important part of this equation and the first indicator of the work involved to make money online.

You can have the best product in the world; the fanciest website and graphics and the most user friendly order process in the sun, but if people don't have a need for your product they are not going to buy it. Travis from Bum Marketing fame is credited for creating the term "starving" customers - those peole who want and need a product desperately and will buy the moment they are directed to your web page.

Finding those starving masses is not easy - it requires research and if you want to be a success, some extensive research. You will need to do your keyword research and an in depth analysis of what your competition you have. Don't think either that it is a good thing if you don't have any competition. Face it, the internet is so big that you can safely assume that if you don't have any competition it is because other marketers have already done their research and realized that the niche is not a profitable one.

So hard work number one # Researching your niche and finding out what people actually want.

You need to establish a web presence if you make money online
 
Actually setting up your own website so you can make money online is the easiest part of this equation in my opinion. Although many people shirk the idea of doing it themselves with the increased use of blogs as business pages setting up your own web presence is only a few (free) clicks away.

If you take a look at my own blog Grans Internet Income you will see through the various posts I have included links to things that I am selling as part of the overall informative nature of the blog. I am trying to honestly depict what it is like starting an internet business and so some posts are more optimistic than others.

But what you will also notice is that by including those links in my blog content I am actually improving the Google ranking of my pages - Google loves backlinks. Take "Real Work Real Money" for example. I didn't even have to make that page - I got the script for it for free when i signed up to be an affiliate for the product - the whole thing took me less than ten minutes to set up and as the product for sale on this page is good value for money I do well out of if.

On the other hand my ghost niche site, Can Ghosts Hurt You where I am selling two of my own products as well as one as an affiliate I used a website template to create that site in a free WYSIWHG editor - simple really.

So the web presence is not really hard work, but coming up - Traffic and listing building - that takes a bit more doing.

 You would think that because the internet is populated with so many millions of people that getting traffic to your little slice of virtual real estate shouldn't be that hard. But the bottom line is you can be selling $100 notes for a $1 and if people don't know your site exists you won't get any sales.

There are both free and paid methods of driving traffic to your site. Free methods can include article marketing, using Squidoo lenses or blogs, forum and blog commenting and free advertising sites. Paid methods include advertising and PPC or Google Adwords.

It is not the number of options you have that is the problem - it is which ones are the most effective. You need to ask yourself what is the most effective way of getting targeted traffic to my offers - because simply driving hordes of people to your web address won't do it - you need targeted "starving" people to go to your offer before they will buy.

This is where the hard work comes in. To be successful you need to be testing and tracking your numbers - working out where the traffic is coming from' developing your web site community (within your niche) so that you get more organic traffic and building your list.

I know for myself it is the traffic side of things that take the most time. i don't have a huge budget to throw at Google Adwords and so I do use the free options - writing, forum and blog posting, articles, Squidoo and my own blog. I also use free advertising so I spend about half an hour a day clicking on website links to build up my own credits so I can post my adverts to other members. I also spend at least an hour a day on forums, and try and post at least three little messages on twitter as well as responding to replys. Oh yes and I write a post for my blog every day as well.

Then there is the setting up of Squidoo lenses and posting my own articles on Ezine Articles. And because I would rather be selling my own products rather than being an affiliate for someone else I have also got product creation to contend with as well.

So if you are putting a lot of effort into your internet business is it worth it?
 
My husband works outside of the home anywhere between 5 and 8 hours a day. Although he is very supportive of what I am doing at home, he doesn't really classify it as work. But I spend more than double the amount of time on my computer working on my business, than he does in his job. It is not unusual for me to still be on the computer at 3am.

I have only been working on creating my own business for about two months and apart from a few spasmodic sales I haven't got a lot to show for what I am doing. BUT the reason why I keep doing what I am doing is because I do know in the not to distant future I will be making good money - more than my hubby could ever hope to make. That income will be recurring, it will be residual and it will start to come with very little effort from me.

So you see it can be done - I know it can. But I defy anybody to tell you that it is not hard work, because if you do it properly it is; at least initially. But it is worth it - I know I am learning more than I thought possible about the opportunities the internet can offer ordinary people everyday - I had spent the previous ten years online as a ghostwriter and thought I was doing well then. But this will be so much better and so if you are asking me if it is worth it you will get a resounding "YES" from me. But if hubby mentions that I don't have a "real job" just one more time I will be sending him off to scrub the bathroom - "don't bother me, I am working on my Internet Business".