Affiliate Marketing Profit Tools

Free Report: Do You Want Extra Cash, a Job, or a Business?

Too often, people start looking for ways to make money online simply because they either want or need extra cash. Maybe they’d like a little extra money to have fun with, take a vacation, or just put something extra into savings for a rainy day. Other people aren’t making enough money in their day jobs to cover all their expenses, and still others are deeply in debt and looking for ways out.

Now while all of these are completely legitimate reasons for trying to make more money, the problem lies with not knowing exactly what you want or need. So people end up saying they want to “start a business”, even when in reality they just want a couple of hundred dollars extra each month.

So let’s look at what’s different from one scenario to another, and explore just a few of the ways each method can help…

Making Extra Spending Money - If you’re simply looking for a way to make $100-$200 or so extra each month, you don’t actually need to start a business. You simply need to explore the various ways this is possible to do online in your spare time, then choose which option is right for you.

Making just one or two hundred dollars extra each month can easily be done online for instance, by simply taking some surveys or filling out various offers that interest you. And while there are some legitimate companies who will pay you cash for these actions, some people prefer to “earn” the money through their shopping instead.

If for instance, the reason you want to have an extra $100 each month is so that you can afford to buy nicer clothes or things for your home, then you might want to explore rebate shopping sites. Through these types of sites, when you buy your merchandise through specific merchants, you receive rebates of varying amounts. So if you spend $100 on clothes for instance, and you’re able to get a 10% rebate with that purchase, then you’ve spent just $90 in the end. Do that 10 times in a month and of course you’ve essentially “made” $100.

If you don’t want to earn the extra money by buying things of course, then you’ll need to look at various ways to actually generate additional money instead. And this is where things like survey sites can come in handy. These sites aren’t to everyone’s taste of course, but many absolutely adore them. You can sign up to some for no cost, then start taking surveys, participating in polls, or requesting free samples and information on products or services you’re interested in. And each time you take one of these offers, you’ll earn a small amount of money. Some might pay you a dollar to take a survey for instance, and others might pay $5 if you agree to receive a sample product in the mail.

I’ll warn you right now though: This is an easy way to make some extra money each month, but it does have it’s downside too. At best you’ll be receiving tons of extra junk mail, and if you’re not careful you may find yourself getting a lot of email spam too.

You also need to read the fine print on any offer you choose to take though, because some of them can be sneaky. They might require you to pay for shipping and handling on a product for instance, which is completely acceptable. But if they have fine print which says they’re going to bill you each and every month for something if you accept the offer, then you could find yourself spending money on something you never wanted in the first place.

Another popular way to make some extra cash each month is to simply sell things on EBay. Most people clean out their homes, and choose items which they no longer want or need, then place those items for sale on EBay. Sometimes you can find enough stuff around your house to continue making a few hundred dollars a month for several months, and sometimes you’re hard pressed to find enough to make even $100 once. There’s a lot involved with successfully making money on EBay for extended periods of time, but as a source of some extra spending money it’s pretty straight forward.

Jobs Online - Now if you want or need to make more money each month, or you need to do it for a longer period of time, you may find yourself looking for a job online instead. It’s actually common for some people to search for online jobs just because they want to be able to work from home instead of going to an office too. Each of these scenarios is a bit different though.

If you want an online job so that you can make several hundred dollars or more extra each month consistently, your options will be a little different than if you’re looking for a full time job online. Some situations are interchangeable, but there are usually at least a few differences.

Making a little extra each month can be done fairly easily if you have certain skills. Let’s say for instance, that you’re a decent writer and you don’t mind writing a 500 word article each day. You could sign up at one or more websites such as Associated Content, which pay writers for the articles they create. Some pay $3-$20 for full sized web articles, and others pay $5 for a hundred word summary. So doing just one each weekday for a month could earn you at least $100.

If you wanted to earn more of course, you could sign up for multiple paid writing sites, or you could simply write more than one article each day.

There are various other simple “jobs” which can be gotten online, but things get a little more complicated than most beginners expect. You can for instance, sign up at a freelance site such as Elance, and bid on various projects and work assignments listed there. If you win a project bid, then you’ll have a temporary job to do and you’ll be paid for it. Jobs and projects can range from writing assignments, to research and statistics, to website designing, to advertising and marketing, and much more.

Unfortunately, most people who start looking for a job online are actually looking for a way to work full time from home. They want the “security” of having a regular paycheck, and possibly all the benefits which can come with being an employee such as health insurance and a retirement fund.

These types of jobs are called telecommuting jobs, and they’re quite rare. In fact, the few companies that do allow telecommuting, only do so with proven and trusted employees. So a person first starts out in a regular office job with the company, and may work there for many years before they’re allowed to start working at home. And it’s not uncommon for the at home work to be part time too. In other words: The employee is only allowed to work at home two or three days a week, and they must be in the office the rest of the time.

You can “create” jobs for yourself online fairly easily though. The biggest difference is that you’d be working as a freelancer, so you may not have a “boss” and you have to be more self-disciplined in order to make money.

Using a technique such as article marketing for instance, or blogging - assuming you made yourself work every day as if it were a real job you could be fired from - you could earn a substantial ongoing income. Likewise, becoming a freelancer as noted above, you end up with clients who are essentially “the boss”, and for some people that person looking over their shoulder is a key ingredient needed for them to get things done day in and day out.

Starting A Business - Starting a business online is yet another simple way to start making extra money each month. Now, when a business is planned, designed, and run properly, it can actually do much more than just make you some extra money each month. It can literally make you quite wealthy.

There are plenty of online business owners who earn more in a month than they would in a full year at a regular job. And this is just one of the reasons starting an online business is so popular. It’s also fairly easy to do, you can get started quickly, and you can often start something major with little to no out of pocket expense.

But it too gets complicated. Running a full fledged business is not easy. Doing it online is quite simple, but simple is not the same as easy. And this is where many beginners get hung up. Starting a business takes a lot of time, dedication, and hard work. Most business owners work harder in their business than they ever had with a regular job.

There are many common mistakes when people try to start an online business too. One of them is to actually set themselves up with jobs instead of businesses.

What’s the difference?

A business will usually continue running and earning income even if you’re sleeping or taking a vacation.

A job however, requires your presence, skills, hard work, expertise, or all of the above.

Using the same writing example from above, let’s say you decide that you love to write articles, and you can do many each day. So you decide to start a freelance article writing business.

If you sell your writing services to other business owners, and you’re paid a flat fee for each article you write, then you’ve essentially set yourself up with a job and a boss. If you have multiple clients then you’ve gotten yourself multiple bosses, but it’s basically the same thing.

If you’re able to write a maximum of 10 articles each day, and you’re being paid $10 for each article, then you’re only able to earn a maximum of $100 each day. And that’s not bad money right? The problem though, is that if you get sick then you can’t write. If your kids get sick then you can’t write. If you want to take a vacation, you won’t be writing. And anything that prevents you from writing is effectively a “missed day of work”, and like a regular job: You can’t earn money if you’re not working.

There are various ways you could turn that same work into more of a business though. Let’s say that instead of writing the articles each day for clients, you decide to put them onto your own website or blog instead. And with those articles, you put up some form of advertising. For the sake of simplicity we’ll go with the Google AdSense program in this example. With it, you earn a little bit of money each time someone clicks an ad that’s running on your site.

Now with this method you will not earn the immediate $10 each time you write an article. Instead, you will earn a few cents or so each time someone clicks an advertisement. The reason this is more of a business model though, is because you can be earning those few cents regardless of what you happen to be doing. Money can be earned while you’re sleeping, while you’re sick, or while you’re away on vacation too.

One article can continue earning money for years to come. So instead of earning $10 once, you can potentially earn $10 every month from it.

By keeping with the idea of writing 10 articles each day, you’re creating 10 new ways to earn a trickle of income each day. And over time that adds up to quite a bit of potential money. After one week you’ll have 50 articles that can be earning you a few cents or dollars each day. After a month there will be 200.

So while you forego the immediate cash gratification of selling those articles to someone, you actually create long term leverage which can add more trickles to your income, and that will eventually create a large and growing stream.

There are various other business models which can be used with the same basic concept.

• Write 10 articles each day for instance, and after a month you’ll have a very large book which can be sold online or off.

• Write 10 articles each day and put affiliate links in them, then give them away freely to other websites and online publishers. Then each time a visitor clicks your affiliate link and buys a product, you’ll earn money in the form of commissions.

• Write 10 articles each day and put them into a private membership site which you charge money for accessing.

• Write 10 articles each day and syndicate them to other publishers for a small fee, such as $1 per article.
  

These aren’t the only ways to make money with writing specifically of course, and the models referenced above have a variety of their own pros and cons which we’ll explore in later articles.

There are also plenty of other ways to either make extra money online, earn money from jobs and projects, or start an online business too. And these are also other areas we’ll explore in more detail here as time goes on.

For now, think about why you want to make money online. What is the purpose of that extra money and how much extra do you really want or need? Ask yourself if you’d be happy making just $100-$200 each month doing this and that in your spare time, or do you really need to make $500-$1000 each month instead?

Do you want or need a part time job and are you happy with just that for now, or is your dream to actually start a real business which can potentially make you thousands - maybe tens of thousands - of dollars each month?

Knowing exactly what you want and why is a large step in the right direction of getting started with making any level of money online. So sit yourself down and ask the hard questions, then give yourself honest answers too.

Recommended Resources…

• Getting Started With a Little Extra: $5 Bucks a Day

• Still looking for the idea that’s right for you? Check out “20 Ways to Make $100 a Day on the Internet“. It’s an excellent resource for both inspiration and money making idea generation.

• Interested in making easy money with blogging? Check out this comprehensive plan called “Blogging to the Bank”

• If you don’t have much to try selling on ebay, you can still make money from them by setting up a Niche EBay Store.

• You can also set up an automated store using my Affiliate Datafeed Profit System

• Just want to earn a little spare change here and there? Try writing articles for Associated Content, they pay you via PayPal every Mon, Wed, and Fri.

• Want more ideas and inspiration? Check out the various entreprenuers profiled in Success Alert. It’s an excellent read that gives you lots of details about how these businesses were started, how they run, and how profitable they are.