A Quick Start Guide to Making Money Online

What most people don’t realize is that the internet is still in its infancy. There is still a huge opportunity for people to come in and build a business with little to no money.

A lot of times all it takes is a little sweat equity if you’re willing to pursue the right channels and put out some effort.

Here is a quick guide to growing a business online for the complete newbie.

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Table of Contents

Pick a Service

The first thing you want to do is to assess your skill set and think of a service that you will want to provide. This can be anything, whether its a product idea that you have, the ability to sell insurance or even provide a marketing service to something like being a beautician or personal trainer.

Whatever it is, there are people out there looking for it both locally and nationally and you should definitely be monetizing it online. Don’t let the fear of not having a trade stop you either.

You can always go out there and learn one. This can be getting your real estate or insurance license, or something else. Just think of a business that you’d like to run, and commit to the idea.

Build a Website

The next step is to build a website around the service that you picked. Sounds hard right? Its not at all.

These days you can build a website with ZERO programming knowledge. There are thousands of videos out there showing you how to do it.

In fact, the easiest way to do it is to buy your domain, google “WordPress themes (your service here)” and upload that theme to your domain, import the demo content, and just fill in your words.

You will have a professional website that will look like it cost thousands of dollars. You can use websites like Fiverr and Upwork to get little edits done that you need to customize and use stock photo sites to upload custom images to it.

Research Opportunities

The next step is to figure out what people are searching for in regards to your business. The way to do that is to use Google’s keyword planner or the Keywords Everywhere Google Chrome extension. These tools will allow you to see how many people are searching for your service every month and what words they are using to describe it.

Be mindful of picking words that can turn to revenue rather than just words that will turn to traffic. Stick to keywords that are further along the research process. For example, steer clear of any keywords that start with “what is.”

This customer is way too early in the process to bring business your way. Only after you have maximized other opportunities should you go after them.

Start Writing

The next step is to start writing both for your blog and on your website with pages and posts dedicated to those keywords. Make sure to focus on one keyword per page and not try to target multiple keywords. What you’re doing here is SEO and it largely consists of creating good content and building links.

SEO has by far the best ROI of any digital marketing channels out there. Keep focused on the topic and make sure that whatever you write is better than whatever is ranking on the first page for the keyword. You can take several courses on SEO online that are free in order to learn how to optimize your website for SEO. This will be important when you start writing.

The good news is, if you used WordPress, then you’re ahead of the curve as it gives you a good platform for SEO, to begin with.

Build Links

The blue hyperlinks you see online don’t just take you to other pages. They tell the search engines that the website the link is on, trusts the website it is leading you to. Getting other websites to point links to your site and your content will tell the search engines to move you up.

The way to build links is to reach out to other sites and offer them free content, and in return just tell them you’d like to link out to your site. Most websites are looking for fresh content so you can expect a greenlight.