I usually get people ask me to tell them a specific activity they can do and make money on the Internet. But I will not be able to do that for two reasons.

One, I may be recommending a business or activity that you may not have the expertise, resources, or passion for it. If that happens, it may be difficult or impossible for you to succeed in it, even if other people are making money from it.

The second reason is that, it may limit your creativity, and knowledge of how making money on the Internet works.

Instead of telling you, go do this business or that, and you will be making money, I believe it’s better to lay before you the different ways people are making money on the Internet that I know, and trust, some of which I’m doing presently with result to show.

From there, you will be able to assess yourself and decide which one you could do.

Having a Content Site

You can create a website to provide information to your target audience. The success factors in content sites are:

- Targeting topics with huge monthly search volume. You will need to do keyword research to decide which topic or subject to focus your website on. Keyword research will enable you to have an idea of the number of people that may be interested in your topic. For content sites, you should pick topics that have huge monthly search, preferably in the millions.

- Posting huge volume of articles or contents. It is not enough to set up a content site and post five to ten articles in it, and expect it would start making you money. successful content sites, that bring in hundreds of thousands of traffic monthly usually have thousands of unique articles.

If you cannot write the articles yourself, you can outsource it to freelance writers, but ensure that the articles are unique and are not copies. If you have Private Label Articles, you should rewrite them to make them unique before using on your site.

Another way you can provide articles for your website without you personally writing them or paying for them, is to offer revenue sharing proposition to other people. They will provide the articles, and whatever revenue (usually adsense) their articles can generate, you will share it (may be 50-50).

You don’t have to load your site with hundreds of articles overnight. That will be both demanding on you, and also raise the suspicion of search engines, as they could perceive it as an attempt to manipulate it, and so could avoid indexing the site. You should gradually build the website with articles. If you could post 20 articles in a week in it, that will build up to a sizeable amount in one year.

- Optimizing your articles for search engine traffic. For your content site to be successful, that is, to be making you thousands of dollars or Euros or both, many of its pages need to rank highly on the search engines. This will enable it to pull in huge volume of search engine traffic. And with huge traffic coming in, it becomes easy to make money from it through different monetization methods you may decide to use.

To achieve your pages ranking high on search engines, you will need to optimize your articles, and the pages.

Examples of content websites include xomba.com, about.com, wikipedia.com, allbusiness.com, mahalo.com, and zenhabits.net

Having a Programmed Website

You can set up a website to help people achieve certain goals. For instance, you can have software on your site to enable people search for something, treat and upload files, pictures, or videos, distribute materials over the Internet, do certain calculations and provide useable information for people, watch and follow sports events, etc.

If you are not a programmer, you will need to pay someone to help you design the program you want for your site, therefore, you should be ready to spend some money to have it done.

Programmed websites can be very lucrative, especially if there are lots of people who may need your service.

You can monetize such websites by offering the service for free to draw traffic, while monetizing the traffic with adsense, affiliate product sales, and selling advert space. You could also monetize it by charging for the advanced results the software provides.

Examples of programmed websites are google.com, youtube.com, and simplyhired.com.

Having a Content and Programmed Website Combined

You can actually set up a content website, and also have software to perform specific function in it. With this kind of website, you will be providing your visitors great value. The result of this is that it will be easier for your monetization strategies to convert as your visitors are relaxed and stay long on your site.

Providing a Service

Another way you can make money on the Internet is to provide certain services, like articles writing, blogging, proofreading, web designing, graphics, link building, and programming.

To appear professional, which can increase your marketability, you can set up a website or blog to refer prospective clients to.

You may not need to be the one to do the jobs, you can prospect for, and get clients, and then hire freelancers to do the job.

Blogging

Based on your experience or knowledge of a topic or industry, you can set up a blog to share it with other people who may be interested in it.

You can make lots of money from your blog if it becomes popular, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors and followers monthly. There are blogs making up to $50,000 and above monthly for their owners. And this proves how easy it is to make money with blogs.

However, it takes time to build a successful blog. You need to frequently update your blog with fresh and rich content. At the beginning, it might be tough with little or no money made, but if you continue, you could over time build a massive group of dedicated readers and followers who would easily respond to any product you recommend to them.

These are the ways people are legally making serious money on the Internet. You can see which one you want to do. But know that success doesn’t come overnight. You will have to give yourself a minimum of six months of continual and persistent work on your business, learning and applying what you need to do, without expecting to start making any money. If you persevere, the money will surely come.

Setting Up a Mini-website

You can set up a mini-website containing 5 to 20 pages, and promote it with paid advertising, such as adwords. You will need to have a budget for advertising, and decide the best advertising strategy for you.

You can use such websites to promote affiliate products, or your own products, and strive towards making a profit. You could actually make a good profit if your sales are well up over your expense on advertising.

This method of making money on the Internet can yield result a lot faster than the others because you are paying for immediate traffic. However, you need to learn how to get the best targeted traffic to your site, and how to make the site to convert well, otherwise, you could be losing money.

Example of such mini-websites is Debt Consolidation Help.

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