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Since we have posted on the internet scam “Posting links on Google” and other money making schemes like Clickety Split many of you have asked about other similar services. One that was recently brought to my attention was iNetGlobal. They are an internet company that claims they will help you get a “piece of the internet pie”.

Based on the information on their website it looks like you download their software and then you have to visit certain websites for at least 20 seconds or so in order to earn credits. They then allow website owners to pay to have their website put into the software so other members have to look at the website in the rotation.

The major problem with this model is that people that are using this software only care about one thing, earning credits for visiting the required sites. They are not going to engage with the websites they are required to view (1) because it is a complete shot in the dark if it is relevant to something they want to see and (2) because that would eat into the time they can visit more sites and earn more credits.

This is a model that has been circulating around the internet for many years. If people like looking at sites that they have no interest in then more power to them. I just don’t think this is the answer to the question how do I make money online?

My big question is, why is this company using an MLM model? If they have the know how to teach people how to make money online, why don’t they just do that? I have to admit that they do a fantastic job getting people excited about these “opportunities” but in reality your time is much better spent building your own internet empire.

Here is what you need to understand: If you want to make money online, you need to start your own internet business. Don’t join an MLM and try to make money that way. All you will do is make money for the people who started the MLM. A common marketing tactic for companies like iNetGlobal is to show you the founders of Google, or Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) in order to try to get you excited about the prospect of making millions online. The point they don’t make is that the thing all of these people have in common is they started their own internet business, they didn’t join an MLM.

Decide what you are good at, think about what the internet world needs and start looking into internet businesses you can start from there.

Getting into the internet business world can be a daunting task. I realize there is a lot to learn in order to feel comfortable and make a good living online. As I have helped people get started by buying their first website I have realized that a step by step “things you need to do” is in order. Hence this post.

So you and the website owner have agreed on a price. Here is what you need to do to get the website transferred so you have full ownership.

1. Pay for the website. - It seems like an obvious first step but there are always worries that the person may take your money and never transfer you the site. This can be a big concern especially if you contacted them out of the blue so I would recommend that you always use Escrow.com. This is the fail safe way to buy a website without any risk. They do charge a small fee to use their service but when your shelling out a lot of money it’s better to be safe than sorry.
2. Get the domain transferred to you. After you have paid, Escrow.com takes your money and holds it. Then they contact the website owner to transfer the domain. You need to contact the seller directly to find out where they have registered the domain. If they have registered the domain through a registrar you have never used before, you need to go to that registrar and sign up for a free account. Then they can transfer you the domain. This is such a common practice that most registrars have a simple process to do this.
3. Get the files transferred to you. After you have received confirmation that the domain has been transferred, the website owner will try to get you to release the funds with Escrow.com. IMPORTANT: Do not release the money to the person until they have emailed you all of the files for the site. They need to send you a zip file that has all of the website files that way you have full control of the website. Now you can release the funds through Escrow.
4. Set up hosting. You have two options on how you want to set up hosting for the site. Some website owners were hosting their websites themselves and offer to continue to host the site for you for a monthly fee. I personally would rather have the website completely under my control so what I do is go to my favorite hosting company and sign up for a new hosting plan. I then upload all of the files they sent me to the new host. Then  I go to wherever the domain is registered and change the DNS settings to point to the new host. The hosting company can give you the DNS settings you need. If some of this sounds confusing the hosting companies should be able to guide you through the process.
5. Make Improvements. Once you have the website under your full control it is time to go in and make SEO improvements as well as internet marketing improvements that will increase the amount of money you make from the site.

Good luck in your website buying journey!

Stephen R. Covey’s wildly successful The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People touts one of the seven habits as follows:

Begin with the End In Mind. This chapter is about setting long-term goals based on “true north” principles. Covey recommends formulating a “personal vision statement” to document one’s perception of one’s own vision in life. He sees visualization as an important tool to develop this. He also deals with organizational vision statements, which he claims to be more effective if developed and supported by all members of an organization rather than prescribed. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Habits_of_Highly_Effective_People

This is obviously effective, setting long-term goals based on true principles.  Where I see a breakdown happen all the time is in just starting.  I suppose Covey might say be proactive (it’s numero uno).

Many times when people first begin building their internet business, they’re wanting to have an outlined, detailed business plan of exactly what they’re going to do to reach success (however defined) with their business.  You’ll see a person think through things to such an extent that they never actually start doing anything.

In this internet age, it’s even worse.  Why?  Because there is so much information available, you easily fall prety to paralysis by analysis.  For instanace let’s say you just want to get started with a little affiliate website where you try and get traffic through AdWords.  You could spend days — weeks — reading all about AdWords, optimizing, peeling and sticking, testing, evaluating, scrutinizing…

And never actually start.

Learning By Doing works.  Quite well.

Part of the reason we want to be outfitted with all the information possible (which right there disqualifies us, because that’s impossible) is because we’re afraid to make mistakes.  Learning from mistakes is a very quick way to learn, and it’s honestly not that expensive when you’re just starting.

Pick some key metrics that you want to track with your site: Visitors? Sales? Pageviews? Clickthroughs? Pick whatever’s important for your business goal and then write down three things that you need to DO (not learn about) to improve those metrics.  Do you need to reach out to other bloggers?  Write more? Find more keyword niches where you could profitably advertise?

Don’t worry about the Grand Scheme of Things when it comes to your business.  Don’t worry about every single logistic.  For heaven’s sake don’t waste a week on a logo, business card design, letterhead, legal formation, or accounting software.  That’s what I call circling the bush.  You only have success when you start beating the bush — circling it doesn’t do anything except give you a few warm fuzzies so you can go home at night feeling like you accomplished something.

Start DOING and things will fall into place–don’t worry so much about the big picture.  Suddenly, when you’re making money, you’ll need to do some accounting, and you’ll need to form a legal entity, and you’ll want to maybe have a professional-looking logo.  In the meantime, it’s better to just start (do the logo yourself) and not sweat the details.

Now that I have revealed my #1 internet business idea, here is another good one that I like and use. It isn’t as good as the top one but it still is a legitimate money maker.

Create Your Own How To Guide

This could also be entitled create an informational product. The reason we push informational, is because it is digital and thus the automation of such a website becomes very easy.

People always look to the internet to find out how to do things. Truth be told, you can find pretty much how to do anything for free if you look hard enough. Here is the kicker; most people don’t want to take the time to look all over to find information, and they are willing to pay someone that has put the information together for them in a nice how-to guide. Their time is worth more than the price of your guide and thus you make the money.

I have capitalized on this principle for the last 5 years. One of the first websites I ever started (Lawn Care Directory – will be referred to as LCD) sells a digital product. It is a how to guide on starting a lawn care business. If people look hard enough a lot of the information is out there for free on the internet. But I sell a complete guide to starting this type of business, and since people can find it all in one place they pay me for the information.

How did you create a how-to guide? There are a few ways you can create a how-to guide that people will pay for.

1. Write it yourself. – If you have experience doing anything that you would consider your knowledge to be advanced then you can write a how-to guide. For example, if you are a dog lover and owner and have a lot of experience house training puppies, you could write a guide on how to house train your dog. You know how to do this so just write a step by step very detailed guide on how you do it. It’s that simple.

2. Buy the rights to one someone else has written. – After my brother in law saw the success I was having selling a how to start a lawn care business guide he decided that he would sell a similar guide in the pool cleaning industry. He had worked in this industry and knew the process well, however he didn’t have time to create the guide as he was in the military. He found a guide similar to the one he wanted to create and emailed the owner and offered to buy it from her. She sold it to him for $500.

He knew that based on the success I had achieved with my website that $500 was a no brainer. He was able to hit the ground running because someone else did the work for him. After 6 months he was making 2 times that a month.

3. Get the experts to write it for you. – There are two ways you can do this. The most common is to go to a place like Elance.com or Guru.com and create a project for professional writers to bid on. Just tell them you need a guide written on how to “insert your idea here” and then pay them to write it. You can also go to a local expert in your area and ask them to write it for you for a certain amount of money.

I actually got my guide written for me for free. That’s right, that wasn’t a typo. I got experts to write my guide for me for free. How did I do it? Well to be honest I didn’t have any experience in this industry. I emailed several business owners that I knew were successful in this type of business and I asked them several questions.

Most experts will gladly impart with the knowledge they have obtained, and my case was no different. Many of these business owners gave me step by step instructions on how to start this type of business and be successful. This is the guide I sell today. The information is legitimate, but it didn’t cost me anything.

Selling a guide like this is a good strategy because you can automate the process 100%. Search engines send someone to your site, they like the guide, they order it and then they can immediately download it. You personally are not involved in that process at all.

The Downside
The downside to this internet business model are as follows: There are emails that have to be answered and returns to process so this business model is not completely hands off. I’m not a huge fan of doing customer service but if you make enough money you can hire someone to do it for you. I still do it myself on LCD unfortunately. But I have set it up to where I probably spend an hour a month total working on customer service.

Pricing your guide
One of the most difficult decisions you will have to make is deciding at what price to sell your guide. The first thing you can do is look around and find some of your competitors and see how much they are selling something similar. If everyone is selling similar guides for $29 then you probably know that is a good place to start.

IMPORTANT: Don’t assume that other website owners know what they are doing. Just because all of your competitors might be selling the guide at $29, that doesn’t mean that is the best price. You could be leaving a lot of money on the table. For example, when I started selling the “lawn care business guide” on LCD I first offered it at $39 because that is what my top competitor did. After watching sales come in a making some good money I decided to go out on a limb and move the price up to $49. My total income went up and sales remained steady. A few months later I got tired of only being able to make $49.95 a sale and so I decided to make two versions of my guide, the basic and a premium. I packaged the premium with some extra stuff like some forms and advertising propaganda etc.

I put the premium at a price point of $99.95. Guess what happened? I doubled my income. Today, the premium sells twice as much as the basic kit does. The point of this story is to test your pricing until you find the price that will bring you the most total revenue.

Where to market your guide
A great place to market the new guide you have created is in forums that talk about the topic of your guide. For example, if you have created a real estate flipping guide, you should do a search on Google for a real estate flipping forum and then advertise your guide there. Don’t just start posting on the forum advertisements for your product. People see right through that and you will quickly be sent packing. Make good posts, solidify yourself as an expert in the industry and include a link to your new website in the footer of your posts.

If you want to spend a little money you can also try a paid advertisement at the forum. You can usually get pretty good rates for ads on niche forums.

A longer term marketing strategy is to do proper SEO on your website and build up your rankings organically. Then all the traffic you get is free. That is my only advertising strategy for LCD.

Your website
Now that your guide is ready to go you can create a website and start selling the guide. I have seen many people that sell guides online just use a one page website with very long sales copy. This tactic converts well, but you have to rely on traffic from affiliates and pay-per-click traffic because a one page website will not rank in search engines. One way to overcome this is to have articles written that are sub pages of the site but you still have the long sales copy home page.

The other main strategy is to create a website that is about the topic of your guide and then push the guide on the site. Your website can have articles and tips etc on the site to make the site bigger and appear more important to visitors and search engines.

People often want to know where to start when it comes to starting a business online. I mean the options are truly unlimited. If you have read about the Prosperly Way then you know that I like to create internet businesses that run themselves. I try to automate as much as I can so that it takes as little time to run as possible. If I help you start an internet business that takes you 60 hours a week to run then I really haven’t helped you.

So the best internet business model that I recommend first and foremost is to start an affiliate website.

Start An Affiliate Website

This is the internet business model that I have had the most success with. This is where I pick a very specific niche and then I create a website around the products in this niche. (I hire a writer, I don’t write the content myself) I then have links to buy the products we have talked about in the site which are affiliate links so we get paid a percentage for every sale we send them.

For example, if I owned a DVD website I would create a ton of content for individual DVD’s. I then would have affiliate links from Amazon or another DVD store telling people to go buy the movie. Anytime someone buys one of the DVD’s from Amazon, I would get paid a percentage.

If you find the right industry you can quickly make an impact in search engine rankings and start making money very quickly. A good example of this is from one of the websites I started back in 2007. I knew the industry wasn’t very SEO savvy but there was a lot of money being thrown around in the industry.

I hired a copywriter to add at least one page a day to the site and after 6 months the site was making $15,000 a month in affiliate sales. Now keep in mind that I was also doing a lot of link building for the site getting good quality one way links and the site was optimized properly for the search engines.

By that point we were ranking on page one of Google for almost every product included on the site and we also were dominating the search engines for the more general terms in the industry. I had companies in that industry contacting me and offering me a ton of money to help them achieve the same kind of results.

I was pleasantly surprised with these results in such a short amount of time. Even after having optimized hundreds of websites over the years I didn’t expect to see such dramatic results so quickly.

This internet model is good because as you write, or hire someone to write for the website, you are constantly adding fresh new content to your website. This content needs to be high quality good content. Visitors see right through junk. This will also help you achieve higher search engine rankings and thus more traffic to your website because of the quality original content being added.

So choose an industry you like and start an affiliate website. Try to find an industry that isn’t over saturated with affiliate sites out there already.

Word of advice: When you sign up for affiliate programs there are going to be some products you can make more money on than others. This will motivate you to recommend these higher paying products over other products you write about. This is a normal and effective practice.

What you need to avoid is being overly critical of other products on your site just to make the one you want to push look better. There is no need to do this. It just makes you look bad. If you offer good quality in depth content people will trust your recommendations. Be fair and don’t bash other peoples products unless they really are bash worthy. Most people are trying to put out a good quality product and some just do a better job than others.

This business model is great because you never have any customer service or products to ship. You just play the middle man and take a cut. When you’re talking about the best internet business ideas, for me this one tops the list.

Here is another good Prosperly internet business idea