How To Make Money Online For Newbies

I got a great question from Sharon on how to make money online, who asked:

Hey Liz,

I’m a stay at home mom that has more free time now that my kids are back in school and I’m considering using the internet as a way to make money online but I’m not sure how to get started or what I should do.

I don’t really have any talents and my skills are pretty basic. I’m not a great writer but I think I can learn. What would be your best suggestion for making money online for someone like me?

Thanks, Sharon

Great question Sharon

Even though you don’t have any real talents or skills, there are still lots of ways to make money online, but what’s most key is that you’re willing to learn

Unfortunately there’s no one size fits all or a magic business that everyone will find success with, but if you can follow a few easy decision making steps, you can get a good handle on what might suit you and know if it will be profitable.

Find a Profitable Niche

If I’ve learned anything from being online these past several years, it’s having a niche focus.

It doesn’t matter if you’re selling your own products, promoting other people’s products, creating digital products, blogging, offering services, advertising, whatever it is, find a specific niche. Trying to be all things to all people will diminish your success.

Take for example topics like cooking, gardening, sports, beauty, finance, and weight loss are much too broad. To be successful and make money online you’ll need to find a much more niche focused topic

For example, weight loss is a very broad topic, but weight loss for women over 50 is much more niche focused. It will attract a smaller audience will be easier to connect will making it easier for you to get them in touch with the products or services they need and will be most interested in.

So how do you find a good niche that will make money online?

Start with what you already have an interest in or what you already know.

What do you like? Do you have hobbies, life experiences, or personal remedies others would love to know? Are you crafty? Do you like to write? Once you have a niche idea, it’s time to do a little research to find out if your idea will be profitable or not.

Here’s a free report I created that’s designed to help you find out if your niche idea will be profitable:

Finding profitable niche ideas

Next you’ll need to decide how you want to make money with your niche idea. In other words, do you want to create an ecommerce web site and sell your own products, do dropshipping, promote products as an affiliate. become a blogger, offer a service, etc.?

Ideally you’ll want to choose a business model that you can easily start, fits within your budget and fits your lifestyle.

Here’s how to find Your Ideal Internet Business model.

My Best Suggestion For How To Make Money Online for Newbies

In my opinion, blogging is an ideal place to start for a newbie. It’s one of the easiest way to create a professional looking site that’s interactive and helps you make use of all the socializing methods that are so key to being successful online.

I personally recommend creating a self hosted WordPress blog as opposed to going with a blog like blogger.com if you’re serious about making money.

Sites like Blogger have are restrictive and because it’s not a blog you own, you are vulnerable to being dropped if you don’t fully understand their terms of service.

For more information on how to get started blogging, here’s a post I did that will give you some ideas for getting started. The sooner you start, the faster you’ll begin making money

http://www.homenotion.com/blog/how-to-get-started-blogging/

Once you’ve created your blog, you can make money with just one of these things or with all of them:

3 Basic Foundations for Making Money Online with any Website or Blog

Create Awesome Content

You website or blog MUST have great content. That is, content that your readers find value in. One of the biggest mistakes new bloggers make is brushing aside the importance of creating high quality content. This means your content has to be useful or is solving problems for people. It should be inspiring and give your readers something they can act on. With out that your readers will go elsewhere.

Promote It!

Go where your readers are and get in front of them with what you are writing. You can most effectively do this by commenting on forums related to your niche and make social comments on sites like LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook and Twitter. These are all places that people hangout. Type in your topic’s keywords and seek out others that have the same interests.

But one of the best promotion methods I use for promoting my blog and getting more traffic is guest posting on other blogs. This method is outstanding for bringing visitors to your blog and expanding your reach within your niche community.

Get Connected With Your Niche Community

You want your blog to be a place where readers can hang out. It should be where readers feel ownership and can interact with each other. Keep on top of what your readers want to know by knowing who your readers are and what kind of information they want.

In Summary…

How you make money online can only be your decision, but it really doesn’t matter what you decide to do. Of course it should be something you enjoy, but your success will ultimately depend on how dedicated you are, how open you are to learning the strategies and methods for making money, and your ability to stay focused.

Thanks Sharon for that great question!

17 Thoughts on “How To Make Money Online For Newbies”

Freelance on May 10, 2012 at 1:32 am said:

To start making money from your blog, you should keep in mind that you should establish your social networks accounts and share your content there. Social Media is crucial to both your blogs traffic and PR, since Google has included them in their last update.
Freelance recently posted..Regular signage design, way finding schemes, logos, layout ready for print
Ms. Liz on April 24, 2012 at 1:48 pm said:

Melva, I actually love your SBI site, you’ve done an awesome job with it
melvapratt
Twitter: me
on April 24, 2012 at 1:27 pm said:

This is a great article. I would also recommend SBI to any new comer. When I was a new comer three year ago I started with SBI and now I know so much more and am making money online.
melvapratt recently posted..Direct Selling Cosmetics
eBay dropshipping on October 19, 2011 at 8:42 am said:

You are totally correct, starting an online business or any kind of business is hard because you have to consider many things. Anyway, there are guides out there newbies, you just really have to do thorough research.
Floyd Andrews from SEO resellers on October 10, 2011 at 7:46 am said:

Karen has said all there is to say about this post of yours. These are definitely good tips. You could also add this to the list: creating relationships with other people in the same community that tackles your niche. Joining communities might help you get new ideas for your business in the future.
Karen from SEO Los Angeles on October 6, 2011 at 2:50 pm said:

These are some great tips, I’m working on setting up my own food blog site right now, it started off as more of a hobby but I am thinking about trying to make it into something that could be profitable at some point. I am definitely taking notes on what you suggest!
Roy Polite on September 24, 2011 at 10:14 am said:

You want to know how to make money online,join a network with like-mined people and share ideas and information to become successful.
Ms. Liz on September 22, 2011 at 6:54 am said:

Hey Charmaine, you’re right about Adwords. There was a time I used them to advertise and did well, but then Google changed the rules.

I no longer use Adwords, I focus more on writing effective SEO copy which is something I happen to enjoy a lot more than fighting with Google Adwords :-\

Thanks for covering me with the hosting service, you’re absolutely right, you’ll need a hosting service with a self hosted domain. I use Hostgator because I love their support which is important to my business, actually here’s why they get my full thumbs up. http://www.homenotion.com/blog/looking-for-the-best-web-hosting-for-small-business-hostgator-gets-my-thumbs-up/

Thanks for the great feedback Charmaine
Charmaine from Work For Women At Home on September 22, 2011 at 6:26 am said:

A great post Liz with some valuable links to some valuable information as well. Definitely a great “starter” guide.

As far as the comment by Josh goes, I would leave Adwords alone as a newcomer to any form of online marketing as it requires a certain level of expertise far greater than any newcomer will have. There have been 250+ page books (one is a best seller) about Adwords alone. If you don’t know what or how to do it properly you WILL lose a lot of money fast!

Affiliate marketing works, there are NO shortcuts, but the ways you have outlined here Liz, are the right ways to go about it, after all you want to build a business here and like any business it takes hard work and time to generate good profits. Be consistent and persistent and you will make money. Just learn from others how to do it properly!

Just one quick observation, you did not mention that to have a self hosted domain you will need to get some hosting too!

Love & light,
Charmaine
Kayla from Online Furniture Stores on September 21, 2011 at 4:06 pm said:

I find it amazing how easy and fast making money online can be, at least in terms of getting started. Obviously I know that I wouldn’t be a success overnight, but the idea that I can start accumulating passive income in a matter of hours is so cool. Wonder why more people aren’t taking advantage?
Ms. Liz on September 21, 2011 at 1:03 pm said:

Hey Sam, what kinds of things are you looking for?
Sam from Air Purifiers on September 21, 2011 at 12:58 pm said:

Great links. I have been reading up on how to make money on line all morning and lots of great information but I haven’t really found any links that were helpful. Thanks for cross referencing your self.
Sara from Tours of the Vatican on September 20, 2011 at 3:56 pm said:

I have been seeing that you can make money blogging or from the pictures on your blog or advertisements, etc. But I am curious how much money is really being made from this? Anyone know?
Josh on September 20, 2011 at 12:12 pm said:

I would have to say from experience, that the easiest way to get started making money online is to learn the WordPress platform and how to get it ranking through SEO efforts. This is not as bad as it sounds due to several great plugins from WordPress. Next would be to monetize the site using Google Adwords. I would only move on to Affiliate products and sponsored links once the site/sites have some traction to the point where it is getting some significant traffic from the search engines. But to start I would recommend WordPress/Adwords to get the ball rolling
Ms. Liz on September 20, 2011 at 11:48 am said:

Why Thank you! I’m glad the points were clearer. That’s always my goal. Thanks for your feedback
Buy to Let Properties on September 20, 2011 at 10:43 am said:

Hey Liz,

Today I have read three blog posts on the same topic and I must say you have highlighted few great points much better than the other three I read.
negocios por internet on September 20, 2011 at 12:45 am said:

I am a newbie in this business and I am really looking for an article like the where I can get some ideas on how to start making money online. I am happy that I have now this post.