How I Make Money Online

I am an Affiliate Marketer. Affiliate programs allow publishers (in this case me) a chance to promote a company's product. In other words, I search the net for profitable products related to my business; How to Make Money Online. Once I have found a product that interests me, I have several options to market this product to my readers.

The first option is, leave an advertisement from the affiliate program on my website. The advertisement possesses a tracking code that allows the product owner to track where their sale came from. Since the viewer bought or signed up from my site, I am rewarded with a referral fee. For most companies, the fee ranges from $5-$100. Some of the more established high end sites on the web offer even more competitive rates that sometimes reach the $500 mark. Impressive huh?

Now for option 1 to work, this is under the assumption that the viewer bought or signed up for an affiliate program that I am endorsing. Also, the viewer MUST sign up from my affiliate link. If the viewer closes the window, and re-opens it by manually typing in the website, I lose my referral finders fee because the tracking code is no longer visible to the product I am endorsing.

The second option is through a set up called Pay-Per-Lead. This is very similar to option 1, instead this time I am awarded money based on how many potential clients I send the company I am endorsing. In other words, if I send Company B 20 potential clients, at $1.00 a client, I earn $20.00. It may seem insignificant in the example, but when you consider sites like Amazon.com or Johnchow.com receive upwards of 20,000 unique visitors a day, the amount of potential income is alarming!

For option 2 to work successfully you need to develop a high traffic website. Which means, you need to put your site in the top 5 search results in every major search engine. This, doesn't happen overnight. In fact getting to that prime real estate on the search engine results page takes among other things, 6 months, accurate information, a community of people, and a highly reputable name among the internet.

The third and final option is Pay-Per-Click advertising. This is a minimal amount of income. Google Adsense offers its affiliates payment based on conversion ratios. It gets somewhat technical from this point on, forgive me if it gets confusing. I still don't understand all the charts Google gives me. The math works out something like this: Every time a Google Ad is displayed on your site, this counts as an impression. Every time someone clicks on that ad, it is called a click. Now, Google takes the #clicks and divides it by the #impressions giving you a base number. Google then takes your base number, and compares it to ALL of its affiliates and ranks your conversion ratio amongst other affiliates. It then concludes your earnings for the given month, and you receive a check in the mail. Typically, you receive between .20c-.60c a click.

Option 3 is really only rewarding if you either have a high conversion ratio which means your ads have to be REALLY relevant to your viewers. It can also be rewarding, if your site receives 20,000+ viewers a day. Regardless, money is money. Income, no matter how insignificant is still money in your pocket. Especially when you're doing absolutely nothing for it.

These are the three basic ways I make money online. There are still TONS of options out there, these are just the ones that work specifically for me. Do some research, investigate the unknowns. Profitable businesses open everyday, maybe today is your day?