Chapter Nine

The Four Fastest, Easiest Ways

To Make Money on the Internet

By Ben Hart

Fast Internet Cash Strategy #1

My first experience with Internet marketing was on eBay.

What’s great about eBay if you are a beginner is that you don’t even need a website – though it’s best if you have one.  All you need is some stuff to sell.

If you look around your house for an hour, I’m sure you’ll find all kinds of things you never use – but that someone out there will be happy to buy from you.

eBay, of course, is the world’s most famous online auction site.  If you have ever been to a traditional auction, you’ve probably noticed the psychology at work.

People get competitive at auctions.  They want to win.  For certain items, you will see a feeding frenzy take over with people trying to out-bid each other.  What often happens is that people end up paying far more than the product is worth.

They become more interested in winning the bidding war than whether they are getting good value for the purchase.  People often end up paying more for an item at an auction than they would if they had just bought the same item at the store.

So that’s the psychology that makes auctions work.

Let me tell you my first experience selling on eBay.

As part of our spring cleaning ritual, we had a yard sale and sold most of the junk we had out there – a sofa, other furniture, some toys, books and a lot of other stuff.  But there were some things that did not sell.  We had old baby clothes, some Christmas ornaments, some posters of sports figures, an old computer and quite a few books.

This was before I had a website or even thought about getting deeply involved in Internet marketing.  So I thought, heck, let’s see what happens if we put these items on eBay.

I had bought things on eBay.  But I had never tried to sell anything on eBay.

But I thought, let’s try it and see what happens – either that, or we just give the stuff to Goodwill.

So what happened?

Well, I had no trouble selling the stuff at all. All the junk was sold within about 48 hours.  So instead of standing out in the yard all day meeting and greeting visitors to our yard sale, we could have just sold everything on eBay and been done with it.

In other words – this, in a nutshell, is an easy way to put your marketing and selling on automatic pilot.  You write a few ads, put them up on eBay and then basically forget it. Except that it’s fun also to monitor the bidding.

And if you write good ads, you can get the bidding going quickly on just about any product.

Now think about how well auctions can work even in a relatively small room – with, say, 100 people present.  Pretty darn well.  A traditional auction can move products fast if they have a crowd of 100 or 200 people in the room.

But on eBay, you don’t just have 100 or 200 people.  Your reach is now global.  And you’ll find people across the world who will buy the weirdest things.

Pictures of goats sell.  Porcelain champagne flutes sell.  A collection of old milk bottles will sell.  Antiques sell. Baseball tickets sell. Used books sell. Cardboard cutouts of Clint Eastwood sell.

On eBay, there’s always someone in the world who says “that’s exactly what I want.”

I have a good friend who is making a great living selling used books on eBay.  eBay has millions of regular users – most looking for specific things,  others just browsing the merchandise – the way people do at flea markets.  On eBay, you can compete with Wal-Mart.

But here’s the big payoff by starting your Internet business on eBay.

Not only will you make money.  But you will discover what ads you write work and what don’t work.  You will find that having photos of your product will boost your order rate by 1,000 percent or so.

You will find that one headline will pull 1,000 percent better than another headline.  And you will quickly become a pretty darn good copywriter just through trial and error on eBay.

And it does not cost you anything to fail.  It’s not like in direct mail where if your mailing doesn’t work, you’re out a lot of money.  There’s no out-of-pocket cost to failing on eBay. 

If one ad does not work well, just try another one.  There is no cheaper way to get a copywriting and marketing education than this.

And the feedback you get on your ads is instant.  Well, actually it is not quite instant.

Let’s say you set your auction to last 7 days.  It takes a little while for people to notice your product.  And the first few days you might not get any bids.  Don’t get discouraged.

The bids tend to come in at the last minute.  People like to wait until just before the deadline to make their bid.

By the way, this will teach you the importance of having a deadline with all your offers.

Just having a deadline will always increase response 40% or more.  People are procrastinators.  People need to be given a reason to act now.  An approaching deadline is the reason.

So when you conduct your eBay auctions, you will see a flood of bids come in at the last minute, just before the deadline.  The bidders are looking for bargains.  That’s why they wait.

Marketing on eBay is no different in principle from all other kinds of marketing.   Just offer something that some people want, and you will be successful.  If you do that on eBay, you will see what I mean.

Tickets to the Masters golf tournament sell for $4,000 on eBay.  eBay is goldmine for ticket scalpers.  You could make a great living just by buying up tickets to the hot events and selling them on eBbay.

People used to make a great living by buying tickets to the hot events and standing outside the stadium to sell them.  You don’t have to do that anymore. I have made thousands of dollars buying tickets to hot events and selling them on eBay.

eBay gives you access to millions of people – some of whom will want your tickets, or your Barbie doll collection, or your stamp collection – and pay you big money.

Frankly, it really doesn’t take much to be successful on the Internet.  It’s a whole lot easier than marketing off line.

Now, you want to make sure you are delivering good value over eBay.  You want happy customers because you want to have a good rating on eBbay.

eBbay has a “Power Sellers” program to recognize the top sellers on eBay. To get that recognition, you must sell at least $1,000 of merchandize per month for three consecutive months and also get a 98% customer satisfaction rating.

What you will see as you move along in this book is that your keyword research and selection strategy is one of the lynchpins of successful marketing strategy.  We’ll cover this in much more detail as we go along in this book – especially in the big chapter on “How to Use Google AdWords to Build Your Business.”

But advertising on eBay will teach you a lot about keyword selection strategy – that is, how to select the right keywords for the products you are selling.  When people search for things on eBay, they can search by category or they can just type in keywords – which is what most people do.

To be successful on eBay, you need to get a feel for what keywords people are using to find products like yours. 

Fast Internet Cash Strategy #2

With eBay you can get started making money on the Internet without even having a website.  But there really is no excuse not excuse not to have a website.  But, in case you don’t have one, a great solution is to head on over to a site called www.Shopster.com

Shopster.com is a remarkable site that offers both an online website building tool and more than 700,000 products for you to sell on your website.  Shopster.com handles all the shipping for you.

Now, online website building tools are a dime a dozen these days.  Back in the old days, you had to be a technical wiz and know HTML coding and all kinds of programming to build a website.

But today, building your own website and having it up on the Internet ready to do business is easier, much easier than even using Microsoft Word.

I like www.SiteBuildIt.com for newbies.  It has all the e-commerce tools you need.

CityMax.com is another one that includes the shopping cart and all the ecommerce tools you need.  Yahoo Small Business is another great solution at http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com

So having a website today is a no-brainer.  You can have a website up a running in 30 minutes with any of these super-simple-to-use online website builders.

But what I like about Shopster.com is that it also provides 700,000 products for you to sell.  So this is great if you have no product to sell. And Shopster handles all the customer service, the transaction, the shipping everything.  You set your own price for the products you are selling.

Your only job is to get people to come to your site.  So it’s a little like an affiliate program, only different – because you actually have a true-blue store.  You are not driving people to someone else’s site and getting a commission.  You are selling products on your site.  It’s your store. You pick the products you want to offer.  Shopster handles everything for you except the traffic part.

Your only job is to get people to come into your store.  In this sense, it’s more like a franchise.

So what Shopster.com is doing here is paying you to bring traffic to your site.  Shopster is paying you to tap into whatever network of contacts you have – your email list and whatever other kinds of marketing you might be doing to bring people to your site.

Shopster makes money when you sell products on your site.  And Shopster reduces its advertising cost by tapping into your network.

So what you have here is a partenership.  Shopster provides the products, the customer support, gets your website up and running, ships your products, does the transaction – no need for you to bother with a merchant account.

All you focus on is bringing traffic into your store.

Okay, so how do you do that?

The easiest, fastest way is with a pay-per-click ad campaign using Google AdWords.  But Ben, some of you will say – I have no money.

That will cost me money.

Yes, that’s true.  A pay-per-click ad campaign on Google AdWords will cost you some money.

But it’s the most cost-effective advertising there is.  You can test your ad campaign on Google AdWords for less than $50 and get a pretty good idea of whether your ad will work.

Google AdWords is the primary method I use to drive traffic to my sites.  And I’m getting $4 for every $1 I spend using Google AdWords.  Plus, I finance the growth of my Internet business by using my credit cards.

I know I will more than pay for the acquisition of a new customer by the time my credit card bill is due.  In fact, I will have turned a profit.  So in a sense, using Google AdWords for me is not just free – it’s an instant money-maker for me.  My biggest challenge right now is just finding more keywords and keyword phrases to bid on that fit my market niche.

Now, what I am selling primarily on the Internet is marketing advice for entrepreneurs.

So that’s my niche.  That’s my target market – entrepreneurs who want to learn how to grow their businesses by improving their marketing.

Okay, so let’s get back to Shopster and the 700,000 products you now have to sell.

Now, obviously you can’t and you shouldn’t offer all 700,000 products on your website.

So which of these 700,000 products should you sell?

What you want to do is target a niche.  You would want to target a niche that interests you – because you want to have fun while you are making money and building your business.

Why is this so important?

It’s important because of they way people search for things on the Internet.  When people go to a search engine and type in their keywords and keyword phrases, they are looking for something in particular.

They are looking for something specific.

So, when you design your Google AdWords pay-per-click ads, the ad should be exactly on the topic of the keywords your clicker is typing into the search engine.

And your ad should link to a page that is also exactly on that topic – or that is offering exactly what your searcher is looking for.  So the ad on your website should be a seemless continuation of your Google AdWords ppc ad.

Now – what is a pay-per-click ad on Google really?

All it really is a classified ad.  And people click on the headline to find out more information on the subject of the ad.

What’s great about pay-per-click advertising on Google, Yahoo and the other search engines is that your ad comes up in the listing only when people are looking for exactly what you are selling – that is, only when people type those keywords and phrases that you have associated with your ad.

And you only pay Google when someone clicks on your ad.  In other words, you only pay for performance.  You don’t pay for anything vague like impressions.

You know with 100% certainty that those who click on your Google AdWords  are: 

1. Interested in what you are offering; and 

2. That they made a decision to go to your site to get more information on your offer, and perhaps to buy.

 In other words, this is a very hot prospect indeed.

Now, let me pause here to say a word about “stickiness.”

You hear a lot about the importance of websites being sticky – sticky meaning creating interesting content that people want to return to over and over again.  This is important for building a long-term business on the Internet – especially for certain kinds of businesses.

But if your goal is to bring in money fast – say, within 72 hours – pay-per-click advertising is the way to go.

When people have a problem and they are frantically surfing the Internet to find a quickly solution to their problem, you want to be the instant problem solver.  When your prospect lands on your site, you want your prospect to say “That’s it.  My problem is now solved.  That’s it.”

So don’t emphasize stickiness for you site here.  Emphasize solving your prospect’s problem.

Okay, so now let’s head back over to Shopster and browse through its 700,000 products.

What products look like good bets to work?

Well, several categories jump out.  One is laptop computers.

I like that because it’s an expensive item, so you’ll have a healthy profit margin to work with.

Lots of people on the Internet are looking for laptop computers.  Laptop computers are commodities these days, so to be successful here you will need to offer a really great price – the best possible price.

But you also have no overhead.   You are not like Dell which has enormous factories.  You don’t have a lot of employees or a big infrastructure to support.

You are just you – you and your computer and your Internet connection.  So you have afford to sell laptops for a great price.  So what if you only make a $100 profit on every laptop you sell through Shopster.

If you can sell 10 laptops a day on your site, that’s $1,000 for you minus whatever you are spending on your pay-per-click ad campaign.  And you really have to work hard at it to spend more than $300 a day on your pay-per-click advertising.

That’s only after you get really rolling.

Just for fun, let’s see how much it would cost per-click to rank in the top three for the keyword phrase “laptop computer” Remember, a click represents a visitor to your site – to your sales presentation.

How much do you think it would cost to rank in the top three on the paid listings for the phrase “laptop computer”?

Maybe $10 per click?

Nope.

Now, you would think this would be very expensive because , after all, you are (at least theoretically) competing against Dell, Hewlett Packard, Toshiba, IBM, Best Buy, Circuit City and companies like that for the phrase “laptop computer.”

But the stunning truth is you can be on the first page of search results for the phrase “laptop computer” for about $1 a click.  In fact, I only find 21 pay-per-click ads on Google for the keyword phrase laptop computer (as I write these words).

That means you will pay $1 every time someone clicks on your ad for laptop computers and ends up on your website – which should be all about laptop computers.

So if your profit margin is just $100 per sale on a laptop computer, you break even on your Google Advertising if just 1 out of 100 clickers on your ad ends up buying a laptop computer from you.

In other words, all you need is a 1% order rate.

If your site and your offer are good, you should, at a minimum, be able to covert 2-3% of these visitors into buyers – “visitors” being those who clicked on your Google Ad for laptop computers.

If your profit margin on the laptop is just $100, you should be able to offer a very good price on laptops and so should be able to get a lot of buyers . . . because remember, the only ones who are going to click on your ad are those who are looking specifically for laptops.

The weakness of “laptop computers” as a market niche is that it’s very competitive and you are up against a lot of big companies.  When I plug “laptop computer” 104,000,000 sites come up in the organic (“free”) search results list.

But there are only 21 pay-per-click ads.  So I really like those odds for success.  Lots of people around the world looking for laptops.

A big point I want you to grasp here is how the efficiencies inherent in marketing on the Internet allow you to make a ton of money very quickly.  Unlike a traditional offline brick and mortar store, you really don’t have any overhead.

You don’t have a lease you have to pay.  You don’t have employees.  You don’t have inventory. 

You just focus on one and only thing – the marketing.  The selling.  That’s it.

And with pay-per-click advertising, such as what I just described for you using Google Adwords, you can bring in instant traffic to your site – a river of people all day long who are looking specifically for a laptop computer.

All you have to do is convert 2 out of 100 of your visitors into buyers, and you have doubled the money you have just invested in Google AdWords . . . because you only pay Google when someone actually clicks on your ad and visits your site.

How long would it take you to get set up like this?

You could get the money flowing in 2 or 3 hours by heading over the Shopster.com to get your products and your website – and then testing some pay-per-click ads using Google AdWords.

I’m just not sure how life gets any easier or simpler than that.

Or let’s take another subject.

I browse again through Shopster’s list of 700,000 products.

“Bibles” is a category that jumps out at me.  Shopster offers all kinds of Bibles.

Now, this interests me because of what I know about the Christian market.  My direct mail marketing program built the Christian Coalition to 2,000,000 members in the 1990s.

So I know this market well.  I know that the Bible is the bestselling book of all time.  I know that Christians don’t just have one Bible in their home.  They have many Bibles.

They have a children’s Bible.  They have Bibles with commentaries.  They have all kinds of Bibles.

And Christians don’t just buy Bibles, they buy Christian books and tapes and all kinds of resources to help strengthen their faith.  That’s means there will be many opportunities for follow-up sales to this market.

So Bibles is an interesting category.  And anyone who is searching online for a Bible is clearly a Christian – probably a serious one.

Okay, so lets head back on over to Google AdWords and see how much it would cost me per click to rank in the top 3 in the listings for the keywords  “Bible” and “Bibles”

Probably a lot, right?

Wrong.

For 50 cents per click on your ad, you can be in the top three on Google for those keywords – “Bible” and “Bibles.”  Remember, a click on your ad represents a visitor to your site.

Now, your profit margin for selling a Bible is clearly not going to be as big as for selling a laptop computer.  If you profit margin on the laptop is $100 or more likely $200 – your profit margin for selling a Bible might be $10 or $15.

So you would need to convert about 3-5% of clickers on your ad into buyers.  But you will probably sell a lot more Bibles than laptop computers because it’s a low-ticket item.  And the Bible is still the world’s bestselling book.

But even more importantly – you know with 100% certainty that your Bible buyers are committed Christians who will then be excellent prospects for all kinds of other Christian products – books, videos, music, etc..

Hundreds of billions of dollars in Christian merchandize is sold every year to this market.

About 2,000,000 people plug the word “Bible” into a search engine every month.  And to think that you can be in the top three listed on Google for just 50 cents a click – and have a chance to get a sizeable chunk of that business.

Even more stunning, you can do it in 48 hours or 72 hours simply by using pay-per-click advertising on Google AdWords.

By the way, you can learn what keywords are best for you by using a program called www.wordtracker.com.  That’s a service you pay a monthly subscription for and its very good.

Google’s keyword tool used to be awful, but they have improved it.

Google’s keyword tools will help you come up with all kinds of combinations of keywords and phrases for what you are trying to sell.

Just remember the foundational principle for all internet marketing.  The way people search for things on the Internet is by typing keywords into the search engine that are related to what they are looking for.

Your job as a marketer on the Internet is to make sure your pay-per-click ad pops up in the Google listings for keywords and phrases that are related to the product you are selling – and to make sure that the offer on your website is also exactly in line with what your searcher is looking for.  The keywords you select that describe your product, your Google ad and the landing page you take your clicker to must be a seemless continuation of the same ad.

The biggest mistake people make with their pay-per-click ad campaigns is to take people to their general site or to their general store.

What you want to do is take people who click on your ad to a web page that is all about that specific topic.  If your Google ad is designed for people looking for laptop computers, take them to a page or a website that is all about laptop computers – not a general site where you might be selling all kinds of computers and accessories.

In other words, offer people exactly what they are looking for.  This might seem like common sense – but few  on the internet actually follow this iron rule of effective marketing.

Find out what people want, and give it to them.  It’s really as simple as that.

So eBay is the easiest simplest way to get started selling on the Internet

Signing up with Shopster.com and launching a pay-per-click ad campaign on Google is the next easiest, fastest way.

Now, I’ll give you a third way.  This mthod is actually even more simple than signing up with Shopster.

Fast Internet Cash Strategy #3

The strategy is to produce an ebook centered around a super-hot search term – that is, around whatever is the hot news topic on cable news and the tabloids.

You can probably guess what the hottest searches are by just watching the news.  Or you can just type hotsearch.aol.com into your browser and find out what the top searches are on AOL.

You can do the same on Google or Yahoo. Just type “Most Popular Searches” into Google and you’ll find Google Zeitgeist

Google Zeitgeist will tell you the 10 most popular searches of the week.

Okay, so let’s take the death of Anna Nicole Smith.  That was the most popular search for many weeks.

So what you would have done when she was the hot search topic is produce an ebook all about Anna Nicole Smith.  You have to produce it fast because news comes and goes.

The death of Lady Di would have been perfect for this.  So would have been the O.J. Simpson Trial.  Anything really big works.  And there’s always something.  Just follow the news.

So you produce your 120-page ebook or have it written.  And you do that essentially by pulling together all the publicly available information – which you can do with your Google searches.

You put together what is known in the journalistic world as a “cut and paste” job.  That’s what a quickie book like this is.  It’s a cut and past job.

Here’s how you make money.

Millions of people are searching for information, say, on Anna Nicole Smith.  Even during the news furor over her death, you could have been in the top three on Google for searches of Anna Nicole Smith for 10 cents a click.

Why so cheap?

Because you are not in competition with other businesses for the search term – at least not intense competition.  So millions of people were out there every day searching for information on Anna Nicole Smith – the hot topic of the day.

They are typing here name into Google.  Some are Anna Nicole Smith fanatics.  Some of these fanatics will click on your pay-per-click Google ad to get your book on the Life of Anna Nicole Smith.

And you might charge $19.95 for this book, or maybe $29.95.

You run a split test to see which price works best.  If 1,000 people click on your ad for 10 cents a click, that will cost you $100.

10 cents a click is about what you would be paying for the “Anna Nicole Smith” keyword phrase.

Okay so you’ve just paid $100 for 1,000 people who have clicked on your ad and are now on your website which is really just a big display ad for your book on the Life and Death of Anna Nicole Smith.  These 1,000 visitors are highly targeted.

If you are charging $29.95 for your ebook, all you need is four buyers out of 1,000 visitors to cover your Google AdWords bill and to make money.  If you are charging $19.95, you will need six buyers of your ebook out of 1,000 visitors to cover your Google AdWords bill and make money.

Do you think you might be able to persuade at least six of these 1,000 certified Anna Nicole Smith fanatics who have clicked your ad to visit your site to plunk down $19.95 or $29.95 for your ebook – just as an impulse purchase?

Remember, these 1,000 visitors are bonifide Anna Nicole Smith fanatics. You know that because . . .

1. They were actively searching for info on Anna Nicole Smith

2. They then clicked on your Google pay-per-click ad to at least read your offer on your eBook on on Anna Nicole’s life.

 I would guess that it would not be too difficult to get six out of 1,000 certified Anna Nicole Smith fanatics to plop down a few bucks for your ebook on her life.  And then you’re off to the races.

For the next two or three weeks, while she’s all over the news, you are making money hand over fist.  The key is to be out fast with your ebook on whatever the big hot news event it.

It’s best if your ebook is on a person – a big celebrity.  The O.J. Simpson trial would have been perfect for this strategy.  Plus, that went on for a year.  Now there’s going to be a new O.J Simpson trial.  Remember, here are what the keys are to this strategy:

1. Zero in on the hot search topic of the day.

2. Produce a quick ebook on that topic.

3. Launch a pay-per-click ad campaign using Google AdWords. Even though millions of people are searching for info on the hot topic of the day, your keywords for the hot topic will be super cheap to bid on because you are not in serious competition with other businesses for those keywords – so you can be near the top spot in Google’s pay-per-click ad listings for 10 cents a click or so.

So that’s fast Internet cash strategy #3.

Fast Internet Cash Strategy #4

Once you understand the basic concepts I’ll outline for you here, you then just build on this foundation.  We’ll call this “Your Eight-Day Plan For Making Money on the Internet.”

Day One

Find a good affiliate program on a subject that interests you

Just type “affiliate program” into Google and hundreds of affiliate programs and affiliate program directories will pop up in the listing.

An affiliate program is when you sell other people’s products and get a commission.  Most affiliate programs pay anywhere from a 20% to 40% commission.

The great virtue of an affiliate program is that you don’t have to worry about creating or developing a product. 

You just sell someone else’s product.   You don’t have to worry about shipping the product.  You don’t need to worry about customer service.  You don’t even need to have a shopping cart or a merchant account.

The company you represent takes care of all this for you.  Your commissions just show up in your bank account.  Or you get checks in the mail.  You don’t even have to worry about writing ads and sales letters.

You just link your readers to the sales letters of the company you are representing.  All you focus on is building your list and writing great articles for your blog on the topic of interest to your target audience.

More on that in a minute.

The key to success on Day One is to make sure you pick the right affiliate program. There are thousands of affiliate programs to choose from.  Almost every online business has an affiliate program.

Start by signing up as an affiliate to represent one product.  As you get the feel of it, you can add more products later.   And pick a product you yourself are using and have had a good experience with.

Choose a company that has generous payouts, that is fanatical about customer service, and that understands marketing.

You want to make sure you are partnering with a quality company that has a track-record of success with this product.  And it’s best to represent a product that has to do with your area of interest and your area of expertise.

Okay – so that’s your job for Day One. Sign up as an affiliate marketer for the product.

Day Two

Subscribe to an email broadcasting and autoresponder service.  And learn how to use it. 

You need this to broadcast your email messages.  Email is how you stay in touch with people on the list you’ll be building.  Email is how you bring people back to your website site over and over again.

There are lots email broadcast services out there.  I use Aweber.com and iContact.com.

ConstantContact.com is also popular.  So you need an email broadcast service.

Whichever one you choose does a good job of walking you through the mechanics of how to use it.  So now your work for Day Two is complete.

Day Three

Put up a blog or an ezine.

A blog is the easiest kind of website to put up.  You need zero technical knowedge.  It’s much easier than using Microsoft Word.    A blog is an articles site.  The home page is a long scrolling page with one article after another.

So just head on over the wordpress.com or typepad.com and you can have a blog up on the Web in 12 minutes.  Your blog should zero in on a particular topic – a topic that is directly related the product or products you are selling.

80 percent of your blog should be articles that don’t sell anything.  Your great informative articles are what keep your readers coming back to your blog.

For more on blogging, read the chapter in this book titled “Blogging for Dollars.”

Having a blog is the easiest way to build your presence on the Internet fast.

Day Four

This is when you begin your advertising program.  You need an advertising program to build traffic for your site.  And you want the right traffic – people who are interested in the topic of your blog or ezine.

Go to several directories of ezines.

Look for ezines that are exactly on your topic.  Subscribe to those ezines.  Almost all of them are free.  This is a critical part of your market research.

You’ll find a good ezine directory at ezinesearch.com.

There are others as well.  Within a few days, it will be obvious which are the quality ezines with a big readership.  And EzineSearch.com tells you how big the ezines are.

Contact the ezines that look right for your market and ask for an advertising rate card.

You want to find out how much it costs to run an ad.  It’s usually very cheap to run ads in ezines.  The types of ads ezines run are usually text ads, banner ads and classified ads.

Test some ads in select ezines and see how they do.  It’s a good idea to contact other advertisers you see advertising to ask how their ads are doing.  Make sure your ad takes those who click to a page with a sign-up form that offers something of value free for filling out for your form – such as a free ebook on the topic of your blog.

You’ll want to read my chapter on how to construct an effective landing page. 

This is a key link in your marketing chain because your ad and your landing page is how you build your list of email addresses so that you can follow-up and keep bringing people back to your blog.

Day Five

Sign up for a Google AdWords account.

This is the world’s biggest and best pay-per-click advertising program.  I spend 70% of my advertising dollars on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

I love PPC advertising because I only pay when someone click on my ad and ends up on my site.  I only pay for performance.  The key to making PPC ads work is to pick the right keywords and phrases.

The way people find what they are looking for on the Internet is they type keywords and phrases into their browser and see what listings come up. 

The listings include PPC ads that fit these keywords and phrases that have just been typed.

So your key to success here is picking the right keywords and phrases that attract your most likely buyers.

Just like with your ads in ezines, you want your PPC ad on Google to take your clicker to a page where your sign-up form and free ebook offer is prominently featured.

Again, never take those who click on your ad to your general site.  Always take them to a landing page that is exactly in line with the subject of your Google PPC ad and the keywords your clicker has typed into her browser.

This is a page with a sign-up form – the entire purpose of which is to get people to fill out your form.  The way you do that is to offer a free ebook or a “white paper” that is exactly on their topic of interest.

Take a look at one of my landing pages at FreeSalesLetterBook.com to see what I mean.

You have to give people a strong reason to want to fill out your sign up form. That’s your free ebook or “white paper.”

Remember . . . you are not trying to sell anything yet.  You are just trying to build readership for your blog.

To do this, it’s essential that you do everything in your creative power to capture the name and email address of your visitor.  Your list of email addresses will then become the readers of your blog or ezine.  So this is how you build your list.

Remember, those who know how to build a list rule on the Internet.

The name of the game for making money on the Internet is to build your email list of people interested in your topic – so that you can follow up and build your relationship with these people – so that you can let them know when you have posted a hot new article on your blog.

The other key is to keep your blog focused on that topic . . . because you know this is the topic of interest to people on your list.  And make sure you are tracking the results of your ads.

There are many ways to do this.  Google’s Conversion Tracker tool is very good.

You can also do it by having a different landing page for each ad you are running.

We won’t get much into the mechanics of tracking here.  The key point is that you must track the performance of your ads. 

You want to know how your ads are doing – whether you are losing or making money on each ad.    You want to stop running ads that are losing money and ramp up the ads that are making you money. It’s really as simple as that.

Day Six

On day six you want to look for discussion groups and discussion boards that are about your subject.   Don’t laugh.   This is a great way to build a list . . . and it’s FREE.

It just requires a little elbow grease and some time.

People in those discussion groups are usually fanatics about their subject. 

Take stamp collectors. Now, stamp collectors tend to be fanatical anyway.   But stamp collectors who spend time on stamp collector discussion boards are super-fanatics. 

Same with golfers, wine connoisseur, bowlers, dentists, skiers, tennis players, Internet marketers, Dante scholars, and a thousand other subjects.  You want to be on discussion boards that are on your topic – that is, the topic of your target audience. 

Get involved in the discussion.    And when someone asks a question you have the answer to, give your helpful answer – and then post a link in your message that takes people in the discussion to the squeeze page on your website to get your helpful and valuable free ebook on the subject.

You can actually build a big list of super-hot ready-to-buy leads very quickly this way.

Here’s how and why.

Let’s say you learn over time that the value of capturing a lead from this discussion group is $10 on average.    That is, 10% of these people who go to your sign-up page to get your free ebook end up buying $100 worth of product from you on average sometime over the next three months.

That means capturing just 10 leads from this group is the same as earning $100.

If you are able to capture 100 leads a day by doing this, that’s the same as earning $1,000 a day.  And that’s just from one list source.

A big key to making this work is to make sure you really get a feel for the discussion board or group before you start posting your comments.    Posting irrelevant comments is just a waste of time for you, won’t attract any interest, and you will be identified quickly as a discussion board spammer.  Not good.

Focus on the discussion boards that are exactly on your topic.  Be a genuine help to people in the discussion.  No one wants to be in a discussion with spammers.

So this is a great FREE way to build your list. And it’s amazingly effective. The quality of names you’ll get are very good.  It’s a great way to get started -- especially if you don’t have an advertising budget.

Day 7

Write a sequence of at least five email messages for your autoresponder.    If you don’t know what an autoresponder sequence is, your email broadcast service will explain it to you.

But this is just a sequence of emails that are written in advance.  When someone fills out your sign-up form, they should get a welcome message.

Later that day or the next day, they should get another message – perhaps an invitation to read an article on your blog.  On day three they get another message, on day five another message, etc.

Make your email messages 80 percent helpful tips . . . and only 20 percent links to sales pitches. 

If too many of your emails are links to sales pitches, people wills stop reading your emails.  Your emails should be short – three or four sentences of intriguing copy with a link that takes your reader to the article on your blog you want your readers to see. 

Four of your emails should take your readers to an interesting article you have just posted on your site for every one article that takes your reader to an outright sales pitch. 

As you begin see money coming in, don’t spend it at Bloomingdales or on a big fancy dinner. Instead, revinvest that money in your ads that are working.

Your standard for judging a successful ad will depend on your budget.  My standard is that I want to break even on my advertising within 30 days. 

This means my sales from the new names I acquire pay for my advertising within 30 days.  Every penny I make after that is then profit. 

With my current program, I double my money on my advertising about every 75 days. 

So that’s pretty good return on my money.  I don’t know many investors on Wall Street who are doing that well – doubling their money every 75 days like clockwork.  My Google AdWords bill alone is about $25,000 per month now.

But I don’t mind one bit because I cover that cost within 30 days from the new names that come in and sales that are made from those names.  And I double my money in 75 days on average.

If you have really deep pockets, you can build your list much faster if you are willing and able to wait 90 days to recover your advertising investment, or longer.  I like 30 days as my benchmark for the time it takes to break even on acquiring new names because that means I can finance my growth by using my American Express card.

There are several ways to structure your blog or ezine to make money.

One way is to have the articles run down the center of the page and to have the ads or links to ads run down the sides.  Another way is to have the ads look like articles – and have every fourth article be an ad for the products you are representing.

Even though the ad might have a headline and be designed to look like an article, it’s a good idea to actually write the  word “advertisement” right under the headline so that your readers don’t feel deceived.

A good ezine to look at that works like this is called “Early to Rise.”  You’ll find it at: http://www.earlytorise.com

It’s a good ezine on how to be healthy and wealthy and is well worth reading.  Lots of good writing and good advice in there.  But the main reason for you to subscribe to it is so that you can see what I am talking about here – and how to make money with your blog or your ezine.

I believe every business needs a blog or an ezine – even if you are running a good old fashioned brick and mortar business, and even if you are not now bringing in any money over the Internet.

A blog full of informative articles establishes you as an expert at what you do.  If your blog is good, your clients and customers will enjoy reading it.  And you will always be the first to come to mind when they need your product or service.

Day 8

Now that you are having success and money is coming in the door, start looking for more products to represent as an affiliate marketer – products that fit nicely into your target market.

Now this is important.  Only represent products and services that you believe in, and that you are actually using; or you will lose credibility with your audience.

And there’s really no reason to push hard to sell these products.  Just make them available on your blog.  The reason people are coming to your blog is to read the articles.  So your focus should be on making the articles good and worth reading.

Think of your blog is like a newspaper.

A newspaper makes money by selling advertising.  But people read the newspaper not to read the ads, but to read the articles.  So your blog or your ezine needs to be like that.  You make money when someone clicks on one of your affiliate links and buys the product you are representing.  You get the credit because code is embedded in the link.

And there are other tracking mechanisms to make sure you get the commissions you are earning as an affiliate marketer.  We’re not going to get into the mechanics of tracking here.

The point to take away here is that one of the easiest way to make money on the Internet is to put up a blog focused on a specific topic; and to sign up as an affiliate marketer for products that you believe in and that fit in well with your market niche.

Enrolling in the Google AdSense program is another way to make money from traffic coming into your blog or ezine.  This is another type of affiliate program, and it’s one of the easiest ways to make money on the Internet.

You receive a commission from Google whenever someone clicks on a Google AdWords ad that you let Google run on your site.  You can enroll in Google AdSense and learn more about it by going here: https://www.google.com/adsense

The focus of your efforts should just be on providing great content for your blog.  Your job is to keep your blog interesting and valuable so people keep coming back to read it.

Your income will then mostly take care of itself.  Once you have traffic coming into your site, figuring out all kinds of ways to make money from your traffic is easy.

There are many other ways to make money on the Internet.  But being a blogger and an affiliate marketer is the easiest and simplest way.

So there it is – “Your 8-Day Plan” for making money on the Internet.  The foundation of this plan is to sell the products of others – which removes about 90% of the headaches that come with running a business. 

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