Making Money - Online Business Opportunity

Hello there. This is our third and last part of the Money in Health series. You can find the first two parts here:

• Money in Health - Part 1
• Money in Health - Part 2

I would suggest that you read them first so you’ll have an idea what we’re trying to talk about here.

Now, back to topic. Today, we’ll focus on two important things - money making methods and driving visitors to your website. I assume at this point that you already have a blog and have already put some interesting content in them.

Money Making Methods

As I previous mentioned in Parts 1 and 2 of this series, there are many ways to earn money online. One of them is to start putting PPC ads on your website. Again, with PPC ads, you earn each time someone clicked on an ad on your website. Here are three PPC Ad networks that I use:

Another method of making money online is by making affiliate sales. I would strongly recommend that you sign-up with Clickbank. They have a huge database of products available for affiliate marketing. Some even give commissions of upto 75%.

Now, after you have signed up with these Adsense, Adbrite, Text-Link-Ads, and Clickbank, all you have to do next is follow their instructions on how to put their ads / links on your website. Note that the Adsense Terms of Use doesn’t allow Adbrite to be displayed on the same page because they’re both contextual PPC ads. But you can put Text-link-ads together with Adsense on the same page.

Driving Traffic

This is the problem that most internet marketers encounter - getting traffic. But I’ll show you a bunch of ways to promote your website for free. I’ll also show you a few proven and effective paid methods to bring traffic to your website.

First the free ways…

• Search engines - the best visitors you will get are mostly from the search engines. The problem is that just having a website doesn’t guarantee that you will have traffic from search engines. I recommend that you read this Basic SEO Checklist to get you started on Search Engine Optimization.
• Write an article about your target niche and submit it to article directories. This gives you inbound links (good for Search Engines), the chance to appear as an expert in your field, and even direct traffic from the articles you write. Here’s a Google search for article directories.
• Email signatures - put a link on your email signature. You might think of this as very primitive and ineffective but I tell you it works.
• Get involved in group discussions - join Yahoo Groups / Google Groups related to your target niche and create a healthy discussion with them. Note, do not promote on these groups or people will start to hate you - lots of them. Instead, just put a link to a particular topic on your website whenever appropriate.
• Join online forums - this is a bit more tedious but is also effective. Again, don’t promote.
• Submit your website to the Open Directory Project. If you get approved, you’ll get a bunch of links from major directories that tie up with the Open Directory Project.
• Visit other blogs related to your market and post honest and true comments to their articles. Oftentimes, these blogs asks you for your URL - this is where you put a link to your website.

There are many more ways to promote online for free. I’m sure you can come up with a few more.

On the sidelight - Keywords…. it’s all about keywords….

Whether you target Search engines or actual humans, keywords are what matters most. When a search engine or a human sees a particular keyword on your site, then they know that your site might just be the right site for them. Our goal therefore, is to include specific keywords in our website text.

Specific keywords… Back to health, let’s say your site is about plastic surgery. Instead of just saying plastic surgery in your site, try to put Toronto plastic surgery instead. Though this may result in lesser searches, it also means more specific searches and easier competition. Here are few other examples for plastic surgery:

• reconstructive plastic surgery
• nose plastic surgery
• plastic surgery doctors
• plastic surgery liposuction
• plastic surgery rhinoplasty

You may also add a specific location to each keyphrase - i.e. Toronto reconstructive plastic surgery.

Point is, the more specific the keywords, the better chances you have of getting more interested visitors and higher search engine rankings - either way it means more traffic.

Special Note: Click here to download a free Ebook called SEO Made Easy.

Now the paid ways…

I will only mention a few and I won’t detail much about them here. One thing I can say about these is that they’re VERY VERY VERY effective.

• Google Adwords - the other side of Google adsense.
• SEO Elite - the perfect software for Search engine optimization
• Keyword Elite - powerful software to get just the right keywords

Note, the paying for SEO Elite and Keyword Elite might be expensive but I tell you, it’s worth the money. In fact, I suggest that you get both softwares first before you try a single Google Adwords campaign.

Ok, that sums up our Money in Health series and though this last article didn’t focus much on health, I’m sure already got the point. There’s money in everything and health is just one of them.

Find more Online Money Making Opportunities

Hello there! This time, we are going to discuss how we - the average human being - can make money from the lucrative health niche. I will guide you into the basics of how to make money online by spending as little as 2 hours / day.

By the way, if you haven’t Part 1 of this series yet then click here to read Money in Health - Part 1.

Step 1. Find a niche (What’s a niche?)
For the sake of discussion, we’re going to focus on the niche market of plastic surgery because it’s popular. Though plastic surgery is not directly health-related, it is still within the bounds of health called beauty and fitness because it involves professional medical practitioners to perform a good plastic surgery procedure.

Plastic surgery is popular among actors and actresses. In fact it’s so popular among them that Beverly Hills plastic surgery is no longer an exception but a rule.

Step 2. Study your niche market

Many writers will skip this section merely because it is believed that people don’t want to waste time studying and also because this part is considered to be the toughest. However, be informed that if you don’t learn all you need to learn about your niche market, then your odds of having a successful online business drop drastically low.

To study, you can start by researching your particular niche on the web. Learn the type of people within your niche, learn their spending habits, learn their age brackets, country of origin, etc. One thing worth of special mention when it comes to learning is to learn their surfing habits. Do these type of people love to read text or do they just want photos? Do they want to see modern looking websites or will the simple and clean web design approach work better? Things like these can make a huge difference in your success.

Step 3. Build a website

This is the next toughest thing to do. Good thing that technology now makes building a website 10 times easier than it used to. Before, building a website usually takes days - now you can have your own website in as little as one hour.

For beginners, I would recommend the blog approach as it is the easiest. In creating a blog, you no longer need the the expertise of a web developer / designer. All you need is web hosting provider that includes blogging software with their package.

Most modern web hosting providers will allow you to install blogging software such as Wordpress in as little as 15 minutes. FYI, this website runs on Wordpress.

After you have setup your blog, start typing. Just keep on typing fresh, original, and good content on your new blog until you have nothing else in your mind to type. Remember, people and search engines want content and that’s what you want to give them.

Step 4. Put income generating ads on your website

One way of making money on websites is by putting PPC ads on them. With this method, you earn each time a visitor to your website clicks on an ad. Important notice: do not click on your own ads - that’s not allowed.

Another way of monetizing your website is by putting affiliate links on them.

Step 5. Promote your new website

There are a million ways to promote your website but for the sake of those who have no idea how to, then here are a few:

a. Email all your friends in your address book. Note that you have to be as courteous as possible in writing your email. It can be a simple as this:

Hi Tim!

I just made a new website about health. Just thought you might be interested. You can find it at www.somedomain.com.

Thanks!

Sincerely,

Tom.

Don’t try to sell anything in your email as people hate sales letters. Selling is best done on the website and in newsletters, not in invitations.

b. Announce it in your favorite social networking website. This can be Friendster, MySpace, etc.

c. Put your new website’s address in your email signature.

You can think of more. One general rule of thumb for you to follow is BE GOOD.

That’s just about it. I hope you liked this article.

I’ve recently joined a ’secret society’ of bloggers who vowed to help each other in promoting their health related blogs. These bloggers (including myself) obviously target health-related niche markets. So, is there money in health?

The answer is YES!

People are ever conscious about health that more and more of us human beings are willing to spend a huge amount of our budget for health’s sake. But it’s not only health. With health comes beauty and fitness and it is usually through these venues that bloggers like me hope to make money.

Take the case of this New Jersey plastic surgery website. I have a friend - Benj Arriola - who worked for a web development company in the USA. The company he worked in focused a lot on lawyers and doctors. I was told that these doctors are willing to pay $10,000 / year for the simplest of websites just to promote their services. Most of these doctors are plastic surgeons and dentists - those who deal with beauty.

Question, why do these doctors spend so much for their websites? Answer, because they’re earning a lot more from their customers. Plastic surgery - simple or not my dear friend - is expensive! For a professional who earns thousands of dollars monthly, $10,000 / year is just a small amount to spend for promotion.

Now, as you can see, there is money in health. In Part 2 of this series, I will tell you how to get a slice of this multi-billion-dollar health business.

I once talked to a Chinese businessman about his ways of doing business. One thing he told me that I can’t forget is that “there are a million ways to make money on this planet, most people just don’t see it.”

Back then, I can’t really understand what he was talking about. How could there be so many ‘blind people’ in the world? Thing is, if there are a million ways to make money and many are still at or below poverty level, then majority of the people in this world are blind. To be honest, during the time of that conversation, I can’t help but say that I too was blind.

It took years before I actually realized what the “million ways to make money” he was talking about is. It’s called opportunities. The problem is that many people are not trained to identify opportunities. I strongly believe that every person encounters at least one money making opportunity per day. Sad to say 90% of the population can’t really identify what the opportunity was until after they see someone else grab it - then they say, “Why on earth didn’t I think of that?”

One can make money through buying and selling items either offline or online. People do this online through ebay and other auction sites. I also know people who make money in the order of thousands just by reselling products. This is also known as affiliate marketing and it is fast becoming more popular on the web. Online, there is also pay per click advertising and though the earnings per click can be as low as $0.01, there are people who have managed to master the technique and are now earning hundreds of thousands of dollars just by putting PPC ads and / or selling ad space on their website.

Offline, I personally think that the food business is a great opportunity and here in the Philippines, franchises for food cart can be as low as P50,000 (about $1,000) only and that covers all the necessary equipment and training to start a definitely good food business. Btw, if you’re interested to find out how to get really cheap AND legal micro-business franchises in the Philippines, just send an email to e@mikelopez.info.

One person I remember who’s good in identifying opportunities was my stepfather. Once, he was so sick that he can’t leave the house and yet he managed to make money just by looking at the local newspaper and making a few phone calls.

I also know another person who makes lots of money and manages to support his entire family (and extended family) by selling his expertise as a consultant. Yes, consulting can be very lucrative in terms of making money.

Anyway, the whole point is that money is everywhere and as Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad puts it, money is just an idea and ideas are free. The only thing you need to do is expand your boundaries and learn to identify opportunities as they come along. Who knows, you may just manage to retire young.

So, before things get too late, I tell you this — start making money NOW!